The soul has greater need of the ideal than the real for it is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live

Monday, July 26, 2010

Good vs Evil

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. -Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.


Can evil influence one's life in a negative way and actually act to oppress a person?

First, I don't believe that evil exists, well, unless one is talking about George Bush.  THAT'S evil.

God, the Devil, they're inventions.

They were invented by "religious" people in an effort to control the congregation.  What else would they be for?  The good vs. evil discussion has been raging forever, and with God and the devil they have a face.

God is this big bearded white guy in the sky looking benevolently down at us all, and the (red)Devil is among us, (indicating what?  That we're inherently evil?...Nice.) and causing all kinds of havoc which mitigates our responsibility in modern parlance, and yet makes us more responsible for fighting against the evil he would have us do.  Catholics have neatly, as is their way, invented this little ceremony in which a baby, can be cleansed of their original sin.  I mean have you looked at a baby?  Ever really looked at one?

How could anyone see evil in that?

Seriously, who in their right mind would  subscribe to such claptrap?

The main selling point of religion is not to celebrate life, it is to tell us how bad we are, and that we need them to help us not only mourn our existence, but to work our asses off at not being the inherently evil sons of bitches we were born to be. Because we were BORN THAT WAY!!!!!

So we get to waste our lives attempting to be something we're not.  We get to tell ourselves that we're not good, but we can be if we try hard enough.  As if we don't have enough bullshit raining down on our heads to begin with. And if that doesn't work we always have the devil to lay the responsibility on.

It wasn't others, it wasn't the people who treated me as though I had the pox my whole childhood. It was the devil.  Easy way out that.

The "religious" knew what they were doing when they invented God and the Devil.  Most people are sheep looking for someone to follow and in the absence of leadership that will show us our value and give us reason to celebrate our existence we'll follow some naysayer off a cliff.

We're taught from an early age to think that if we just weren't gay (not a choice) or didn't have sexual desires for others (human nature) or had skin that wasn't yellow or brown or black (I'm still mystified at Black Mormons) we could be better people, and so we mourn.

We mourn our existence, and we mourn our place in the world, and we regret that we weren't born heterosexual and chaste, and/or white, and we try to change into THAT. And by that I mean whatever THAT we think is best at the moment. 

Why?

Why can we not celebrate the difference?  Why can we not see that, yes, it does indeed take all kinds to make this world, and why must we have this incessant duel between rational thought and zealots who believe that that big guy with the beard in the sky sat around for few days and made everything we see, and negate the work of people who look at frogs and tadpoles and say..."hey, wait a minute..." 

I went through the phase of thinking I could be straight in my youth.  I went so far as to have a girlfriend and to get my dumb ass engaged.

I was lucky.  Something happened.  I honestly can't remember what this far down the road, but I had an epiphany.  I suddenly realized that my "beloved" wanted to get married.  It just didn't have a thing to do with me.

A week after I broke it off, she was engaged to someone else and 60 days later they married.  I dodged a bullet there.


But my family would have been thrilled for a while.  Until they came to the realization that I was apparently unable to control my desire for evil and chose to go back to being a degenerate 'mo.

See, control.

That's what it's all about.

So we'll continue this march off the cliff, lemmings that we are,  and this civilization too will end, as must all things.  But the real question is; Will we be remembered as a people who tried to make a difference, who tried our best to see that all people regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, political preference, ability to understand simple instructions, or country of origin have worth and value?  That they, no matter what they think or do or feel had intrinsic value that we embraced them and took them to our bosom as one of us?

And so it goes: