THOUGHTS ON POVERTY

Poverty is self-perpetuating through no fault of the impoverished. Poverty = can’t buy things in bulk, so pay a premium for small amounts, can’t pay a fee to join a shopping club, can’t afford transport to cheaper stores. If you had a sharp knife there would be less waste. Refrigerator, ziplock bags, plasticware (if you can afford them) = less waste. Clean water, if you must buy it, is a devastating expense. Day-old bread is great if you can afford the transport. Food banks will give you a few things you need and make you take a dozen things you don’t need = more waste, and you’ll wait in line for hours for it, if you can get there in time. Every container, every bit of plastic or paper – every pencil,- becomes precious. Candles are far too expensive, but worth their weight in gold – if you had the gold. You can grow some of your own food, but only if you have access to dirt, sunlight, water, seed, and you happen to be good at that. If you don’t have access to hot water, then cleaning requires twice the water and twice the soap. You can earn interest on your bank account and get free services, only if you have enough money. You can get low car payments and even lower insurance costs if you have enough money/good credit. But you don’t. Banks offering “free checking” are just mocking you.

Poverty is self-perpetuating through no fault of the impoverished. This person may be smart as a whip, may have a grand education, might have once had a great job, may have been in the armed forces, may have children or parents to care for, may be sleeping on the asphalt behind some bushes. How much can you really expect from them? They may be dirty, hungry, cold, thirsty, lost. You expect them to show up for a job interview? This implies they have enough money to buy a daily newspaper and/or computer with internet access and electricity, that they have enough money for transportation, that they have soap and shampoo, razor, and at least one good suit of clothes. How are they supposed to get all that, when they have to buy single-cup-sized sachets of instant coffee at 30 cents a cup? The imported coffee you buy, grind, and make in your fancy coffee machine costs one tenth that much. But you have to have the fancy machine, a grinder, and buy a pound of beans at a time. You want them to respond to phone inquiries instantly, because for you with a nice phone and unlimited access, such a thing is free. But they’re using the worst, cheapest phone, and may have to go to a phone store and pre-pay a few minutes just to answer a call. How can you hire such a person? Yet they might work harder, be more grateful, and ultimately pay back far more than the effort of hiring them. They’ll certainly be a better employee than the entitled rich kids who are impressing and flattering you.

Poverty is self-perpetuating through no fault of the impoverished. They may be very discouraged, may have given up hoping for anything better, or may be so desperate for any advantage that they’ll do anything. Desperation breeds unplanned crime – they’re so hungry, and you left a bag of delicious groceries sitting there for a minute unattended. Maybe the temptation will be too much. But often the severely downtrodden are just as honest as the rest of us, and will return your dropped wallet to you. What does that say about you? You won’t give them a glance or a chance. There’s an old saying “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Just a few unexpected hardships could put you digging through the dumpster next to them. The fact that you’re not there doesn’t mean you’re smarter or better-looking, it only means you started out from a position of advantage. You could lose that advantage at any time. Just a few medical bills, loss of your job because the company is re-vamping, maybe some stock losses or a pension or other income someone legislated or frauded away from you, and everything you’re so proud of can be ripped from you, and then you’ll see that poverty is self-perpetuating through no fault of the impoverished.

If you have children, how will you be able to keep them in school? How will you buy paper and other supplies, clothing, meals? How will you afford medical care? If you have a beloved pet, no food bank will give you food for them; they’ll have to live on a share of your limited supply. If they need medical care…….

You’ll find that there are government programs which help the disadvantaged. However, how will you find them, how will you get there, how will you fill out the endless reams of paperwork when you haven’t eaten all day? What address will you give? How will you prove you qualify when you’re dirty from sleeping under a bridge (if you’re lucky enough to find one)? How will they contact you if you’re entitled to help? Where will you sleep until next February when another few hundred housing vouchers become available, which will be taken within a few hours? Can you make it to that office on that day? Poverty is self-perpetuating through no fault of the impoverished.

A Basic Income is the only solution. If everyone can afford to eat and have a modest home, most of these problems disappear. If education is free, the unemployed can usefully retrain, being able to eat meanwhile. Some people worry that if living expenses are paid, no one will work. But how long, really, can someone sit in their not-very-nice home and do nothing? They can’t afford a computer, TV, or game console on this income, may not be able to afford a newspaper. How long do you think most people will stare at the wall? We WANT useful work, we CRAVE purpose, we DEMAND meaning. In Gene Roddenberry’s world, everyone works only at what they love. They rejoice in training for their dream career, without having to worry about holding down that demanding wait-person job when they should be studying. They excel because they have the security that their basic needs will be met. Food and shelter, education, medicine. Do you really think – now think about it – if that was all you had, would you just sit around? Wouldn’t you maybe take a hike, think about what you want to do with your life? Look at a college catalog, try your hand at paper mache, volunteer at an animal shelter? Maybe you’d clean up that empty lot next to your house instead of looking at it all day, and put in some trees. Maybe you’d help your disabled neighbor with their groceries. If you were sure that you were safe, what would you do? If you knew you’d never end up sleeping on the street, your children starving, dependent on begging……how would that change your life? Can you imagine a world where NO ONE had that worry?

Yes please.

Poverty is self-perpetuating through no fault of the impoverished. Let’s end the cycle of income abuse, prejudice, and vicious competition for resources when in truth there’s plenty enough for all. Maybe some industries would die. Maybe single-cup-size instant coffee sachets would disappear; so be it. When every man can look every other man in the eye and not see poverty or failure or viciously-attained success, then we can all just be Mankind, true equals. I predict this will happen; I only hope I live to see it.

HUMANS: SO EASY TO KILL, SO EASY TO SAVE

Lazy-ass gamer or Olympic star, get hit by a train and we all die the same; blood, bone, guts, and good intentions. But it’s actually easier to kill us than that; just isolate us. Not in prison or anything, nothing like that! Just, in your own home, your friends and family gradually leak away, the joy of living evaporates, your reason, your hope, your love – so easily taken away. With no one to talk to, you stop thinking and shrink; hearing no new ideas, you stew in the old. The carousel begins to run; everything I’ve done is useless, I am worthless, nothing good will ever happen, and NO ONE CARES. You turn to drugs, alcohol, maybe suicide. So sad; anyone could save you at any time, with very little effort, but no one cares. No one sees anything but their own interests; no one sees you crying, no one cares even if they do see. You might chose food instead of drugs; a slower, more punishing death, a prolonging of misery indefinitely. But it’s all the same.

When an isolated person is told that they’re special, that there are others who are also special, and that they can join the group, be important to the group, even become a leader of the group, the desperate need to belong overwhelms sense. It doesn’t matter how smart they are, how clever, how reasoning, how reasonable; we all fall into the same trap. Cults and movements attract the young, only because they feel hopelessly disenfranchised already. Violence by youth has the same root. BELONGINGNESS is far more important than we give it credit for!

When someone gradually loses their hearing, the world slowly retreats, and dementia creeps in on silent little cat-feet. You can isolate someone so easily; just spread some rumor among their friends, the equivalent of “Plague!” and watch their support system crumble, then their confidence, then their will to live. Putting a prisoner in isolation in no way cures him or her of the desire to commit crime, it just strips them of their humanity, the only thing keeping them from even more horrific crimes. But prisoners given a dog to care for pull an abrupt turn-about and become happy, purposeful people. Such a simple thing! Just someone/thing that needs us! Just one small purpose; to be there for a dog. But it means everything.

