Stupidity is evil

About 20 years ago I was talking with a guy at UT while we were waiting for the professor to arrive. We were discussing religion, relationships and dating and somehow the subject shifted to arranged marriages. I don’t believe in arranged marriages. That is not part of my background or culture. It may have been back in Africa before the great abductions, but I ain’t there and I don’t care. I think parents have more than their share of influence over their kids’ choices, esp. when the kids become adults. Picking out your future spouse is overkill in my book. So anyway I told him I didn’t agree with the idea of arranged marriage. He went into this pseudohomily about the 10 Commandments and “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother” and started telling me about Biblical Conservatism and strict interpretations of the bible. At one time I considered myself a conservative christian, but as the cliche says, this guy took the cake.

Some stuff in the Bible falls under “What the hell are you talking about?” Sorry. Don’t wish to offend. But it just does. I got the no stealing thing. I think I have a good take on the adultery thing, though I have had disagreements with overzealous pastors over that (she wasn’t married). Most of the 10 I understand. Who decides what is honor and what is dishonor as far as parents are concerned? How does wanting to find one’s own way in the world do dishonor to one’s parents? When I was a little kid I hurt my grandmother’s feelings once when I said I wanted to move out and buy my own house. That’s disappointment, not dishonor. If the writer of the 10 Commandments meant to say that parents are never to suffer disappointment in life from their kids’ choices, well I don’t agree and we’re gonna have to part company on that one.

Stealing your parents’ things and selling it to buy drugs is a dishonorable act. Becoming a chef instead of whatever the parent and grandparent had for a career may disappoint them but it is not dishonoring them. Disappointment, just like skinned knees, is part of life. Suck it up. Get over it. Move on. Or in the immortal words of Shannon Clark, “I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden.” There is still too much familial burdening and imposed expectations in the world. Life is to freaking short for that crap.

Stupidity is evil because when people say, “well that’s the way we’ve always done it” then either try to make you feel guilty or worse try to drag God into the discussion of the supposed guilt, they’re being stupid. And it’s evil. When someone tells you “have faith” instead of “I don’t know” in answer to your question, they’re being stupid. And it’s evil. Hand-me-down living, the rationing of information and suppression of questioning are evil. I don’t care that we’ve always done it a certain way. If you don’t know I’m going to find out and if I have to ask why, I will.

My approach to things now and in the future

A few months ago I joined a movement that the media and a couple friends of mine refer to as the “Conspiracy Theorists.” Now amongst ourselves we refer to it as the “Patriot Movement” but that is the subject of a different blog post. As I started examining the “evidence” and arguments I started to get angry. I realized that I had bought into several lies for a number of years since 2001. But as I looked further I realized that I couldn’t stop at 9-11 because the lying did not begin with 9-11.

As far as my life is concerned, we’re talking about 40 years of lies, manipulations, propaganda and bad information. Much of this is pretty innocent on the surface. I do not believe that my parents and teachers were intentionally lying or trying to manipulate me or my thinking. However much of what they did disseminate went to serve deliberate programs created with just those purposes in mind. I’m saying they didn’t lie but ultimately they worked for liars and manipulators.

The same goes for church. I didn’t convert to Christianity until I was 19. Within every congregation I have ever been a part of there has been a mindset of following, believing because someone or book (Bible) says so. And as I look at the way many, myself included, have bought into lies and propaganda from politicians, it’s the same situation as the education system and the misinformation that people hand off to one another in ignorance.

So as I have gotten increasingly angry and disgusted with the status quo and things and people that make it their business to perpetuate the status quo I have lashed out, sometimes loudly and violently, in protest. For a lot of my life I have held my tongue when dealing with people and situations who deserved everything but that. I am learning to not do that as much. While that practice has allowed me to be seen by many as a “nice guy” it has not helped the situations I have been involved in because people have not understood that they were wrong and needed to check themselves.

