Hell is a boy on a diet

Well we have just finished watching Hellboy II, we being my roommate and myself. It was fair, there were some fun times that reminded me of various video game moments of my past, especially when the German man o' smoke took over one of the Golden Army warriors and used it to battle the others. Very fun, though much of the rest of the movie was quite forgettable.

Hellboy I was forgettable too, though the circumstances under which I saw it were hardly so. I was on a date with a fellow I was quite fond of, and it was my idea to go see the movie since it looked fun and I often love movies like it. It was not fun, he did not have fun, I did not have fun, and I was embarrassed to have dragged him along to the movie. It did not work out.

On another topic, has anyone ever found that skinny people (not "in shape" or "hey I have a disorder" this people, but skinny people) revel in trying to get those of us not-skinny people to eat the crap they do? One of my roommates is a skinny person. He eats anything he wants, and it does nothing to him. Since I returned from the holiday travel extravaganza I've been trying to eat healthy. No, not trying, I HAVE been eating healthy. This is something we all know how to do, it's not rocket science, and I'd like to get on track for doing it more often. Spare tires are for cars, not waistlines.

For that entire time he has been taunting me, and gleaning great joy out of the act. He teases, he purposely buys crap and offers it to me, laughing when I say "no thanks". He is evil, for evil knows itself and he knows he's being evil, and he loves it. He is not alone either, as most people I know seem to revel in dismissing my attempts to eat better and get in shape. "You look fine!" they say. Yes, thank you, I know I look "fine". Small children to not run in horror from me and no one fears that if I fall their pet's lives could be at risk. But that's hardly the point.

I don't feel healthy, I don't exercise enough, and these two things make me feel bad, not "fine". And I'm the only one that sees me naked, and right now I'm glad for that fact. Grad school makes you fat, it's official and true. And I want to counteract that.

So what do Hellboy, II or I, and my eating habits have in common? Well, in both cases the rest of the world seems to have a love affair with the mediocre. This is a love I don't share, and I'm tired of being taunted by it. For many years I've been trying to figure out a way around it, and after these many years I have finally found a way.

Ignore them.

It's against my nature, honestly, to ignore people. I don't like being shut off from people or things, I like to take part. But I've found that sometimes it's best to keep a distance. I've gotten quite good at ignoring the crap people create and cough up on TV and on the silver screen, but I've had a harder time with dealing with people face to face. I think it's time to start employing the same tactics against those that would have me remain "fine". I'm really not doing any of this for their approval, so there's no need to be listening to them.

Mindsets are everything, and my mind is quite set. Hellboy II was mediocre at best, I intend to be something more.

Letter to Barack Obama

It's been quite some time since I posted anything here, and while I don't expect that anyone will see this here, one never knows.

As many of us know, Rick Warren has been invited to speak at Barack Obama's inauguration. At first I did not think too much about this, but the more I think about it the more unhappy I am about this invitation. Mr. Warren does not deserve this honor, in any way shape or form. His type of bigoted speech needs to stop, and it certainly does not need a place on the world stage.

If anyone knows of a good email address for Barack Obama and can send it my way, please do. So far I have not been able to find one, though I will keep looking. And write your own letters. It is time for this type of hate speech directed at gays and lesbians to stop.

-Sean

Dear President-Elect Obama,

I have been a supporter of yours since I first saw you on, of all places, The Daily Show. Never before had I seen someone who could actually go round for round with Jon Stewart without looking like an out of touch idiot. I was extremely impressed by your presence of mind and the content of your words. Each subsequent forum I have heard you speak in has left me with the same admiration and respect, and hope for what can come of your presidency. I have been running very low on hope for some time now as I deal with the struggles of my own life and contemplate the immense struggles facing all humanity on this every shrinking planet, and with your historic rise to the highest office in this land I find a small amount of hope returning. Of this I am deeply grateful, and I thank you.

Recently, and for the first time, I find that hope diminished. Simply, I am a gay man. As I’m sure you have heard from countless other gays and lesbians at this point, we have a problem with some recent events. While it is terrible that it must be pointed out, we live good lives, we work hard (often harder than our straight brothers and sisters since we many times feel the need to prove ourselves more deeply than they do, a fact that you no doubt understand as a black man), we are law abiding, we care for our families and our friends. I am a music teacher devoted to the education of young and old with aspirations of publishing works aimed at deepening everyone’s understanding of the arts and the great benefits that can come from their study. I want to see the world become a better place, for myself and for everyone I know and have yet to know, as I believe you do as well.

Why then does your administration give credence to hateful bigotry of the variety voiced by Rick Warren? While I was certainly shocked by the invitation you extended to Mr. Warren to speak at your inauguration, I am quite a bit more shocked by the reasoning in your defense of that invitation. If I may paraphrase, you have invited him in a spirit of inclusion that is the corner stone of your campaign, that we are a diverse people in America, “noisy and opinionated”, and that we must come together despite disagreements and have a dialogue. I could not agree more, except on one small point.

If Rick Warren thought that black people and other racial minorities should not have the right to marry, you would not support him as you do. The rest of this country would not support him as they do. He would be a marginal figure, preaching a hate that in the eyes of the public went out of style many decades ago. Instead he preaches a hate that IS still in style, despite the valiant efforts of many brave individuals and groups over the past 20 years (though 40 years is more accurate). These voices were forced to make themselves heard as our friends, our family members, and our partners died in horrifying numbers at the hands of AIDS. We may not have been attacked by police and dogs and fire hoses, but we were attacked, and few cared as we died. Something needed to change, and the strides we have made are heartening to a young gay man like myself. To have Mr. Warren given this immense opportunity on this world stage, after all that we have reached and strived for, feels like a slap in the face.

If Rick Warren had had a problem with the fact that you were black, he would not have invited you to his church to speak, nor do I think you would have accepted his invitation, despite your desire to inspire dialogue in this country of the noisy and opinionated. There are some ideas that are not worth entering into dialogue about, at least not in a forum such as the Presidential Inauguration. I do not wish to hear a Neo Nazi speak there, nor a Ku Klux Klan member, nor Rick Warren. While I understand some may find the joining of these three extreme, I and all other gays and lesbians I know do not find it extreme. When you listen to a man dehumanize you, advocate that marriage is about “love and family and procreation”, and realize that he means we cannot possibly have these things, I cannot find his inclusion on that list extreme.

I have made it a point to be inclusive throughout my life, TRULY inclusive. I have had Christian friends who I adored and who in turn pitied and ultimately rejected me because I did not share their faith. I have stood by while Fred Phelps picketed funerals, and other religious “activists” damned me and my loved ones to Hell and worse, taking the advice they ignore to “turn the other cheek”. I have gone out of my way to educate the uneducated and try to break down barriers between myself and those that think there is something wrong with me. I understand and revel in the fact that there are innate qualities in people that cannot be changed, like the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, their gender (physical or otherwise), and we cannot exclude people based on these qualities.

We CAN exclude based on choices people make, and that includes bigoted beliefs like those held by Rick Warren. Just as those that think non-whites to be subhuman, those that think Jews drink the blood of Christian babies, those that believe women incapable of achieving as men do should all be excluded from the public stage, so to should those who believe gays and lesbians to be regrettable, pitiable deviants be excluded. If a discussion is going to be had about why all these views are deplorable and wrong headed, let’s have that discussion, and they should all go approximately the same way; “Each of these groups of people are ignorant and their views cause deep harm to the groups they preach against, and they cannot be taken seriously because….”, and most of us can easily fill in the rest. If you cannot fill in the rest when it comes to gays and lesbians, just talk to us. We can easily tell you why we are human beings deserving of every right you have.

By far the best quote I can find summing up the disappointment and sadness I feel over your invitation of Mr. Warren is from Susie Bright; “The only reason this "invitation" flies at all is because anti-gay and sexually divisive bigotry is still considered palatable, while racial and ethnic bigotry is not.” While I understand the constraints you are under to appease those for whom this type of bigotry is palatable, when will someone in your position finally take the step of saying “Enough is enough”? Either that or please invite a racial bigot to speak as well, so that I know you truly do hold to the ideals of the open forum discussion that you speak of.

Lastly, I have one more statement to make, one that I regret I have never heard from a public figure. There is nothing wrong with being gay. If one cannot hear that statement and nod in total agreement, then one needs to look within themselves more deeply and find the roots of their bigotry. There is nothing wrong with being black, there is nothing wrong with being Jewish, there is nothing wrong with being a woman, and there is nothing wrong with being gay. As a moral and caring person first, and a gay man second, I know for a fact that statement is true. I hope, I hope deeply, that you will believe that fact soon as well.

Thank you for your time and I wish only the best for you and this world moving forward,
Sean Barker
The University of Montana,
Missoula, MT

This is getting stupid....

Today I ran into the comments made by Geraldine Ferraro about the Obama campaign, and was disturbed, to say the least. I started writing an e-mail to her. I finished the e-mail and in the process of trying to find her e-mail address I ran across more information on the subject (thank you Wikipedia, you are God), including video clips of her interviews and transcripts of her statements.

I am not going to send the e-mail any more, because in it I was being way too nice.

I fear for her sanity, though I think more than an insanity problem she is suffering merely from an ego problem, a malady many in her line of work so righteously endure. Her interview on Fox was shocking. Does she really think that she is above reproach when she speaks?? She voiced complaints that she was getting e-mails saying her comments were racist. Did she stop to think that perhaps they WERE racist?? Not to mention that ludicrous threat at the end not to "antagonize" her. Does she ever listen to what she....... -sigh-

Bah, this is taking up too much of my time tonight.

Geraldine, your shit stinks, don't think otherwise, or you're just the "liberal" version of G.W. Bush, and that's repulsive.

In the Short Term

If you turn on a media device, you may hear about a mentally handicapped Texan causing a stir in D.C. No, not that one, the other one (SO scary that there is more than one.....). Alberto Gonzales is the one I'm referring to this time, though the other one is certainly still of concern and should not be forgotten about.

And memory is precisely the issue here. Mr. Gonzales has displayed an impressive ability to "not recall" nearly all details concerning when or where various meetings and decisions took place, or if they took place at all. One may question whether his memory loss is a ploy, but I'm not so sure it is. It really seems that he doesn't remember these details, that they are gone from his mind, and it doesn't seem to bother him or the other mentally challenged Texan. They both seem quite content with the memory loss, which certainly speaks to it being a ploy, but I think instead they're just very used to it. It's normal in their lives, as it seems to be normal in the lives of many people.

Over the years, but most especially in very recent months, I've had the pleasure of running across people's memory lapses, and enjoying the problems those lapses then causes me. For instance; I just had my tonsils out, I can't really do much but watch TV, take pain meds, and type on the computer, teaching is certainly out of the picture. A parent brought her daughter to her piano lesson though, despite the e-mails, the hand outs, the face to face conversations stretching back for nearly 2 months telling her and her daughter that I would not be in to teach until the first week of May, because I have open wounds in my throat and am on narcotics. This is not her first memory laps of this kind, she does it constantly in fact, and the fun part is she then blames me. She even once personally offered to create and maintain a schedule for me, since it seemed I was having a terribly difficult time keeping my lessons straight on my own. I wanted to laugh loudly in her face and point out that I was doing just fine keeping 40 shifting and rearranging student schedules running smoothly, thank you, SHE was the one having the issue keeping her ONE child's schedule on track. Instead I of course thanked her and said I would get it put together, things were just busy and the weekend would allow me to catch up. I upped the number of correspondences about schedule changes with her in the hopes she could be helped, but I'm coming to realize that that is just not possible for some.

If you can't remember shit, you can't remember it, and no amount of reminding will help. Unfortunately our perception of reality is based in large part on our ability to remember events, and the ability to remember those events accurately. The more inaccuracy that seeps in, the more reality starts to loose all objectivity and becomes a huge subjective mess. This makes consensus amongst us humans fairly impossible. This, as one could imagine (if one remembers to do so) could cause problems.

I have a good memory. I actually always thought it was just pretty average at best; I can't do crazy things like remember a list of 100 items at a single glance, or recite poetry or song lyrics after only one listen, but I'm realizing these are really just freakish party tricks, useful though they could be. They should not be the bar by which one judges one's self, they are amazing abilities to be wondered at and perhaps pay admission to see. I cannot do these fun little tricks, but I remember pretty accurately the things that I do, things that I say, things that others do to me and things they say to me. I remember where I am all the time, I don't get lost, I remember what direction I'm going in. I remember facts that I hear and read to a pretty deep degree and can give you a good run down of those facts for a long time afterward. Give me time to study and I can go even farther. No, it's not reciting Pi to 10,000 digits, but it really does seem to be more useful. I do regret that I am terrible with names, but I try. I will remember the date I met you, what you were wearing, and any number of other interestingly useless facts about the time, but I'm sorry, I probably won't remember your name....

I'm finding others are not as capable. Facts twist, events fade from memory and are replaced by imaginary ones, conversations that did happen are forgotten and are replaced with ones that happened only in people's minds. Most of the time I can just shake my head, ignore the problem and move on, or perhaps remind the person how I recall the event, where they will often respond with "oh yeah, that's right.... I forgot." But lately I seem to instead be getting my ass munched because of things I did, things I didn't do, things I should have done, and/or things I could have done but didn't. But.... as I remember events I DIDN'T do that, I DID do that, I SHOULDN'T have done that, and what COULD have been done was.

Many times there's proof, but proof is not so welcome I think these days. Either it is repressed, as the Texans like to do, or it is dismissed as false, as the Religious Right likes to do (guess that includes the Texans too...), which is also the tactic the rest of the public seems to like. We're often quite fond of our own thoughts, and so our own recollection of events trumps the video footage, because... uh... video can be faked and our memories are more concrete? Yes, well our memories are our own, and no one else's, and you can't take that away from me, as the song goes. These days truth is always subjective, and we feel so much better about ourselves because of it.

Add to our love of our own memories this; if you're in a position of power you can force your memory of events to be taken as the "true" version, it's the privilege of that power position. The Texans love that fact, and take advantage of it ad nauseam (I've been so nauseamed for so long.... at least I'm loosing weight). The rest of us will use that power position as often as possible as well. We can't handle being wrong, to the point that we defend our positions to the death; the death of the other person of course.

I also hate being wrong, it's one of the things I honestly hate most in life. I LOVE being right. I love being right so much that if I find out I'm wrong, I CHANGE MY POSITION, right then and there, with gratitude to the person or entity that is right. I want to actually BE right, not just THINK I'm right though. To that end I work very hard to remember things as accurately as I possibly can, my own ego out of the picture, with merely my obsession with the truth driving me. It's sick really, but it's a sickness I'm pretty ok with.

I'm moving out of the country soon. Maybe across the pond truth still trumps ego, but in reality humans are humans are humans, and I don't have a lot of hope. I am much more leery these days, I think it's best to keep more proof on hand. After I move it will just have to be in multiple languages. It's the prudent thing to do I think, in case I get called in front of Congress and don't want to look like a moron, or I get accused of things in a more personal arena and don't want to be painted as a heartless fool again.

"Maiu"

One day, a number of years ago, I think nearly 20 of them, I happen to mention something about evolution on the bus trip home from school. As I was in the company of my zealously religious friend Jerry, an argument ensued. At all of 9 or 10 years old, he already had the fully formed indignation of the Fundamentalist Right when it came to such matters as "evolution" (his quotes), so within a few short moments he was leaning over the bus seat with his fist cocked back, ready to ram it into my godless face, all in the loving name of Jesus. He was yelling at the time "I did not come from apes!!!!", which I found deeply ironic in the face of his behavior, which seemed proof enough that he was more closely related to a sulky African Silver-Back than he obviously thought.

Certainly we all like to think of ourselves as "human", as something opposed to "animal", but in the end this is really only our egos talking; we're animal, through and through, there's no escaping that fact.

But here's the question; what animal are we?

We're most closely related to chimps and apes, this we've all known for some time. I suspect even the religious types know this deep down, which would explain their constant anger over the subject. Kind of like how some of them are so stubbornly anti-gay, even while they're busy buying meth from gay prostitutes before having chem-fueled sodomy sessions with said prostitutes. Allegedly. Biologically our monkey friends are certainly our closest relatives on the planet, but there seems to be something else going on as well.

I think perhaps all people all tied, maybe from some previous life or something, to different animals, plants, bacteria or fungi, and those past incarnations manifest themselves in people in their human forms.

It's hardly a scientific theory, it would do little good to go looking for concrete proof, and in the end I doubt that that matters. Kind of like with astrology; it's quite ridiculous, but there seems to be something to it. Take it or leave it, I find it fun and interesting.

Next time you're people-watching, take a close look your fellow humans walk by. What animal do they remind you of? We've all seen portraits of people who look almost exactly like their dogs, and vice-versa, it's kind of like that. Only open it up to the entire spectrum of Earthly life, not just the K-9 variety. You may be shocked by what you see.

There are dog people (as the pictures have proven), the occasional hamster, fish are prevalent (I try to be all accepting, but I'm not proud to say fish people frankly give me the creeps...), reptiles here and there, the occasional plant (they're not called wall flowers for nothing) and even undulating, barely conscious amoeba-esk types. You can see it in the shapes of faces, eyes speak quite loudly of animal pasts, the way one moves, the set of the brow and jaw. Some crawl along like the proverbial karmicly-punished slug. Others have a distinct simian bend; further proof that some of us are still more monkey than man.

This line of thought certainly begs the question, "What animal am I?" I am subject to the same laws of this little game as all the others, what creature do I strike myself to have been? Oh, and if any who know me would like to weigh in on this, feel free, I'd be curious hehe :)

Speaking of curiosity, I think I'm mostly cat. I've thought this for a long time, and it's frankly only becoming more apparent as I get older. I've had an odd bond with cats all my life, with the distinct desire to have my belly scratched and my head petted. I'm a bit nervous, though I try my very best to play it cool when in front of the crowd. While I have never been caught licking my own ass in mixed company, I have been known to put my foot deeply in my mouth, completely without realizing it, and am surprised, a bit skittish, and not a little indignant when someone throws a shoe at me for it. I will rub up against you if you're nice to me and if I like you, and I prefer to keep myself well groomed, though every cat has the occasional day or two of mange.

The event that has prompted this little foray into animal land is the fact that I'm in Berlin right now. Something else I recently learned about cats is that they hate it when you move furniture in their living space. The become a bit disturbed when you go shifting things out of their place, forcing them to have to figure out where stuff is again. Cats are wildly in-tuned (one could say obsessed, but that one would not be me; I owe that much to my brethren) to their surroundings, and changes throw them off balance, another trait cats possess in abundance.

But the worst stress in a cats life is when you make them move; EVERYTHING is different suddenly, and they become neurotic messes. If you've ever taken a cat into a new space, the first thing they do is explore the room, in Extreme-Caution-Mode, eyes wide, nose twitching, ready to spring out of the way of any new danger or rogue foot stool. First and foremost they must find out where everything is, where the paths of escape are, where the warm and comfortable spots to curl up are, where the entrances and exits are, where the food resides. Stress a cat out enough, either by moving things or by moving them, and they start peeing on stuff. They're pissed, so to speak.

While I have managed through the years to control my deep need to pee on things when I'm under this kind of stress, I have come to believe that I precede pretty much like any other cat would when stuff in my house gets moved around. Or, as I am currently experiencing, I get moved.

Berlin is amazing, I'm having a fantastic time, and I'm a bit skittish and my whiskers are twitching. I'm firmly in exploration mode right now, I have not actually stepped foot into a single museum, church, historical monument, or any other such tourist wonder of the world, of which there are TONS here. This most certainly is part of, as Eddie Izzard said of Europe, "the place where history comes from".

That being said, I'm not quite ready to go into any of these places just yet. I've found a few cozy places to curl up and some places that obviously need to be avoided. I've discovered what color of brick on the sidewalk denotes "bike lane; don't walk on me or old men will honk their silly bike horns at you." I've found the few places where it IS ok to pee (I'm a civilized cat, thank you), but I'm not ready to lay down just yet.

I give myself the rest of today to explore my surroundings, I've already put a multitude of miles under my paws this morning and afternoon. I'm feeling more at ease, less like I want to find a bed to hide under while I peer out at strangers' feet. I've started eating again (something else both cats and I stop doing when we're stressed), and perhaps I will socialize with some other furry animals soon. I have an affinity for others like me, though I don't mind at all crossing furry animal species lines. Just no fish please; they're for killing and eating, not conversing with.

Perhaps by the end of my week I will be completely at ease with my new surroundings and I will gladly and calmly glide from room to room, with the air of hard-fought-for easy-confidence, often mistaken for aloofness or superiority by those that don't understand the ways of the cat. In reality we just want to be scratched by cute people that we like, so we can purr and feel at home. We go through a silly amount of turmoil to get to the point of being able to relax, let our guard down and allow our purr to motor away, we like to enjoy it when we get there.

I'm close to being ready to relax. A good night's sleep and a bit to eat in the morning and I think I'll be ready to cavort with all my furry friends out there. Let's hope I can find one or two to scratch my ears :)

Who gets to be a good American?

I recieved this e-mail forwarded to me today. I read it, and responded, both are posted here.

It's crap like this that makes me think humanity survives on borrowed time.

"Can a good Muslim be a good American? "

I sent that question to a friend who worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years.

The following is his reply:

Theologically - no. Because his allegiance is to Allah, the moon god of
Arabia.

Religiously - no. Because no other religion is accepted by his Allah except
Islam (Quran, 2:256)

Scripturally - no. Because his allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam
and the Quran (Koran).

Geographically - no. Because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns
in prayer five times a day.

Socially - no. Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends
with Christians or Jews.

Politically - no. Because he must submit to the mullah (spiritual leaders),
who teach annihilation of Israel and Destruction of America, the great
Satan.

Domestically - no. Because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and
scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34).

Intellectually - no. Because he cannot accept the American Constitution
since it is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be
corrupt.

Philosophically - no. Because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran do not allow
freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist.
Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic

Spiritually - no. Because when we declare "one nation under God," the
Christian's God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as
heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in The Quran's 99 excellent
names.

Therefore after much study and deliberation....perhaps we should be very
suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. They obviously cannot be both
"good" Muslims and good Americans.

Call it what you wish....it's still the truth.

The war is bigger than we know or understand."

My reply

We've heard now whether Muslims can be "good Americans", now I ask this;

Can a Christian be a good American?

The following is my reply:

Theologically - no. Because his allegiance is to God and Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb of God

Religiously - no. Because no other religion is accepted by his God except
his own (1st Commandment)

Scripturally - no. Because his allegiance is to the Bible.

Geographically - no. Because his allegiance is to after life and the Kingdom that will come, to which he alludes to in prayer more often than not.

Socially - no. Because his allegiance to Christianity forbids him to make friends
with Muslims or Jews, and even if he doesn't think he is forbidden from it, he looks down upon them, wishes them to "be saved" and will never accept them for who they are.

Politically - no. Because he must submit to the evangelicals (spiritual leaders),
who teach annihilation of secular democracy and all those that do not believe as they do, sending all of them to burn in the fires of Hell with Satan.

Domestically - no. Because he is instructed to marry only women and treat them as lesser beings than himself, raising his children to believe only as he does, and rejecting them if they do not comply.

Intellectually - no. Because he cannot accept reason as a source of information, but believes that only through revelation can truth be known, and since the American Constitution
since it is based on REASONABLE principles he cannot accept it and wishes to amend it to mention God and Jesus, which it does not.

Philosophically - no. Because Christianity, Jesus, and the Bible do not allow
freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Christianity co-exist only because secular people and moderate religious people demand it, while every fundamentally Christian government is either dictatorial or autocratic.

Spiritually - no. Because God is vengeful and wrathful, and only in modern times has He become thought of as Love, since the vengefulness and wrath were too unpalatable to the growing secular movements. He will rain His wrath down up the Sinners, damning each of them to burn in hell, and calling on all His followers to deny Sinners in this corporeal world as well.

Therefore after much study and deliberation....perhaps we should be very
suspicious of ALL CHRISTIANS in this country. They obviously cannot be both
"good" Christians and good Americans.

Call it what you wish....it's still the truth.

The war is bigger than we know or understand, especially bigger than Christians understand. I'm so profoundly sick of hearing crap like this "Can a good Muslim be a good American?" list , and it's even more disturbing that it was sent out by a Reverend. Christians have no claim to ultimate morality, and any study of the Bible or history will prove that. The level of hypocrisy of even sending out that tripe about Muslims is nearly overwhelming, and would lead me to laugh if people didn't actually believe they were above the same failings attributed only to Muslims.

Listen, religions around the world hate other religions, and Christianity is HARDLY immune from that. What ever happened to " Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3) We are quick to blame others for what we see as their shortcomings, but are loath to look to ourselves. Christianity is just as insane as Islam is, and the Bible preaches death, destruction, and hate constantly itself. Most Christians prefer to overlook most of it, just as most Muslims prefer to overlook it in the Koran (though the fact that Christians love to cherry-pick passages about homosexuality these days goes only to prove my point, and prove Christians' intellectual laziness).

Religions breed irrationality, since they are based on faith and revelation, two fundamentally irrational concepts. The founders of this nation new that, that's why they used REASON as the basis of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and NOT the Bible (reasonable Biblical ideals are present, but they are there because of their REASONABLENESS). Even the founders of America had to fight against CHRISTIAN fundamentalists who desired a more fundamentalist Christian nation. If you want to be a "good American", read the Declaration, the Constitution, AND the Bible with reason and logic in mind, you'll be much better off.

If you want rationality in our world, get rid of all religions, not just Islam. Lack of understanding got us wrapped up in this mess, bigoted tripe like this " Can a good Muslim be a good American" only adds to that lack of understanding.

Sean Barker
You can direct your complaints back to me directly, thank you.
ace9415@gmail.com

Darth Vader, Superman, and Christ's Deposition from the Cross

It is an escapable fact that we are products of the world we live in. We do not live in a vacuum, devoid of influence, but instead we are immersed in a constant barrage of sensations, thoughts and actions, be they our own or those of others. It is the “Nurture” end of the “Nature and Nurture” debate, it is our environment and we are affected by it at all moments of our lives. To discern the effects the world around us has on our own actions and ideas can be exceedingly difficult; how do we objectively view that which we cannot hope to stand outside of and observe? We instead have to make our observations from inside the box, from within our environment, with only our imaginations to help us step outside and gain some perspective.

The history of human kind is a story of our desire to reconcile the things we observe in the world around us with the questions that arise from our experiences. This ability to question that which we see is perhaps the most fundamental difference between us and the rest of life on the planet; or perhaps it is our ability to answer those questions for ourselves that truly sets us apart. Either way, as a consequence of our conscious viewing of our world, we long ago created religion, created myths, created God. To all questions God is the final answer, and is a deeply satisfying answer for most. "Why did _____ happen?" Answer; "God." The concept of God answers all questions, by the very nature of the idea of God, while simultaneously providing that which we desire in all our answers; comfort. The feeling that all is under control, that power exists to give order to that which is chaotic, to provide answers for all questions our conscious minds may create.

Over thousands of years we have added to and refined our religious ideals, creating edifices of extreme complexity and nuance which provide answers to any and all questions presented. The various ideas at the core of our beliefs have permeated culture, again to such a omnipresent degree that we can hardly be aware of their influence. They are everywhere, from birth to death, and we rarely, if ever, question them no matter how strange or thoroughly absurd they may be. For example, why is it that so many find the idea of Athena springing fully formed from the cracked open head of Zeus, or Aphrodite being born of the lopped off genitalia of Uranus falling into the sea comical, weird, childish even, while at the very same moment holding the idea of a virgin birth, parting seas, Sunday resurrections and six headed monsters sacred? These Christian ideals have saturated Western culture, become part of the public consciousness to such a degree that the very lunacy of their details no longer register to our minds. Their influence is immense, despite our lack of conscious awareness of their effects.

Central to the Christian paradigm is the idea of the single omnipotent and omniscient God. Catholics have been kind enough to define three versions of Him; God, the guy sitting up in heaven, Jesus, the manifestation of God that walked on earth, and the Holy Spirit, the unseen, all knowing, omni-present influence of God. While they decided that making these aspects more tangible and defined was their preferred route, these same basic constructs exist within all Christian concepts of a God. He is a person, Jesus was at least part of Him (and thusly was something more than human), and He has influence and power over all things in this world, whether He is seen or unseen. Lodged deep in the social consciousness after generations of exposure to these tenets is the idea that metaphysical power exists beyond what we experience ourselves each day, that people walking the earth can be in possession of that power, and that perhaps somewhere, someone is watching, someone with both the power to create and the power to destroy. We cannot escape the world in which we live, and the ideas swirl around us every moment of every day as our imaginations digest and synthesize this vortex of belief.

Most of the last thousand years of Western civilization revolved around the Church, and around the idea of our lives were lived in service to God, with Jesus our role model and savior. The Church provided for people, and the constant eye of God upon us simultaneously gave us hope for something better, though what were truly horrible conditions for life, and instilled fear of stepping out of line and incurring His wrath. Slowly, as society began to become independent of the Church, with the rise of industrialization, personal wealth, and the Church's failing ability to punish those that stepped outside its rules (for certainly in the end it was the wrath of the Church and not God that was ever incurred) people began to move away from their subservient roll in the world, began to see themselves as individuals interacting in the world around them, instead of secondary creatures being acted upon by God and the world He created.

The Ego began to grow, we began to become autonomous. But the influence of the concept of God, in all its forms and with its many centuries of social influence, did not disappear with our growing sense of self. It was sublimated and made to fit in with the lifestyle we were beginning to adopt; a lifestyle of self sufficiency, of human-centric society, of self rule. We ourselves started to become the focus of our own worship, for the first time in many thousands of years (the Greeks had gone down the same path in ancient history). Nationalism began to flourish, groups of people decided they were superior, that others were inferior, and not because God had decided it was so but because good and evil were perhaps something inherent in the human traits of individuals, God given or not. Good and evil were no longer necessarily the dictate of God, but could be determined by an individual’s abilities and powers as well. A shift from a paradigm centered on deistic strength to one centered on human abilities, strengths and weaknesses had begun.

Even a cursory look at Western history over the last few centuries will throw one into a world of equally spectacular achievements and atrocities, from profound scientific discoveries and invention to mass genocides and complete breakdowns of shared empathetic humanity. It was clear that we were capable of ever new heights of wonder and horror. While acts of great discovery and brutality were nothing new to recent centuries, there are unique qualities to these last few, aspects that had not existed before, mainly in the form of technological advances, though ideological shifts played a decisive role as well. The mass scale of the operations is one new aspect, furthered to a large degree by technological advances making it possible to effect invention and power over a larger area of the world. Technological advances also made it possible to make mass numbers of people aware and conscious of the events of the world, both good and bad. Everyone was made aware through the spread of mass media, ideas could spread like wild fire. Perhaps even more importantly these ideas could linger well beyond the events that had unfolded, in archives and books, where they could be studied and become a part of the social consciousness.

What was growing was a world populated by a strengthening sense of the individual’s power, while the power of religion over people was diminishing, or was at least taking a more subconscious roll in every day life. Interconnectivity was rising with the spread of technology, technologies that combined with various ideologies were creating humanitarian offenses of unprecedented scope. The social consciousness was consistently immersed in the entire affair, gathering and disseminating information around the globe. While word of the grand achievements of man and science certainly grabbed the attention and imagination, there was another force at work pulling us away from the grand and would focus our attention on the abhorrent.

Every idea must have its foil, its logical opposite, for its very definition to make sense. For up must have down, light must have dark, white must have black, and good must have evil. Monotheistic religion has always embraced this fact, with most deistic traditions creating not only a God of infinite good, but some entity of infinite evil. Sublimated just as deeply in the minds of all Christian society as the notion of God and Jesus’ goodness is the notion of Satan’s evil. This was evil as an inherent trait, as a trait known of, accepted and embraced by the evil party. This concept of inherent recognized evil is one profoundly familiar to all in Western culture, despite the ironic fact that most people deemed to be evil would not claim the title if asked. Did Tomas de Torquemada think he was evil, or that he was in fact ridding Europe of evil? Did Mao Tse-tung think of himself as evil, or did he believe he was doing right in the world by killing off tens of millions of Chinese in his bid to bring Communism to China? Of course the grand case of all is Hitler. Did he think of himself as evil? No, like all people we deem evil he had reasons for his actions that he believed were good, however irrational and destructive those beliefs were. While evil may exist, it rarely exists in the minds of the wicked, but resides instead in the minds of their victims.

But this distinction is rarely if ever made, if but because we accept so fully the idea that evil can be an innate trait, that the evil doer can and does know that he is evil, relishes the fact, and acts accordingly. Just as one concept of God is of an unseen, all present force of good in the world, the collective imagination envisions entities of vast evil, waiting to pounce and prey upon us, to harm us and take whatever happiness we may posses away. These visions inspire fear in each of us and in our societies, and for most of history they were completely imaginary creatures like demons, monsters, Satan himself or those he controlled (for example witches). As wars of increasingly heinous duration and carnage or individuals of exceptional brutality increased in the world, and as people’s awareness of their atrocities grew, the faces of evil began to move from the mythic realm and took on human faces, real human faces. Evil was real, there were real people doing horrible things, and our lives could be and were impacted by their evil. A culture of fear was on the rise right along side rise of the culture of the individual, the culture of technology, and the culture of secularism.

We bathe in this world of swirling notions of God, holy power, evil power, human power, and all that these things imply, along with news and information of world events spread in text and later along the airwaves. Our imaginations cannot help but process these factors, to sublimate and recreate our experiences, our desires, our dreams into the world around us. It is our nature to create, and what would we create in this rapidly changing new world?

From a combination of ideas of metaphysical deistic power, scientific power, power of the individual, and a need to face the evils in an ever more fearful world we created Super Heroes. People imbued with powers greater than reality dictated could exist, who could battle forces of fear and evil where we could not. They were something different than previous heroes, people like Sherlock Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel or even Tarzan, all of who possessed great skill, but nothing that would quality as a “super power”. Even mythological heroes who possessed abilities akin to the modern Super Hero all derived their powers from some divine source, be they sons or daughters of gods, vessels for the powers of gods, or working magics stemming from divine or demonic sources. The super abilities did not originate from within these individuals, it came from some source outside themselves. Super Heroes have powers intrinsic to their very beings, deriving either from within themselves or from some man-made event.

In the 20^th century, we found ourselves often powerless in the face of the events around the world. In past centuries we had looked to the power of God to help us through the times we felt powerless, but God had moved farther and farther from the social consciousness, pushed away from real world events into a metaphysical realm of religiosity. There he dealt with biblical evils, while we were left to deal with the human evils of nuclear bombs, genocide, Communists, and curiously, as we looked toward the vastness of space, space invaders. While these things might have been said to be “Godless”, they were hardly “of the Devil” and for that reason hardly up to God to come down and fix. Especially in the case of space invaders, who have been relatively devoid of links to religion, though their links to Communists are interestingly many.

In the face of these terrifying events and the people behind them, our imaginations ran wild. Just as we created Super Heroes to battle the evils of the world, we also went to work creating foes equally as compelling and powerful for our new gods to do battle with. The Super Villain became as integral to the idea of Super Heroes as the heroes themselves, at times taking on personas larger and even more lasting. If asked to name one character from the Star Wars movies, can we guess who would most often be named? Darth Vader looms far more pervasively in our public consciousness than the whiney Luke Skywalker ever will, certainly more than the suave (but superpower-less) Hans Solo. Other Super Villains of note who nearly eclipse their Super Hero counterparts include Magneto of the X-Men, the Joker (at least in the first Batman movie), and comically, Dr. Evil from Austin powers. The Super Villain gives a face to the unseen evil in the world, an evil that knows itself and revels in its own heinousness.

Our sense of powerlessness leads us to create those that are powerful, just as thousands of years ago we created the notion of God, Jesus and Satan when faced with a world we did not understand and which we had little to no power over. We created Super Heroes, once again as reflections of ourselves, with power to defend and defeat the evil we faced in the world. These individuals had replaced God, and even Jesus, in our minds as forces of good that acted upon the earth to fight the forces of evil. For matters of spiritual crisis, Jesus was your go to man, but if a nuclear irradiated super bug being controlled by a sociopathic mad man were your trouble, Jesus was hardly who you called.

Adding to the appeal of the Super Hero was something that neither God nor even Jesus had; Super Heroes are us, they are human. While Jesus may be the prototypical Man With Super Power, even Jesus is seen to be a manifestation of God, or at best a human being who was begot by God. He is removed from us, he resides on another plain, he is divine and we are not. Super heroes may have a multitude of sources for their power, but none of those sources are divine. In the end they are human beings like the rest of us*, and this adds an interesting new twist to the story; we want to be them.

(*This I believe is one of the reasons we have seen a falling off in the popularity of Superman; he is an alien. He is not human, no matter how much he may look like us and act like us, in the end he is an alien. He is distanced from us, we can never be like him. But the X-Men? Spiderman? Batman? The TV show Heroes? They are all us, we can be them.)

