1) Had my first good church experience in way too long this morning. It's always nice to have three strangers engage you in conversation within five minutes of walking in the door. And have seven more do so before you leave.
2) It is a sad testament to the state of the American cultural consciousness that we extend altruism suspiciously, and treat any altruism extended in our direction with suspicion. We have become so accustomed to being exploited that we can't handle genuine selflessness.
3) I'm really not accustomed to only needing five to ten minutes to get places.
4) When it doubt, picardy third. When not in doubt, picardy third.
5) The principles of Affirmative Action should also be applied to relationships. Don't have many black/Hispanic/gay/transgender/atheist/agnostic/Muslim/liberal/nerdy friends? Get some. It'll improve and expand your perception of the world and the people in it.
6) Never underestimate the emotional impact of singing the fifth over a picardy third in progress.
7) It's interesting to notice the ragtime roots of Southern Gospel piano music.
8) Too many of the atrocities suffered by the Hebrews in the Old Testament are treated by the writers therein as their own fault. No wonder centuries later the Pharisees wanted to know whose fault it was that the man Jesus healed was born blind. Also no wonder that we've had centuries of Christians trying to blame the victims of oppression, poverty, and injustice since then.
9) In my experience, a person whose mind is entirely undivided, who does not struggle with difficult questions, is either a fanatic or apathetic.
10) We assume that everyone needs unfettered access to information, that information is the key to a more educated society and thus a more enlightened society. But we also need guides to help interpret, extrapolate from, and apply that information. Otherwise we're just dumping an ocean into a bucket and hoping it will fit.
11) It's amazing how big a gap exists between "peace on earth, good will toward men" and "peace to those on whom his favor rests." This is why studying Biblical Interpretation is necessary for intellectual honesty.
12) Rituals take us out of our routines, bringing us into a communal experience away from our complicated lives as individuals. Thus, faith communities who omit or minimize their rituals set themselves on a path to splintering into factions based on dogma. Not because individual thought and study and opinion naturally leads to such, but because they have removed and/or made impotent their shared experiences and demonstrations of faith. Removing rituals removes symbolism from religious communities, and without symbolism, a religion is just a philosophy with some divine salad dressing sprinkled on top.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Friday, August 28, 2015
Thoughts, Mostly Regarding Indoctrination and its Effects
I need to come up with a simile that involves explaining the scientific method to a creationist for the hundredth time.
Something really witty that I can bring up in mixed company to vent just a little of my frustration.
Maybe...
-Starting your car with no gas in it? You can go through the steps over and over, but you won't get anywhere.
-Taking a bath in a lake? You can be as thorough as you want, but you'll still feel dirty when it's all over.
...eh. Work in progress.
It's difficult to form a straw man of religious fundamentalism.
Just like it's difficult to satirize American rightwing politics nowadays.
Attempting to skirt ahead of reality and depict it as MORE ludicrous than you think it could ever be is an exercise in eventual futility in both cases, since both appear to be hurtling away from "comprehensible, decent, and rational" territory at the speed of light.
That there are people operating the accelerator pedals in both camps simultaneously isn't a coincidence.
It makes me wish there really WAS a leftist conspiracy to institute communism or that there really WAS a plot by the scientific community to oppress religious groups into oblivion.
At least then the ranting and raving would have SOME basis in reality.
Instead of simply being violent delusions spewed forth by victims of generations of indoctrination.
And they continue to spew, even as many their children turn back on them with fact and cited sources to counter their indoctrination.
Many, sadly not all.
Though the Internet and the free and infinite availability of information has put a dent in the age-old cycle of ideological repression and worship of the irrational, there are still families who manage to squelch their offspring's intellect beneath the weight of dogma, and send them out into the world to make another generation of mental midgets who think themselves giants-by-divine-appointment.
These families are mainly of the Duggar or Duggar-fandom variety who REPRESS *irony* their children and keep them away from any and all sources of actual-not-dogmatic information.
While there have been a few voices expressly against religion in the scientific community (Carl Sagan comes to mind), most researchers, experts, and students, if they acknowledge religion at all, express at least some level of devoutness to a religious tradition.
Which, to the rational people in the peanut gallery, demonstrates perfectly that there isn't some cosmic chessgame between Science and Religion.
Science does its work and mostly keeps to itself.
Religion, at least in the fundamentalist circles, can't seem to comprehend that, much less do it themselves.
And just to clarify my terms, here's a nice breakdown:
1) Religious people say, "This is what I believe."
2) Evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and it would probably do you good to believe it as well."
3) Fundamentalist evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and you really believe it too, which you would realize if you STOPPED LYING TO YOURSELF AND SENDING YOUR KIDS TO HELLRAAAAAAAR!"
What I think the more rational and/or altruistic religious and evangelical religious people are afraid of is that a point made by the Agnostic and Atheist communities is in fact true, or coming true.
That being that all the altruistic efforts motivated by religion over the centuries cannot counterbalance the atrocities committed in its name, and that by this stage in our societal development, we shouldn't NEED the proddings of a Sky Father to get us to take care of each other.
That we will eventually outgrow religion, having finally learned to take care of each other because "It's the right thing to do," not because Heaven or Hell depends upon it.
Even as a Christian, I hope this is true, that we will one day take care of each other simply because we should, not because of morality or bribes or threats.