You make fun of the “cat lady,” but she has gathered her defense against the dark. You can’t defeat her now. In her frenzy for safety, she may end up with a hundred cats, but she’s right; their loyalty is stronger than human loyalty. Humans run off the first time something shiny catches their eye. They forget who fed them, which cats do not. They forget who nursed them in sickness, and cats never will. You can accuse cats of indifference, but it’s nothing compared to the indifference of one’s own family; cats are more faithful, more grateful. They are your real tribe.

Humans have very fragile devotion and very little sense of commitment. Don’t try to bring friends into it, either. The first sign of financial trouble and they’re suddenly busy elsewhere. If you’re perky and healthy and have an operation, sure; they’ll all come to visit, bringing cards and flowers. But if your health continues poorly, they won’t stick around and hold your hand, discuss your care with the nurse, bring you your favorite foods. They’ll be gone-ee. Even more so, if you’re in emotional pain; don’t even dream someone’s going to come and hold you, hand you a Kleenex, rock you to sleep, cheer you up. They’ll whisper some kind of justification among themselves (“Plague!”) and make their discreet exits. Even getting a divorce can cause this rats-leaving-a-sinking-ship behavior; people are afraid of your pain, afraid they'll catch it from you. Friendships may feel like they’re forever, but they’re as fragile as orchids. Only so long as a “reasonable” amount of substandard circumstances prevail, all is well. But not only is there a possibility that you’ll experience UNreasonable hardship in your life, but they might also desert you just because someone else seems more shiny. Maybe this drives all fashion; you must continue to be new and sparkly, just to keep people’s interest. Whether there’s anything of substance inside is irrelevant; they want to see your new clothes, hairdo, car, lover.

For women, it used to be that if you did you work well, if you kept clean and didn’t talk shit, you were a valuable member of the clan, right into old age. Help others if you can, but just keep to your own corner modestly. These things are no longer of any value. What is your work? Are you scrubbing us up some clean dishes? Baking bread? Making us nice clothes? No? Just pulling a pizza out of the freezer? Then who needs you? We used to NEED each other. When a man worked outdoors all day, he needed a home-maker, seamstress, cook. He couldn’t do that for himself. Now his work is minimal and “labor-saving” things have enabled him to get along just fine on his own. So what do you bring to the party? You can give him children, but other people will raise them. You won’t be educating them except in the most basic skills. They also have no need of you.

It’s not just women. A man once had to be strong and fit enough to pull a plow, hitch a carriage, drive a team of horses, bail hay and toss it into the barn he built. His usefulness is also very limited now. He provides only money, if even that. The idea of hard, honest work has become foreign to either gender, to any generation. Taking care of each other used to be a matter of nursing the other half of your hard-working team back into usefulness. A lifetime of commitment mean just that; to work as a team until you died. There was none of this nonsense about Valentine’s Day or whose last name to hyphenate or what restaurant or jewelry to romance you with.

Surprisingly, gender roles weren’t defined by one’s morals or politics, they were defined by what you could and could not do. A woman’s role was defined by her ability to bear children, because a man couldn’t do that for himself. She was kept near home and safety, was kept indoors in the hottest and coldest parts of the day, did lighter, less dangerous tasks. If a woman fell on the ice a man might lose his wife’s ability to work for a few weeks – or it might be curtailed for the rest of her life – but if she were pregnant, he might lose his child. That would mean fewer hands to help in the future, and knowing his legacy would go to someone else’s line. There's no way of knowing if or when she's pregnant, and children were borne right into a woman's late forties, sometimes even longer. On top of that, the most frequent cause of death for women was child-bearing. This is why men open doors, pull out chairs, and follow women up the stairs; to protect her and her ability to bear. There’s nothing religious or political or even romantic about it.

Being married didn’t used to mean doing everything together. In fact, each of you did your own work, had your own concerns, sought your own fulfillment. Now people seem to think they should agree on what to eat, when and where, how many new things to buy, which things to buy, who to try to impress, what movies and music to ingest, games to play, where to vacation, and especially, you are required to make each other feel happy and fulfilled sexually and emotionally at all times. That’s not an honest job, for either of you. It's not even doable.

With gender roles gone, the feeling of purpose is gone. You may create a child, but it won’t work beside you, learn your trade, follow in your footsteps. You won’t give them your wisdom, but farm them out to daycare workers who truly don’t give a shit. On any given day they’re just trying to get through their shift with a minimal of screaming and other drama, while dreaming of their own vacations or playing video games in the bathroom. Whether your child is taught anything about life is completely irrelevant, regardless of what the posters and other advertisements say.

Did you know that scientists have determined that working dogs are the happiest creatures on earth? Why? Simple; They have a job, they do the job, they are needed by others. Some housewives, remembering that their mothers used to help out people in tough circumstances by baking them a pie, started saving up their pin money to bake pies, too. Their pies were so great people started wanting to buy them. So now in addition to helping those in difficulty, they also run a pie business. Everyone’s happy! You might say that bringing a homemade pie to the poor once a week doesn’t help the poor much. But it actually serves several functions, besides starting a business. First, it distracts the person in tough circumstances; forces them to run a comb through their hair, put on a smile, and invite you in. Putting on a brave face eventually strengthens our brave face; it really works. The giver has to procure, prepare and deliver; this is good, honest work with purpose. The receiver must accept with grace, admit that someone has been kind to them, and also gets to taste something good – it may have been a while. These healing tools are priceless in restoring the will to go on.

Such simple little things. A pet who loves you, a pie, a game of cards. Should you ever feel that you’ve lost purpose in life, look to these things; do some good, honest work with purpose. Be the one people can turn to for help, for compassion. Give people a reason to smile, if only for a moment. If you’ve known isolation yourself, this is particularly good work, because it heals the giver even more than the receiver. You need never lack purpose! If you do, start looking around. However little you may have, you have something to give, if only yourself. There’s always someone with even less.

No rescue is coming; we have to save each other.

THOUGHTS ON PTSD

Okay, I know bad things have happened. Very bad things. You-wish-you-were-never-born things. Things which make the idea of living forever the ultimate horror. And even though the arrow of time moves us steadily away from the things, they never stop hounding us. They keep coming back and stabbing us. You forget about the things for a moment, or a month or a year, but they’ll be back.

When people tell you to never look back, and to stay on the path, this is wisdom! It means; keep busy, don’t ever remember the things. Maybe you can get by for a while on “Jesus saved me,” but as soon as you stop for a breath or something reminds you, then time has no meaning; you’re there again.

Something hurts you, it’s okay, you’re fine, you’re strong. Something hurts you again, that’s okay, but one day one too many things hurt you at once, and there they are again; the things; they’ve ganged up together with present troubles. Then everything is ugly. Even the best of things you’ve done and seen and found and been since then turn sour, like roses wilting before your eyes and putting out a whiff of sewage. You might keep smiling, or you might curl up in a ball, it doesn’t matter what you do – the things are back. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, how brave, how kind; the ambush was already set when the things happened the first time.

Don’t get the idea that maybe you should explore the issues further, re-examine the things, dig around in them deeper; that way is a one-way spiral staircase going down, into the deepest dark in the universe. Hold the handrail, let the tears pass, keep moving on, keep aiming up. Don’t let the old things gang up with the new things to make even more things!

