I needed work today.
It was a mistake, this morning, to even get on the Intertubes. All it gave me was a stomach ache as I seethed in anger at stupidity and injustice. At the very least, there are days in which I should probably be careful about what I read in the morning hours. Sometimes you just hafta.
Work, thankfully, put me back in a good mood, with a good deal of work to do, and lots of great people to interact with (one thing I definitely love about my job). It’s amazing what the sight of a few smiles can do to make one feel a ton better.
Here is humanity then, in its everyday mode, people just being people, getting by, doing their thing, smilng at each other, sometimes not smiling at each other. Nothing big, nothing grand, just everyday living. Who knows what kind of people I encountered today? Who was religious? Who wasn’t? Who liberal? Who conservative? (Okay, where I work, probably mostly liberals) Who this? Who that? Who knows. Just people being people, doing people things, asking after each other’s day, smiling.
If only it were that simple. The uneasy thought pops up — which people would, upon finding out something about me, suddenly stop smiling? Who would blanch at the atheist? We create these things, these categories, these elaborate fantasies that we dress up as religion and philosophies and political views and you name it, and we invest in them an earnestness that is sometimes deadly. These elabroate fantasies can kill the smiles, kill the everyday living and interacting.
How often do you hear the Christian evidence surprise upon finding out that the gay man is really sweet and dedicated and good? Or the atheist or the Muslim? How often does the atheist evidence surprise upon finding out the Christian is really smart and thoughtful, and kind and decent and warm-hearted? Why do we do this? Why do so many people end up being like that little twit of a boy in the anti-Star Trek video, totally consumed by his vile beliefs about others’ supposed evil? Why do so many end up like the writer of that excremental article in the Colorado Spings Gazette?
We live together, work together, interact together, and when our little self-created divisions aren’t mentioned, get along in fine and dandy ways, hi, how are you, howz the day going, smile smile smile. And yet we find it so, so terribly easy to let the creations of our minds sweep us away, make us forget the simple, day to day reality.
A million other questions running through my mind. What is my own complicity in this? Who would I have lost my smile for if I had known x, y or z? How often would that have been justifiied? And how many people are hiding, behind the smiles, secret pain because of injustice against them, hate against them? What am I being silent about, that I shouldn’t be silent about? What injustices am I not doing my part to stop?
6 Comments
21 August 2008 at 8:43 pm
You had one of those days too, huh?
I had the revelation (ha!) late last night that reading the Quran is actually turning me into kind of a curmudgeon. I swear I wasn’t like this 2 months ago.
I used to be such a nice, smiley person, and then this book happened. Sigh. I’m sure I’ll go back to normal once this little project is over, but then again…I don’t know if I’ll ever feel “normal” again. When I see a woman in a hijab or a man in a yamakah or someone with a cross around their neck — I feel like I can see these people in their underwear. …and they all have ashy knees and cellulite.
21 August 2008 at 9:27 pm
I think, I think, I think…hmmm. Maybe this: we have to remember what we are fighting *for*, and not just *against*.
I guess, for me, what I saw today while at work was Humanity’s default — we’re mostly a bunch of basically decent, tryin’ to do our best, gettin’ along folk. And we’re just dumb enough to have an amazing ability to sabotage that left and right. It’s especially bad because let’s face it — you and I know what we’re *really* fighting. In one sense, it isn’t religion — it’s organized religion. Qui Bono, as you keep asking on your blog, and you can be sure when folks are being turned against each other over religion and what have you, someone’s laughing their way to the bank. We silly, Big Man obsessed primates are such suckers for that…
Anyway. I have to remember — I’m fighting for the smiles.
21 August 2008 at 9:45 pm
Mmm, fine writing. Hope tomorrow is better.
21 August 2008 at 10:09 pm
Bad intertubes. Too often, they are for making us angry.
Your point about being “for” is good. It’s a problem with the atheist name–it’s another example of naming yourself for something your not. Atheists need a word for the positive side, but all the best contenders are already taken by people who want to be naked or high all the time.
21 August 2008 at 10:15 pm
Will — which is why I take the scattershot approach to terms that describe me — atheist, agnostic, humanist, skeptic, scientific pantheist, you name it. Mostly, I think it boils down to remember that “human” is the first and most important term to describe ourselves. All else is used as necessary and as it is useful.
And really, this isn’t an atheist thing. It happens in any fight for what you believe in — it’s all too easy to get caught up in the badness you are trying to change, and forgetting about what you are trying to change things to.
21 August 2008 at 10:15 pm
makarios — thank you.
Comments are closed.