Establishing Conflicting Complexes: How Religious Trauma Grows (part one)

I mentioned in my Trauma Nation post about the establishment of inferiority complexes in members of the church. I didn't call it that, but that's what it is. Let's talk about that a moment. Or three.

The basic premise of "the church" is that people are shit. Now, this is actually a crazy idea when you break it down, so let's do that...

"god" is supposed to be a perfect being, right? "He's" all powerful, all knowing, all everywhere (yeah, sure, I could just say omnipresent and do the whole "omni-" thing, but it's funnier this way). And this god made everything, which is supposed to be a perfect creation. Stay with me, because this is where the mental gymnastics come in.

god is perfect and can't make things that are imperfect and, yet, man, his greatest creation, the being he (I'm just using "he" for ease of pronoun usage, at this point, and because that's what "christians" call it) breathed a soul into which, supposedly, he didn't even do for the Angels, is so flawed that he had to make a pit of fire to toss these immortal souls into because of how messed up they are. Mosquitoes (which, according to a recent study, have killed more humans than anything else in creation) don't go to Hell, yet man does. And I'm just going to add in here, how can you credit any being who would willingly create the mosquito with perfection?

Now, "christians" will tell you that god did indeed create man perfect; it's only that man chose to become imperfect through sin. And I'm going to go back to the "all knowing" part and say "what the fuck?" And apply some logic, because logic is good, right?

If you were an omniscient being creating something you wanted to be perfect and have a relationship with, would you make it with some kind of fatal flaw? On purpose? I mean, that's the kind of thing writers do to create tension for their audiences so, unless "god" has some audience of other "gods" and this is all some kind of weird galactic stage play, creating man with a "fatal flaw" is just spiteful. Cruel. It's messed up, man.

The other option is that it was an accident, making "god" not so perfect after all.

At any rate, "christians" would have us believe that man's imperfection is by design, so they choose the "that's fucked up" option. Then they beat it into believers because you only need "god" if you are, indeed, fucked up.

But, wait, I'm not through.

See, the reason that god made man all fucked up and imperfect is so that man would require the assistance of god to become perfected and be... just like him. Which is where the next part of the mental gymnastics comes in.

See, the idea is that god was hanging out up in heaven and got lonely. Which kind of does away with the galactic stage play thing because you'd think if there were other god-beings to hang out with then you wouldn't need people. Oh! Oh! But wait! There's more. Because god had a kingdom full of angels, already! And this is the screwy part: the angels were no good for hanging out with because they were too much like god. So, evidently, god needs something less than perfect to hang out with to give him some mental stimulation. Although, all things considered, how much mental stimulation can you get from an ant? Have you ever tried hanging out with ants, having philosophical conversations with and whatnot, and, maybe, firing up the grill and stuff? Oh, wait, we know what happens when you invite ants to picnics.

Now we have all sorts of problems because, according to "christians," god can't hang with less than perfection. So god needs some imperfect humans, but god can't deal with imperfect humans. It's like someone with lactose intolerance staring at a triple cheese pizza.

And, so, god creates man and puts him in a situation where he can't help but fail, causing man to be no better than shit. Shit that god needs to toss in a fire because god can't deal with the imperfection. Did I say that was fucked up? Because that is fucked up.

Let me tell you, what I want to do most as a creative individual is make art that I have no better purpose for than burning. Yeah, that's how I want to spend my time; how about you?

But this is the proposition proposed by "christians":
1. god created man, a perfect being, to "fellowship" with "him."
2. god put man into a situation where man would "sin" and become an imperfect being and, thus, interesting.
3. But god can't "fellowship" with imperfect beings and, also, imperfect beings will damned to Hell for all eternity suffering for their imperfection (which god caused in the first place).
4. However, god made a way for man to become perfect again which will allow him to "fellowship" with god once more, not that god has any interest in that, having plenty of perfected beings around himself already that he has no interest in, but, hey, it does save you from perpetual burning.

And, yes, the "church" can help you with the secret to that (for, you know, $20 in the offering plate on Sundays). Which is why they spend so much time on convincing people about how messed up they are. And kids who grow up in that environment? Well, they become convinced pretty early on that, on their own, they're not worth a whole a lot. Even people who don't grow up in it become convinced of it:
You're no good without "god."
In fact, you are an inferior person.

Fear Tactics: The Root of Religious Trauma

 

My first real memory of church is of being scared to death. Or being made to be scared to die. However you want to say that.

Actually, my first memory of church is of having the car break down on the way there. I was probably four or so, and we were going to some church way out on the edge of town, and we broke down on the highway. The next time we went to church was at this tiny little Southern Baptist church a few blocks from our house. We didn't drive; we walked. I think I was five. Not older than that, for sure, but I don't think I could have been younger unless I'm misremembering which house we walked from, not that that is important other than establishing the age.

This church was so small it didn't have any kind of childcare for during the service, so I was in "grown up" church. I was probably wearing my suit, because my mom believed at the time that you should always wear your very best to church. I had this little, light blue suit that I absolutely hated. Writing this, now, I'm wondering if it was maybe even Easter or something and that's why we were there. It's not like we went much to church when I was a kid. At least, not yet.

Now, I'm not going to try to pretend that I remember what the sermon was about. I have no clue. What I do remember, though, is that there was some hellfire and damnation in it, because I left that service deathly afraid that I was going to die and go to Hell. Seriously afraid. So afraid that I had nightmares for years of being chased by the devil... He was in a rollercoaster, by the way. I was running on my legs, and he was behind me in a rollercoaster chasing me so that he could catch me and drag me away to burn forever in a pit of darkness. That was the sermon that started my obsession with bedtime prayers, as if praying "now I lay me down to sleep" was somehow going to keep me safe through the night and keep the devil from getting me.

I was five.

I was traumatized. Not that I knew that. I mean, I was five! I can still remember that fear in my chest when I think about it. The terror of going to Hell.

I would like to say that what happened to me was an accident. That I wasn't supposed to be in that service and that that message wasn't meant for me. I would like to say that it was "parental error" due to the fact that we hadn't been to that church before. But it wasn't. There were no childcare services offered. Children were supposed to be there, and I'm sure I was not the only kid in that service.

And it wasn't just that church. The putting the fear of Hell and Satan into kids so that they will want to convert is standard operating procedure for fundamentalists. They teach it as part of their fucking preaching programs. "Get 'em while they're young" and all of that.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of raw data out there about religious trauma, but I spent a lot of years working in the church-industrial complex, and I can tell you that of people I have known who were childhood converts that the vast majority have said that their reason for becoming a "christian" was because they didn't want to go to Hell.

That's just sad.

Let's look at this another way for a moment:
"christianity" is supposed to be about love, so much so that Paul says that non-"christians" will be able to tell who the "christians" are by their... love. So the religion that is supposed to be, above all else, about love instead uses fear to drive conversions. The vast majority of people claiming "christianity" converted during childhood. That point was driven into us over and over again. Seriously, "Get 'em while they're young." And the way to do that is to make them afraid of the consequences.

Ironically, it's those heathen liberals who tend to appeal to love and fellowship and building people up. If you're going by Paul and looking for love in the world as identifiers for "christianity," you're not going to find that in "the church." You're going to find it with the liberals. "christians" are most certainly not known for their love.

To get back to the point, though: The vast majority of "christians" became "christians" because of a traumatic fear experience as a child, at least those in the USA. Maybe it didn't cause nightmares for everyone, but, when you feel the need to let some strange man, even if he is your pastor, dip you backwards into a pool of water to keep you from going to Hell, there is something wrong. Especially considering that Hell is make-believe, anyway. You may as well tell kids that Santa won't bring them any toys... oh, wait...

All of which is compounded because "we" want kids to believe that God/Jesus loves them and, yet, God/Jesus is also going to throw them away into Hell for all eternity for being bad. And, even after you're "saved," there is some unknown unforgiveable sin that'll get you sent straight to Hell no matter how good you've been, so you have to be the fucking best all the time, because you don't know when "god" might pop out and say "Ha ha!" and toss you in the pit.

This trauma is so deep and so pervassive that there may not be a way to heal it from those who have been affected. I'm 50 years old, and I can still have moments of fear and second guessing before I remember to engage the very rational part of my brain and talk myself out of it. I'm not convinced that most people have a very rational part of their brains or, if they do, it has never been used enough to be worthwhile. Possibly, the only thing we can do is to start trying to prevent this trauma from being visited upon future generations of children. And it's time that we start doing that.
Somehow.

Trauma Nation (part two)

I'm not going to try to get into the science of all of this. Seriously, it's just too much. Too much picking apart of every piece of information I want to talk about, and too much data to try to introduce in any kind of concise way, and I want to do this in one post, not 40.

The thing about trauma is that you don't always know you're suffering it. This is especially true if the trauma has been caused by a series of small incidents built up over time rather than one large trauma event. It's even more true if the form of abuse has been institutionalized so that the people around you are telling you that it's not really abuse.

So you don't like the way the old geezer in your church is always touching you? Putting his hands on your shoulders or, maybe even, patting you on the ass? "Oh, don't worry about him. He's harmless. He does that to everyone." Eventually, you do quit worrying about it because you get numbed to it, and who are you going to tell, anyway? Once your parents have dismissed the inappropriate contact as harmless, and your church leaders have as well, and your friends are all putting up with it, what are you supposed to do? Who do you tell? These are the people you trust, so you learn to ignore it no matter how it makes you feel.

When the message from the church is that women should keep their mouths shut and shouldn't be in leadership and it must be true because the Bible says so (and the Bible is NEVER wrong), who do you turn to? No one. You learn to keep your mouth shut because, if you don't, you face disapproval from everyone.

You wonder why your whole congregation is white, and the message that you get from the people you have grown up with and have learned to trust and who are your family is that White People are the chosen People-of-God and will be the ones to inherit God's Kingdom, you accept it and, without realizing it, you look down on black people and any other minority, especially Jews, because Jews were the Chosen People, but they spit on God and killed his Son, and the Bible says that they deserve all the punishment of the world for the rest of time.

But most fundamentally, you are a worthless piece of shit. You are a piece of shit who is destined for Hell where all of the pieces of shit go. This particular message is pervavise; after all, it is how the church survives. It needs to convince you of your shittiness before it can offer you the only chance you have of escaping Hell: Jesus (and $20 in the offering plate). This is the root of the trauma we face as a nation, the buy-in of "christians" that we are all pieces of shit and deserve to burn for it.

Of course, "christians" have their "get out of Hell free" card, but that doesn't change the fact that, at their core, they have bought into the idea that they are worthless pieces of shit. Only "Jesus in their hearts" makes them valuable at all. And, since they are worthless pieces of shit, everyone else, all of us heathen liberals and minorities and gays, are even more worthless pieces of shit.

I know how this works, because I grew up in this, with this belief that people are worthless and that it's only through "the precious blood of Jesus" that anyone has any value. Everyone else is just going to get heaped on the fire, so you need to save everyone you can. The problem is that it becomes so ingrained, this notion that people are worthless, that you can't separate it from your actual feelings and thoughts.

I grew up with this idea that the inherent state of people is one of depravity. I'm just going to say that middle school and high school may not be the best places to learn that that might not be true. By the time I was in college, my whole world view stemmed from this place of people starting in the negative position and not even being able to get to neutral without some kind of divine help, not even the very best of people.

Was this view mine? Or was it just ground into me at church? How do I separate out from that what my own views even are? Because, now, I know that people are just people. They may not be inherently good, but they certainly aren't inherently evil, even if people do tend toward being selfserving. I know this in my head, but I can't just pick out of myself the feelings around all of this. It means that I have to always be on guard against my own emotional reactions to things, because they may not be my emotional reactions, just the reactions implanted in me by the fucking church.

