I have a number of thoughts and subjects vying for attention in my mind at the moment. I am not absolutely certain how they will choose to manifest themselves in this stream of consciousness post. View this as potentially some forbidden text by the Mad Arab, or from the halls of Miskatonic University if it helps you have a more disposed and amused mental countenance as you read this. That is kind of my own mental state at the moment...
No I didn't find these strange ideas in a painting that seems to move out of the corner of my eye or in a message in some bottle that floated to shore from forgotten island. My mind is more than adequate to produce insanity laden visions and considerations.
That was kind of fun. I don't know why I decided to start this thing off like some Cthulhu Mythos style story but that is where my mind went. Was it a foretelling?
Exit Cthulhu
I've been thinking on race, on religion, on the division in the United States (though it is also reflected in other nations), on climate, on RINOs, and so many other things. Let's see if I can piss off many different groups by making this particular post not focusing on one FORBIDDEN TOPIC but going for multiple. Why do I call them forbidden? You are forbidden to discuss them outside of an official narrative without risking problems, damnation, condemnation, etc.
On race I've been thinking of simple things about the popular diversity narrative. I think that mostly comes up when considering the Jussie Smollet trial.
The push for diversity based upon skin color. You do realize that is racism don't you?
They are making decisions based upon race. In a climate without racism then the decisions should be race irrelevant.
Making sure there is an appropriately "representative" amount of diversity is racism. It is making choices completely based upon race. That is racism. Race should be irrelevant if we wish to end racism, or at least minimize it.
Furthermore, it rings false when you consider something like 66% (I don't know the current numbers) of the population are "white". If it is representative of the population distribution wouldn't you expect at least 66% of the people to be "white"? Yet the people pushing for diversity are fine when it is as low as 0% white. Yet if they encounter a situation that is near 100% white they become enraged and begin shouting about racism. They are making decisions based PURELY upon race.
Now just in case a rather symbiotic someone is reading this. I am not making a joke about racism. I consider this very serious.
I am fine with getting racism as close to ended as we can. Yet for that to happen we can't be making decisions based upon race. We should not be giving special holidays, events, celebrations, etc. in the NAME of race.
The concept of BLACK HISTORY MONTH is racist. Historically Black Colleges is not as long as they allow non-blacks to attend them now. If they do everything they can to discourage such attendance then that would be racism.
Treating someone based upon race by a law enforcement officer is not acceptable either but, we should deal with each case and hold people that actually perpetrate racism accountable rather than extrapolating and painting all of society with a huge paint brush based upon the events of a FEW individuals. Comparatively yes the numbers are FEW. They are just greatly amplified by the media networks.
I could go off on this topic for probably a very long time. I have before. I think this is a good time to look at the next thing.
A nice neighbor who likes my family (we moved to the area in September) and especially my dog (whom is sick today: EDIT - he died a few hours after writing this post) spoke for awhile to my wife. She was surprised when my wife told her that she doesn't believe in God. She said she believes there may be a higher power but not something like God. (This differs a bit from my own views as I consider myself a Deist). She was greatly surprised as my wife and I take care of my wife's elderly parents and we've actually given this neighbor a Thanksgiving Dinner plate when they declined the invitation to join us for Thanksgiving (she declined for personal history reasons). She has seen us act kind, helpful, and caring for other people.
She wondered why we are so active in doing that when we don't consider ourselves Christians. My wife did point out that her parents who we care for are devout Mormons and we frequently have Elders and Bishops that we invite into our house to minister to her parents and provide rituals and practices as her parents desire. You see we actually believe in freedom of religion. We are fine with people having religion as long as it is personal to them and not used to force behavior in other people. Do what you want as long as it doesn't harm another and/or their property. Pretty simple.
Yet why do we help people... I was not surprised. The question ultimately comes down to morality and ethics. I am human. So is a church going person. When it comes to ethics and morality we still encounter similar crossroads where we must make decisions.
I find it interesting that some religious people cannot imagine a person can take a path towards what the religious person might consider "good" actions and behavior without belief in their God or religion.
I am a human. I long ago ceased admiring people's ability to destroy things. I think destroying things is the easier state. I tend to admire people who create things. That takes a lot more effort and intent.
As such why would it be surprising that I try to gear my choices toward constructive and beneficial paths as opposed to destructive and harmful paths?
Also... I collect bibles from all kinds of religions and other religious texts. While I don't believe in the written word describing "God" in any of them I do see value in the books. They are different philosophical meanderings of people trying to explain the world around them. They often have good moral teachings. They often are gateways into history through the telephone book style game interpretation of the events after the fact. Yet there is still value. There is still wisdom.
