“You must do this. You must believe this. How can you not see this? What are you, stupid?” So the comments pour over me from those who have decided they know more, are greater thinkers, better “papered”, more moral and obviously better bred than I. It doesn’t matter if I’m talking to a socialist or a conservative, an atheist, a xian (anyone claiming to be Christian, but obviously not), an agnostic or pagan, an academic or pseudo intellectual. I’m always wrong, they, always right.
The Catholic Encyclopedia for instance says this about Paganism: “… in the broadest sense includes all religions other than the true one revealed by God, and, in a narrower sense, all except Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism. The term is also used as the equivalent of Polytheism.”
I’ve been anxious for decades for someone to present me with proof there is a god, any god! I’ll settle for a Greek or Roman god. Heck, I’d take proof positive that Mother Earth is a god, urr… goddess. I’d even settle for proof that Obama is the One!
I’ve endured countless lectures on why I’m going to Hell if I don’t accept Jesus as my savior, yet no one has been able to prove to me the man actually lived, let alone taught the religious philosophies people keep pressing on me. When I tell them I want to believe, that I simply can’t without some proof, I’m usually told I’m stubborn, or foolish, or willfully stupid, or my favorite- damned. Rarely, am I pitied and told I’ll be prayed for.
While I’m searching for proof there is a god, I’m hoping the atheists will prove to me there isn’t one. So far, they’ve succeeded as well as the “true believers” in presenting nothing concrete to support their belief in… nothing? However! They are, by and large, as certain of my stupidity as the worst of the religious are.
Then there are the ideologues who hound me with their beliefs claimed (just as the religious do) as fact. The high priest of the cult of Man Made Global Warming, urr… Cooling, no wait! Global Climate Change! Yeah, that’s what it is (at least for this decade), tells me I’m destroying the planet with my lifestyle. Really?
I fly around this rock in jet airliners to give paid speeches to people who live and think the same way I do? I live in a house big enough to comfortably shelter Emmitsburg’s entire extended Cool clan, make huge chunks of income off the oil stocks I own, monthly pay an electric bill partially generated by the burning of more lights in and about my home than some small countries can boast?
Well, I guess he’s right. I am leaving one hell of an immense global footprint. Except I don’t live like that. He does. Yet I’m killing the planet by working within a half mile of my home? Which, by the way, didn’t/doesn’t require a smidgen of the resources his mansion sucked out of the Earth, to build, or maintain. I’ve only once in 56 years been off the ground in anything that flew under its own power. That was a De Havilland “Beaver” that took me twenty minutes into wilderness Canada and brought me back out. I doubt that roundtrip flight used the fuel his jet consumes while warming one engine. But I’m told to change my extravagant ways?
Of course, I don’t get it. It being the opinions and dictates of my betters. I’m one of those leeches sucking on the blood (collected taxes) of town, county, state and federal governments because I’m under-educated, under-employed and not paying my fair share of the tax burden while demanding government services and assistance. Or so I’m told in news articles on-line, by way of a DSL service we pay for, via a computer we bought, operated with electricity we pay for, while sitting in a house bought without aid of a government loan (which we probably qualified for) while working locally for less combined income than the average “down the road” employee spends on their combined new home mortgage and workday travel expenses each year! But I’m the problem?
Okay, for the sake of enlightenment, I’ll accept that I’m the problem. Now, some genius please come along and explain it to me; slowly, in small, simple words, and please be patient and not get angry when I ask for clarification because I truly do want to be a safe little sheep and have someone or thing watch over me and assume all my worries and burdens. I don’t care if it’s a god or a state. I’ll follow. Show me the way! Convince me, not with utopian/dogmatic (same end result, different spelling) or ivory-towered fabrications untested in reality, or pronouncements from those never stooped so low as to entice their food from the soil. No! Just simple facts I can grasp, taste, and use. Line up your proofs, show me how you live and I’ll get in line if my bull stuff meter doesn’t register much above zero. (So far, it’s been pegged at “overload”.)
In fairness, I have engaged in conversations with philosophers I respect, mostly because they are living what they preach. One of them (a communist at home on the farm, a serious capitalist off it) has claimed to have looked upon Babylon and found it sorely lacking in anything truly useful to, while being repressive and destruct of, the soul he believes he is. He has climbed his mountain, cleared a bit of ground, sown his seeds and taken to raising/educating his clan along with most of the food they consume. His goal is not to avoid Babylon (Babyland, as he sometimes calls what the rest of us live in), but to view it in its entirety! To understand what his god (Mother Earth, Nature?) demands of him counter to the Siren promises of Babylon.
Another pagan, living in the heart of Babylon, ministers to those lost in its tangle and desperate for some connection to reality, their Mother. Oddly both pagan philosophers work, or have worked, in fields of science. One worked for a drug company and the other a telecommunications satellite company. As different in lifestyles and worldviews as these two pagans are, they have been very patient with me, taking time from their busy lives to explain what they are about and to answer my questions.
I’ll listen to such philosophers. Philosophers who live what they preach. All others? The BS meter is still pegged at over-load.
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