Notice I separate "should" from "morality".
Every other communal species on this planet has a biological imperative to care for and protect all individuals within a particular group.
Whether it's a single family or a group of families which interbreed.
Yet for some reason we humans need some abstract-made-physical thing to focus on in order to get us to do what every other communal animal does naturally.
Read Warren Ellis' Supergods for a larger breakdown of that concept.
On an unrelated note, it's nice to post a conservative-run discussion board, and get three "likes" from members and an infraction from the site admin.
Something really witty that I can bring up in mixed company to vent just a little of my frustration.
Maybe...
-Starting your car with no gas in it? You can go through the steps over and over, but you won't get anywhere.
-Taking a bath in a lake? You can be as thorough as you want, but you'll still feel dirty when it's all over.
...eh. Work in progress.
It's difficult to form a straw man of religious fundamentalism.
Just like it's difficult to satirize American rightwing politics nowadays.
Attempting to skirt ahead of reality and depict it as MORE ludicrous than you think it could ever be is an exercise in eventual futility in both cases, since both appear to be hurtling away from "comprehensible, decent, and rational" territory at the speed of light.
That there are people operating the accelerator pedals in both camps simultaneously isn't a coincidence.
It makes me wish there really WAS a leftist conspiracy to institute communism or that there really WAS a plot by the scientific community to oppress religious groups into oblivion.
At least then the ranting and raving would have SOME basis in reality.
Instead of simply being violent delusions spewed forth by victims of generations of indoctrination.
And they continue to spew, even as many their children turn back on them with fact and cited sources to counter their indoctrination.
Many, sadly not all.
Though the Internet and the free and infinite availability of information has put a dent in the age-old cycle of ideological repression and worship of the irrational, there are still families who manage to squelch their offspring's intellect beneath the weight of dogma, and send them out into the world to make another generation of mental midgets who think themselves giants-by-divine-appointment.
These families are mainly of the Duggar or Duggar-fandom variety who REPRESS *irony* their children and keep them away from any and all sources of actual-not-dogmatic information.
While there have been a few voices expressly against religion in the scientific community (Carl Sagan comes to mind), most researchers, experts, and students, if they acknowledge religion at all, express at least some level of devoutness to a religious tradition.
Which, to the rational people in the peanut gallery, demonstrates perfectly that there isn't some cosmic chessgame between Science and Religion.
Science does its work and mostly keeps to itself.
Religion, at least in the fundamentalist circles, can't seem to comprehend that, much less do it themselves.
And just to clarify my terms, here's a nice breakdown:
1) Religious people say, "This is what I believe."
2) Evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and it would probably do you good to believe it as well."
3) Fundamentalist evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and you really believe it too, which you would realize if you STOPPED LYING TO YOURSELF AND SENDING YOUR KIDS TO HELLRAAAAAAAR!"
What I think the more rational and/or altruistic religious and evangelical religious people are afraid of is that a point made by the Agnostic and Atheist communities is in fact true, or coming true.
That being that all the altruistic efforts motivated by religion over the centuries cannot counterbalance the atrocities committed in its name, and that by this stage in our societal development, we shouldn't NEED the proddings of a Sky Father to get us to take care of each other.
That we will eventually outgrow religion, having finally learned to take care of each other because "It's the right thing to do," not because Heaven or Hell depends upon it.
Even as a Christian, I hope this is true, that we will one day take care of each other simply because we should, not because of morality or bribes or threats.
Notice I separate "should" from "morality".
Every other communal species on this planet has a biological imperative to care for and protect all individuals within a particular group.
Whether it's a single family or a group of families which interbreed.
Yet for some reason we humans need some abstract-made-physical thing to focus on in order to get us to do what every other communal animal does naturally.
Read Warren Ellis' Supergods for a larger breakdown of that concept.
On an unrelated note, it's nice to post a conservative-run discussion board, and get three "likes" from members and an infraction from the site admin.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Some Thoughts From Today
1) Sometimes I find myself truly torn between a personal need for rituals, and a desire to deconstruct them.
2) It seems counterproductive for churches to devote so much energy to eliciting an emotional response via music, only to cut it off and try to swerve into the intellectual just before the sermon. Maybe that's why the homily is so short during Mass. Perhaps Protestant and Nondenominational churches and university chapel services should cultivate the intellectual response in small-group settings, and reserve corporate worship for exactly that, the emotionally ecstatic state which results from the combination of prayer and music.
3) How sad is it that humans consider ourselves to be the peak of evolution, yet we require rites and rituals involving inanimate objects or anthropomorphized abstract concepts in order to take care of each other as members of a society? No other animal on this planet requires such. Each member of a community cares for each other member of the community for the sake of the community. The group must survive, moreso than any one of its members. Yet humans seem to have left that basic instinct behind with our attainment of "sentience".
4) Too many religious people try to oversimplify too many complex concepts, to their detriment and the detriment of their testimony. Seemingly in an attempt to avoid truly dealing with hard questions, avoiding the complexity of real life and the real universe, they cling to one-liners, and a very small pool of simplistic cliches and platitudes to throw at every question and concern which crosses their path. The world, with its unlimited access to information, is no longer impressed with simplistic answers or simplistic attitudes. Oversimplification in the face of honest complexity leads to outright rejection of one's beliefs and principles. People would rather know we struggle than be handed the illusion of confidence.
