Tolerance

I was listening to a man on the bus today talk to another man. (That is to say I had no choice but to listen to this man. He was yelling his opinions at this man at a volume that was just a hair higher than irritating!)

The man kept talking about politics. (Taboo bus conversation.) He kept talking about how Republicans do not respect or tolerate any other race but whites and how they don’t tolerate any other religion except Christianity. He went on to say, and I quote, “Everyone should respect and have blind tolerance for every religion, view point and political party. Everyone one deserves to be on this earth just as much as anyone else. The utmost a person can do is being tolerant!”

Now, I understand perfectly where this man is coming from. He is saying a nicely packaged acceptable statement that comes across caring and filled with justice. However, I’m going to do what I love doing best and dismantle this statement to show how it actually supports and promotes an attitude of the exact opposite of what this man’s intentions are.

It is in fact in my opinion that the greatest crime one can socially commit is blind tolerance. I believe firmly that an intolerant heart is a heart that has love in it. Let me explain;

We should be tolerant of all religions right to exist and practice freely, correct? Even a religious practice that said it is moral to marry, molest and rape young girls? Well, our government has decreed that it is “selectively” intolerant of this act, like in the case of Rev. Jeff’s of Utah whose cult practiced these very acts for generations.

We should be tolerant of all ideology? Hitler and Stalin had some very stimulating speeches then!

I think you see where I’m going with this, so I’ll stop.

These are all extreme cases of what one should not be tolerant of, however I believe there are things in this life that lie on the grayer side of the spectrum that people tend to be tolerant of that they should not, which leads people to gradually accept things that should be unacceptable to a rational mind.

Mostly people should not be tolerant of apathy. In the end I think indifference is what blind tolerance creates. A blindly tolerant world is a world that does not reject you; but no more than it accepts you either… nor will it love you anymore than it hates you. Blind tolerance is indifferent to every faith, ideology, opinion and human being. It is indifferent to all those things that make us human, thus blind tolerance is inhuman.

So many people say “Tolerance is love”, I think tolerance in its core definition is “not giving a damn”. I’m sure my boyfriend would be moved to hear me whisper in the dark “Baby, I tolerate you!” It is cold, impersonal, and without tact. Therefore tolerance is not love; it is avoiding conversations, people and problems. It is a way of sounding caring without becoming attached to our fellow human. Sound like you care for their plot when really you are indifferent to their plot and care for only your own.

Tolerance has a time and place. “Tolerance is love” rhetoric is likened to the old saying “live and let live”. Would you live and let live a viper in the bush? Most likely, but would you let it live in your bed, in your wife’s closet… in your child’s crib? Of course not. We need not check our brains at the door with tolerance in other realms of life either.

One thing I agreed with that man on the bus said was “Everyone deserves to be on this earth just as much as anyone else.” He’s right. But I think he’s right from a different stand point than he’s most likely taking.
He most likely thinks that everyone deserves to be on the earth as much as he does with the assumption that he in fact DOES deserve to be on this earth. However, I do not think he does deserve to be on this earth, neither does my neighbor, my friends, my boyfriend, my teachers, or even myself.

Who really deserves to be alive? How did we earn it? Are we all just that great of people that we perpetuate our own existence with our shining karma? Rubbish!

We are all guilty of crimes, indifference and perversions. We all descend from peoples that have warred, pillaged, raped, slued, enslaved and ravaged other peoples. We, alive, are the products of the winners of wars and the bounties of thieves in reality. Who among any of us deserves truly to be on this earth in the end? We suck!
That’s the real reason why you are to never deny another man his existence. You are just as deserving, or non-deserving as the next poor chump. You deserve to be punished for the way you stab your brother in the back, cheat on your wife, cheat your taxes, but you aren’t. So God-forbid you ever forget that and ever condemn another man of what you so proudly have committed in your life. You give yourself leeway when you tell a lie or steal some change. You justify your own behavior every time you lose your temper or act impulsively. So why not love others as you love yourself. You’d never harm yourself over what you’ve done; give your brother the same leeway. In the end our goals should never be to tolerate each other, but to actually love each other.

Tolerance is not about tolerating ideology, religion or parties. It is about loving humans, while being intolerant of the human evil; accepting humanity while rejecting malice. If tolerance is left blind of humanity it begins to become both indifferent to the man and the crime, as though they were one. I still refuse to accept that a man can and should be defined by the sum of his actions; forbid I had that fate. Love is never blind. Love is dividing. Love is what makes a man favor one woman above all others, love is what makes a mother patient with her child’s behavior and love is the only reason there is any grace in this world to begin with.
One needs to be boldly intolerant against bigotry, hatred, injustice, corruption, abuse, genocide, and suffering. Yet, the world desperately needs us to be tolerant of those who commit such actions, because in the end it is us who are the culprits.

