Day 79: How do you like to spend eternity hazing?

And so it comes to pass that our law students are going through the old and barbaric system of hazing again to initiate a member into fraternities. Hazing is an eternal recurrence — nobody knows who invented it, for what reason, and why people engage in it. It is probably as old and as returning as an army of soldiers assembled to defend a king. 

With the recurrence of this foolish practice, I am reminded of the Doctrine of Eternal Return. It is said that what you do on earth, you will do in eternity. It is the phenomenon that follows from the cyclical nature of time. Thus, every event in the universe, in all its details and in its whole cosmic context, will recur an infinite number of times in exactly the same way that it has already occurred an infinite number of times in the past. 

 I’ve often used the Doctrine of Eternal Return as a tool for discerning my actions.  Before doing something, I simply ask myself — is this action something that I can do in all eternity? In the Philippines, I’ve heard declarations that mirror this Doctrine as, for example, the saying “Ang nabuhay sa baril, sa baril din mamatay.” (Live with the gun, die with the gun.) On a lighter note, I’ve heard men professing their love to maidens and say, “Pakakasalan kita sa lahat ng simbahan.” (I will marry you in all the churches.) 

But to go back to hazing, I ask each prospective neophyte and senior frat members to think about this before they find themselves in a hazing incident again. Is hazing something you are happy to do forever?  There is no escaping the curse of eternal return — it is as certain as the sunrise and the sunset — you will be the hazer or the hazed for all eternity. And each death that occurs in a hazing has and will be occuring in an infinite number of times. If you even try hazing with a promise that you will never do it again, you will be engaging in wishful thinking  — for like the others before and after you, hazing will forever be in your fate. It will haunt your dreams. The vision of this madness will be on endless repeat mode in the Youtube playlist in your minds. 

We are all on this earth only for finite number of years.  And whatever we do in these years we will do infinitely. Is hazing really worth doing forever?