When the things come, let them pass over you. See them, and let them just go by. Yes, there that thing is again, and it still hurts, but don’t grab hold of it, and don’t let it grab hold of you; let it pass. Present troubles are unrelated and will gradually shrink to their real size, just keep your head down until then. It’s easier to go under a big wave than fight your way through the storm. Just duck down where it’s calm and wait; it’ll pass. Then, begin again. Keep busy, don’t look back, stay on the path upward.


The thought that hope is the cruelest of all things – a thought only the PTSC sufferer has

It’s as if you were getting ready for a family barbeque, carving a watermelon, monitoring the fruit for mojitos, and the doorbell rings, and it’s Satan. Everything stops. Time stops, the family disappears, the mojitos turn to mold, the watermelon fills with maggots. But no, none of that happens, it only FEELS like It does. The family is still waiting for dinner.

THOUGHTS ON DEPRESSION, SUICIDE, AND NEEDING ONE ANOTHER

It doesn’t cost anything to give a hug, or to accept one. If you think there is, you may be too tense, or too paranoid. All people need to be held. We need it BADLY. Why can’t we do this simple thing for each other? A smile, a little kindness, a compliment – these things are free to give, and oh, so precious to receive. It’s like investing in a stock which skyrockets. Paying it forward, passing on the love.

Huddled together against all the monsters, the loneliness, the dark, our only true purpose in this world is to comfort each other. “It’s okay, I’m here, I won’t let go,” “You’re very brave, I know you’re tired, I know it’s hard.” Such simple words, that speak directly to every soul. “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” are the only meaningful words in the whole of holy scripture. If you want a sacred mantra, make these words it. There, that’s yours for no extra charge.

Not only does loving kindness cost nothing, but the benefits to ourselves are enormous. Why haven’t you done this? Why aren’t you doing it now? Be of comfort to someone; that’s the noblest goal and must be our loftiest aspiration. If we’d stop worrying about everything else and just hold on to each other – there’d be no need of miracles or rescue, of healing or any other emotional damage control. Suicide would end, despair would transmute into serene joy. All at no cost.

When someone we love commits suicide, we may feel we’re to blame. If you haven’t kept in touch, if you haven’t TOUCHED, then yes, you must take some of the blame. Suicide is most often a response to what the victim sees as extreme isolation from everyone, with no way to reach out, and no way to initiate change or reverse the circumstances. Since they see themselves as worthless, they interpret the fact that you don’t make contact as a further confirmation of their uselessness. The occasional phone call, remembering a birthday, sending holiday greetings, even just getting together for a movie could completely change the situation, but they can’t reach you; the action must come from your side. Maybe you did or said something the last time you spoke which made them believe the relationship over. Don’t let it be over; your loved ones will actually die of neglect and profound regret. Don’t leave them feeling worthless, or you are indeed to blame.

A mother’s happy while her children live at home, because she has a meaningful focus for her energy. It doesn’t matter too much that no one ever thanks her, it’s being needed that counts. It’s the same reason the Cat Lady keeps cats; the perception of being needed is deeply, desperately needed. If you have the power to make someone feel needed – and you certainly DO – don’t lie to yourself about that - don’t be shy, ask their help, their presence, their input (though you can certainly disregard it if you wish). Learn to play their favorite board or card game and play it with them, why not? If they play with friends, let the friends meet you, and you meet them – now your relationship has a new, deeper dimension! Good work! If they’re alone much of the time, see if it would be possible to get them a pet. That can literally save their life. The fact that a little thing needs them means they’re stuck waking up one more day. And that gives you more time to reach them.

And just so we’re clear, it’s not that suicides don’t care about the emotional mess they leave behind - they care very much, but not nearly, nearly enough to overcome the mess they’re already in. Suicide is just an end to pain. If the attempt fails, don’t go around and give them more pain; be the cure. Be the love they thought was gone from the world. If you don’t, they’ll keep on trying, and they’ll figure it out sooner or later. If you kept putting off touching their lives, then yes, you must take the blame.

Post-traumatic stress is not only for war veterans. Anyone who’s been through a horrific experience can suffer – is, in fact, likely to suffer – this malfunction. Medication and therapy can alleviate a lot of the effects, having an emotional support animal helps even more. But for the rest of their lives, sufferers may have sudden stabs of memory which cast every good thing into shadow, every hope into despair, making it seems like nothing before or since that incident has been true or valuable, that only that incident is Truth. If stress is high, it can happen in dreams, making them excrutiating nightmares. Waking up is even worse; one has to face the even more horrific fact that it’s not just a dream, it’s your life. Telling that person to cheer up, man up, control themselves or get their shit together is not only worthless but strikingly cruel. No one would live with this if they had a choice. The only way out is to wait for that memory to fade, to plaster it over with some good ones.

People in this world may promise you all kinds of happiness, and you can work all your life toward the imaginary happiness of success or wealth, but here’s the secret to real happiness; It turns out that all we humans need is each other. All sorts of studies confirm this, but I can prove it much more easily than all that; Imagine a lone hunter on the savannah with his spear, trying to stalk impossibly large prey, fearing starvation if he can’t manage it. Imagine another human hunter appears. NOW everything will be all right. When two of you don’t know what to do, how much more likely you are to try than if you alone don’t know what to do. And if you don’t try you can’t possibly succeed. Together, you can take down anything, even a mastodon.

These days we’re put off by pictures of peoples’ children, but if they have photos of their pets, a crowd will gather instantly. Why is this? Because animals don’t let you down! Increasingly, people DO. Animals remain loyal, faithful, responsive. They never stop needing you. If we could find these qualities in a human, we’d plaster the internet with their picture instead – but we don’t find them. But don’t be sad, here’s what to do; stop looking for that person and start BEING that person.

It was an unspoken law just two or three generations ago – depending on your family dynamic – that it was taken for granted you’d hang out with your family all your life. Cousins were closer friends than mere acquaintances. Personally, I lost track of my cousins decades ago; I can’t even remember thier names now. If you remained single all your life, you’d be the beloved uncle or aunt of a dozen trusting children, and the most trusted babysitter in the world, invited to every family event, treasured right into old age. Even in cultures like America, where coming of age has always included striking out on one’s own, there was never any doubt where you’d spend the holidays. If you lost your job, you’d move in with family without even asking, and they’d take you in without question. Nowadays we don’t even wait until we achieve adulthood to distance ourselves from these horrible people. It’s not that families were made of better people back then; they weren’t. What they had – and what we lost as we gained our independence – is real commitment. It should be no surprise that now we try to find that with each other. The trouble is, no spouse can be to you everything your family used to be. They can’t be your wise advisor, your mentor, your confidant, your caretaker, your lover, a good parent to your children, your companion in secrets, your best friend, your nurse, your romantic ideal and your only desire. No one can be all that, and so we live our lives in a state of constant disappointment. We’re disappointed in our spouses, disappointed in our lives, disappointed in ourselves.