This is trauma. And, for at least some portion of my life, I visited this trauma upon other people by allowing my reactions to them be ones of suspicion and distrust or mere avoidance. During high school, I enmeshed myself with my church and my youth group and forsook, basically, all of my other social connections. Staying in your church group and not socializing outside of it is part of the paradigm. And you can't see or feel your own trauma while you're stuck inside of all of this.

This is the state of being for a significant portion of the US poplation, right now. They are living in the trauma that the church has buried them under and have no idea of what their own thoughts or feelings might be, because they have never known any other thoughts and feelings than those the church has given them. And, so, they visit this trauma on those around them because they don't know any other way.

Trauma Nation, it's what we are.
And we can't begin to heal the trauma until we can break the hold that the church has over the nation; specifically, the hold it has over the politics of the nation. This was never supposed to be the state of things in the US. The framers of the Constitution came from a country where religion cohabitated with government, and they knew how dangerous it was. It's time for us to, to co-opt the phrase of another moment, defund "the church." "christians" already think we are at war with them, just for wanting to live our lives in peace without them moralizing to us, but I think it's time for a real war against "the church," one in which we take an active stance and depowering the church and deprogramming the cultish thinking they're living with.

Because, make no mistake, "christianity" is, indeed, a cult. It is a cult that is bent on bringing about the end of the world (I'm not exaggerating, but I'll get to that in a later post) so, if we want a future, we have to start taking an active stance against "the church" and religion in politics. It's time to work on healing the trauma.

Trauma Nation (part one)

Back during my college days, I had a friend who was a "philosopher." Who didn't, right? He was, of course, a philosophy major and fancied himself the "last true philosopher." Because no one can be more pompous than a philosophy major. Unless it's Rudy Giuliani. One of my other friends used to say that "The Philosopher" was just shy of being an oxygen thief.

On the one hand, having The Philosopher around often prompted interesting discussions. The Philosopher was, of course, agnostic, because one cannot be a true philosopher and have an actual answer to anything. Not even to your own existence, because, well, who knows, right?

One night, one of these "interesting" conversations led to the The Philosopher declaring that the church had been the greatest force for good throughout history, which prompted the rest of us to... stare. And stare hard. So hard that, eventually, he was all like, "What...?"

Let me make a thing clear, here:
In this group was, of course, me who, at the time, was deep in Christianity. I was a fucking youth pastor, so I was a True Believer and stuck in the ways of converting all of my friends all the time (there were many late night conversations with The Philosopher about his lack of faith).
An atheist.
A Catholic, who loved being Catholic because he could go to church twice a year, do confession, and be considered an excellent Catholic. He also supported bombing abortion clinics because that's what the Catholic church suggested was appropriate without actually saying it (much the way Trump #failedpresident urges his followers to violence).
A couple of Cultural Christians. You know, those people (MOST "christians") whose parents took them to church when they were kids, maybe they got baptised, and who, maybe, go to church every few years for whatever reason and drop $20 in the offering plate, and think they're good. You know, "Once saved, always saved," and all of that. Or they have young kids whom they want indoctrinated the same way they have been.

All of that to say that the statement that the church had been a force for good would have been expected from any of the rest of  us (probably, especially, me (or the Catholic)) other than Atheist.

Ironically, I responded first: What about the Crusades?
[You do know about those, right? When the Catholic church went on a Holy War against Muslims and Jews to take the Holy Land away from the heathens and "return" it to Christians, where it belonged. Except it was really all about a land grab the Catholic church wanted to do because any lands belonging to any of the knights they sent to the Holy Land became the property of the church when they died. Plus loot. Plus weeding out the European nobility. It was a big win/win/win for the church no matter what happened in Jerusalem.]

Then Atheist: And the Holocaust.
[Look, if you don't know about the Holocaust, you have serious educational issues. And if you're a Holocaust denier, you have serious personality issues, starting with extreme racism.]

Then everyone (everyone!) else started naming other evil things "the church" had done over the course of history (Spanish Inquisition, anyway? what about some witch trials?), a conversation which spread out to include religion in general and how, really, religion had been the greatest force for evil and harm throughout history. Because it has. Almost all of the great atrocities in history have been done in the name of some religion or another.

The Philosopher was completely caught off guard and, actually, had to admit that his statement had been foolish. He was, he said, thinking about people like Mother Teresa, individuals who had, because of their faith, done some amount of good in the world. And, yes, it's true that there have been individuals who have, because of their faith, done some good in the world, but it doesn't come anywhere close to balancing the scales against the evil done in the name of "God."

And we haven't even gotten to the individual people who use their "faith" as a reason to inflict abuse upon people who don't believe the same way they do or who do it as way to maintain control over someone else, frequently children and spouses.
-- Like the parents of one of my teenagers when he came out. Oh, if you could have heard the vile things they said about him. Before disowning him.
--Like the Catholic parents who disowned their teen for becoming Protestant, kicking her out of the house with nowhere to go.

Well, I was going to give many examples, but what's the point? They are all over the news all of the time for anyone who wants to see it.

In fact, the huge schism we are suffering as a nation is due to religion and the desire of "christians" to inflict abuse upon people who don't believe the same way they do. Having grown up in that, I have firsthand experience with the "repent or die" attitude that Republicans have about liberals. And, well, they know we're not going to repent, so it's time for us all to die. They've had just about enough of allowing other people to go about their lives and live them they way they see fit. It is, for some reason, very onerous to them, the knowledge that other people might be living "outside of the will of god," whatever that even means. And, especially, the thought that two men might be off having sex together somewhere drives "good christian men" crazy.

Basically, we are, as a nation, suffering from religious abuse and have been for... well, probably since the First Great Awakening but assuredly since the Fourth. I would say since the First, but the abuse changed in tone during the Fourth, switching from what I would call a personal abuse model preached and taught by the church for more than 200 years (beginning in the early 1700s) then switching to a more institutional model of abuse beginning in the 1960s. As with all abuse, the result is trauma. We are a nation being torn apart by religious trauma.