I can agree with some things, and not others. I don't treat anything written by another human, or stated by another human as unquestionable, or as gospel. I view everything as challengeable. I question when I have the urge to question.
Yet I still believe in construction and the true meaning of the word progressive. Trying new things and moving forward. I don't embrace failed ideas from the past, rebrand them and call that progressive. (oops went into politics there)
Instead I wonder why a religious person seems to think a person cannot act as they think a person should act WITHOUT the religion to guide them...
I view people by their actions. I long ago stopped viewing them by what church they attend.
Some of the more corrupt people I've met in life (I worked for some of them) had two faces and were very devout and attended church every Sunday. The rest of the week their actions didn't resemble what you'd expect. You see they are human. Being religious and going to church doesn't guarantee a removal of corruption, greed, etc. Though some people treat it as some kind of umbrella that such people are under so they can't be "bad people". I can tell you now that if I truly wanted to control people, manipulate them, and have power I would do so under the guise of religion. I would work hard at probably becoming a priest. I would then use that unquestionable status some people would then afford me as an opportunity to manipulate, and control.
To the Christians (I was raised Christian) I say this. If I truly were Satanic and wanted the most power I would reside within the Christian Church and make my moves from there. It would be the least likely direction people would look and thus I could move with more stealth and obfuscation.
I also don't like people being manipulated by fear. Though as we are seeing around us fear can convince us to do almost anything. We can give up our rights. We can be convinced that someone else should be destroyed or killed often for reasons that under non-fear based circumstances we would be questioning and saying "no death". Fear is tremendous motivation. It has been used as the foundation for virtually every major atrocity I can see in history.
Those who want power and to manipulate know this. They use it. They amplify it. They try to turn it into a mental contagion.
I don't need a fear of damnation to convince me to help people. I choose to help people. I am not doing it to make up for some bad act I did in some attempt to balance the scales. When I do make bad choices I also don't have the outlet where I can go an feel like I am free from those "sins" because I tell a priest about them. I simply try to learn from my mistakes. I don't try to brush them under the rug. I also don't view them as damning myself.
Remember I stated I collect religious texts?
I know more about Christianity than just about any other religion. I know a lot about its formation. For the most part I consider it a benevolent religion that if people truly practice the "new testament" and don't look at the "old testament" as a good guideline is safe and good. Yet that doesn't stop power seekers from positioning themselves within and attempting to manipulate people.
I am a Deist. I believe in a creator. I simply don't think the words written in some book, spoken by someone in a vision, etc. are the word of God. To me they are the words of people. I also don't trust people who claim to be speaking "for God" and thus making them God's words. Again if I were a power seeker wanting to manipulate that is EXACTLY one thing I'd promote about myself.
You may be thinking but what if they really were such a person speaking for God and you didn't believe them?
I operate based upon my own internal probability matrix not upon certainties. As such I see it highly improbable that we could describe reality in the simple words we have used, and to describe the creator and their desires in such words. To me there is a word of the creator yet it is something none of us seem to be able to hold in our minds as a whole. It is written into reality itself. We are constantly learning new things about reality. The physicist learns some of the words, the chemist some others, mathematicians others still, biologists, geologists, etc. We specialize and focus on specific WORDS within the overall writing that is reality.
As a deist my views are simple. They can be summed up as follows: "There is a creator. Now observe and use reason." That's it.
I don't need a priest, church, or religious text to tell me to help people, be constructive, and be kind. This is something that can apparently be quite unfathomable to some people...
I moved from Colorado to Missouri. I am glad I did. Very glad. I keep reading about the nation being divided and usually referred to as red and blue. Yet in reality it is more Urban versus Rural. The urban sprawl seems to be where the bastions of what I call the "Leftists" seem to rule. Out in the rest of the world is just other people. Some of them may be "Right" in terms of the overton window but really at the is point it is better to call them simply "Not Leftists".
You see the people that are not Leftists do not all agree. They are not all Alt-Right, and in fact that overused label only accurately describes a very small group of people (VERY SMALL). It is just used like a verbal grenade upon anyone that dares to disagree with a Leftist and is amplifies greatly by their media outlets which they have taken control of.
At the heart of leftist movement (of which wokeness is part of it) is truly a Marxist style revolution. The Marxists had no luck pushing the class divide narrative to destroy the United States. It worked in other nations but it did not work in the United States. Here they have instead harnessed the concept of bigotry completely. They have used racism as one form of bigotry they embrace and use to emphasize a divide and this works better than class due to guilt over things done by our ancestors to other ancestors in the past. Guilt can be fertile soil. Even if that guilt is not your own. None of us should be held responsible for the actions of our ancestors. Our ancestors choices were not choices we ever had the opportunity to make. Thus we cannot be held accountable for choices that were not our own. If we go down that path then there is an endless path of guilt for EVERY SINGLE human alive can be found guilty or found a victim based upon past actions of ancestors. It just depends upon how one chooses to spin the narrative.