Maybe it’s that disappointment which makes it impossible for us to make a real commitment. A real commitment means that no matter what life throws at you, you’ll still be together. You’ll suffer ups and downs on the job market, ups and downs in your financial and housing prospects, you’ll have automobile accidents and nearly incurable diseases. There’ll be times you’ll have only each other for company, and times when you can’t believe this person whose supposed to know you could be such an idiot. There’ll be times when you can’t agree with their parenting. But you’ll (I hope) grow old and frail and forgetful together. So how long can you stand this other person’s company? What if they get depressed, or addicted to drugs? None of that matters; they’re yours for life, they’re the rest of your skin, your other pair of hips. You stay together anyway, and that’s why it’s called commitment. Not because you put on some nice clothes and said some nice words in front of everyone – no matter how sacred that vow - but because you become as one with this person, forever. Whatever their problem may be, it’s your problem too. There’s no quitting.

There’s no “He’s not fulfilling my needs.” Those are your needs, find your own answers. There’s no “They don’t understand me.” It’s up to you to make yourself understood. Good luck arguing with your grandma, but anyone else, you have a fair shot if you try.

Wouldn’t it be nice, if you became incapacitated, if someone would care enough to empty the friables out of your refrigerator, water your plants, pay your rent? Anyone? If they’re only a friend, how long would they stay around, really? I’ve had some experience in this area, and I can tell you, 99 percent of the time, they just won’t do it. They might help out once, and even twice, but that’s all you can expect. And if it were very serious, who will make medical and financial decisions on your behalf? Anyone? If that sounds lonely to you, if it sounds sad, then you have to act now. Fix your family, take care of them, then they’ll be willing to take care of you. It’s a circle, and one you can’t do without, no matter how free or independent or self-sufficient – or unique - you think you are.

The elders in your family see the long view. Of course you think that your problems are unique, but they’re probably still one of a recognizable subset others have had. You think they won’t understand because you have problems with technology – but for one thing, you should be trying to keep them in the techno-loop, and for another, the difference between a sext message and a love letter isn’t as wide as you might think. No matter how deep the canyon you’re in, you can still see them on the mountaintop. Follow their signals to safety, don’t think you know better. This is the whole concept of trust. Trust that you may not, after all, know everything. That you can’t, after all, BE everything.

It’s regrettable what’s become of our families, but the good news is, it’s never too late to put it back together. Leave the most difficult ones til last, get your sea legs…You have a weird uncle who’s out of work? Let him sleep in your basement. Your perception of privacy is self-defeating, and not nearly as precious as your relationships must be. You have a relative in an old folks’ home? How hard would it be to visit them? Call them? Just how hard is it for you to be a real human being? This shit doesn’t cost you a thing but your time, and no matter how excrutiatingly important you think you are, you have the time for this. You have some cousins, nieces, nephews you haven’t met? Go find them, play Frisbee or chess with them, help them build a kite – kids still do that. Relationships aren’t handed to you, you have to hand craft them over many years. You have to give of your time and attention in many little ways which will add up over the years to real trust, real meaning. If you have a relative who likes books, ask what his or her favorite is – have a conversation. It’s amazingly fun!

If it’s been months or years since you spoke to anyone in your family, do it now, no excuses. They need you, but no more than you need them. Don’t fail to show up for someone’s wedding or funeral, those insults can never be undone. Even if you can’t bear to speak to a single soul there, show up. If you can’t afford a gift, don’t bring one, just be there. If your grandfather’s always hated you, take him fishing anyway – he may decide you’re not that bad after all. Whatever’s wrong with your family, fix it. Keep on fixing it till you die. Just think of your relatives as crazy people you’ve been put in charge of. See that they get something to eat and have a good time, and ignore the insults and complaints which are sure to fly. Just be at peace with yourself, and rejoice in the nearness of other humans who are – admit it – an awfully lot like yourself. In every family there’s one person who makes sure that no one gets left out, that holidays are spent together, one person who orchestrates reunions and picnics and barbeque. If your family seems to be missing such a person, let that be you! You can make yourself the glue holding your family together. End the terror of isolation, and the dread of loneliness, for you and for everyone around you. Be the family you wish you had.

You can’t entirely prevent depression, but helping someone pull out of it can be as simple as taking them to a game of cards every week. That’s one little thing they can look forward to, spend time preparing for, thinking about. It’s one thing the two of you can chat about, laugh about. That’s a few hours a week they think of something besides the peace and release of death. It distracts, for a time, from the hopelessness, and makes it imperative to be “together” for that date. And one day when they’re facing the dark alone, may they think of your embrace, of your humanity, of your love, and realize they aren’t so alone after all. None of us, ultimately, are. We need each other so much, and all the wealth or responsibility or success in the world is nothing if you’re standing at the top of the heap alone.

The Other People
In case you haven't seen this one (thanks, Oberon Zell!):
"We Are the Other People"
by Oberon Zell

"Ding-dong!" goes the doorbell. Is it Avon calling? Or perhaps Ed McMahon with my three million dollars? No, it's Yahweh's Witlesses again, just wanting to have a nice little chat about the Bible...
Boy, did they ever come to the wrong house! So we invite them in: "Enter freely and of your own will..." (Hey, it's Sunday morning, nothing much going on, why not have a little entertainment?) Diane and I amuse ourselves watching their expressions as they check out the living room: great horned owl on the back of my chair; ceremonial masks and medicine skulls of dragons and unicorns on the wall; crystals, wands, staffs, swords; lots of Goddess figures and several altars; boa constrictors draped in amorous embrace over the elkhorn; white doves sitting in the hanging planters; cats and weasels underfoot; iron dragon snorting steam atop the wood stove; posters and paintings of wizards and dinosaurs and witchy women, some proudly naked; sculptures of mythological beasties and lots more dinosaurs; warp six on the star-filled viewscreen of my computer; a five-foot model of the USS Enterprise and the skeleton of a plesiosaur hanging from the ceiling; very, very many books, most of them dealing with obviously weird subjects... To say nothing of the great horned owl perched on the back of my chair and the Unicorn grazing in the front yard. You know; early Addams Family decor.

And then, of course, it being late in the morning, you can expect Morning Glory to come wandering out naked, looking for her wake-up cup of tea. Morning Glory naked is a truly impressive sight, and the Witlesses look as if she'd set titties on stun as they stand immobilized, hands clasped over their genitals. With the stage set and all the actors in place, the show is ready to begin.

Their mission, of course, it to save our heathen souls by turning us on to "The Word of the Lord" - their Bible. I guess they figure some of us just haven't heard about it yet, and we're all eagerly awaiting their joyous tidings of personal salvation through giving our rational faculties to Jesus. Every time they come around, I look forward to trying out a new riposte. Sure, it may be cruel and sadistic of me, but hey, I didn't call them up and ask them to come over; they entered at their own risk!
This time should be pretty good. After letting them run off their basic rap while lovely Morning Glory serves us all hot herb tea, I innocently remark: "But none of that applies to us. We have no need for salvation because we don't have original sin. We are the Other People."

"Hunh? What?" they reply eloquently. It's clear they've never heard this one before.

"Right," I say. "It's all in your Bible." And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own book for reference:
Genesis 1:26 - The [Elohim] said, "Let us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth."
Elohim is a plural word, including male and female, and should properly be translated "Gods" or "Pantheon."
27 The Gods created humanity in the image of themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them, Male and Female they created them.

28 The Gods blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth."

Now clearly, here we are talking about the original creation of the human species: male and female. All the animals, plants, etc. have all been created in previous verses. This is before the Garden of Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these people. The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the Pantheon, goes about assembling his own special little botanical and zoological Garden in Eden, and making his own little man to inhabit it:
Gen 2:7 - Yahweh fashioned a man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus the man became a living being.

