Mowing down psychological tall grass and tangled weeds; clearing the field and planting new seeds.
Thoughts lifted from my angry days, when someone asks my opinion and then denies it. If I tell you my favorite color, who else would have the "right" answer?
Challenge it, oppose if you must, but to correct it is to erase my existence.
If we all had the same thoughts, there would be no need for democracy.
Cogito Ergo Sum.
'm just going to put this up here because it was as fluid, spur of the moment as it gets. I have no local friends who have time for me, so I'm the guy who sees movies alone. Maybe this will explain why I have no friends.
If (when) you listen to my diatribe, be sure to read the quote I found on the liner notes of the 7-CD collection of George Carlin called "The Little David Years" - the CD versions of all the comedy albums that made him famous (Including the Supreme Court case)
I write this post on the weekend when J.D. Salinger and Howard Zinn have both died, and after reading Salinger's words from the only interview he ever granted,
There is some confusion about "bringing people back to life" and "bringing planets back to health"; Avatar was not solely what I was thinking about when I screamed that; I was thinking about all the other movies that allow mere mortals to commune with their dead loved ones, or bring them back to life, and there was that one moment here with the "spirit" that enveloped the Navi.
My point is that only in a stone-cold atheists world do we realize that IF there is no "G"od or gods to repair the damage we've done, or bring our loved ones back to life (or who is harboring them for us to be with when we die) - then this moment -
- this planet -
- this life -
- this one chance is all we've got.
And if we fuck it up, we fuck it up. Too late after that.
I was inspired by a woman I met in 2006, a very nice woman and devout Christian who said she believed in God because she just "could not take the chance" that the stories of Hell might be true; therefore, because the stories of what Hell is like as told in the Bible MIGHT be true, she could not risk thinking otherwise, and therefore must seek God and obey his commands.
I had a very pleasant conversation with this woman, and I even apologized to her husband for occupying his wife as we sat at the bar eating dinner in this restaurant; he almost seemed indifferent as he really did not miss talking to her for that one meal.
But the point is that if a person is willing to play "what if" games with existentialism and religion, why not take the opposite view? "What if" it really is only humans, the rocks, and the trees? What if there is no God coming to save us? What if the battle of Armageddon is not inevitable, and such catastrophic death and destruction are merely the wanton hubris of mortal men who don't know enough to think that their side might lose - or that both sides might lose even if one side thinks they "won"?
What if there really is no "G"od?
The aliens who find the Earth after we blow it all up thinking that is what "G"od wanted us to do because it was written in the book of Revelation are going to have to call on their own Shakespeare and Funk and Wagnals to re-christen the meaning of the word "tragedy" -
"Here lies Humanity. They had everything they needed to live in peace, and to sustain themselves - including the knowledge to know when they did the wrong thing and to correct their path - and because they were seeking answers in the ether from a God who was not there; because they did not have the courage to own up to their own errors and failures and had invented this "G"od to forgive them (and such forgiveness was only in their own individual minds), all the planet was lost.
All the humanity is gone.
All the other lives have had to pay the price.
We've seen that movie before too - "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (2009).
I first had this thought when I saw "Independence Day" (2005) - President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) has some kind of mind-meld with the aliens and he says,
"I saw what they're planning to do. They're like locusts - they move from planet to planet; after the consume all the natural resources, they move on"
Hey - President Whitmore - News Flash! Humankind is doing that all by itself!
Why are we afraid of aliens who might take it from us by force, but we're utterly indignant and outraged if any mere mortal human suggests we might be doing just as much damage (with no hope to save ourselves) all on our own.
So the aliens will arive and leave this epitath on the tombstone they erect on the dead, empty Earth:
"Here lies humankind. The fantastic randomness of the universe delivered life to this planet. They grew intelligent enough to understand the consequences of their actions, but in their desperation to invent some larger purpose for their own existence, they denied their own hubris and lack of courage to take responsibility for what they were doing.
Here lies humankind. Smart enough to understand what was happening, too proud and arrogant to admit to themselves what they must do to save themselves, and they took the whole planet with them.
May other forms of life learn from this tragedy and never repeat these most tragic and egregious failures of conscience and responsibility."