Pashtun Girl

In 1985 National Geographic featured a haunting photo of a young Pashtun girl. She was beautiful with strikingly cold eyes staring dead into the photographer's lens.

Well, 17 years has come and gone. She's nearing 30 now, has married, produced 4 children and managed to avoid getting blown up.
It shocks me. You can see the years of refuge and war on her face. She looks like a woman of almost 50, not a woman of almost 30. Before her eyes were defiant, now they are weary and tired.

The evils of this earth really does do much to crush out life in people.

TIME!!!

Time

A thought was posed to me tonight. The thought was a depressing analysis of time and our relation to it. The thought viewed time as a vacuum in our lives that causes great pains and frustration to fill. It is a cynical view, a view I’m sure I’ve shared in the past.

However, I got thinking about time and it’s actual nature.

I’ve come to a conclusion and a personal opinion that time is only an intimidating void when we struggle to fill it, and perhaps the very outlook of “having to fill it” is where the problem originates in the first place. I pose the question therefore that maybe time is not a void (an absence of a thing,) but rather it itself is in fact existent within reality. (a thing.) Like a vacuum is an absence of air, time is the absence of reality in this view point. This view point is nihilistic, and not a Christian perspective then. If the bible clearly states that God Himself is the maker of not only the Universe, but this thing we call “time”, and our lives, then we can not view time as a nonexistent entity. (That statement within itself is contradictory.) God is real. Everything originates from God, you can not add to Him, nor take away.
With that established, God creates. He creates existence. He IS existence. To state He made a thing to the contrary of His being is not only unbiblical, but is against the very concept of God.

So, we have established time is a thing. What do we make of it?
When we were viewing time as a void to be filled, what we were really thinking of was an empty vessel; like a cup or vase, waiting to be filled with water. Now, it is in my opinion that this is not a healthy view of time and our life’s relation to it. If our very view of our time is that of an empty vessel, then I have to admit that our lives themselves are very empty.

Now, here is what I believe time to be: time rather than being that empty cup waiting for water; time is in fact the water. Like Marcus Aurelius said in his meditations “Time is like a steam of water, one current comes after the other, then is swept away, then another current arrives to replace it, only to be swept to sea as well. Such is time just as fleeting.”

Time is a thing, and it will escape us.
In my opinion, a man who sits and seeks out things to fill his time with is not partaking in a purposeful life. That man is a great defeatist, just simply looking for things to do to keep him occupied until his death. Like a loyal wife reading a magazine to past the hours before her husband returns home for dinner, so is a man that waits for death akin to death, and it is death‘s meal they partake of. And, a man who at his very essence is akin to death is not only already dead, but He is not akin to God. If God is akin to life, and if God is Life, how can one call themselves a child, akin to God, if he himself is akin to death? I can not rationalize this.

There is few things I find more upsetting in this life than men who have chosen to die 10-20- ever 60 years before his own funeral.

I firmly believe there is a great sin in the slothful-wastefulness of the potential God has imbued to human life. I believe God that has given us life, and I believe as the bible teaches, He created for us a constraint to live in, that we formally call “Earthy time“. (or a plane of existence, call it what you will. ) God has also in that token given time particular unique qualities, and those qualities have a purpose.

God has made time with a past; perhaps so we may be reflective? God has made time with a future; perhaps so we may be hopeful? God has made time with a present; perhaps so we may live in it? And furthermore, He has made time fleeting; perhaps so we may chase it?
God made time with qualities that serve great purposes, so perhaps a man who ties himself to the perspective of “purposeful time” is also tying himself to the perspective of a “purposeful life.”

The concept of a purposeful life is very uniquely Christian in the concept that if one is to confess they submit to Christ, believe He is God, their Savior and kinsmen, then they are agreeing to be transformed by this Christ. They are agreeing to Christ’s principles, thus, they are agreeing to serve God’s purposes, and not pride. Any Christian who knows their bible will tell you that God’s purposes will be carried out whether or not you are driven to complete them. Any Christian also knows that if you claim to be a Christian and are not bearing the fruit of that confession, then the confession itself is suspect.
Point blank: Christians are not asked, but ordered to serve a real purpose in life. They are not asked to live, they are given life. It is written within the Law of God that His children live purposeful existences. You see, a life which seeks purpose does not seek to fill time, but it seeks to use it-- master it, dominate it, and maybe also it is depressed by the prospect that time might run thin when there is still much work to be done.