So now and in the future I am on a quest to understand history and philosophy. I don’t intend to become an expert in either field. Frankly there is more out there than I think I could master in the next 45 years, assuming I can make it to 90. The overriding part to that is that I am questioning EVERYTHING. Wherever I have been taught something, especially any thing that has required a moral or other judgment I am questioning whatever was taught and however I responded. When I say EVERYTHING I mean every area of life including religion, psychology, history, humanity, sociology, economics and philosophy.

As I said before I have done and am doing some lashing out in anger. Part of the problem I have been having is that as I realize that I have bought into a lie I have become angry with the person who sold it to me, whether they did so intentionally or not. I have also started re-evaluating relationships with those people. Some relationships I have no problem allowing to continue. And I know that the only key to resolving this is to forgive those people and to forgive myself for buying into things, especially without questioning.

I am forgiving the family members and other adults who participated in this when I was a child. I am forgiving the school teachers who were mostly handing down what was handed down to them. I am forgiving the evangelical church leaders and members I was around in the past. They too were mostly handing down what was handed down to them. And lastly I am forgiving myself for buying the lies, manipulations, propaganda and bad information. In the beginning I was little and didn’t know any better. I am also a product of several left-brain indoctrination programs (public schools) and continued to buy into what was told to me.

I have been changing some of the relationships I have had with some of the folks I am talking about above and there have been and are going to be some hurt feelings in that process. On the whole I am not going to try to do anything about that right now. I am studying and following the information and it is leading me to different understandings about life and myself and I am not and don’t expect to be the same person I was before all this started. As far as I am concerned the sweetened-condensed-canned version of life is nothing but sour milk and is no longer digestible.

I shall continue to report here the different discoveries and new perspectives I attain. Some of it may come out in extremely strong language depending on what it is.

Rectitude

The best example of perfect rectitude is a coffin.

More on this in the future.

The Heresy of Self Condemnation

I have put up with this crap since 1983. That’s 25 years. That’s over half my life at this point. All the time when I was attending certain churches the message was that part of me has to go to hell so the rest can go to heaven. The church is full, front to back, with counter-intuitive psychology that is euphemistically called wisdom. If you question those in charge, they’ll tell you the holy spirit said it, which serves as a further coercion for you to obey. And people will quote verses like “…God has confounded the wisdom of the wise…” This stuff comes in the ears one way and filters through the subconscious as something quite different and much worse.

You don’t hear this every Sunday in every sermon. But. At some point you’re subjected to what amounts to encouragement to curse your self. I am splitting the word up because for this essay “self” is not part of any pronoun. Now you won’t hear the clergy or the other members of the congregation saying curse your self. Nobody says that, at least not out loud. I doubt many are thinking that. It might actually get their conscious attention and we can’t have that. What is said by many people around you is humble your self, deny your self, yield your self, surrender your self, give of your self, be selfless, die to your self, there is no such thing as self-worth. I wish I could say all this stuff goes in one ear and out the other. Unfortunately it goes in at least one ear, gets processed by the subconscious and comes back as self-criminalization. According to these doctrines the self is at war with God. And to put that in our pop culture lingo, spiritually we’re all terrorists.

For this essay I have split the word self from whatever associated pronouns it occurs with in the sentences. When people are saying it to others, they don’t. It gets read in by the subconscious as mostly “yourself.” If you don’t “robot” easily and since things aren’t explained well in the church, you tend to walk around with ideas in the back of your mind that you’re worthless, you’re nothing, you don’t matter and you have no value. Then to confound matters further, there is a separate message of self love. People will ask, “if you don’t love yourself then how can you love anyone else?” Right. Exactly. And how can you love your self if everywhere you turn it is being assaulted by religion? And not only is your self being assaulted constantly by religion, you’re being asked to participate in this psychological Gangbanger’s jumping in. Being worthless, nothing and not mattering are certainly not things I want to feel affection for.