...I'll take advantage of that for my own purposes. (that seems to be the thing to do these days). I heard that there are so many blogs and so many other things competing for our time that each blog has basically one follower - the one writing it. After all those years we kept our diaries secret, we finally leave one open for the world to read and they're too busy.
Ha!
So...what would you talk about when you knew no one was listening?
Suicide of course. This is a funny one, actually, because I'm going to diagram for you how the people die who many want to live, and the people who arguably many people probably wish were dead are still alive to piss them off.
Some people care what others think of them. Other people don't. Which group of people would you want in your life? - those who care what you think of them, naturally. It's kind of waste of energy to be around people who don't care about you since all your efforts go unnoticed or unappreciated.
But what basically is a therapist/counselor/psychologist/psychiatrist (and even your priest and your best friend) telling you when you open yourself up to them and tell them all about what is making you so depressed? Take care of yourself first. Don't cast your pearls to the swine. Don't allow yourself to be too vulnerable. Don't share so much, people will take advantage of that.
Share just enough so that people will find interest in you, but dont' share so much that they are overwhelmed or burdened by you.
That's a bit vague, don't you think?
Especially if you're a man and you see the cover of all those woman's magazines in the grocery store checkout lane (I've often wondered if the reason that the line doesn't move any faster is because the cashiers are being paid to sandbag so that the customers will have more time to buy chewing gum, batteries, and magazines).
The woman's magazines all say how men are rotten because they never open up and share their feelings; they say that the men they want are the ones who can show their emotions and be "deep" with them.
But wait - don't we live in a paternalistic male-dominated society?
Yes, what's your point?
Well if you're a woman and you know that the world has you by the throat because you're not a man, when you go looking for a man aren't you going to be searching for one of the guys that has other people by the throat so you can hopefully share in the spoils of his conquests? Women want a guy who's confident, strong, and arguably dominant so that when he's out there earning his living and managing their mutual affairs that he can slay all the enemies, dragons, and other forces that get in his way.
...and then when the woman realizes he's strong enough to treat her like all those other things she wants him to dominate, control, and defeat, she somehow can't figure out why.
The alternative is the guy who's emotionally as vulnerable as the woman is; a guy who's learned to be open and expressive about his feelings so that he can share them with her. The women love this....for a while. Suddenly they realize that any guy who opens up with this kind of ease will get his little candy ass bruised and beaten (if not slaughtered) by all those other dominant forces that are out kicking ass and taking names.
So what women want doesn't really exist - A guy who's strong enough to be a US Marine and White Knight while he defends the righteous and noble and slaughters the demons and devils, who then can instantaneously turn himself into a soft, cuddly teddy bear who brings home flowers and writes poetry.
When the Myers-Briggs interest inventory came out and put us all into four codes- meaning that of the eight choices, your answer to 200 questions would classify you into four of them with opposite polar classifications, I became a freak for sure. We often say that if something is "one size fits all" then it won't fit anyone very well. Of the four choices I/E, N/T, F/S, P/J, I am one of the few people who is very close to the middle on all four scales. They call me "lateralized". You might think that a person who could fall into either one catagory or the other if only a few of the 200 questions were answered differently would be well adapted and well balanced.
Not so, say the shrinks. They blame us for making their test look bad. I was told by one "doctor" that my answers were very "inconsistent". Hmm....let's see - Meyers/Briggs takes what are really only about 25 questions and asks each one of them 8 times by changing the wording slightly. They say this is done to try and pin down the people who don't obey the instructions to the test and answer each question on one's first impulse. But imagine a person who can't be that impulsive, and does contemplate each question, and then envisions or remembers situations where sometimes the answer was A, on other days in different situations the answer was B.
The real world is a lot more like that last scenario, where things are unique and must be judged in the moment on the merits. But if you actually take the test that way, the test administrator will accuse you of screwing up their results and say you are "inconsistent".
How did deep and introspective and capable of elaborate consideration with a stake in the outcome become a liability like "inconsistent"?
I started out talking about suicide. I'll do that later, because apparently in writing this out I'm not so obsessed about dying right now.
This is part 3 of a series in my response to the self-righteous, hypocritical sanctimony of a few people who think they have the calling to put thoughts into someone else's head and then disavow their handiwork.