8 Yahweh planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned.

9 Yahweh caused to spring up from the soil every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden.

15 Yahweh took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it.

Now this next is crucial: note Yahweh's precise words:
16 Then Yahweh gave the man this admonition, "You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. 17 Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die."
Fateful words, those. We will refer back to this admonition later.

Then Yahweh decides to make a woman to go with the man. Now, don't forget that the Pantheon had earlier created a whole population of people, "male and female," who are presumably doing just fine somewhere "outside the gates of Eden." But this setup in Eden is Yahweh's own little experiment, and will unfold to its own separate destiny.

21 So Yahweh made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh.

22 Yahweh built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. Right. Man gives birth to woman. Sure he does. But that's the way the story is told here.

25 Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other.
Well, of course not! Why should they? But take careful note of those words, as they also will prove to be significant . . .

Now this next part is where it starts to get interesting. Enter the Serpent:
Gen. 3:1 - The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh had made. It asked the woman, "Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?"

2 The woman answered the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. 3 "But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, 'You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death'"

4 Then the serpent said to the woman, "No! You will not die! 5 "God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."

What a remarkable statement! "Your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil." The Serpent directly contradicts Yahweh. Obviously, one of them has to be lying. Which one, do you suppose? And, if the serpent speaks true, wouldn't you wish to eat of the magic fruit? Wouldn't it be a good thing, to become "like gods, knowing good and evil"? Or is it preferable to remain in ignorance?

6 The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths.

The author makes an interesting assumption here: that if you realize you are naked you will automatically want to cover yourself. Further implications will unfold shortly...
8 The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh among the trees of the garden. 9 But Yahweh called to the man. "Where are you?" he asked. 10 "I heard the sound of you in the garden," he replied. "I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid." 11 "Who told you that you were naked?" he asked. "Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?"

And so the sign of the Fall becomes modesty. Take note of this. The descendants of Adam and Eve will be distinguished throughout history from virtually all other peoples by their obsessive modesty taboos, wherein they will feel ashamed of being naked. It follows that those who feel no shame in being naked are, by definition, not carriers of this spiritual disease of original sin!
12 The man replied, "It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it."

Right. Blame the woman. What a turkey! 13 Then Yahweh asked the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman replied, "The serpent tempted me and I ate." So of course she blames the serpent. But just what did the serpent do that was so evil? Why, he called Yahweh a liar! Was he wrong? Let's see...

21 Yahweh made clothes out of skins for the man and his wife, and they put them on. Out of skins? This means that Yahweh had to kill some innocent animals to pander to Adam and Eve's new obsession with modesty!

And now we come to the crux of the Fall. Yahweh had said back there in chapter 2:17, regarding the fruit of the tree of knowledge, that "on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die." The Serpent, on the other hand, had contradicted Yahweh in chapter 3:4-5: "No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil." So what actually happened? Who lied and who told the truth about this remarkable fruit? The answer is given in the next verse:
22 Then Yahweh said, "See, the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat some and live forever."

Get that? Yahweh himself admits that he had lied! In fact, and in Yahweh's own words, the Serpent spoke the absolute truth! And moreover, Yahweh tells the rest of the Pantheon that he intends to evict Adam (and presumably Eve as well) to keep them from gaining immortality to go with their newly-acquired divine knowledge. To prevent them, in other words, from truly becoming gods! So who, in this story, comes off as a benefactor of humanity, and who comes off as a tyrant? THE SERPENT NEVER LIED!

This story, to digress slightly, bears a remarkable resemblance to a contemporary tale from ancient Greece. In that version, the Serpent (later identified as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer) may be equated with the heroic titan Prometheus, who championed humanity against the tyranny of Zeus, who wished for people to be mere slaves of the gods. Prometheus, whose name means "forethought," gave people wisdom, intelligence, and fire stolen from Olympus. Moreover, he ordained the portions of animal sacrifice so that humans got the best parts (the meat and hides) while the portion that was burned to the gods was the bones and fat. In punishment for this defiance of his divine authority, Zeus condemned Prometheus to a terrible punishment for an immortal: to be chained to a mountain in the Caucasus, where Zeus' gryphon/eagle (actually a Lammergier) would devour his liver each day. It would grow back each night. Zeus promised to relent if Prometheus would reveal his great secret knowledge: Who would succeed Zeus as supreme god? Prometheus refused to tell, but history has revealed the answer...The interesting thing about all this is that the Greeks properly regarded Prometheus as a noble hero in his defiance of unjust tyranny. One may wonder why the Serpent is not so well regarded. On the contrary, snakes are loathed throughout Christiandom.

23 So Yahweh expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken. 24 He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.
So that's it for the Fall. But the story of Adam and Eve doesn't end there.

Gen 4:1 - The man had intercourse with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain...
2 She gave birth to a second child, Abel, the brother of Cain. Now Abel became a shepherd and kept flocks, while Cain tilled the soil. 3 Time passed and Cain brought some of the produce of the soil as an offering for Yahweh,
4 while Abel for his part brought the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as well. Yahweh looked with favor on Abel and his offering. But he did not look with favor on Cain and his offering, and Cain was very angry and downcast.
Well, why shouldn't he be? Both brothers had brought forth their first fruits as offerings, but Yahveh rejected the vegetables and only accepted the blood sacrifice. This was to set a gruesome precedent:
8 Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out;" and while they were in the open country, Cain set on his brother Abel and killed him.

Accursed and marked for fratricide, 16 Cain left the presence of Yahweh and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
We can assume that the phrase "left the presence of Yahweh" implies that Yahweh is a local deity, and not omnipresent. Now Eden, according to Gen. 2:14-15, was situated at the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, apparently right where Lake Van is now, in Turkey. "East of Eden," therefore, would probably be along the shores of the Caspian Sea, right in the Indo-European heartland. Cain settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married one of the women of that country. Here, for the first time, is specifically mentioned the "other people" who are not of the lineage of Adam and Eve i.e., the Pagans.
So let's look at this story from another viewpoint: There we were, around six thousand years ago, living in our little farming communities around the Caspian Sea, in the land of Nod, when this dude with a terrible scar comes stumbling in out of the sunset. He tells us this bizarre story, about how his mother and father had been created by some god named Yahweh, and put in charge of a beautiful garden somewhere out west, and how they had gotten thrown out for disobedience after eating some of the landlord's forbidden magic fruit of enlightenment. He tells us of murdering his brother, as the god of his parents would only accept blood sacrifice, and of receiving that scar as a mark so that all would know him as a fratricide. The poor guy is really a mess psychologically, obsessed with guilt. He is also obsessively modest, insisting on wearing clothes even in the hottest summer, and he has a hard time with our penchant for skinny-dipping in the warm inland sea. He seems to believe that he is tainted by the "sin" of his parent's disobedience; that it is in his blood, somehow, and will continue to contaminate his children and his children's children. One of our healing women takes pity on the poor sucker, and marries him...
17 Cain had intercourse with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. He became builder of a town, and he gave the town the name of his son Enoch.

With both of their first sons not turning out very well, Adam and Eve decided to try again:
25 Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she gave birth to a son whom she named Seth...26 A son was also born to Seth, and he named him Enosh. This man was the first to invoke the name of Yahweh. Now it doesn't mention here where Seth's wife came from. Another woman from Nod, possibly, or maybe someone from another neolithic community downstream in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. But her folks also, cannot be of the lineage of Adam and Eve, and must also be counted among "the other people."