What I Choose To Believe

I choose to believe that there is no "god" rather than believe in the
abusive
neglectful
god of the "christians."
That you would defend such a "god" to me says more about your
Stockholm Syndrome
than it does it about me.

Neil Diamond and America

Let's be a little Biblical, here, because there's nothing "christian" extremists like more than cherry-picking their Bible verses and misusing them while ignoring the ones that condemn their current actions.

Matthew 5: 13-16 describes the role of the Christian in the world. Be salt and light. Draw men to you. Specifically, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden." Be a lamp that will share light with everyone because why? It's dumb to light a lamp and cover it with a basket. Seriously, what the fuck good is that?

And, you know, when I was growing up in the Bible Belt in the South, there was this idea that America was supposed to be that city on a hill for the whole world. That we were supposed to draw people to us because we were a beacon of hope. It was therefore unsurprising that Neil Diamond scored  a huge hit in 1981 with his song "America." We celebrated the fact that refugees of all sorts sought the shores of the United States.

Not to mention the Statue of Liberty right there for all to see and declaring:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me...

So here we are with this song that celebrates the immigrant and the refugee coming to America, and it's this huge hit. Not just is it a huge hit, but, in many ways, the song burrowed its way into the American subconscious. In a good way, because it's a good song. It's a song that epitomizes Matthew 5:14.

It's such a good song that it has been a traditional part of the fireworks show on the 4th of July here in Sonoma county. Not that we've gone every year in the last two decades, but we've been to an awful lot of them (because that's what you do when you have kids), and that song has been a major part of the music that played along with the fireworks every... single... year.
Until this one.

Okay, I'm not sure if this is the first year they left it out because we actually didn't go to the show the past couple of years, so maybe they cut it out last year. But I'm thinking it was probably this year because, suddenly, that song is... politically controversial.

And, you know, I'm sure they just did it because they wanted the event to be good fun for everyone so why include something that might get some people all twisted up and belligerent, right? Just leave the politics out of it. Like sports. Nothing that might raise the awareness of people.
(Because we wouldn't want people to bother to think.)

However, when you leave out something that has always been integral to your celebration in order to not appear to be making a political statement, you have, then, made a political statement.

At best, that statement is, "We're scared of Republicans and the GOP and what they might do if we play this song that is so obviously pro-immigrant and pro-refugee, so we're going to leave it out so as not cause any trouble."
At worst, you have someone in charge who is a Trump (#fakepresident) supporter who dropped the song so as to remove any and all show of support to the people being currently abused by the government.

It's probably the first because this is Sonoma county, but you can't completely rule out the second because Right-wing fanatical assholes seem to show up everywhere.

But going with the assumption that "America" was left out of the lineup because of cowardice, I have to say, C'mon! This is Sonoma fucking county! If you can't play a song that has always been in the show and give even that much support to the people that Trump (#fakepresident) and his goons are fucking over, then where can you play it? Where can you show support?

Needless to say, I was very disappointed that the song was left out and at the message, intentional or not, that was sent by its absence. We're way beyond coddling the Right at this point. They talk big about civility and how we ought to be being nice to them, but they removed all civility from the conversation when they started kidnapping children and putting them in concentration camps. We're way beyond "playing nice." Not because we are, because they are. They quit playing nice...

Man, they quit playing nice so long ago, it's difficult to remember a time when they were playing nice, but, certainly, all pretense at niceness went out the window when Obama was elected. That's when they really started letting their racism come out for all to see.

All of that to say that whoever put together the fireworks show in Sonoma county this year should be ashamed. They should be ashamed for not being willing to do something as simple as keeping a song in the show that has always been in the show. If you can't do something that small... well, if you can't do something that small...

And if it was a Trump (#fakepresident) supporter who pulled the song, well, that person should just be ashamed for being.

It's seriously time for the Left to start pulling themselves together and standing up to the Conservative fucks who are currently holding the reins of the country. In all the ways, small and big. Especially the small, because everyone can make small gestures of resistance, and we need to all be doing them all the time. The small gestures, even as small as a song, add up.

#resist

And they didn't even replace "America" with anything good. It was shitty big band music. Which sounds about like what Trump (#fakepresident) and his ilk want to replace the USA with.

What Does It Mean To Be Human? or The Question of Sentience

What does it mean to be human?
Most humans would say that being human is something that sets us apart from the rest of... everything. Being human is something that elevates us above the animals.
Even though we are animals.
"Christians" would say it's because humans have a soul, but what even is a soul? Some bit of "secret sauce" that makes us more than just a biological machine? I don't think I can buy that anymore.

I mean, there's nothing to say that animals aren't just as soul-full as man. Just because the Bible doesn't say it, doesn't mean it's not true. The Bible doesn't mention America, either, so maybe that's just a fantasy, too.

And there's nothing to say that a "soul" is what elevates humans. "Christians" have taken a lot of liberties and made a lot of assumptions about the phrase "breathed life into" Since man was last, there is nothing to say that God didn't go around breathing life into the "nostrils" of all the animals.

Personally, I'm tired of the liberties "christians" take. It's the definition of entitled.

However, it's not just "christians" who have long said that humans are elevated above the animals. Science has long held this to be true, too. And I get it. Man has done so much stuff that other animals have not: created art, built cities, murdered for fun. Man looks so much different than every other creature, not in physicality but in... accomplishment.

But what if it all comes down to opposable thumbs and a prefrontal cortex?

When I was growing up, what was said was that man is the only sentient animal. But what is sentience? Looking up the definition, now, it's pretty loose: the ability to think or feel subjectively. Basically, the ability to have a personal perspective.

So let's talk about my dog:

My dog doesn't like tall men wearing hats. There are few things that can make her flip out like a tall man in a hat walking by, well, other than the vacuum cleaner, but the vacuum cleaner is her nemesis. Now, it is objectively not true that tall men in hats wish her harm. My father-in-law is a very tall man who sometimes wears a hat, and she loves him, though she is giving him special dispensation. Clearly, something in her past (she was a rescue) has caused her to hate tall men in hats. It is her personal perspective. It is also her personal perspective that she doesn't hold my father-in-law to the same standard as other tall men in hats.

And, yet, dogs are not generally considered to be sentient.

So let's throw in one other factor that is often applied: the concept of "I am."

Humans like to think of themselves as the only creatures with a concept of individual identity, which is something I find highly amusing considering that most people spend their time trying to do nothing more than fitting in. And, while we're not sure if dogs have a concept of individual identity, we're pretty sure some other creatures do.

Take dolphins, for instance, who have names. They have fucking names just like we do as people, making it blatantly obvious that they not only have an awareness of their own selfhood but of other's selfhood as well, and I would be willing to bet that that extends to humans. They sound a little more evolved than we do, though.

I could go on with other examples, but I'm going to skip ahead to the part where I talk about elephants.

Elephants have a complex social structure, distinct roles and personalities, value the individual, and, even, some kind of funeral observance for the dead. Their brains are of a comparable size to human brains, and they are capable of complex tasks and, yes, building. Why don't they do it in the wild? Lack of interest? I don't know. What is clear, though, is that if there is any other land animal that qualifies as sentient, the elephant would be it. And, yet...

And, yet, Trump #fakepresident recently made it legal to once again bring elephant trophies into the United States. He might as well make it legal for ICE agents collect ears and scalps. Oh, wait... I better not give him any ideas.

Look, I'm not saying I have the answers about sentience and where or what that line is, but, then, I don't think anyone has that answer yet, What I am saying, though, is that if there is the possibility -- and there is EVERY possibility where elephants are concerned -- you should not be supporting the murder of said sentient species, especially when that species is already endangered.

But, then, Trump #fakepresident has a difficult time of recognizing the humanity of fellow humans (see Puerto Rico), so I suppose it's too much to expect that he would see anything beyond his own bloated sense of self-worth. And his gut and bucket of chicken.

The Hidden God

Let's imagine for a moment...

Imagine you're a young child. Your circumstances don't matter. They could be anything: you live in an orphanage and don't know who your parents are, you have an upper middle class family with a stay at home mom who devotes her time to you, you live in a single-parent home and your one parent works all the time so that you have enough money to eat and have a place to live. Really, it doesn't matter.

So you have this particular living circumstance, whatever it is, and, one day, someone comes along and gives you a letter. The letter is a little lengthy, especially for a kid, but the gist of it is that the letter is from your real father. He's sorry that he can't be there with you all the time like a good dad would be, and that he can't even come in person to meet you, but he wants you to know that he loves you and will be watching out for you. He will even do what he can during your life to make sure things go your way and that you're provided for, though he will never be able to be there in person to do any of those things or even let you know when he's done something. You just have to believe that he's there and that he cares for you even if you never see any proof of this. Never. The letter will have to be enough.

He does want you to know, though, that you are his living heir and, one day, his immense wealth will pass to you. One day. If you believe enough and have faith. Because he will always be watching and will know if you forget he exists. If you don't honor him, you get nothing.
Even though he wants above all else to have a relationship with you, his child.

As you grow up, you cherish the letter, reading it frequently and dreaming of the day when you might one day get to meet your father. Your real father. When you find a $5 bill on the ground, you know your father left it there for you to find. When your dog dies, you know it's because your father wanted you to get a new, better dog, so you shouldn't be sad about the old one. You see your father's hand in ever circumstance that happens to you. After all, if he's as rich and powerful as he says he is -- and he did say he would always be watching you -- you can't risk not attributing every good thing to him.

__________

Now... Imagine that this is not you but someone you recently met. This person talks about his "real" father all the time (let's just say it's a "he") and to everyone he meets... because he doesn't know who might be an agent of his "real" father. He has to make sure his "real" father knows he believes and that he's keeping the faith.

What would you say to this person? It's not like he doesn't have "proof" that his father is watching out for him. I mean, what about that time he found the $5 bill? And what about that time he got the awesome puppy when his dog died? His father was there for him. Right there. His "real" father. Watching. And, of course, there's the letter itself. Even though some stranger whom he has never seen again gave it to him.

It wouldn't matter how much you tried to talk about how there was no actual relationship involved in any of what that person had experienced in his life. You'd tell him that an actual relationship includes interaction and that if his "real" father really did love him and want a relationship with him then he'd show up. In person. Relationships aren't built on... let's call it what it is: fantasy.

Of course, the real issue in all of this is that the letter is a lie. Even if the letter is real, the letter is a lie. So, sure, there might be some real father out there somewhere who is exactly who he says he is, but all of that stuff about wanting a relationship is a lie.  And, well, if that one thing is a lie, then the rest of the letter is suspect, at the very least.

How do I know it's a lie?

Because if you want to have a relationship with someone who also wants to have a relationship with you and that mutual desire is known, then you do that. If you don't do that, then there is something else that one of you wants more than the relationship so, then, any "desire" for a relationship, any "wanting to be there" for someone, is just lip service.
Seriously, ask any kid who has a parent who never comes to his games, performances, or birthdays, or, even, just never spends any time with her.
Like the kid I once heard say in response to a comment about how much her father loved her, "No, my daddy loves golf." (I knew him. She was right.)

To be cliche, love is a verb. It's about what you do, not what you say. The same is true of "god." If "God," any god, wanted to have a relationship with you, "God" could do it. A real relationship with tangible proof. Tangible, verifiable proof.

It's like this:
Let's pretend that one day I just took off and left my family. I called and told my wife and kids that I had things to do but that I loved them and that they should just keep believing that I do. That might work for a little while but, eventually, they'd all say, "Fuck that guy." Why? Because it wouldn't matter how many messages I sent them saying "I love you" if I wasn't going to show up or offer any compelling evidence that I was somehow being detained.

In the same respect, the idea of a god who hides himself away from the world while demanding blind faith and unrequited love is absurd. By "his" own standards -- if you're going by the "christian" Bible -- it's absurd. Double standards, even for "God," aren't okay.