Audio is available of my version of therapy on youtube at
Now, having said that, let's go through a little history:
Here's the comment that earned me my first "suspension" at Street Prophets; and here's Rain's explanation of why:
• snafubar, (3+ / 0-) (recommended by Sister Quarterstaff of Undeclared Grace, Maureen, ladybug )
The not-so-implied threat of suicide here is unacceptable. I asked loggersbrat to call you last night to check on you. She did and, thankfully, you were okay. However, using suicide threats as a rhetorical tool is not okay. Ever. Nor is not acceptable to attack another member the way you did JCH. His very presence seems to set off violent emotion in you. I went back to the thread where you attacked him and he did not do what you accused him of doing – he was simply replying to a comment of Ojibwa’s, not to you. The front pagers have discussed the situation. This is what we are going to do. You will be able to read but not post for the period of two weeks – a “time out”. Then, your posting privileges will be restored but you will be on probation. After that point, a personal attack on another member will result in banning. Another suicide threat will result in banning and a call to the police in your area for help for you.
We will write to JCH and speak to him about refraining from pushing buttons. We will also ask him to stay away from any diary you may write in future.
Now, first of all, you got any judge to throw your case out of his court. If it was rhetorical, then you had no reason to call the cops because rhetorical means it was not serious. If it was serious, then who are you to accuse me of using suicide as a rhetorical "tool"? You wouldn't last five minutes in a courtroom before the judge threw you out for contempt. Marie Antoinette said, "let them eat cake", but Rain wants her cake and she's gonna eat it, too.
Now buckle your fucking seat belt sweetheart, because this is gonna suck if you have any vestige of hoping you were truly objective in what was happening.
That was November 29. The conflict and condescension dumped on me by John Howard, JCHFleetguy, (and there is a shitload more of it if you really have the time; I do) had been going on since at least June and you had been involved personally already once.
So I thought you ought to read the day that I decided that I wasn't taking Mr Fleetguy's attitude any longer that he was a good Christian and I was something else .
You blame me for bringing up suicide?
This mother fucker had already told me that having such thoughts was what he expected of me. And you didn't see it, or if you had, you didn't say a word about it. If that "Judge not lest ye be judged" verse is important, somebody's screwed.
I was serious about sitting down. Here is the sanctimonious prick on September 29, and you didn't have a problem with this discussion of suicide:
(note: this is JCH standard response to anyone who mentions "more people have been killed in the name of God than for any other purpose", which I will take on in future installments.)
A few points (0 / 0)
It is interesting that people want to count bodies until the body count doesn't favor them. Frankly, I think you bought into a generally believed urban legend about faith causing more wars than anything else, and now simply do not want to say that should have been debunked in Snopes. So be it.
People have found lots of reasons to kill each other for a long time. I can take my share of credit for that - just about 7% of the credit.
. . . faith - blind or otherwise, and regardless of what dogma the faith is based on - deserves to take it's share of causing misery in the history of mankind than any misery caused by people lacking faith.
No one really lacks faith - unless you are using it synomously with religion (i.e. Catholic faith, Muslim faith, etc). Faith is not an organized thing, faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see.
All human beings who are not suicidal or otherwise terminally pessimistic share that – but faith has an object.
Before that though, let us make sure we understand the word "hope". This is not "I hope I get a pony for Christmas" - this is confident expectation.
Everyone exercises faith in "something" (and indeed many things) nearly every day. Therefore, faith is a meaningless word unless you attach the "object of the faith" to the faith itself. It is "faith in [fill in the blank]' that you have to discuss. So, now this paragraph
If I follow your argument, you seem to indeed be claiming that without faith in something - anything, even if the things that one has faith in are competing amongst each other for supremacy - is always and unconditionally preferable to having no faith at all. So, since you say "something, anything" I would say yes - although actually I would say it is just flat unavoidable.People who absolutely could not exercise faith in anything probably would be suicide victims.We cannot operate without "having a confident expectation of the results of things which we cannot see". Period.
So, if you want to discuss what your faith is "in" (or the many things) and I want to discuss what my faith is "in" (or the many things) - then we can start to have a rational discussion.
However, back to violence. Since science doesn't deal in absolutes but really in percentages and odds - the odds of being killed in the 20th century by someone exercising something coming out of their faith in God is far far less than you being killed by their faith in something else . Indeed, the odds of you being killed in the United States tomorrow by someone acting out of their faith in God is far far less than your chance of being killed by someone acting out of faith in something else.
by JCHFleetguy on Wed Sep 02, 2009 at 06:43:35 PM PST
[ Parent ]
OK, I gotta go. This is way too close to home (2+ / 0-)
Recommended by:JCHFleetguy, linkage
People who absolutely could not exercise faith in anything probably would be suicide victims.
Well, now we've found agreement. But they aren't victims until they go through with it, and that's where the fun stops. If you have real courage to see me frothing at the mouth and throwing heavy objects, and crying - but nevertheless being unflinchingly honest in the thoughts I have on the subject -
then I'll explain that to you.
I know I have to go unwind for a while because I realize you must not have any way to know what that might imply. The condescension is showing when I read
"then we can start to have a rational discussion", which implies that the one we're having now is not rational, and I'm pretty sure you're not admitting any culpability in that.
Peace.
SNAFUBAR: I know things will always be FU from time to time, what I'm working on is that we stop being so damn comfortable with it as "Situation Normal"
by snafubar on Wed Sep 02, 2009 at 07:59:14 PM PST
And in his typical passive-aggressive way, the motherfucker (and when I use the word, I want him to see his mother crying and begging him to get up off of her) had the balls to recommend the comment.
I'm going to put up a whole new diary about how John C Howard sumarrily re-wrote the rules on what a "cookie" and a "troll" was for, and what life would be like if he decided to be that unilaterally arrogant about the colors Red, Green and Yellow when displayed by a traffic light. But for now, here's an analogy for the hubris and wisdom of using something in a completely different manner than everyone else is using it: (George Carlin made a lot more sense to me than Jesus on so many levels)
But beyond his arrogance, what is more sickening is his indifference. This heartless - and yes, Rain, soulless bastard, would stand eye to eye to me while I had a nine millimeter Beretta held to my temple with a full clip and keep telling me I had faith while the tears ran down my face and I cried for him to shut the fuck up.
ANd you didn't say jack shit to him, but you threw me out for what?
Because you're all too afraid to admit you're no better than me.
And that's how you sleep at night.
Now I know why people say "sweet dreams" - because only in a dream could you believe this shit made any sense and that God loves you for it .
You can kick me out of Street Prophets - but I promise you that if you pick up the phone and try to get anyone involved in my personal affairs like you have threatened to do, you had better be goddamned sure you have a good lawyer and a lot of fucking money, because I'd love to retire and live fat and happy for the rest of my days after you lose your shirt in court trying to explain why and how you think you care if I live or die.
You care about your own liability, not one god damned fucking ounce about who I am, or how I feel, or if I live or die.
ANd that's why I don't need God to help me sleep at night.
Let me know what he says about your blessed objectivity. I am sincerely curious to see how this one plays out.
I'm going to keep going on this - there's a lot more of Mr Fleetguy's sanctimonious hypocritical condescension. You gave me shit because the "rules are very clear" about being a jerk and a hater. You seem to have exceptionaly acute radar for what you think is hate, but you're blind and in the fog on what a jerk looks and sounds like.
And so it goes, Rain.
I'm sure you'll find a way to see how God will forgive you.
I don't see a God, all I see is you. So if you want any such thing on this temporal Earth, it has to come from me and I'm - as of now - a long way from thinking you have earned it.
And stop with the vigil already - you made your choices. Have the courage to stand up to them without feeling sorry about it when you clearly don't give a flip-happy-flying-underhand-fuck if people live or die.
This is Part 2 of a series in my response to the self-righteous, hypocritical sanctimony of a few people who think they have the calling to put thoughts into someone else's head and then disavow their handiwork.
Audio is available of my version of therapy on youtube at
When I wrote the following comment, I was trying to commend the person who wrote the diary - virgomusic - for finally putting some response up on the site to Pat Robertson's latest "Haiti made a deal with the Devil so they deserved the Earthquake" comment. Because I had been checking for a week to see if anyone would say something about it.