There is a difference in this, between what is meant, what is said, and how it is received. If the message is don’t indulge your self to excess, that would be okay. But that’s not what is said. What is said is that self-indulgence of any kind is evil. If they limited the talk to things that cause harm to others, like engaging in some favored activity at the expense of one’s children’s needs that would be okay. If they’d take the time to describe these cases and why this sort of selfishness is bad, that would be okay. People could process it. People could understand it. But these speeches aren’t fleshed out enough to do that. Most sermons consist of how much can we pack into a 15-45 minute talk to get some message across. Whenever the self is being discussed in these speeches, prepare to get the ice packs out because you’re about to take a beating.

The self is just what it is, it’s you. It’s not evil. It’s not worthless. It’s not nothing. Evil is coming from the abusive authority figures who are telling you that nonsense. Overcoming this, and believe me I am just starting, is a subjective process. It’s internal. You’ve got to value your self enough to take the time to do it. You have to decide to do it for your self. Try picking out something you do well and taking credit for it. Try to think of something to love about your self. Start with something small. Light a match. Turn on a flashlight. As you continue to do that, the darkness will retreat.

I have to come up with other solutions because what I have been trying to do and what others have been encouraging me to do ain’t workin’. I am putting it up here for others to read because I know I am not alone.

Economic Theory for Politicians

The other names for this course is Econ 101-SP and Special Ed. Economics for Politicians. Economics is the one place where politicians show an ever unswerving lack of ability to get it. This is most recently evidenced with former Sen. Phil Gramm exiting the McCain campaign after saying that we have a “mental recession.” He’s an economics prof. and he has never gotten it. So without further digression, here it is:

In order for the people to survive and “make ends meet” their cost of living has to be below their income.

That means that certain portions of the cost of living like, oh, fuel, need to not rise at over 40% a year over five years. That means that nonsense gimmicry like mortgage lenders financing the land and not the building on the land and then hitting a home”owner” with a balloon note five times their established payment cannot happen.

We cannot Wal-Mart our way out of this with cheaply made goods coming from Asia. The rate the cost of living is increasing in this country has to be brought down to 1% so that it is under most people’s rate of pay increase.

Fixing this is a lot more complicated than I am describing. But when I read about politicians bringing up the same dysfunctional “solutions” like jacking up the taxes on the rich, I know that the whole lot of them are useless, insane and increasingly intolerable. I think it’s in the brandy they’re having with their cigars. They seem okay when they go into office. After that it’s like there is some rave for old fogies and they come out with the same bullshit.

I still want to see Obama elected even though I know he’ll be another four or eight years of the same insanity. Insanity is more than repeatedly attempting the same thing and expecting a different result. It includes thinking that the only reason the attempts have not worked is that the right people haven’t tried them yet.

It really won’t matter who we elect. The government will still be in office.

The final exercise of mind, spirit and life

You are surrounded by 1 Billion dots of roughly random sizes and at roughly random distances from one another. Your primary task is to connect them by traveling from dot to dot carrying a white silken thread. The dots are all related to one another. Your secondary task is to discover how. Take all the time that you need, but we must warn you that at some point, if you have not completed your tasks by then, they’re all going to turn a gun-metal grey and come hurtling together to permanently trap everything and everyone in one geodesic-type super-dot. We cannot predict with absolute certainty when that time will be but we strongly suggest that you be somewhere, anywhere else when that happens. Your third task is to spread the word and encourage others to engage in the same connecting process. If enough people are able to string enough connections between the dots you will create a mass of fiber strong enough to hold them apart. This is the only way to defeat the sadistic elitists who set up this system. They hope you will find the task too daunting, that you’ll believe there are just too many, that you’ll become too stressed and whine and want to quit. You probably will. The elitists have gotten a tremendous amount of mileage out of people coming to just those conclusions and stopping. If we were to assign you a fourth task it would be to push past that point. Picture yourself leaving the next to the last dot and carrying the last length of silk to the final dot. The only other tip we can give you is that once you start to see how one dot relates to another dot, relates to another dot you’ll find it easier to understand the world you’ve been placed in and will find the task not so impossible. Good luck.