Marxists did not stop there. They have harnesses psychological studies quite well. They have weaponized "being offended" and they have changed it from something that people can choose to view as an offense, or something that can simply be ignored as just one of those things. They have made being offended out to be akin to being physically attacked. Thus in some cases being offensive has become illegal. Yet the thing is...
People can choose to be offended by anything.
This creates a situation where the paths of division are greatly expanded. Furthermore, it turns it in kind of a mental virus. Spreading being offended about subject A to more people and then new subject B, C, D, E are born and spread. Soon the only time these warring people agree is when anyone dare call them out for being destructive and stupid. At that moment they will mobilize and unite to challenge the person that dared challenge them. Once that is over they will go back to bickering and pointing out the short comings among themselves. They have been turned into zombies who actually do eat the brains of other people. They turn them into manipulated mindless automatons who are constantly on the watch for oppressed and oppressors, victims and perpetrators. Since they can choose to be offended by anything they have an endless supply to look at. When they have eliminated one "oppressor" they can look among their own group to find more things to be offended by and they further subdivide.
This has created power and opportunity for a potential Marxist style revolution. It is succeeding where class division emphasis failed. It is creating massive destabilization and loss in constructive brain power. You see the Leftist approach is not constructive. It is destructive. Thus, it is something I oppose.
The division we see in the nation is formed by this. Leftists thrive in urban centers where all the services they might desire are supplied to them. The problem is they are supplied by the type of people they are attempting to eliminate. Some leftists cannot picture how things make it to the shelves.
Leftists that identify as Communists tend to have unrealistic or vastly simplified views of how a supply and production chain work. This is why their ideas still seem like good ones to them. Emotion rather than reason. It feels good, so it must be good. Yet if you look, think, think long term, consider as many parts and processes as possible it quickly falls apart as fantasy and unrealistic.
Yet it still has staying power.
It doesn't hurt that avowed Communists Terrorists such as those in the Weather Underground told us they were going to stop bombing places and instead operate from within the education system. That is indeed what they have done.
I suspect this is why some people seem incapable of getting past the emotion and actually looking at processes and considering long term effects, and requirements.
If the nation divides. The leftists cannot subsist based upon their ideas. Not without justifying the enslavement of people to fulfill the needs to continue the services they expect. They likely don't realize this. It is okay for the Urban masses to enslave the rural plebs. I seriously doubt they see it this way yet when you break down the divide this is where it is headed.
Fear of being wrong.
We've been conditioned to view being wrong as a very bad thing. In fact it is an incredibly important thing. It is one of the few ways we learn. We learn basically by two methods. First we encounter new information we didn't know about (aka were ignorant about) and we learn something new. The second way is when we are wrong about something. We now have the opportunity to learn something new and change.
Being wrong is a good thing. It only becomes a bad thing when we refuse to learn from it and we keep being wrong over and over again about the same thing.
Yet we've been conditioned to do exactly that.
There are a lot of "smart" people who think they are "rarely wrong". To me that is a sad thing. It means that many opportunities to learn are being missed, or IGNORED. Perhaps that is one of the things that separates a person from being wise and not being wise. I don't know. I just speculate and ramble.
It is okay to be wrong.
Just acknowledge it and learn from it.
Don't let your being wrong be something you ignore then move somewhere else without problems you are perceiving and continue to be wrong about the same thing and inevitably spreading the problem.
People fleeing so-called "blue" states to go to "red" states makes sense. Red states tend to work a lot better if you actually want freedom and less of the division and hate. At least for the moment. Blue and Red are colors or in this case proxies for ideologies. They may not be suitable in the near future.
The problem is that many people flee "blue" states that have problems based upon choices they and others like them made. Yet they blame it on others and the state. They fail to acknowledge their own part in it. They move. Then they start pushing for the same things that destroyed the place they fled. Why? They did not acknowledge their mistakes. They repeat them.
They have been conditioned that being wrong is a bad thing.
I witnessed this happen to Colorado over the 45 years I lived there.
I am seeing reflections of it happening in Texas and I hope Texas manages to stave it off where those of us in Colorado failed.
I am about written out for the moment though there are other thoughts I could have pursued. If you made it this far... thank you for hanging in for my mental journey. Hopefully I didn't unleash any horrors that are too frightful for your mind.