Sadly, like I do, it looks like I left off the last half of the sentence; I lose things. I would have read like this
"If I had seen these kinds of refutations when the events happened, I might be less offended by those who merely distanced themselves or excused themselves from Robertson/Fallwell and others."
What follows is a cut/paste of the comment that I didn't see, because once I had been "banned" I had weird time that night. It's strange that they are acting as if they are grieving themselves right now, but that's how it goes.
And that's what they tried to teach me, that's how it will continue to go, apparently.
• If I had seen those kinds of refutations when (2+ / 0-)
( Recommended by: JCHFleetguy, JDsg )
...he said that wildfires in Florida were the result of a gay pride rally in Orlando...
...when he said 9/ll was the fault of everybody but Christistians... ...when he almost caused an international incident by suggesting the assassination of Hugo Chavez... ...when he told the "good people of Dover (PA)" that they should not call on God in time of need beecause they had rejected God in throwing out the school board over Intelligent Design -
I will direct you all to this diary - I hope you'll get the analogy.
Is is more outrageous that I would ever dare to say something so unthinkable, or is it more outrageous to realize that it was only once I said something so unconscionably obscene that the he finally took me seriously? If Pat Robertson can get away with saying all the things he has said in the past and only now face a backlash from his fellow Christians, that should stand on it's own as a legitimate reason that people like me have become (in the eyes of some here) "extremists". I wasn't sitting in a closet somewhere reading Winnie the Pooh cartoons all my life, these are the kinds of things that have been raining on me all my life and every time I spoke up about them in the past the answer was almost universally the same, "Well, I'm a Christian, and I didn' say it, so it's no skin off my nose"
SNAFUBAR: I know things will always be FU from time to time, what I'm working on is that we stop being so damn comfortable with it as "Situation Normal" by snafubar on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 05:33:39 PM PST
A few points that are important. Note that JCHFleetguy is one of the ones who recommended the comment. He's the guy I've been so mad at in recent months and one of the reasons is that he has unilaterally re-written the meaning of a 'recommend' himself. He says he rec's every comment he reads just so everyone who reads it will know he was there - like a calling card. Well then would it not seem strange that if he had been criticizing me for all that I had wrote (or re-writing it by posting corrections and telling me I had just never learned history correctly or my definitions or wrong or....) he would give what is supposed to be a 'thumbs up' sign.
Nope, not to John. Although to recommend a comment might be a universal thumbs-up sign for everyone else, he is OK that he uses it differently and doesn't care what I feel about it. That is a quote, although It will take me a week to find it. He said he's been like that for years, and will not change for me.
I wonder if he how he deals with traffic lights. Red might mean stop to everyone else, but John feels it's perfectly OK to assign a completely different meaning to it...
He also said that he's never TR'd a comment in all his time there. So the tools that are at his disposal to express approval or discontent have either been forsaken or misused, and he can't figure out why someone might be getting the wrong message from him.
Now, for the responses:
○ Right (0+ / 1-)
Nice anti-theistic garbage. Thanks for sharing.
Not
by Danish Brethern on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 06:39:45 PM PST
This is the guy who says he's a counselor of some kind. Where is there an anti-theistic message? I said I was upset not about theism but about lack of condemnation or denial from people on his camp. No atheist or secularist could attempt to correct Robertson, for any attempt to do so would simply inspire more of his outrage, and more of this bullshit victimization that these pious whiners cry out about people taking away their religious freedom. So any correction of Robertson has to be from a fellow "theist". Again, more labels - no constructive progress on how to solve the problem any more than he feels mine was not.
○ You would find (1+ / 0-)
if you looked as I did that there was equal unreported reaction to Robertson then
by JCHFleetguy on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:15:17 PM PST
Get that? If only I had lived my life the way John has, I would have gotten all the information that I needed. Nothing condescending or insulting in that attitude, right?
This is the person who had set me off all these last months. He just did it again - you see, he wants me to know that my experience was invalid, and if I had only lived my life as he did and "looked", then I would have found what he feels I should have seen. That's too convenient; I guess I should just have to live my life standing right next to him so I would be sure to experience the world precisely as he does, then I would see the world the right way after enough time.