Christ’s dying words, “It is done!” Christ’s last breath was a statement of how we should live our lives; we should be pursuing our goals even to, and with, our dying breath. In that same turn, Christ’s resurrection spoke of something greater. It spoke of real purposeful living; it is a living that bleeds purpose beyond the grave. Runners run past the tape, not to the tape-- a life that respects time drags time with it to the crypt, and beyond.

Therefore, I pose a final question:
Perhaps the old men we admire, who fill their lives with tasks are not doing so to past the time before they expire? Perhaps they are feeling the creaks in their backs, and the slipping of their memories and are afraid? Perhaps they are afraid that the days have few to little hours, and the hours have fewer minutes than they did when they were young? Perhaps it isn’t boredom they fight against, but time fleeing them before they are done with it.

Foolishness

Sometimes people say stuff they think is really "sensitive" like "people can't help it, everything that's happened to them has made them who they are, it defines their behavior" this kind of stuff pisses me off. They think it is sensitive, but they never see how insensitive it is. It just sounds nice!—but it is lazy thinking, and thus indifferent—thus uncaring by default.


Let me explain myself:


As a matter of personal opinion, it is absolute rubbish to accept the concept that past behavior "defines" how a person behaves. I say this because the word "define" derives from the term "definite"... meaning “absolute”, “objectively true” and “without exception”.
Would it be a point of sensitivity to tell the woman who’s been raped that she’s screwed, her way of looking at the world, her character and her behavior, and her mind is forever construed beyond her finite control? She’s doomed to a life of fear, seclusion, and shame? I mean to say, when we bring a term like “define” into play this is exactly what we are starting to suggest. We are suggesting that all the experiences of our life decides exactly who we are, internally and extrovertedly. I find this fathom to rape man of his humanity. I do not adhere to the concept that the sum of a man is the culmination of experiences.

People always say,“I feel that everything that happens to someone makes who they are today.”
I do not adhere to this; I find this statement to be highly un-empowering to humanity. This statement is in reality is a guise of sensitivity, which is masking what is really being suggested. It is technically looking at man in a demeaning manner. It is taking the experiences of his life, patting him on the head, justifying his behavior, and allowing him to not think about his own being, and allowing him to embrace an excuse for his behavior, instead of a solution. This breeds a highly uncaring world; a world where we don’t implore each other to hold ourselves to higher standards; a world where those who do become out of the norm, and even looked down upon.

I’m however not suggesting people who say this stuff mean it in any insensitive manner. What they say is somewhat of a “buzz term” now a days, it is widely accepted. Again however, just because something is widely accepted as just, and kind and nice, doesn’t necessarily mean it is well thought out—it might just simply sound nice. Sometimes these things are just adopted as opinion, because they formulate aligned to our own ideals of what great people we all are. My opinion, regardless of whether or not something sounds sensitive, we need to challenge our own views and opinions, dig deeper and consider whether or not these statements of ours actually work in and have vitality, and serve our fellow man to the utmost.
Man in a sense is not merely the sum of the experiences in his life, he is the sum of what he decides to do about those experiences.
Therefore, to say that the cumulative of past experiences, will without exception, amount to the sum total of a man's character and demeanor is not only neglecting every other known psychological and sociological fact, it is also demeaning to man himself, in my opinion of course.

I Hate Freud soooo much!!

Okay,

Now, this next statement is of personal opinion I assure you, but I've for many-many years have always believed Freud to be a mother-loving idiot! (Yes, I did just take an Oedipus-complex crack!)

I've always thought that Freud was about as accurate in his portrayal of the human mind as Salvador Dali was in his portrayal of the female body!(Side note: Dali was a follower of Freud, and heavily influenced by him.) I'm in constant disagreement with his theories, and I rarely see eye to eye with him.

I frankly think Freud needed mental help more often then he gave it, for these reasons:
His ideas on interpersonal interaction is isolating to a man’s person. It would not function on any real world basis where we are forced, and thrive off of interpersonal human interaction. There is of course something to be said about “looking within to realize your true strength”, but in Freud’s world it seems that’s about as far as it goes. He didn’t seem too focused on looking in and then abstracting the redeemable qualities of man to better his world or self. He wanted us to look within, see how dirty we are, sulk in our perverseness, then come to a point where we feel comfortable with glorifying our own lacking— without striving to over come them. He offered no cure for the worse aspect of man, but simple was content in indulging in it, it would seem.

Freud viewed everything as more of a self discovery, as though the human being was some sort of mystical frontier to be explored. This is idealism without evidence to justify it. (It is like eating psychological rice-cakes; it’s big and bulky, but can’t actually satisfy.)

I think Freud spent too much time simply reflecting within, in which case he didn’t find a mystical frontier of a man to explore, he found a waste-land of penis-envy. There was no grace to Freud’s theories, he highlighted and obsessed about the latter aspects of man. He utterly over-looked, or could not find the things that were redeemable in man. I believe he was spending too much time looking in, in self-judgment, insecurity and disappointment to of ever seen how the healthy-redeemable man functioned.
He had rhetoric of selfishness; he was focused on the self. I can not imagine how anyone can have any love, or sense of grace towards their fellow man if they never stop to look at him, compare themselves to him, and realize they are identical to him; in both their strengths and lacking. Freud didn’t show much love for the human race; he seemed to glut and glorify more in the lacking of man. This spawns a hateful attitude towards your fellow man, when the only moment you choose to look at humanity is when you wish to seek out perversity. I find his motives far more primitive than intellectual, you see.

It is in fact possible to be so self contained that you become a virtual social zombie. Humanity’s sole existence and elevation into civilization would not be possible without interpersonal interaction. No man is an island, but I feel Freud only seems to focus on man, as the island. His views are selfish, self-serving, xenophobic, and self-contained. I think they are more of a reflection upon his mental insecurities and social anxieties than they ever were a reflection upon society or the human condition.
(There is a reason that colleges have been slowly dropping Freud.)

Adversely, we as humanity need each other. Self-realization can only go so far. There comes a point where we have to look out of ourselves, and start practicing comparative realizations. We can not be healthy human beings, functioning in the way man was meant, and programmed to function if we remove the interpersonal link from man.

It is simply counter productive to spend your life looking within to see where you rest happily with yourself, with out ever looking out into society to see where you rest within it.

With all that said Freud did have a pretty awesome beard!

Maybe it is the lack of sleep...

...but I've been really thinking about the way people around me lead their lives lately. Not my friends, just the variety of people buzzing in and out of my life vaguely.

I worked for two days at Arlington Food Lion as a fill-in cashier. This Food Lion is in a very bad neighborhood, and makes over 50% of it's gross from EBT(Electronic Benefit Transfer.. in other words; Government issued Food Stamps.)

What I've seen the past two days has sickened me. Not the fact there are poor people, because by all means I am not a millionaire or prophet by any stretch of the imagination (I'm in fact homeless living in my friend's house barely making above minimum wage trying to scrape through school.); what struck me was the energy and manner by which the cliental carried themselves.

I can't tell you how many times I heard mother's (younger than me) tell their herds of children, "We can get candy, don't worry, it's FREE money!" I'm sorry, but there is no such thing as "FREE money".

Things just don't manifest out of nowhere upon their own will without any logical source or origin!!! That's the rule of nature, the Universe-- and frankly God!

So, I decree that Economics follows suit!
Money comes from somewhere; some one is paying for that candy for those mothers!! And the joke is; due to the confines of Economic Law, where there is no such thing as "something for nothing", where money is in fact numbered; those single mothers have in fact become indebt to this fact. They can not receive without giving, thus there is a debt on their head which inclines itself to be paid in full.

As I've watched these individuals I've become all to aware of what exactly it is they are trading to relinquish their debts. It has stunned and bothered me to the core. What they are giving back in return goes beyond the reality that 500 pound women feed their children nothing but starches and sugars; all foods that make you feel full, minus the nutritional value, thus it gives you the illusion of comfort and plentifullness when there is little. It is miles beyond the fact that old men try to beg for cheap booze when they can't buy food, and the fact that these people NEVER say thank you when you assist them, or loan them an extra dollar from your pocket to help them afford formula, or the fact that they expect these donations from their cashier, as though they were entitled to it.

It is beyond all that, yet I can sum up my horror very simply, within these words: The children would always look up at their mothers with pride and gleefully shriek, "Yeah, mama! It's FREE money!"

Useful Idiots!