Now, I'm not saying that there's not a Creator, not necessarily, but I am saying that the one presented by "christians" is a lie. That god who wants to have a personal relationship with you...? Yeah, he doesn't exist. If that's what he wanted; he'd do it. For real. Anything else is just a letter from someone who isn't going to follow through.

Grass (a book review post)

One of the modern myths of American protestant religion is that God wants to have a personal relationship with you. With you, specifically. The best part about that is that "christians" think that's how it has always been, that that thought about God has always been there. But that's just not true. The idea of a "personal God," a God who wants to be "friends," originated with Enlightenment thinking and has only been around a couple or few centuries, but didn't really take off till the middle of the 20th century through evangelists like Billy Graham and his whole inviting Jesus into your heart schtick.

Prior to that, the thought about God had been more... communal. God didn't know or care about you as an individual person, only as part of humanity. That's the reason in the Catholic church you didn't appeal to God directly but worked through advocates. God didn't have time for you, but St. Joseph or St. Matthew might. It's something like the owner of a large company not knowing who every employ is, but your manager knows who you are and you can talk to her with any concerns.

As such, according to Tepper's presentation in Grass, people don't have individual purposes handed down to them by God. People have a purpose as a race, and God isn't up in Heaven handing out purposes to everyone like ice cream cones. It's up to the individual to help make sure the purpose of humanity is fulfilled, and that's as close as you get to having a purpose.

I like Tepper's view. It makes sense.

Not that that's how she presents it.

But if mankind were to have a purpose, what would it be? Something like taking care of the Earth, maybe? Which we have done a piss-poor job of and many of us, especially those in power, try to pretend like everything is perfectly fine. Nope, no climate change happening here! Move along. Because, you know, it doesn't really affect them, and they all have the money and position to avoid the negative consequences of the global devastation that is already beginning to happen. If they, the rich and powerful, are going to survive, why worry about anyone else or curing the plague at all?

And, now, I've told you a bit about the book without telling you anything at all. I suppose you'll just have to read it to understand what I mean.

Which brings us to the question of whether the book is worth reading...
I would say yes. It's a quite good book. Generally speaking, Grass is regarded as Tepper's best book, though I would say The Gate to Women's Country is better. I can't do better than that; those are the only two of Tepper's books I've read so far, though I do have a couple more on standby and just discovered that Grass is the first of a trilogy, so I'm going to have to look into the other two of these, also.

What I can say for sure is that Tepper is under appreciated as an author, and I can't really figure out why that is. Unless it's because she was a woman writing in the male dominated sci-fi field, and I'm not saying that, but I probably could, and could probably make a strong case for it. As someone who's read a lot of sci-fi (A LOT), I would say that Tepper is among the best I've read. But, then, I wouldn't expect The Gate to Women's Country to be raking in the male fans, and men and the patriarchy don't fare much better in Grass.

None of which is to say that the book isn't without its flaws. She gets a little overly explain-y when she gets into the plague, what causes it and... all of that (no spoilers!). Also, it takes a while to get to what the point of the book actually is, but, then, the protagonist, Marjorie, takes a while to come to grips with that herself, so I suppose that's understandable.

But the flaws are slight, like coming across a salty bite in your eggs, a momentary unpleasantness before returning to your scrambled goodness.

I would mention, though: Tepper seems to like telepathy and mind powers. Out of two books, so far, both have had elements of this. And I'm assuming the next two books in the Arbai sequence will also contain these elements since they're sequels to Grass. On a personal level, I'm not sure how I feel about all the telepathy and stuff. That's still something I'm dwelling on.

Anyway! Read the book! It's good!

The Good Place (a review, of sorts)

We stumbled across The Good Place recently. Which was a good thing because it's a good show. Actually, I'd say it's a great show. As I was saying to my wife just before we found this, the problem that I have with many shows is that there is no story. For instance, we've been watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine with our kids, lately, and it's a funny show; I enjoy watching it. BUT! If we never watched it again, I wouldn't miss it. I wouldn't miss it because it has no story so I wouldn't wonder what was going to be happening next. The Good Place, despite its sitcom status, has a story, a pretty great one, too. As I said, it's a great show, currently my wife's favorite show.

Part of that is because of Kristen Bell. Actually, all of the cast is great, including Ted Danson, whom I've never been a big fan of, but he's great in this. But Kristen Bell! She's just the kind of person you'd expect to find in the "good place." Which is part of why it's so funny that -- okay, spoiler alert but not really since you find this out virtually right away in the first episode -- she's not supposed to be there. Yeah, she's died and gone to "heaven"... by mistake.

Hi-jinks ensue. Because, you know, now that she's there, she can't let anyone know there was a mistake.

Oh, and Adam Scott shows up as "Trevor" a few episodes in, and he's spectacular.

So here's the thing, and it's the thing about why it's such a huge mistake that Eleanor is in the Good Place: almost no one gets in. Like, less than .01% of people get in. The system in the show is all based on how much good a person has done in the world, and only the very best of the do-gooders get into the Good Place. Everyone else goes to the Bad Place. There's this funny bit where Eleanor asks Michael who got it right, you know, about the afterlife and all of that, and Michael says something along the lines of, "Well the Christians got it about 5% right, and the Muslims got it about 5% right, basically, everyone got it about 5% right." Then he goes on to say that one guy sitting around a campfire one night doing mushrooms got it 92% right, but he was the only ever who got even close. The whole thing is kind of brilliant.

Not the getting into "heaven" by doing good things, but the part where no one has gotten it right. Because if there's one thing the religions of the world have in common it's that they, none of them, have not gotten "it" right. Oh, and they all think they have.

Which is why there should be more shows like this, shows that state bluntly, even in a comedic way, you've got it all wrong. Though this might be a show that "christians" avoid. I'm pretty sure that when I was younger I would have been offended enough by the premise of the show (that you earn your place in the Good Place by doing good in the world) that I would never have watched it no matter how funny it was. And there are a lot of people out there who are like how I was. Which is to say: stuck in dogma. Which is to say: wrong.

