soapboxdiner

Psychobabble and tater tots

You know, this "growing as a person" thing can suck my ass. Seriously. I'm 30 years old, people. Growing is fine and dandy and wonderful and all, but maybe it's just time to accept that I'll never be popular, I'll never be charismatic, I'll never be a whole lot more than I am right now, here at this very moment.

And there is nothing wrong with being me. I'm odd and eccentric and introspective and highly intuitive. I can be funny, but I'm really not what one would call "fun". I'm not stoic, but I am that thing that people call other people who just don't have a lot to say. Well, I have a lot to say, it's just not fluffy social type stuff that makes for easy conversation.

And I suppose I can appreciate the trade off - even if, practically speaking, it makes me the kind of person who is spare on friends and alone a great deal of the time.

I'm just not an easy person to know and love - unless you're me or my mother. Then you're kinda obligated.

I was watching TLC last night - a program that discussed Flood mythology. You know the Flood, as in Genesis and Noah and the Ark and the Flood. You know - The Flood.

As is fairly common knowledge, Flood myths abound globally. This isn't news. Caanan/the Hebrews did not invent this myth. There are many experts who claim that perhaps, prehistorically, there was a major catastrophic event that inspired the myth. Other experts opin that there may have been a regional flood, such as the one documented in the archeological digs in ancient Ur; a flooding of the Black Sea by the Mediterranean. But! Here's the thought to spend your evening pondering. In putting aside the possibility of the flood being a factual legend (confirmed in cuneiform texts dating back nearly 4000 years to the Babylonians/Sumerians and predating the Old Testament by hundreds of years), perhaps the legend isn't about history. Maybe it's about psychology.

So much of Christianity is about humanity in all its various aspects and characteristics. It's hard not to ponder on any part of it without wondering how much of it is pacificist to the human condition. That's not a new thought. How many times have you heard hardened atheists/agnostics say religion is the surregate parent otherwise mature individuals fall back on for comfort? However, if taken a step further into the arena of the specific, think about what Christianity offers to humanity.

In the Old Testament, there is judgment and retribution. There is free will, and there are pitfalls God sets up to smite the peoples. Is this not what we do to each other, every day? Do we not say, "Do what you want, but if I don't like it - there WILL be a tit for your tat. I WILL avenge any perceived wrong you commit against me and mine."

There are coventants. "I'm sorry, I feel guilty for what I have done. If you promise to still love me, I will promise to never do that again."

There are rules. "I have expectations that may or may not be equitable and fair, but if you abide, you will have good things. If you do not, and we all know that you won't, There Will Be Consequences." which gives us all by proxy permission to get pissy and agreived and aggressive when other do not act within the parameters of our expectations. And so many of us need those boundaries of propriety defined externally. So many of us require that reward incentive. So many of us prefer not to develop our own morality. Isn't it so much easier to fall back on the rules contrived by others - especially those we elevate to superior positions - deities and princes?

And then you have the New Testament. You have contridition in spirit with the old school. You have a living God in the flesh condemning those who have set themselves up as the sentries and lesser judges of The Judge. You have Christ condemning the Pharisees for their narrowmindedness. You have communion with prostitutes and outcasts. You have free love. It's like God became Mork from Ork and grew young - a teenager rebeling against the established law.

But still, God is God. He says, "I have taught you in parables so those who believe will understand, but those of you who do not, will not." So rather than making His Love universally accessible, he creates a loophole with which humanity can perpetuate division and misunderstanding. And thereby set up a new human aristocracy with the power to twist The Word to its own agenda. To be able to still have rule to hold over the common man (as one would a child) to say, "If you don't do what I want, you will be punished." i.e. if you do something I deem "bad" or "wrong", you WILL go to hell and be denied Paradise Eternal.

Which is all kind of funny, because even the apostles were unabashed in changing the story or integrating pagan attributes they were attempting to supercede in order to make the religion more palatable - a precident that has continued into the modernity.

Which all rather covertly illustrates how psychologic Christianity and all of religion is; and how imperfect. Each of us seeking some sort of permission to act as we wish, while still having something higher and more auspicious to strive for, and something more fundamental to excuse our basest instinctual desires to kick some ass when we feel the need; or have our own asses kicked when we know what we've done or thought is detrimental to others or ourselves.

A giant brain fuck. But isn't it all rather fascinating? Isn't it interesting to dissect all the major, driving personality traits we employ? The people who create scapegoats; the people who steal credit and thunder; those who require artificial division and boundaries to feel comfortable defining and excusing their abilities or inabilities to socialize themselves - Everyone. There is something for everyone. None of which makes contemporary Western society anything more than an ant farm of workers maintaining the mechanations of a contrived system that values corporations of power and profit more than the individual, the creative, and family (be that hereditary or otherwise), or the fundamentally resonating self and soul.

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And I'm really sad right now... knowing and experiencing anew an affiliation that started out as hopeful, only to desintegrate into unreturned phone calls and sighs that say, "Will you please just stop with all your 'philosophizing' bullshit that makes my brain hurt. I don't want to talk about your deep thoughts, I want to talk about drinking pink panties and who's throwing the next raging party you aren't invited to."

Bah. So what if I'm an outcast amongst the crowd I wish would accept me; I have psychobabble and tater tots every evening at 6:00. Just don't get me started on Christianity. Then you just may see how completely eccentric and irreverant I truly am.

7:45 pm - 08.06.03
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