5) The word is "sure," people. You can't be "for sure". At all. You can do something "for sure". Such as, "I know for sure that I locked the front door." The expression is an adverb, not an adjective. On an unrelated note, the word is "regularly". "On the regular" is MEANINGLESS. "Regular" is not a noun, and thus cannot be the object of a preposition. YOU KEEP DOING THIS, AUTHORITY FIGURES AND TEACHERS, AND YOU WILL ONLY CONTINUE THE LANGUAGE'S DOWNWARD SPIRAL INTO VAGUENESS AND MISUNDERSTANDING.
6) Having no direct day-to-day experience of persecution, far too many American Christians assign the term flippantly. "That man said the Founders didn't write the Pledge of Allegiance to say 'under God'! He's persecuting meeee!"
7) I haven't needed to use the word "mezzanine" since I was last in Herrick Auditorium in 2007.
8) It's always nice to see an alto standing proud in a crowd of loud sopranos.
9) I can't imagine how frustrating it would be for an adult who leaves home right after high school, works and pays bills and taxes for a couple of years before starting college, only to be forced into High School 2.0 because of the way his/her institution of choice is run.
10) Why is it seemingly only the colleges which force religion or force a militaristic attitude via obsession with athletics upon students who are willing or able to have an intimate, caring environment on-campus?
Why can't academia and the arts bring people together without the trappings of religion or sports mania?
11) We continue to celebrate 1st-year college students, but I have a feeling that once my generation (aka the most-educated, least-employed generation) has kids of college age, it won't be something to celebrate anymore. It will either be an unspoken expectation, or a questionable decision due to the mountain of debt required.
12) Getting to hear Dr. Mark Reighard play for the first time in years was an awesome unexpected birthday present.
13) It's weird having a new phone that's lighter than the old one. Makes me think I'm going to break it every few seconds.
2) It seems counterproductive for churches to devote so much energy to eliciting an emotional response via music, only to cut it off and try to swerve into the intellectual just before the sermon. Maybe that's why the homily is so short during Mass. Perhaps Protestant and Nondenominational churches and university chapel services should cultivate the intellectual response in small-group settings, and reserve corporate worship for exactly that, the emotionally ecstatic state which results from the combination of prayer and music.
3) How sad is it that humans consider ourselves to be the peak of evolution, yet we require rites and rituals involving inanimate objects or anthropomorphized abstract concepts in order to take care of each other as members of a society? No other animal on this planet requires such. Each member of a community cares for each other member of the community for the sake of the community. The group must survive, moreso than any one of its members. Yet humans seem to have left that basic instinct behind with our attainment of "sentience".
4) Too many religious people try to oversimplify too many complex concepts, to their detriment and the detriment of their testimony. Seemingly in an attempt to avoid truly dealing with hard questions, avoiding the complexity of real life and the real universe, they cling to one-liners, and a very small pool of simplistic cliches and platitudes to throw at every question and concern which crosses their path. The world, with its unlimited access to information, is no longer impressed with simplistic answers or simplistic attitudes. Oversimplification in the face of honest complexity leads to outright rejection of one's beliefs and principles. People would rather know we struggle than be handed the illusion of confidence.
5) The word is "sure," people. You can't be "for sure". At all. You can do something "for sure". Such as, "I know for sure that I locked the front door." The expression is an adverb, not an adjective. On an unrelated note, the word is "regularly". "On the regular" is MEANINGLESS. "Regular" is not a noun, and thus cannot be the object of a preposition. YOU KEEP DOING THIS, AUTHORITY FIGURES AND TEACHERS, AND YOU WILL ONLY CONTINUE THE LANGUAGE'S DOWNWARD SPIRAL INTO VAGUENESS AND MISUNDERSTANDING.
6) Having no direct day-to-day experience of persecution, far too many American Christians assign the term flippantly. "That man said the Founders didn't write the Pledge of Allegiance to say 'under God'! He's persecuting meeee!"
7) I haven't needed to use the word "mezzanine" since I was last in Herrick Auditorium in 2007.
8) It's always nice to see an alto standing proud in a crowd of loud sopranos.
9) I can't imagine how frustrating it would be for an adult who leaves home right after high school, works and pays bills and taxes for a couple of years before starting college, only to be forced into High School 2.0 because of the way his/her institution of choice is run.
10) Why is it seemingly only the colleges which force religion or force a militaristic attitude via obsession with athletics upon students who are willing or able to have an intimate, caring environment on-campus?
Why can't academia and the arts bring people together without the trappings of religion or sports mania?
11) We continue to celebrate 1st-year college students, but I have a feeling that once my generation (aka the most-educated, least-employed generation) has kids of college age, it won't be something to celebrate anymore. It will either be an unspoken expectation, or a questionable decision due to the mountain of debt required.
12) Getting to hear Dr. Mark Reighard play for the first time in years was an awesome unexpected birthday present.
13) It's weird having a new phone that's lighter than the old one. Makes me think I'm going to break it every few seconds.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Some Things Aren't Up For Debate
For several months now, I've avoided getting into debates in the anonymous corners of the Internet.
Mainly because I have standards regarding any arguments I make, such as proper grammar, cited sources, as few (trying for none) logical fallacies as possible, treating all participants with respect as people even if their argument is bunk, etc.