That's not specificially proselytizing; it's condescension and I find it much more offensive and demeaning. But remember - it's their house, and they are interested in harmony and a 'safe place' for faithful people. So if people like me are out sharpening our fangs because of whatever reason, they'd rather not know about it.
That's fair - it's their right and perogative to manage their own site. I would suggest though that they ought not to be surprised at the hostility that might be present still; and I will demand that despite their claim that I was surely broken before I got there and therefore it's not their fault. I wasn't drunk, stoned, or otherwise under the influence of anything other then the feedback and contributions of others when I lived through it all.
In other words, I was reacting to people at Street Prophets as much as I was Pat Robertson, so now that they have restored harmony to their site by banishing the dissenters, where am I now?
Out of sight, out of mind - but they'll still be writing diaries about the tension between faith and lack thereof.
What I think is most telling about JCHFleetguy is that every post has a link to his personal blog. I think he's insecure and needs validation as much as I do; and maybe he felt I was getting some of his light or at least taking it away from him. But I won't be so arrogant as to use that as a reason to shut him up; I just want him to recognize he can be doing damage to people by being so innured, indifferent, aloof to how he makes other people feel.
If you look at my history at SP, I just posted my own diaries and then I tenaciously defended my position. I rarely ever went into other diaries at all; I was just there to know that I had left my footprints somewhere, and I gained my energy from those who saw them. I lost energy when someone tried to tell me my footprints did not belong there or tried to fill them back in with something.
So I banged heads for many months with a guy who's seeking validation and feedback as much as I am, and someone else made a judgment call to declare who was right and who was wrong.
I'd say my outlook on life is pretty accurate - other people are going to throw stones no matter what I do. I was a fool to think I should try to ask them why they felt the need to; that wasn't my call.
This is part 1 of a series in my response to the self-righteous, hypocritical sanctimony of a few people who think they have the calling to put thoughts into someone else's head and then disavow their handiwork.
Audio is available as a playlist in two parts, A and B of my version of therapy on youtube at
Here's a quote from a comment left to me by the editor of the site to justify why she sent me packing:
... there needs to be respect for each other’s beliefs. It is so stated in our FAQ and it has been our way since the Street was opened.
I don't believe she wrote that. She's the one who declared - by her utter oblivion of what a jerk he is - that it was OK for one person to continually show disrespect to me and my beliefs, and then call me a hater when it became so absurd it made me angry.
How can I say that and claim to be objective? Well if she wants, I can show her the emails I have gotten in commisseration from other members of Street Prophets who recognize that John C Howard (JCHFLeetguy) is a sanctimonious ass towards more people than just I. As a self-proclaimed political Conservative, he may be a fox in the henhouse all this time, but since he's a real good Bible guy the radar apparently goes right over him.
Yes, I agree there needs to be respect for each other's beliefs. What seems to be most important, however, is who gets to decide what a "jerk" and a "hater" look and sound like. The objectivity of the referee is what matters most.
What follows is a fictional exit interview between whatever counselor/therapist/warden that anyone thinks is keeping me off the streets right now after the fourth great trauma in my life about religion. This is the stage of the interview where the counselor must first ask only questions so that they may first learn what happened; they cannot give advice until they think they understand what created the problem.
Snafubar: Well there it is. God was in control. It was "beyond their control" that snafubar felt belittled and dismissed by their constant apologies for all things religious and faithful that offended and condemned him. They first apologized for the Pat Robertsons and Sarah Palins and then they just ignored that on certain days some of their arguments and tactics were almost identical.
Counselor: But Joe, they were assailing you because you were an asshole?
Snafubar: Wait - they said it was beyond their control because my being an asshole is up to me. They excused that what the asshole was reacting to was up to them.
Counselor: Yeah, so what?
Snafubar: If a guy is swearing at you because you just poked him in the eye with your finger, rather than object to his swearing you migth consider taking your finger out of his eye. THAT much was within their control.
Counselor:Yes, but it was their house. People should be allowed to control behavior within their own house.
Snafubar: Unless it's supposed to be an open house. If the goal is to promote community, if the ultimate "godfather" of the house says you should be impelled to align for political purposes despite your religious disparity, then the community of political goals is what should be preserved; not the community of religious harmony. What is so unforgivable now is that they're all gathering in sorrow as if they had nothing to do with this.