I find myself lately losing more respect for many of my fellow men. I recently posted a photo displaying an aborted 11 week fetus to express the evils of abortion, even at the 1st trimester level. (Distasteful? —maybe. Brutal?—defiantly!)Now you must understand that the fetus photo really isn't anything more than a simple shock tactic. I find shock tactics both amazing and appalling. It is really just a primitive manipulation upon people. You take something resembling a human form, pervert it, and then wait for the emotional feedback that will undoubtedly surge, without restraint, from the diarrheatic mouths of your fellow man. The reaction I received for the picture was laughable-- the reaction I got from people being pro-choice that is. (I didn't even know they were pro-choice until posting the picture if that tells you anything!) The reclusive pro-choicers attacked me aggressively—violently! Not because they thought the picture was distasteful, (Which is an argument I would have understood perfectly.) but because they thought by my very endorsement of the photo I was some how inflicting upon their personal freedom to disagree with me. Thus, their true implication in argument only served to inflict upon my freedom to disagree with them. (Hypocritical?) It is silly really-- and conflictive. I find a lot of radical liberals to be almost Nazi-like in their rhetoric. They create this double-standard where they are allowed to be judgmental, while accusing everyone else of passing judgment upon them. They cross their hearts with the very notion that they themselves are the defenders of free-thinking, while if a free thought was to pass side-ways against their own personal good-taste it is dismissed violently and antagonized. So therefore free-thought is allowed so long as it is chastised by the chains of neutrality. (Nothing is really free about that sort of free-thought in my opinion.) I think the real reason pro-choicers were offended by the picture I posted is because it conflicted upon something they held dearly to support their identities. They; like most weak minded people, had an emotional response to seeing a dead baby in the fetal state, however that emotional response conflicted against their held identities as a liberal pro-choicer. They were taken from a place where their held beliefs on abortion is a place of high civil-agreement and pro-humanity, to a place where it is anti-humanity and supportive of civil oppression. It was displayed basically as a perversion on the human form and condition-- which is conflictive with the liberal thought that pro-choice is pro-woman and pro-freedom. The shock value of the picture forces one to consider the fact that the personal freedom may be at the expense of enslaving, mutilating and oppressing the very innocent of innocent. (Maybe even that is truly anti-woman, and a perversion on femininity in its most pure form within female function and beauty?) You see, while I was taking the violent attacks from what I thought were "friends" it was revealed to me over and over by these so-called "friends" that I was demoralizing a sliver of their personal identity! (Which may be the real revealer in my opinion?) They were not attacking me for offending some high moral standard they held, or for even the defense of social-rights. It's far more selfish than that!
You see, I blew a hole in something they built a kin to themselves. They identify themselves as "liberal" or "pro-choice", so if you were to approach them with anything that may offer a logical flaw in that identity they must become violent! (To this sort of liberal calling out their flaws is as good as walking up to an African-American and telling them they are wrong for being black.) This sort of close-minded extremism has the very face of it they painted with the concept of “what it is to be liberal.” (Conceptual Liberals if you will—very shy of actual Social-liberalism.)
Taking a shot at their liberalism is like knocking the legs out from under them. It is no longer a political or social discussion, it is a personal attack, because these people really don't have any personality, or personal beliefs-- they are their beliefs!
If you take their liberalism away it arouses fear, because they have no purpose or identity they have built themselves outside of these frail, conflictive and apathetic political agendas. Anyone would become argument and violent to protect the fiber of their beings! So I hardly can blame them for the violent attitude.

Now, this is all a stirring argument for why I firmly believe in building the frameworks of your life upon something a bit more objective and permanent than a contemporary political stand.Which brings us back to why shock tactics are interesting? It is a manipulation of the emotions. And for someone liberal in this way emotions are the center of their rhetoric. People who are easily controlled by their emotions and swayed by their impulses are weak minded. They don't have a firm, objective and logical stand on any topic. Their minds don’t reason out pros and cons to deduce the obvious and most productive stance-- their emotions do. Unfortunately emotions change, sway and are hardly ever objective. (Anything ruled by impulsion and fear is simply subjective.) Thus these people are weak minded and impulse driven, thus I'm appalled at the idea of them ever having any social say in any decision that would affect the rest of the “free-thinking” world. People who can not think objectively, and allow the war over their own personal identity to become more important than that of the war for human-rights should not be making decisions for anyone else! (At the risk of sounding a bit Fascist, I dare to say; sometimes they shouldn’t even be trusted with themselves.) They lack social empathy. They are simply to internal and selfish when it comes down to it! With that said they are weak minded, and it is easy to arouse fear in them, which is technically not a bad this, at least for me.
I firmly believe that all men are created by God, and therefore have the potential to have a use in this world.

In closing, God created the world men with use... the world created me useful idiots.