All of that to say that this is a show you should check out, especially if you're a "christian." While I don't necessarily agree that it's how much good we do in the world that gets us into Heaven or the Good Place or whatever you want to call it, it's certainly an idea that more of us should be paying attention to.

The New Civil War

240 years ago, we fought a war that we say was a war for freedom. For independence. But it was only a war for white freedom and white independence. From other white men. At least, that's what it became because the Founding Fathers couldn't work their way through the issue of slavery.

So we had to have another war 150 years ago to finish the first war and state that freedom is for everyone. Freedom is for everyone, no matter their skin color.

Evidently, not everyone got that memo, so, now, here we are again in the midst of another Civil War, the New Civil War. Sure, this time it's not being fought on the battlefield with guns and bullets (yet) because this war is more like a spiritual war. Last time, the Civil War was fought with actual bodies, but, this time, it's being fought for the Soul of America and what kind of soul it will be, and it's mostly being fought in the information realm.

Will we be an America filled with hate and fear, or will we be an America filled with respect and tolerance?
The irony? Those who claim to belong to the religion of love -- and not just love, unconditional love -- are the ones preaching hate and fear the loudest. I suppose they think "god" is racist, too, just like them. I don't think you can come to any other conclusion if you look inside their churches.

Of course, the "Christians" tend to forget that it is the Jews who are "God's" chosen people. I don't seen anywhere in the Bible where it says "God" changed his mind about that, so, maybe, white people shouldn't be so stuck on themselves about how cool and important they are.
But I digress... [Actually, I do digress, because that's for an upcoming post. Sort of.]

But it sort of brings me to my point, and the point is this:
All of this is still about slavery and race. Still.
I mean, Fuck. What the fuck, people? It's been 150 fucking years since the Civil War. It's time to get over it and quit idolizing your fucking moments to racism and slavery. Tear that shit down.
Look, if Germany can do it, so can you.

And my other point, which is that you can't actually talk to those people, and it's time for liberals, those on the left -- whatever you want to call the people who aren't part of the 25-33% of the country who make up these hardcore Conservative GOP asshole Trump-followers -- to stop trying to reach over to the 25-33% of the country who make up these hardcore Conservative GOP asshole Trump-followers and convince them of the wrongness of their ways. They're NOT going to be convinced. Ever. You're wasting your time and, frankly, everyone else's time, too.

Look, these "people" know that Trump is a lying pile of shit -- which is an insult to lying piles of shit, but they don't make words that go low enough to accurately describe what Trump is (and my mind just isn't degenerate enough to make that kind of stuff up) -- and they have repeatedly shown that they don't care. They don't know or care anything about what "America" means or stands for (the fact that there were people who got upset about NPR's presentation of The Declaration of Independence on fucking Independence Day is proof enough of that). They have repeatedly shown that all they care about and, thus, all they know is some deranged fantasy where white people rule the world and they get to lay waste to it as they please without suffering any of the consequences. They are not going to be talked out of that delusion.

The truth is that this is a war. An actual war, and we on the Left need to start treating it as such. This is really not a time for debating. We're long past that. The world is teetering on the brink, a lot of brinks, actually... Maybe it's better to say that world is currently finely balanced on the head of a pin. Anyway, we're all teetering on the edge of destruction, environmental destruction even if there weren't other things, and we have to stop letting asshole idiots make the decisions. Decisions which have as their sole goal of making them more rich and damn the consequences because they won't be around to suffer them.

I'm not saying we need to arm ourselves and take to the streets or anything like that (though it would be disingenuous not to point out that a significant portion of those on the Right have been stockpiling weapons for decades), but it is time to quit pussyfooting around and trying to engage in conversations. Get the fuck out and do things like voting. It's not hard! [There is no reason that Ossoff should have lost in Georgia or that Measure C should have failed here in Sonoma county other than that Liberals didn't get out and vote. And that's just messed up. At that point, you're basically just -- and I'm going to be crude here, even for me -- bending over and taking it.]

Here's the deal:
If you're Liberal or anti-Trump or whatever you want to call yourself and you're whining about how things are going, but you're not doing anything about it, then shut the fuck up! Seriously, if you're not going to take action and do simple things like voting, then you don't have the right to complain. It's time to take this shit seriously. It's not a game.
For all intents and purposes, this really is a war. The New Civil War.

We Are Not Your Machine

Let's imagine for a moment that you have a great machine. When I say machine, I mean machine. This is a purely mechanical contraption, no electronic parts. No internal computer. Nothing digital about it.

It's all gears and cogs and nuts and bolts.

Machines are fairly straightforward devices, even the delicate and complex ones. I mean that from the stance of that when a piece wears out or breaks, you remove it and put a new piece in its place. The old piece is, at that point, a piece of trash.

Machines are built with a purpose, to do a particular task, even if that task is purely ornamental. But they only work if all the parts are good.

And herein lies the problem, the corporate view of people, and, thus, the Republican view of people, is that we are all parts of some great profit machine. We are all here to generate money for them. For them, and that's the part you have to understand. We, the people, are all parts. Cogs. Gears. Pegs.

It is this view, the inherent view of people from corporate America (and the Republicans), that makes them disdainful of the "unproductive members" of society. "Unproductive members" equates to "broken pieces" of the machine. And what do we do with broken pieces? We throw them away. We do not keep them around as clutter, and we certainly don't "take care of them." That's just wasted resources.

And you wonder why the healthcare plans being offered up by the Republicans are so bad for the sick and elderly and poor...? Really? You wonder about that? These "people," because the Republicans barely view them as people, are a waste, a drain. They suck up resources that are more deserved by "productive members" of society, i.e., the rich, the 1%, the [leaches]. [Yes, let's feed the parasites even more.] So you're cries of, "But people will die if you take away their healthcare," do really fall on deaf ears because, you know what?, that's the actual idea.

Get those broken pieces of the machine out of society!