And other people just....don't.
I've lost track of the number of times I've written or started writing a well-organized, well-researched, well-thought response to a post online, and then thrown the whole thing out instead of posting it because the person would likely not even read the thing, and only respond with cliches, platitudes, or the always-popular "I will enjoy watching you burn in hell".
So for your reading pleasure today, I'd like to post a few issues which at this point shouldn't even be up for debate anymore.
By that I mean issues which do NOT have two equally logical positions which can be taken regarding them.
These are not "just your opinion" issues, like who should be president or whether there should be a monument to Satan next to the Ten Commandments.
These are issues which should have been resolved, accepted as truth, and built up from DECADES ago, but our society continues to stagnate because delusional sheeple continue to argue them.
1) Evolution is not "just a theory".
Stop spewing nonscience regarding this subject.
That goes doubly for church people who seem to think that if anything in the Bible is scientifically explainable, it somehow insults and diminishes God.....even though many of the pioneers of the modern scientific method were CHRISTIANS who looked up at the universe they believed God made in such wonder that they believed the study and greater understanding of it was an act of worship.
Evolution Via Natural Selection is, in view of the evidence currently available, the most plausible explanation for the state of life on this planet.
"Most plausible" is the key phrase here.
Religious people are so obsessed with "certainty," having been indoctrinated to think of their particular beliefs in absolutist terms, that when a scientist tells them the obvious, that science doesn't deal in certainties and absolutes, they lose their minds.
And immediately start screaming in the public forum that science and everything ever discovered or developed by the scientific method is anti-God.
...while posting about it on the Internet using a smartphone while standing under an electric light.
2) Vaccines are necessary for the protection of society, not an optional medical treatment.
See those words "most plausible"?
Read them again.
Because science works in probabilities, not absolutes, the discoveries and developments which result from it work, based on a set of evidence, in the majority of cases.
That one child with a particular genetic makeup somewhere still got sick after getting a vaccine doesn't even come CLOSE to counterbalancing the MILLIONS who have been and are saved by them, by being treated individually AND by preventing a mass outbreak.
That we are seeing outbreaks of diseases which medicine filed under "tamed" years ago, demonstrates that the completely artificial paranoia of anti-vaxxers is a threat to society as a whole via their paranoid-delusional practices.
3) Religion has no place in the education of children.
Ever.
If your beliefs are self-evident in their veracity, let your children discover them as adults.
Shoving texts and doctrines and dogma down their throats before they've even started cognitive development is nothing but forced indoctrination.
It does not lead to greater intelligence, curiosity, or creativity, but in too many cases leads to the stunting of all three.
The more and more deeply you indoctrinate them, the longer it will take them to develop a sense of self, because everything they attempt to make of themselves will be weighed down by your indoctrination.
In addition to placing pressure upon them from day 1 to live up to an unrealistic standard that completely ignores and in some cases subverts their individual personality.
4) Religion has no place in the government of adults.
Ever.
Forced indoctrination is the opposite of a free society, and thus should be prevented at all points from infringing upon the workings of it at all levels.
A pastor who pressures his congregation to vote a certain way has crossed the Wall of Separation, and should have his organization treated as a Party promoter rather than a charitable organization, and taxed to the full extent of the law.
A politician who attempts to use religious beliefs to justify an unjust law or unjust enforcement of a law should be removed from office immediately for the same reason.
People who try to force religion into government and education seem unwilling to be honest with themselves and just shout from the rooftops that they want a theocracy built around their particular dogma, but they continue to attempt to employ theocratic methods in their political maneuvering and PTA protests.
We tout ourselves as a nation of laws, as a nation of freedoms, as a nation of progress.
It is an ideal we routinely fail to reach, in great part because too many people refuse to accept anything as true which counters their own dogma, regardless of the evidence presented.
If we cannot move beyond this, we will continue to stagnate and rot from the inside out.
Mainly because I have standards regarding any arguments I make, such as proper grammar, cited sources, as few (trying for none) logical fallacies as possible, treating all participants with respect as people even if their argument is bunk, etc.
And other people just....don't.
I've lost track of the number of times I've written or started writing a well-organized, well-researched, well-thought response to a post online, and then thrown the whole thing out instead of posting it because the person would likely not even read the thing, and only respond with cliches, platitudes, or the always-popular "I will enjoy watching you burn in hell".
So for your reading pleasure today, I'd like to post a few issues which at this point shouldn't even be up for debate anymore.
By that I mean issues which do NOT have two equally logical positions which can be taken regarding them.
These are not "just your opinion" issues, like who should be president or whether there should be a monument to Satan next to the Ten Commandments.
These are issues which should have been resolved, accepted as truth, and built up from DECADES ago, but our society continues to stagnate because delusional sheeple continue to argue them.
1) Evolution is not "just a theory".
Stop spewing nonscience regarding this subject.
That goes doubly for church people who seem to think that if anything in the Bible is scientifically explainable, it somehow insults and diminishes God.....even though many of the pioneers of the modern scientific method were CHRISTIANS who looked up at the universe they believed God made in such wonder that they believed the study and greater understanding of it was an act of worship.
Evolution Via Natural Selection is, in view of the evidence currently available, the most plausible explanation for the state of life on this planet.