But whatever happened to Adam? After all, way back there in chapter 2:17, warning Adam about the magic fruit of knowledge, Yahweh had told him that "on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die." So, when did Adam die? Gen. 5:4 - Adam lived for eight hundred years after the birth of Seth and he became the father of sons and daughters. 5 In all, Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years; then he died.

Hey, that's pretty good! Nine hundred and some odd years isn't bad for a man who's been told he's gonna die the next day! Well, the story goes on, and maybe next time the Witlesses come to visit I'll tell more of it. But suffice it to say that those of us who are not of Semitic descent (i.e., not of the lineage of Adam and Eve) cannot share in the Original Sin that comes with that lineage. Being that the Bible is the story of that lineage, of Adam and Eve's descendants and their special relationship with their particular god, Yahweh, it follows that this is not the story of the rest of us. We may have been Cain's wife's people, or Seth's wife's people, or some other people over the hill and far away, but whichever people the rest of us are, as far as the Bible is concerned, we are the Other People, and so we are continually referred to throughout. Later books of the Bible are filled with admonitions to the followers of Yahweh to "learn not the ways of the Pagans..." (Jer 10:2) with detailed descriptions of exactly what it is we do, such as erect standing stones and sacred poles, worship in sacred groves and practice divination and magic. And worship the sun, moon, stars and the "Queen of Heaven." "You must not behave as they do in Egypt where once you lived; you must not behave as they do in Canaan where I am taking you. You must not follow their laws." (Lev 18:3) For Yahweh, as he so clearly emphasizes, is not the god of the Pagans. We have our own lineage and our own heritage, and our tale is not told in the Bible.

We were not "made" like clay figurines by a male deity out of "dust from the soil." We were born of our Mother the Earth, and have evolved over aeons in Her nurturing embrace. All of us, in our many and diverse tribes, have creation myths and legends of our origins and history; some of these tales may even be actually true. Like the descendants of Adam and Eve, many of us also have stories of great floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other cataclysms that wiped out whole communities of our people, wherein "I alone survived to tell the tale." Nearly all of our ancestral tribes (and especially those of us who today are reclaiming our own Pagan heritage) lack that peculiar obsessive body modesty that seems to be a hallmark of the original sin alluded to in the story of the Fall. We can be naked and unashamed! Why, our Goddess even tells us, "as a sign that you are truly free, you shall be naked in your rites." Not being born into sin, we have no need of salvation, and no need of a Messiah to redeem our sinful souls. Neither heaven nor hell is our destination in the afterlife; we have our own various arrangements with our own various deities. The Bible is not our story; we have our own stories to tell, and they are many and diverse. In a long life, may you get to hear many of them..

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LOSE SOMEONE TO RELIGION

It’s a hard thing to face; that your long-time friend or family member is now under the control of a religious group. Your first instinct may be to argue with them over dogma or doctrine they’ve begun quoting, but that only makes it worse. So how do you know that it’s no use arguing? How do you know they’re – to be frank – not worth arguing with?

1) They state their case in loaded terms unnecessarily. “Trumped up” instead of “false.”
2) They now find murder, even mass slaughter, acceptable and even necessary in certain cases.
3) They refuse to answer direct questions, instead answering with repetitions of memorized phrases. This will escalate into personal insults pretty quickly.
4) No appeal to reason will be considered. They may say they don’t need to think about it; they know.
5) They continually state that you don’t know what you’re talking about, without providing any examples or actual information.
6) Their only source is a sacred text and they feel that is sufficient.
7) They take any disagreement or questioning as a personal insult and affront.
8) They drag previous arguments and past punishments or judgments into the discussion.

The reason you shouldn’t argue with such a person is because it’ll increase your frustration without accomplishing anything. Any reasoning, any facts, any logic you try to use to clear up what seems like a simple failure of thought may brand you as an enemy of their true faith. They’ve been soaking up rote phrases, a feeling of belonging to a group of people they perceive to be like themselves, and the idea that they’re special and on a sacred mission. They’re feeling complete bliss knowing they’ve been chosen by god. They’ve probably been told that people will try to dissuade them and you’ve just become that enemy.

Now what? There are myriad sites full of advice about how to begin deprogramming, but these are of no use until the persons themselves desire to use them. If you try to trick them or slip some facts where they’re sure to see them, they’ll only become further alienated and reject your overtures more forcefully. It’s important to remember that many religious groups will defend these new members with threats and actual violence to prove their commitment and loyalty. It would be unwise to stir up that possibility. If you’re prepared to storm the castle (as it were) and rescue this person, be prepared for reprisals from the group and from the rescuee. They won’t thank you for dragging them away from what they see as the best thing that ever happened to them; in fact the only meaningful thing that’s ever happened to them. They’re getting a religious high, and your actions, to their mind, are pulling them right out of heaven. The resentment can run deep. Because of the possibility that the group may be dangerous, you have to assume the worst and go in with all the manpower and all the legal backing you can get already in place. It’s up to you whether to take this step, but if you’re thinking about it get some expert advice first. It’s not something you can undo if it doesn’t work out.

The one thing you shouldn’t do is make it clear that you’re cutting them out of your life forever. This only reinforces the indoctrination which says the world is against them. Part of the strategy for keeping their convert is for the group to attempt to isolate them from former friends and family. The best strategy may be to ignore the whole thing, avoid talking about any hot-button issues, and remain calm and reasonable throughout. It may still be possible to share meals, just stay away from the news. At some point you will have to decide whether the friendship or family tie is wise or even possible to continue. Sometimes a convert sees their mistake and seeks escape. Should that happen, you’ll want to be the person they’ll turn to. If you decide not to wait it out, make sure the cut is clean and complete. For your own safety, don’t give either the convert or the group any reason to seek reprisal.

THOUGHTS ON GOD AND CHRISTMAS

So you have this idea about a Great Being. You can’t prove it, you can only show that a lot of people agree with you. On this basis, you’re willing to murder people for disagreeing. Not just murdering, but torturing innocents such as children and even pets! Because of something you can’t prove, and they have the gall to disagree with you? Really? And you call that moral?

And if they disagree with your views on anything else, the same curse applies – they should be killed. If they think marriage is different than you say, or slavery, or sex, or they disagree about which foods are “proper” (though none of them is poison), or any damned thing at all, they should be killed. If their skin is a different color, if they speak a different language, DEATH. And you think you are more moral?

You build mega-churches, pull in mega-crowds, and collect mega-bucks on this basis, all tax-free. You spend this money on alcohol, drugs, sex and prostitution, and you call that moral superiority. When a monkey cheats on its spouse, it hides that fact from its spouse and from the whole community, just as you do. You aren’t even morally superior to a MONKEY.

You do not have the right to any of these behaviors. You should not be exempt from taxes just because you’re exempt from obeying the moral law. 84% of prisoners in the U.S. are religious – only 3% are atheists. Even if such statistics are way off – the difference is astronomical. Tell me now, who hold the moral superiority card?

Why is it that when faced with a terminal illness, Christians are generally filled with dread (though they believe they’re going to ‘join with’ their magical deity), and atheists are filled with peace? Why have atheists never started a war, nor started pulling down the monuments of your religion? Only other religions do that!