Of course, then, the problem (it's not a problem) is that we are not a machine. We are not some great biological wealth machine for the rich despite the fact that we've allowed them to turn us into one. [Over and over and over again throughout history, I might add.] That's the actual problem, we have allowed them to use us as this, and we need to stop.

Well, that's part of the problem. There's also the part where the "Christian" (because they're not really) Right, the Evangelicals, have abandoned charity and mercy in favor of the more hard-line Pauline philosophy of "if they don't work, don't let them eat." And they've taken up this philosophy because it fits in with the whole "God rewards [with money!] the just and worthy, and punishes [by taking away their money] the sinners." So, you know, if you're having financial difficulties, it's because you're a lousy sinner being punished by God and, if you'd just "get right with God," he'd reward you financially and you wouldn't need any charity or mercy. [These people are fully behind Trump and the Republican agenda, just by the way.]

All of it is about money, and,while I don't really agree with Paul on the whole "money is the root of all evil" thing, it is the root of an awful lot of evil.

No, I don't have "an answer" to all of this or how to deal with it, but I think "the answer" begins with people realizing that they've been "turned into" a money-printing machine for the wealthy. People need to realize that they are not cogs, not pegs, at least not round ones. Not even square ones.

If people are pegs, they are all strange pegs. At least, that's how we all start out, with weird little growths and arms and awkward angles and edges. Unfortunately, many of us spend our years as parents trying to take of the edges and angles of our kids and make them into these unified little round pegs that can grow up and fit into any hole. If not that, we don't do anything to stop the education system from doing that for us.

But it's time to stand up for the things that diversify us, differentiate us, make us unique. We are not pieces of a machine, and it's time that we stopped acting like we are.

It's Come To My Attention

It's come to my attention that there are those of Trump supporters who wish I had never been born. To paraphrase what was said, "The world be a better place if you had never been in it." Which, you know, is ironically amusing coming from the side of the political line which wants to make abortion something that doesn't exist.

But the attitude is something I've come to expect from those on the Right, the Conservatives, the ones who believe that only they have the right to be full people. Yes, freedom of religion but only as long as everyone practices religion exactly as they do. Yes, freedom of speech as long as people never disagree with them. Oh, and if you have some other shade of skin than "white," you better be really rich and willing to contribute a lot of green to get to play in the club.

[A recent study has shown that insurance companies consistently charge minorities up to 30% more for car insurance than they charge whites within the same risk bracket. No, there is no reason for this other than that they are not white.]

For me, the thing that makes this situation so hilarious <he said, ironically> is that the person with the specific "complaint" that finally inspired me to write this post is someone who consistently came into my space to complain about the things I was saying. I wasn't going into his spaces and calling him names or saying bad things about Trump supporters at his house or anything like that. No, he was going out of his way to come to my place and, then, getting offended by it. Over and over again.

Because, you know, that's the way Conservatives like to do it: They like to get mortally (yes, mortally) offended by things that happen nowhere near them, have nothing to do with them, and will never affect them. It's like this:
When I was a teenager growing up in Louisiana (a horrible, Hellish place that I would never wish on anyone) [And I'm not just talking about the weather in regard to Louisiana or the mosquitoes. They have the highest incarceration rate of anywhere in the world! One of the worst education systems in the country. And the politics... Look, despite the fact that we currently have Trump as president, the politics in Louisiana are... well, I'll sum it up this way: Edwin Edwards, David Duke, and Bobby Jindal.]
But I digress... Let me start over:
When I was a teenager growing up in Louisiana, people used to fervently wish and pray for the day that California would suffer a catastrophic earthquake and fall off into the ocean. Why? Because California was filled with gays and hedonism and anyone who would live in California deserved... well, God's judgement, but God's judgement was always something along the lines of Sodom and Gamorrah, because Californians didn't deserve to live. When I was a kid, California was just about the last place I ever wanted or expected to live, not least because I didn't expect it to still exist the way people talked.

Of course, it was while I was a teenager that I started having... issues... at church because of my own views. Frequently, my own views had to do with my much more accurate interpretation of the Bible. Not even the youth pastor or pastor ever came away from a disagreement with me about the Bible in which they didn't at the very least say, "You're not wrong." And my other view which said, "Why does it matter what other people do in their own homes if it's not affecting you?" [This was something I most often said when someone was going off about homosexuality.] The response was always, "Because it's wrong!" And I would say, "So is adultery, but you're not advocating for cheaters to die." [That's kind of a personal pet peeve, that "Christians" spend so much time slamming people of other sexual orientations while mostly ignoring infidelity, which must be at least an equivalent kind of sin, and I would say it's worse.]

What Conservatives/Fundamentalists (of all types) need to learn is this:
The planet is not yours. You do not own it. You do not have control of it. You share it with other people and YOU (you fascist asshole) need to learn how to SHARE. That means you need to learn how to live with people who don't believe the same things you do AND you need to QUIT trying to control other people. Also, consider your actions before you take them: If they could hurt someone else (like, if, you're going to put an oil pipeline that could leak near someone's water source, DON'T do it), don't do that thing. Also, also, corporations are not people and shouldn't be treated as such. Also some more, reducing your profits when you are still making a profit is NOT hurting you, especially if it's making someone else's life better.

I could go on.

All of that to say this:
If Trump supporters are getting tweaked enough by the things I say that they are more than wishing that I wasn't saying them, GOOD! I'm going to keep saying them. Because, you know, at this point, if you are still supporting Trump, you're either just an outright asshole (uneducated, racist, -ist-ist) or you'r clinging to Trump out of stubbornness because you don't want to admit that you were wrong, which makes you an asshole. Either way, you're an asshole.
Oh, or you're a Republican congressman who has no spine or no morality. That also makes you an asshole.

And, sure, I get that if you're a Trump supporter that you, in all likelihood, think that I'm the asshole, BUT, you know what, you DON'T HAVE TO COME INTO MY SPACE. So, really, if you disagree with me, stop engaging with the things I say.