"Most plausible" is the key phrase here.
Religious people are so obsessed with "certainty," having been indoctrinated to think of their particular beliefs in absolutist terms, that when a scientist tells them the obvious, that science doesn't deal in certainties and absolutes, they lose their minds.
And immediately start screaming in the public forum that science and everything ever discovered or developed by the scientific method is anti-God.
...while posting about it on the Internet using a smartphone while standing under an electric light.
2) Vaccines are necessary for the protection of society, not an optional medical treatment.
See those words "most plausible"?
Read them again.
Because science works in probabilities, not absolutes, the discoveries and developments which result from it work, based on a set of evidence, in the majority of cases.
That one child with a particular genetic makeup somewhere still got sick after getting a vaccine doesn't even come CLOSE to counterbalancing the MILLIONS who have been and are saved by them, by being treated individually AND by preventing a mass outbreak.
That we are seeing outbreaks of diseases which medicine filed under "tamed" years ago, demonstrates that the completely artificial paranoia of anti-vaxxers is a threat to society as a whole via their paranoid-delusional practices.
3) Religion has no place in the education of children.
Ever.
If your beliefs are self-evident in their veracity, let your children discover them as adults.
Shoving texts and doctrines and dogma down their throats before they've even started cognitive development is nothing but forced indoctrination.
It does not lead to greater intelligence, curiosity, or creativity, but in too many cases leads to the stunting of all three.
The more and more deeply you indoctrinate them, the longer it will take them to develop a sense of self, because everything they attempt to make of themselves will be weighed down by your indoctrination.
In addition to placing pressure upon them from day 1 to live up to an unrealistic standard that completely ignores and in some cases subverts their individual personality.
4) Religion has no place in the government of adults.
Ever.
Forced indoctrination is the opposite of a free society, and thus should be prevented at all points from infringing upon the workings of it at all levels.
A pastor who pressures his congregation to vote a certain way has crossed the Wall of Separation, and should have his organization treated as a Party promoter rather than a charitable organization, and taxed to the full extent of the law.
A politician who attempts to use religious beliefs to justify an unjust law or unjust enforcement of a law should be removed from office immediately for the same reason.
People who try to force religion into government and education seem unwilling to be honest with themselves and just shout from the rooftops that they want a theocracy built around their particular dogma, but they continue to attempt to employ theocratic methods in their political maneuvering and PTA protests.
We tout ourselves as a nation of laws, as a nation of freedoms, as a nation of progress.
It is an ideal we routinely fail to reach, in great part because too many people refuse to accept anything as true which counters their own dogma, regardless of the evidence presented.
If we cannot move beyond this, we will continue to stagnate and rot from the inside out.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Goals?
It's 2:15 AM, and I'm in this weird limbo-state between reeally sleepy and reeeally trying to process all the sugar in my system so I don't crash.
So it's time to get existential:
So many motivational books/speeches tend to focus on you getting "what you've always wanted" or your "dream job," but they all seem to assume that you know what those are going in, that you have and have had a clear idea of where you want to be or what you want to be doing, and the difference between that idea and your current circumstances indicates that you aren't there yet.
But what if you don't have the clear idea necessary for partaking in their advice?
I read awhile back that "there's nothing stopping you from throwing pragmatic caution to the wind and taking a chance on what you really want," which is a nice image, and I'm sure somebody somewhere could take it to heart and take that first step.
But for myself, it's just that much more frustrating.
Even little cliches like "Dream big!" seem to have a big "N/A" over them for me.
The future is completely unknown territory, and the past just keeps piling up with seemingly zero progress made.
This perception isn't helped by the fact that I'm turning thirty in nine days and just finished filling out yet another job application for yet another minimum-wage retail job.
I don't think I would feel as hampered if I had some clear-cut goal, that I wanted with the fullness of my being and that was only kept from me by my own anxiety.
Every time I've attempted to explore the dark recesses of my own psyche, searching for some shining bit of passion that could become the above goal, the question of "HOW?" shoots it down every time.
Specifically "How are you going to pay for crap while attempting to achieve that goal?"
Especially since pretty much every search ends at either music or writing, and the question of money-in-the-meantime-as-a-married-man kills both.
So no progress is made, nothing new happens day to day, and I feel more and more worthless.
I have zero goals, zero motivation, and in my more introspective moments (like now), I feel on the verge of depression.
Even teaching seems like something I want to do for all the wrong reasons.
Not because I feel called to teach or because I love working with kids, but just so that I can feel like I'm using my education to get hired somewhere that provides health insurance.
Which I call "bringing more voices into the discussion," as if that would ever happen below the college level, and maybe not even then.
I feel like there's just nothing for me out there, nothing that can make use of my years of training while challenging me while providing greater financial stability.
And the stronger that feeling becomes the more I feel like a failure as a human being and a husband, especially as my wife pours more and more of herself into her dream-job, and takes on greater and greater stress trying to deal with our finances.
So it's time to get existential:
So many motivational books/speeches tend to focus on you getting "what you've always wanted" or your "dream job," but they all seem to assume that you know what those are going in, that you have and have had a clear idea of where you want to be or what you want to be doing, and the difference between that idea and your current circumstances indicates that you aren't there yet.
But what if you don't have the clear idea necessary for partaking in their advice?