That's the beauty of this new found "get help" mentality in America. If you can label someone as "needing help" then you have absolved yourself from having any responsibility for how that person came to need "help" . If snafubar was living in seclusion on Mars, for example, isolated from all other human interaction, then it's perfectly reasonable to say that his bad behavior originated and was inspired by things that Street Prophets and the people who write there had nothing to do with it.
If the guy has spent hours per day at Street Prophets in recent months because he was isolated for the most part from the rest of his world, and he went from a guy who was grateful to them for their community and the spirit it brought to his life by being welcomed there, and then he comes to say that he doesn't feel so welcome any more because at times certain people want to defend their own positions at the expense of his, then others who contributed to his increasing anger can't erase their participation.
Counselor: But all you had to do was moderate your reaction. You were disrupting the harmony of the site.
Snafubar: I only asked them to consider how the actions of words of people in their own larger community - religion - affected me, which they simply excused or disavowed. What ultimately inspired my ire was that it became clear their own attitude was not much different. They knew they were all right, and if there was discord, the solution was for the outsiders to concede they must change and accept the others perspective - "for the good of the community".
Counselor: That's fair, don't you think? It was after all, their community.
Snafubar: Only to the point that even after I'm no longer there, I'm still somewhere. And I now carry the memories and scars of what happened that have shaped me. And - this is where the irony becomes almost crippling - the people that shaped me and helped form that anger they are so upset about have absolved themselves from any responsibility for it. They label me "sick" or "dangerous" or even just "angry" and they're off the hook.
Counselor: What if it's true? What if you are sick?
Snafubar: Hey - if all it takes to claim you can keep doing what you're doing and that whatever pain it causes others is not your fault; if all it takes to be absolved of your personal effect on others is to insist that the other person feeling the pain is too sensitive, then we can go ahead and make rape legal. After all, if we just train the women to respond better to being raped without having such a bad reaction to it, then what the rapist does to them is no longer a problem.
It's always the same problem, no matter how large or how small the circle of the community is: Whether it's two people in a marriage, or a community of 30 bloggers, or a political party of 60 million voters, or a country of 310 million people, or a planet of 6 billion of them - if the way to deal with strife and tension is to summarily label one party to be out of line and dismiss them (but to take no responsibility of what happens when they leave) then we should look forward to a world with more fences and walls, and a lot of rocks being thrown between the camps.
Counselor: Are you saying you're a victim of Street Prophets?
Snafubar: No. I'm saying that if their goal was to bring people of different world views, faiths, religions and philosophies together for political purposes (and not preserve a safe place for people with religious foundations to say what they will and disavow the results) then they may not be who they think they are. There are examples that are still up on that site now where a person was admonished by site admins for criticizing Islam or Christianity for causing death, and two comments down the people who are still there blame atheism for causing death but suffered not admonition from the administrators.
Faith and religion always has an excuse - When a person with faith does the unthinkable, the others with that faith or religion say either that someone isn't doing it right, or what you see is really something else. Lack of faith, absense of faith - that always take the blame at face value.
My goal was always to point out the hypocrisy.
And in the end the hypocrisy proved itself.
It takes no courage, no effort, no real sacrifice to maintain a community where everyone already agrees.The people who impress me are those who can make peace even in the face of the most disparate points of view, the people who can keep harmony without declaring anyone "right" or "wrong", or "good" or "bad", or "healthy" or "sick".
Labels are good for cans, because otherwise you have no idea what is inside. If you want to know what a human being is thinking, you can ask them and they can tell you. But if you ask them their point of view, you must be at the absolute minimum, prepared to accept their answer. Their opinion is as legitimate to them as yours are to you. To insist otherwise would do as much violence to them as a person as if they did it to you. The danger is in the comparisions.
You can ask a human being what they're made of, and rather than slap a label on them and insist you know what they're made of, you must realize humans are too complex and dynamic and interactive for any one-word label to have any meaning.
There is no "community" smaller than that of humankind itself. We're all related whether we admit it or not. To do otherwise is to preserve "enclaves", not a community.