There’s an old saying, “I swear there ain’t no heaven, but I pray there ain’t no hell.” Yet, when they come to peace with the fact that neither of these exist, the atheist’s morality does not change. The Christian, full of devotion and prayer, hides his amorality unless he can get the group to agree with his immoral acts, then celebrates them as if they were holy. They will rob, murder, and con their way through this world without the tiniest regret. They believe in a Satan; is that why they BECOME him? Their “moral” behavior is not only evil and insidious, but omni-present, omni-powerful, and self-congratulatory.

Never ask why I despise religion; I’m likely to answer you.

If there were a magical, all-powerful being who was the source of love and morality, he would have destroyed the religious centuries ago. Imagine if all the damage done in the name of religion were suddenly reversed; THAT would be paradise! An increase in your “faith” brings the opposite. Having faith only proves that you’re willing to suspend your disbelief infinitely; Jimmy Jones’ followers gave up everything they had and moved to South America to live in his “utopia” and ultimately took their own lives, still apparently believing that only he spoke the Truth. Congratulations! You’re one of those guys!

I never experienced real awe and wonder until I gave up on the notion of God. When one is religious, everything is a test, a trial, a competition. One doesn’t have the right attitude to see the beauty of the Earth, the sky, the stars, life itself. When you study the Bible you come away confused, confounded, and contrite. When you study reality, you come away with astonishment, appreciation, apprehension at the marvel of it all. If there is a God who created all this, then surely the petty little crimes and imaginary superstitions of the tiny carbon life-forms are of the least possible importance. Our thoughts cannot condemn us before He who made us! There is no such creature, but if there were, he would have to be at least as magnificent and astonishing as his creation; not a jealous, homicidal, genocidal egotist who wants – then doesn’t want – our blood sacrifices, who does and then doesn’t command and condemn us! What an absurd notion! Let go of that idea and be free to study and know and wonder at all the mysteries we can behold, all the beauty we can comprehend, all the love we are capable of without need of laws or threats of eternal damnation.

As a child I asked questions no one in my religious community could answer. Because the logic of their religion – even if you suspend your disbelief – won’t hold together. The facts don’t add up! On the one had they say the most beautiful, loving being who ever existed, made this amazing, wonderous universe, but only ever showed Himself in a few square miles of desert. He’s existed for all eternity, but chose to speak only for a few thousand years. No matter that this was a god of Jewish nomads, now everyone considers themselves the Chosen. They preach the commandments, but are the first to break them. They stand in their billion-dollar “churches” and scream into the microphone that one should only pray in private. They claim to cure people but it’s always a hoax, and whatever they preach, however much they say they follow the philosophy of a Jewish man who lived in utter poverty, they still want more and more of your money, and will try to get you to mortgage everything you own to get more for them. There were many preachers in my family, and I got to see their behavior first-hand. There was nothing there to respect, nothing there but shame.

I was about 55 years old when I discovered there was a name for what I am. I had thought I was an atheist, but that is too mean a term. I finally found Humanists, and realized tha that’s what I am. I believe all people – all beings – are equally sacred. I don’t harass the religious, or try to convert them, I just get so weary of having this God shoved down my throat all the time. “God bless you,” “I’ll pray for you,” and things like Christmas music which blares in my brain for months…I don’t mind getting a day off, but to me every Friday is equally “Good.” But most of all, I get tired of Christians and Muslims hating each other, and mis-interpreting their own holy books. Show me, in your holy book, where it says it’s good to hate people! Stop judging me by criteria you yourself can’t meet, and saying it comes from the Holy Bible which you haven’t even studied! Stop claiming a thing is Holy when you don’t even know where it came from, who wrote it, rewrote it, who decided what would go in and what would be kept out. If it were truly written by an all-knowing God, how is it He doesn’t know that stars will never fall to earth? How is it that He advises that livestock fed from a trough containing a striped stick will give birth to striped offspring? It won’t! If He wanted to guide us, help us, wouldn’t he have been clear in what He said, not dress it up in “metaphor” which has to be “interpreted!” Even in the first portion, chapter, of this so-great book defies itself! It proves it’s falseness by contradicting its own tale. Even as a child I could see this wasn’t possible, couldn’t be the work of a Being who was omniscient. How can – and why should – anyone believe in anything this book – this God – says, when he constantly contradicts himself, advises and assists in genocide, and doesn’t appear to know how the universe He supposedly made works. Further, if there were such a Being, why would he punish us for our nature when He created us this way? Why would he threaten and curse these little creatures who are clearly doing their best with what He’s given them? Then He supposedly appears on earth In the form of some holy human, dies like anyone else, and threatens His creatures with eternal torment for having a wrong thought!? Yet He lets evil thrive, grow rich and fat, allows them to torture innocents and murder their fellow creatures, while the devout, the good-hearted, the innocent starve, die of horrible disease, and suffer abuse all their lives? Whoever this Being is, He’s clearly not worth of worship He should be judged by His own rules and suffer the condemnation He threatens these little creatures with.

My constant thought, recurring all my life, is “How can people believe in this?” “Why?” In an age when we know perfectly well what the stars are, and how truly astonishing Infinity is, and how small and petty we are, people are still preaching from their palacial churches and playing the oldest con games in the world on millions of people. In a time when people speak openly about how corrupt and dissolute the clergy is, when the internet makes it possible for anyone to study what the Bible is and how it came to be, the same cons are still being run. The followers of this God must be unbelievably stupid, gullible, and maliciously judgmental. We know for a fact these are cons, these claims are not true, these saints are fakes.

“Merry Christmas?” Do you even know what that holiday is? It’s not a celebration of the birth of your prophet, it’s a continuation of winter feasts which have been held since the beginning of civilization, and has been used to celebrate Jupiter far longer than Yaweh. Your Messiah wasn’t born on this day – read it in your own Book! The “reason for the season” celebration is because this is the time of year when, if there weren’t enough grain to support them until spring,

And at no time did this Messiah advocate giving each other gifts on this day. It has no connection with the Magi who brought gifts to God, and by the way, not to each other. This Messiah advocated poverty and purity, and true charity – not things Christians practice. Spare me your Easter greetings as well – Easter is called so because it’s a continuation of ancient spring rites dedicated to the Goddess Eostre who has been around much longer than this Messiah. Eggs have nothing to do with the Christian mythos, they’re a celebration of Spring bringing life after a long winter. These pagan festivals were hijacked by Christians, and commercial interests have twisted them into the biggest profit-making machine in the history of the world. You spend billions every year on Christmas gifts, and maliciously subject non-Christians of any kind to blaring religious music, decorations, and rituals we have no desire to participate in or celebrate. Yet, if we speak a word against Christianity we’re labeled as rabid, malicious atheists who try to convert the world. That’s not the case. We just wish that if you must believe in this completely illogical, commercially-profitable, fantasy myth, you keep it to your fucking self. If you trust God so much, why do you need police? And why should they proudly display “In God we trust?” Where’s the trusting part?

You go ahead an believe in this Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, but just leave those of us who don’t believe it ALONE. You have no right to subject us continually, from cradle to grave, to your ridiculous con-game myths. What we believe can be PROVEN, will work every time. What you believe is – even after 2,000 years – unprovable, illogical, inaccurate, and torturous. No one is stopping you from believing all that, just stop tormenting us with it. We’re not evangelizing, we’re just standing our ground. You want us to shut up? YOU FIRST.