I read awhile back that "there's nothing stopping you from throwing pragmatic caution to the wind and taking a chance on what you really want," which is a nice image, and I'm sure somebody somewhere could take it to heart and take that first step.
But for myself, it's just that much more frustrating.
Even little cliches like "Dream big!" seem to have a big "N/A" over them for me.
The future is completely unknown territory, and the past just keeps piling up with seemingly zero progress made.
This perception isn't helped by the fact that I'm turning thirty in nine days and just finished filling out yet another job application for yet another minimum-wage retail job.
I don't think I would feel as hampered if I had some clear-cut goal, that I wanted with the fullness of my being and that was only kept from me by my own anxiety.
Every time I've attempted to explore the dark recesses of my own psyche, searching for some shining bit of passion that could become the above goal, the question of "HOW?" shoots it down every time.
Specifically "How are you going to pay for crap while attempting to achieve that goal?"
Especially since pretty much every search ends at either music or writing, and the question of money-in-the-meantime-as-a-married-man kills both.
So no progress is made, nothing new happens day to day, and I feel more and more worthless.
I have zero goals, zero motivation, and in my more introspective moments (like now), I feel on the verge of depression.
Even teaching seems like something I want to do for all the wrong reasons.
Not because I feel called to teach or because I love working with kids, but just so that I can feel like I'm using my education to get hired somewhere that provides health insurance.
Which I call "bringing more voices into the discussion," as if that would ever happen below the college level, and maybe not even then.
I feel like there's just nothing for me out there, nothing that can make use of my years of training while challenging me while providing greater financial stability.
And the stronger that feeling becomes the more I feel like a failure as a human being and a husband, especially as my wife pours more and more of herself into her dream-job, and takes on greater and greater stress trying to deal with our finances.
Saturday, August 8, 2015
"It's Just a Game!"
I thought this might be a good way to bridge the gap between two groups which are constantly portrayed as competing with and mutually exclusive to one another in our culture.
Group 1: Fanatical Followers of Ball Sports
Group 2: Fanatical Followers of Role-Playing Videogames.
From the extreme perspective of the former, the latter are obsessing over people and places which have never existed and will never exist, are shut-ins devoid of social skills, are blights on society because they don't contribute and/or are mooching off their parents, etc.
From the extreme perspective of the Group 2, Group 1 are brutish, plebeian, brainwashed barbarians, and/or are enablers of such, who delight in the titillation of their most base, violent urges by proxies who are collectively paid billions of dollars a year, and who are hypocrites for shaming "nerds" for religiously following anime or game series while they themselves collect player and team stats just as religiously.
Of course, from a non-extreme perspective, both groups are simply taking in a form of entertainment which they enjoy.
My choice of title here stems from arguments I've had as a member of Group 2 with members of Group 1, both offensively and defensively.
Offensively, during any family gathering during football, basketball, or baseball season. Especially in moments when the rest of the room not named Myself or My Wife are losing their minds in the general direction of the television. Saying anything which betrays the fact that I'm NOT experiencing the emotional intensity swirling around the room invites anger and an overall "HOW DARE YOU?!" attitude.
Defensively, during any discussion of hobbies with family or friends who do not share this particular interest. Conveying my emotional reaction to a particular story moment in a game is almost an act of trust in these situations, because those hearing it may not have any similar experience (or think they don't, because too many people do not or cannot equate a videogame story with that of a novel or film or television series).
Both sports fans and gamers HATE to be told "It's just a game! Why are you so upset!"
And I think this should be a point of common ground between us, especially when so many social forces and their expectations try to set us against one another instead of allowing us to peacefully coexist in a mature manner.
Of course, those social expectations don't help the case for common ground when Group 1 is treated as "normal" while Group 2 is treated as "abnormal".
Or, more precisely, Group 1 is treated as part of the Western masculine ideal, and Group 2 is treated as effeminate (and therefore unacceptable because anything deemed female-ish is somehow automatically worthy of shame).
Thus Group 1, as the established, socially acceptable group, feels no need to build bridges.
They are secure in their fortress of manliness, and simply expect everyone to join their ranks eventually.
Group 2, as the outcast, sometimes gets addicted to being the outcast.
This is why we see anyone ever smeared as "casuals," and why so many Vlogs on YouTube center around conspiracy theories by game companies to "pander to the casual base"...which is somehow the most evil thing ever.
Nobody in Group 1 seems to worry about who is and isn't a "true fan," due to the assumption that everyone everywhere is or will be a fan at some point.
Thus Group 2 shoots themselves in the foot in many cases, alienating people who want to join up because they're somehow not dedicated enough (usually due to these individuals NOT demonstrating the stereotypes listed in the extreme perspective of Group 1 above).
Of course, it should be said that I'm mostly dealing in stereotypes here.
There are many, maaany individuals who occupy both camps, playing Skyrim all week and then heading to the local stadium on Friday night.
But maturity demands that the stereotypes be addressed as such, that individuals partaking in hobbies which bring joy to their lives be encouraged to do so, and for everyone to accept and enjoy the fact that it is not, in the end, "just a game".
Group 1: Fanatical Followers of Ball Sports
Group 2: Fanatical Followers of Role-Playing Videogames.
From the extreme perspective of the former, the latter are obsessing over people and places which have never existed and will never exist, are shut-ins devoid of social skills, are blights on society because they don't contribute and/or are mooching off their parents, etc.