Street Prophets has preserved their "community" and it is shocking to read anyone write that what happened was "out of their control".
Counselor: But it is their community. And they are now reacting to what happened as a traumatic event to their community. They're actually demonstrating a grieving response.
Snafubar: Pause and think about that before you say anything. Beyond their control? No. Beyond their willingness to control it. There were a hundred chances to control it, when one person or a few persons could have realized that even if they did not agree with my point of view, it belongs to me no less than their own belongs to them. It doesn't have to be a zero sum choice all the time. My anger was in response to those who always had the same answer every time: Chapter and Verse, or "What others say while under the auspices of our shared religion or faith is not our responsibility, and we disavow even the impact it may have on others." Just as they want some other to make changes, they too can also make changes. But it's too easy for them to act like victims when in the end they are the people who inspired the reaction.
Whether or not the chicken or the egg comes first matters not, if your goal is from this day forward to keep having both chickens and eggs because they both have unique value. You can't make an omelette with a chicken, and you can't make a Chicken sandwitch with Grade A Fancy USDA inspected Large Eggs...
And if you have a problem with what is said here and feel like picking up the phone after you google where this person lives, all you need do is look back at this diary after Netroots Nation 2009 and ask yourself how the man who wrote those words in August became the one who you said was "beyond your control" in January.
That man lived alone. He had no family to talk to. He had few friends. His neighbors all love the NRA, or the Republican Party, or Fox News, so they are not a "safe place" to discuss anything political, economic, religious or civil. That man spent a lot of time on a computer blogging to keep open a lifeline to a world where others weren't so eager to convince him to change his favorite color. He sought a place where he could say "I'm pretty sure my favorite color is red" and not have to be told to go home and stay there because everyone else thought surely blue was a preferrable color and they didn't want to hear him disagree any more.
The squeaky wheel does not always get the grease. Sometimes the owner of the car just asks the mechanic to replace it with another wheel. In doing so the mechanic won't realize that it wasn't the wheel that made the noise, it was the bearings that allow the wheel to rotate. By then the bearings have failed and the car is disabled.
I'd like a ruling from "G"od from this one. Because every time I talk to "H"im, he tells me that logically I'm on pretty good ground. The other people who think they know "G"od hear my words and they think "G"od says I'm unforgivably wrong. I'm sure there will be someone who can tell me that their faith, their religion, they're interpretation surely says something different, because those are all subjective to the reader's interpretation. I'm just the wrong subject.
Beyond your control?
What happened to
"Be the change you want to see"
Sure, but if the other guy won't agree with you, don't change a thing, kick him out and wash your hands.
I got thrown out the first time for mentioning suicide. Someday, but I am not hopeful, it may become obvious that perhaps a cause of suicidal thoughts might be a large chorus of voices that always say that one person is wrong and they are not.
People like me get built; by hand. They get built by people who say they care.
A community preserves it's members because it values their contribution, even if their contribution is to be an indicator light that things are not all well.
If it were true that I really was the only one to apologize for anything, and that it was solely my actions alone that were regrettable - if I really knew that I was the one problem and the only problem - that would be the moment when I would look at myself in the mirror and realize that my critics were right all along. That would be the moment when - if my goal was not to cause pain in others like that I feel inside myself, and I realized I was causing other people pain merely by telling them I was in pain -
Tell me, counselors, that you can write that next sentence for me.
If a person who cares about you feels that he really is harming you, and what he wants is less harm all around, wouldn't that be the proof he really is such a horrible person that it is time to stop causing other people pain the only way that will be sure to work?
The Center For Disease Control website will confirm this for you, or you can look at a blog on Daily Kos and see how it works in real time:
In America, the Greatest Country In The World,
...where 90% of people believe in some kind of god,
...where there are counselors and therapists and doctors and churches all around to offer "help" to people with troubled thoughts, how can it be true that
...40,000 people a year die in accidents.
...20,000 people a year are killed by others
...but 30,000 people a year
...more than 80 per day
...over three people every hour...
...reason that it's better to give up than to stay and fight it.
It might be because it's easy to blame it all on one simple problem and ignore all the things that might have caused that problem.
I wish you great success with your current program.
You've got roughly 30,000 more to go when you've fixed me. This year.