HUMANS!

I don’t care what your reason is for how you believe it happened, because no matter what you believe the fact remains that you are human.

Given that you are human, certain fairly concrete rules apply. You’ll need oxygen, you’ll need clean water, you’ll need food, you’ll require shelter much of the year, you have little in the way of natural defenses so you must outsmart predators, and last but not least, you will require sex. There’s a reason for this last one; the human race is not possible except as an ongoing process. If a single generation fails to reproduce, that’s the end of us. All of the things on this list are pretty much equally important; you can’t just take out a couple of them – not even for just a few days – without killing the experimental subject.

Maybe you believe that a super-intelligent, super-powerful supreme being created humans. If so, he or she appears to have put some pretty definite rules in place for you, as noted above. Honestly, these aren’t the kind of rules you can break. If someone created you, he or she intended very much that you live within these requirements. To think otherwise is to assume you were made in error. And no super-intelligent, super-powerful being would make such a glaring error.

Maybe you believe we evolved by chance, and if so, the same observation applies; apparently it’s pretty important that we take care of these things, these human requirements. So why is there this constant battle to deny being human?

It’s very popular to say, “Oh, I don’t have sex, that’s the source of all humanity’s problems, and I’m above all that.” And we give people who claim this an all-expense-paid life of leisure. Many are also fond of the, “Oh, I have no material needs” gambit. Again, while denying they require anything, they don’t do a day’s work, they just get an all-expense-paid life free of effort. But even then, I don’t see them going without oxygen. And it often turns out that although they’ve claimed to live without sex or without material goods, in the end we discover that actually they did the same as the rest of us – they just talked a better con.

Most mature people would agree that it’s a waste to spend your life hating or in anger. As one saying has it, “Hatred is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” That’s exactly what happens. Our hatred has absolutely no effect on the one who earned it, it just poisons US. Regret is the same. If you spend all your time moaning and groaning about what might have been done better or where everything went wrong, then nothing will ever go right again. You’re turning all your energy against your own self. Don’t be so busy looking back and finding fault and laying blame that you fall off the cliff in front of you. Now listen, here is a great truth; the same is true in denying your humanity. You can spend all your time denying that you need these things and punishing yourself for failing to get by without them, or – here’s an idea – accept that you’re a human being with certain needs, and work forward from there. This is the only way that progress is possible. End the self-flagellation; you’re only hurting yourself.

Being human needn’t be a struggle, you’re making it that way. It’s Nature to need these things and there is no shame in it. Sex is only dirty if you decide it is, otherwise it’s a perfectly natural function which should be practiced, like anything else, with due care. Moral imperatives, like the tendency to enjoy music and dance, are part of being human. If you do what harms others, you are – in the end – harming yourself worst of all. Let other people do whatever they want! Don’t you have enough to worry about in your own life that you need to control and resent other people? Keep your eyes on your own path; that’s the only way ahead.

Make allowances for yourself; you know you’re going to need oxygen, so don’t venture into places without any available oxygen. If you think some god or gods made you this way, or you evolved by chance, makes no difference; you are here now. You are living in this body, which has certain needs. You can spend all your time fighting that and punishing yourself for failing to achieve what others appear (and only appear) to be able to do without. Or here’s a suggestion; accept your humanity, deal with it, celebrate it even – and then decide what this one particular human being is going to do with his or her life.

PROOF

I have no patience for anyone who says God has spoken to them. If He has something important to say, let Him say it to everyone, all at the same time, each in his or her own language. THAT will be proof. The fact that someone I don’t know says something is true is not only unbelievable, it’s laughable. People will say whatever gets them the most money, the most attention, and the most power and pride. To expect me to pay them to hear their “message” of my inadequacies is unspeakably ridiculous in light of their own.

It’s really tempting to say I’m a humanist because I’m not an idiot, but it’s too simplistic. The fact is that even the most intelligent among us can easily fall prey to such manipulations. We crave acceptance, nobility and hope. We crave group approval and forgiveness for our failures. We feel we “fall short” and need to be punished. But we believe all of these things come from God only because that’s what we’ve been taught. Rigorous questioning reveals it isn’t true. God is not the source of our morality, or chimps – who have no churches – would have no morals. Paying someone to tell you that a magical being loves you – but also hates you – is folly.

Anger against “the Unbeliever” proves nothing but “the Faithful’s” inability to mount a coherent argument to the contrary. The fact that they’re willing to kill very effectively proves their inability to mount even a flimsy defense.

EVOLUTION - 'INTELLIGEN' DESIGN

Creationists seem to feel that humankind is so perfectly made that his creation couldn’t possibly have been an accident. I take issue with that. Here are some things about humans which are NOT perfect:
1) Our teeth wear and out fall out before we’re done needing them to eat with. Many species have teeth which are replaced all their lives; doesn’t God love us?
2) Our joints wear out long before the need to walk and grasp does.
3) Our bodies age and make it impossible to do things, right when we’re wise enough to know what to do.
4) Our bones are thin and fracture easily.
5) We have no natural defenses against predators – all other creatures do. We don’t even have stink-bombs or cautionary coloring.
6) Wisdom teeth, the appendix, the pinky-toe, male nipples, the blind spot.
7) Since we eat and breathe through the same esophagus, we frequently choke to death.
8) Outside a very narrow temperature range, we die. There are temperatures much greater and much cooler than we can bear, right here on our perfect world.
9) Our eyesight is poor, our sense of smell is abysmal, we have no claws, flat, useless teeth, our jaws aren’t even able to open nuts.
10) We require vitamin C and will die without it, but vitamin C is not abundant in nomadic society, and unlike most animals, we’re unable to synthesize it. Once again it seems God doesn’t love us.
11) Sweet, salty, and fatty foods are bad for our health, but we find them irresistible. Irrationally, vegetables, roots, nuts, legumes and thistles are good for our health, but we find them extremely resistable.

And how to explain the wings of flightless birds? Is that meant as a joke? The “Argument from Perfection” assumes a perfection which is not in evidence.

Creationists have a very hard time with math. When evolutionists say that mutations occurred over many millions of years, they think this means within the last 5,000 years. Since there’s a lovely old tree in Sweden which is 9,500 years old, this thinking is a little out-dated, not to mention it fails to consider the geological evidence for a 13 billion year old earth. But most crucially, they fail to realize that evolution assumes thousands of generations, each one just the tiniest bit different than the last through our own genetic selection by choice, and that of Mother Nature. Viewed from the correct perspective of time, evolution’s arguments hold up, and the timing is supported by all the evidence (with the singular exception of calculations by a medieval monk who decided how old the earth was, based on the Bible, miscalculating even the birthdate of his Savior). The fact that some found fossils have turned out to be fakes is no more relevant than the fact that some children who are prayed over instead of taken for medical care manage to survive. It neither validates nor invalidates either side of the argument. The fact is, only about 5% of the earth’s surface has been subjected to archeological search, so keep watching! Science makes findings and adjustments constantly.

Another argument of creationists is that because the earth is “perfect” for us, the moon is just right, and the sun as well, this means the universe must have been created for us. But actually, the reverse is true. Because the sun was just this distance, we evolved to survive it. Because the moon was exactly this distance, life on earth evolved to take advantage of it. I find it obvious that if the sun were a little farther away we simply would have evolved a little differently. It’s not a miracle of design, but merely a function of design.