From the extreme perspective of the Group 2, Group 1 are brutish, plebeian, brainwashed barbarians, and/or are enablers of such, who delight in the titillation of their most base, violent urges by proxies who are collectively paid billions of dollars a year, and who are hypocrites for shaming "nerds" for religiously following anime or game series while they themselves collect player and team stats just as religiously.
Of course, from a non-extreme perspective, both groups are simply taking in a form of entertainment which they enjoy.
My choice of title here stems from arguments I've had as a member of Group 2 with members of Group 1, both offensively and defensively.
Offensively, during any family gathering during football, basketball, or baseball season. Especially in moments when the rest of the room not named Myself or My Wife are losing their minds in the general direction of the television. Saying anything which betrays the fact that I'm NOT experiencing the emotional intensity swirling around the room invites anger and an overall "HOW DARE YOU?!" attitude.
Defensively, during any discussion of hobbies with family or friends who do not share this particular interest. Conveying my emotional reaction to a particular story moment in a game is almost an act of trust in these situations, because those hearing it may not have any similar experience (or think they don't, because too many people do not or cannot equate a videogame story with that of a novel or film or television series).
Both sports fans and gamers HATE to be told "It's just a game! Why are you so upset!"
And I think this should be a point of common ground between us, especially when so many social forces and their expectations try to set us against one another instead of allowing us to peacefully coexist in a mature manner.
Of course, those social expectations don't help the case for common ground when Group 1 is treated as "normal" while Group 2 is treated as "abnormal".
Or, more precisely, Group 1 is treated as part of the Western masculine ideal, and Group 2 is treated as effeminate (and therefore unacceptable because anything deemed female-ish is somehow automatically worthy of shame).
Thus Group 1, as the established, socially acceptable group, feels no need to build bridges.
They are secure in their fortress of manliness, and simply expect everyone to join their ranks eventually.
Group 2, as the outcast, sometimes gets addicted to being the outcast.
This is why we see anyone ever smeared as "casuals," and why so many Vlogs on YouTube center around conspiracy theories by game companies to "pander to the casual base"...which is somehow the most evil thing ever.
Nobody in Group 1 seems to worry about who is and isn't a "true fan," due to the assumption that everyone everywhere is or will be a fan at some point.
Thus Group 2 shoots themselves in the foot in many cases, alienating people who want to join up because they're somehow not dedicated enough (usually due to these individuals NOT demonstrating the stereotypes listed in the extreme perspective of Group 1 above).
Of course, it should be said that I'm mostly dealing in stereotypes here.
There are many, maaany individuals who occupy both camps, playing Skyrim all week and then heading to the local stadium on Friday night.
But maturity demands that the stereotypes be addressed as such, that individuals partaking in hobbies which bring joy to their lives be encouraged to do so, and for everyone to accept and enjoy the fact that it is not, in the end, "just a game".
Friday, August 7, 2015
A Fanfic I Should Probably Develop More
After Miraak's defeat, Sabrinia Dragonborn decided in deep meditation that to restore the Empire was the destiny Hermaeus Mora had spoken of, and returned to the mainland.
Arriving at the moot to select Skyrim's next High King on the back of Odahviing, she used her Thu'um to clear the heavy snow clouds out of the sky, and declared herself High Queen before the assembly. The moot, standing in universal awe, selected her.
Her Thu'um echoing over the mountains, she promptly declared herself the heir of Tiber Septim, Empress of Tamriel, claiming that as the Empire was born when mighty one of the dragon blood declared it so, thus it is reborn.
Gathering the scattered remaining Stormcloaks under her banner, the downtrodden Dunmer of Windhelm, and the legionnaires under the command of General Tullius, his will broken by her Thu'um, she marched across Skyrim.
At her command, Odahviing and Durnehviir slaughtered (and ate a few of) the Thalmor agents gathered at their embassy and burned it to the ground.
Pulling every string she had spent years tying off, Sabrinia deployed the thieves over which she was Guildmaster and the assassins over which she ruled as Listener to hunt down and capture every last Thalmor agent in Skyrim.
In a gruesome public ceremony in Solitude, Sabrinia sliced away each agent's clothing as they hung on the pillory. Then slashed each agent's abdomen open to spill their entrails.
Then she called her dragons.
The smell of cooked Altmer flesh didn't dissipate for miles, or for weeks.
Hurling every last assassin into the Reach, she finally burned out and crushed the last of the Forsworn after three weeks of directing the hunt.
Having cleaned her house, she sent thieves and assassins abroad like creeping tendrils, spreading stories of hope and cheer for potential allies and sending any who would oppose her into panicked disarray.
With her consort Serana as second-in-command, she rode west over the mountains into Orsinium, holding the Hammer of Malacath aloft to cheers from the native orcs, who formed up in ranks of thousands behind her armies.
Meeting with the leaders of Hammerfell, with Odahviing in the skies above, she formed the Sand Snow Accord, an alliance to wipe out the Dominion and set Sabrinia upon the Dragon Throne, with Hammerfell's independence guaranteed, though with the provision that any could rejoin the Empire.
Setting sail from Stros M'Kai, her forces sailed around the Summerset Isles, smashing the Aldmeri fleets with sword and arrow and Thu'um and dragon's fire to anchor just offshore from the capital city of Alinor.