The answer is to be found in patience

One thing that ancient man had that we do not have is leisure. Now the common man of his day, whether he was a builder of pyramids or an agriculturist probably did not have much leisure but there was a very broad deep scholarly class particularly the priesthood, then the custodians of all knowledge, who not only had leisure but an infinite kind of patience….which also runs short with us This is the kind of patience which will permit a problem to be passed down through 20 generations without impatience. Observations and reflections were not carried out by small groups in a period of months, weeks or even years but became the projects of empires and of dynasties and of descents of families, so that one problem may have been labored over for a thousand years with each generation, each century bestowing its own fragment of further insight. Thus by observation, with great patience man accomplished much.
—Manly P. Hall, Zodiac & The Great Platonic Year

Those who have risen above us, filtered, strained and refined their power over us to a point where they can finally envision a complete takeover of the human race and the earth, have spent many thousands of years at it. They have exercised such patience in doing so. We must master this level of patience if we wish to stop them. I hope it won’t take thousands of years. But our commitment to freedom must be such that we shall be willing to devote those millennia and more.

A Fallacious Appeal

In philosophy, a fallacious appeal to popularity is usually the charge when someone names a specific number of people and says that is why we should accept whatever they’re saying…”300,000,000 people can’t be wrong.” The reason it is called a fallacy is that whatever number is presented is not sufficient reason for accepting the premise. The flipside of this is what I call a Fallacious Appeal to the Herd. This is not something you are going to read in any text book on logic. It may go by an “appeal to common knowledge.” It is the “everyone knows x” fallacy. People toss about these kinds of fallacies for a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with some form of manipulation. Sometimes it’s to cover ignorance, “everybody knows that rule…” While they may know they’re supposed to do whatever it is, the truth is that they haven’t been doing it and want to cut short the questioning. Other times people appeal to the herd in order to cloud the truth. A while back Fmr. Sec. of State Colin Powell said in an interview, “…well everyone knows that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.” The reason it is a fallacy is that if we can find one case where it does not apply, like anyone who has never been to Iraq or seen WMDs in Iraq, then the argument fails. Powell’s use of it was part of a larger manipulation which works far too often. If one repeats absurdities often enough, people will believe them.

An Evil Notion

Thirty years ago when I started having dealings with Evangelicals I was at a stripmall talking with a man who had been “witnessing” to me. I don’t remember what he was talking about at that moment. What I do recall is that at some point I asked him what he meant by one of the things he said. Sorry. I’m one of those ornery people who has to understand what’s being said to me. There was a girl present who was maybe six years older than me. When I asked “…what does that mean,” she said, “You’re being dumb. Don’t question it. Just accept it.”

I converted to Christianity when I was 20. I tried as best I could to go along with/follow everything people were telling me, and I encountered lots of different ideas and takes on things. There was one thing that I was never able to make any sense of. That was the idea among some that it is necessary to sacrifice my brain to G-d. I really don’t think I ever even tried to do it. That idea was something I thought was just plain nuts. The person who said it might have tried to twist in the living sacrifice verse in Romans Ch. 12. I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. It’s a fool’s doctrine and the people who were supposedly able to do that never seem to have much to give over to G-d.

Then about twenty years ago a former pastor of mine asked me if I thought we should teach children what to think or how to think. I said “How, I guess. What do you think?” He said, “You can teach them how to think. But if you teach them what to think then they won’t be questioning all these things.” By all these things he meant life, G-d, the nature of the world, why we’re here, is the Bible the word of G-d…you know, the hardball questions.

I’ve had a few years to consider these kinds of things and I’ve come to the conclusion that everything needs to be questioned. If you don’t understand, question. If you doubt, question. Do that first. Do that regardless of ridicule or frustration on the part of those incapable of answering. Never accept anything out of fiat (blindly, without any examination). Anyone who asks you to do that is serving evil, regardless of how well-meaning they might be.

I was asked why

Because as far as information goes we are being fed a steady diet of double-thick milkshakes with truth only being dispensed as sprinkles…maybe a cherry…but mostly sprinkles.

That is not healthy.

I am here to give you your vegetables.