Sabrinia took only one Nord, one Imperial, one Orc, and one Dunmer bodyguard in a small boat into the port, surrounded by Thalmor soldiers and mages, every one fearing and hating her, and hating their direct orders to wait.
Sabrinia was admitted to see the High Wizard alone.
The doors slammed shut behind her with a wave from the old High Elf, and sixteen Summerset Shadows leaped from the gloom with swords drawn.
One "YOL, TOOR-SHUL!" and a blur of blades later, she stood over the throne, the High Wizard shaking like a child in the face of a storm.
"Now, your Eminence, I have only two words for you. GOL, HAH!"
He shuddered at the force of her Thu'um, but only for a moment.
The pupils of his eyes dilated until the only colors were white and black.
She smiled at him, and presented a scroll.
"Sign this, give it to your servant just outside the door and tell him to follow the instructions to the letter, and return to your throne."
He did so, in blank silence but with the slow gravity with which one in his position does everything, from eating to passing judgment.
Sabrinia let him shuffle back to his throne and sit.
Let the old mer be found reclining regally.
"KRI, LUN-AUS!"
His body shook under her Thu'um, but stopped when the black dagger pierced his robe, the armor beneath it, and the back of his throne.
She left it there for the servants or the soldiers or the gods to find.
Sabrinia Dragonborn stepped into the sunlight to see the full might of her armies arrayed around the gleaming palace which once held the leadership of the Aldmeri Dominion, but would for now serve as a mausoleum for the enemies of the Dragon Empress, May She Live Forever.
Arriving at the moot to select Skyrim's next High King on the back of Odahviing, she used her Thu'um to clear the heavy snow clouds out of the sky, and declared herself High Queen before the assembly. The moot, standing in universal awe, selected her.
Her Thu'um echoing over the mountains, she promptly declared herself the heir of Tiber Septim, Empress of Tamriel, claiming that as the Empire was born when mighty one of the dragon blood declared it so, thus it is reborn.
Gathering the scattered remaining Stormcloaks under her banner, the downtrodden Dunmer of Windhelm, and the legionnaires under the command of General Tullius, his will broken by her Thu'um, she marched across Skyrim.
At her command, Odahviing and Durnehviir slaughtered (and ate a few of) the Thalmor agents gathered at their embassy and burned it to the ground.
Pulling every string she had spent years tying off, Sabrinia deployed the thieves over which she was Guildmaster and the assassins over which she ruled as Listener to hunt down and capture every last Thalmor agent in Skyrim.
In a gruesome public ceremony in Solitude, Sabrinia sliced away each agent's clothing as they hung on the pillory. Then slashed each agent's abdomen open to spill their entrails.
Then she called her dragons.
The smell of cooked Altmer flesh didn't dissipate for miles, or for weeks.
Hurling every last assassin into the Reach, she finally burned out and crushed the last of the Forsworn after three weeks of directing the hunt.
Having cleaned her house, she sent thieves and assassins abroad like creeping tendrils, spreading stories of hope and cheer for potential allies and sending any who would oppose her into panicked disarray.
With her consort Serana as second-in-command, she rode west over the mountains into Orsinium, holding the Hammer of Malacath aloft to cheers from the native orcs, who formed up in ranks of thousands behind her armies.
Meeting with the leaders of Hammerfell, with Odahviing in the skies above, she formed the Sand Snow Accord, an alliance to wipe out the Dominion and set Sabrinia upon the Dragon Throne, with Hammerfell's independence guaranteed, though with the provision that any could rejoin the Empire.
Setting sail from Stros M'Kai, her forces sailed around the Summerset Isles, smashing the Aldmeri fleets with sword and arrow and Thu'um and dragon's fire to anchor just offshore from the capital city of Alinor.
Sabrinia took only one Nord, one Imperial, one Orc, and one Dunmer bodyguard in a small boat into the port, surrounded by Thalmor soldiers and mages, every one fearing and hating her, and hating their direct orders to wait.
Sabrinia was admitted to see the High Wizard alone.
The doors slammed shut behind her with a wave from the old High Elf, and sixteen Summerset Shadows leaped from the gloom with swords drawn.
One "YOL, TOOR-SHUL!" and a blur of blades later, she stood over the throne, the High Wizard shaking like a child in the face of a storm.
"Now, your Eminence, I have only two words for you. GOL, HAH!"
He shuddered at the force of her Thu'um, but only for a moment.
The pupils of his eyes dilated until the only colors were white and black.
She smiled at him, and presented a scroll.
"Sign this, give it to your servant just outside the door and tell him to follow the instructions to the letter, and return to your throne."
He did so, in blank silence but with the slow gravity with which one in his position does everything, from eating to passing judgment.
Sabrinia let him shuffle back to his throne and sit.
Let the old mer be found reclining regally.
"KRI, LUN-AUS!"
His body shook under her Thu'um, but stopped when the black dagger pierced his robe, the armor beneath it, and the back of his throne.
She left it there for the servants or the soldiers or the gods to find.
Sabrinia Dragonborn stepped into the sunlight to see the full might of her armies arrayed around the gleaming palace which once held the leadership of the Aldmeri Dominion, but would for now serve as a mausoleum for the enemies of the Dragon Empress, May She Live Forever.
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