We all want to be super, to possess power over the world in which we reside, and with the idea of the Super Hero suddenly we can be. No longer do we need divine intervention, which was becoming less and less desirable as God became more and more removed from our sense of reality. We no longer believed in the divine as real and tangible, so why should be put the hopes of our own ascension to greatness in it? A simple radiation experiment gone wrong, cellular mutations, spider bites, genetic manipulation; all these things could now lead to our becoming super, to our having power over our world, power that we do not currently posses. These causes were things we experienced, tangibly and physically in our every day lives, we could believe in them because we knew they were real, whether the imagined fantastic results of these things were realistic or not. Instead of some unseen “god”, we had science on our side.

Any religious person reading this would have by now certainly been overcome with anxiety over the idea that we as a people are moving away from a God-centric society, only to replace our supreme roll models with mere humans with laser beams zipping from their eyeballs. So for their sake it will be asked; what are the ramifications of replacing the Divine with the Human?

By its nature the divine (setting the Christian paradigm of the divine as our own here) is separate from us, it is beyond us, it is something that while me may aspire to reach, it will never be us and we can never hope to become divine ourselves. This has both negative and positive influences. On the negative side, since it is removed from our humanity we ultimately cannot relate to it on a human level. It will always be something other than we are, always separate always distant, always out of reach. Instead we relate ourselves to the divine through our imagination, through or drives and desires for comfort, power, and answers, not through any shared common humanity. Combine our inherent separation from the divine with its intrinsic and pervasive power structure and you have breeding ground rife with instability. Here is an institution with vast power over our imaginations, yet it is always beyond our grasp. This instability often leads to forms of delusions, like religious fundamentalism and beliefs of an individual or a group’s own divinity. Also, as with any removed and dominating power source, there is the possibility of simple rebellion, like a child acting out against an overly domineering parent, an act which quite often takes an unhealthy bend.

There is an interesting benefit to this separation we have from the divine though, especially in the context of hero worship. Since the divine is something beyond the scope of our own humanity, we don’t often feel real pressure to BE a god. We may be pressured to act in a way “pleasing to God”, much like pleasing a parent, but not often are we asked to walk on water, rain lightening bolts down on wrong doers, or create existence. These things are clearly beyond our powers, and while flights of whimsy and imagination may make us wonder about having those powers (and occasionally the insane think they do), we don’t usually have to deliver on the goods.

Is this case the same when it comes to super human powers, as opposed to super divine powers? We all feel today the pressure to be more than we are, to run ever faster, to jump higher, to know more, to read faster, to program more code, to make more, more and then more. We are being pushed to ever higher standards. Our base knowledge of subjects across the board is expected to be higher than ever before in human history, and to compete in the workplace we must face off against those who have elevated their skills often to near super human levels. We are often told that there will “always be someone better than we are”, but now that someone is sitting in the cubical next to ours, and we are being compared to them.

Those that do seem to possess super human gifts (prodigy musicians, spelling bee winners, kids graduating at 14 and going to Harvard) are often worshiped in a way quite similar to the way we worship our Super Heroes; we marvel at them, we wish we could do what they do. But since these people are actual human beings and not fictional characters we also envy them, and often despise them. It is the fiction in Super Heroes, like the fiction in God, that keeps envy at bay. Certainly if God were sitting next to us in class or at work, we would not feel so reverent about Him, but may be filled the opposite emotion when he waves his hands over his SAT’s and gets a perfect score while we struggle our way through our 14^th syllogism. We can’t help but compare ourselves to those with abilities greater than our own. As we compare ourselves to other people with great skill we often find ourselves lacking, since they are human just like us and we should be able to do what they can do.

Do we in fact do the same with the fictional characters though?

If fact yes, we find ourselves lacking in the face of Super Heroes as well. We think “if only I was like that, then I could effect change. But I am not like that, and so I can’t.” We feel powerless and helpless in the face of the world’s greater problems, wishing we had more influence and power than we have, looking at characters that do, and imagining ourselves as sub par. We have sublimated both the “super” and the “sub” into ourselves, believing ourselves simultaneously capable of super powers and wildly inferior since we fail to have them.

How powerful are we though? What are the limits of human ability? Does our desire for super human powers make us over look those powers we can actually posses? We will never fly, we will never shoot lasers from our eyes, we will never control the weather with our minds let alone lift an object with it, we will never have a prehensile tail, we will not shoot webs from our hands. We will not even have a utility belt that allows us to swing from roof tops and battle the forces of evil with our amazing karate skills. These things are works of fiction, our imaginations at their best. We created God and we created Superheroes, out of a desire to ourselves be something more.

Take for example a woman interviewed on an episode of the radio show This American Life, who set as her goal learning all the skills she would need to be a super hero; martial arts, flight training, survival training, gymnastics, etc.etc. She spent most of her teens and twenties marking things off the long list of abilities she had compiled. She achieved nearly all of them too, and then set out to apply for the job she thought would most allow her to use those abilities; a job with the CIA. Despite all her considerable skills and abilities, she was turned down, twice, with no reason given either time. She ended up going to work with a private investigation firm, traveling the globe pulling off risky missions of investigation and manipulation. During her interview with the radio producer, as she was about to leave for another trip to Central America, a potentially dangerous trip, she sat down in the airport and had a small breakdown. Because she was afraid of the possible danger? No, because she was afraid the people she met there would not like her.

The interviewer did not dive any deeper into the psyche of the woman, but instead let the story speak for itself. While any human’s drives and desires are more often than not complex beyond measure, one thing was clear here; despite her near “super powers”, in the end what she feared most was not being liked. In the end, despite all our desires for super powers for the protection of the world, it is ourselves we wish to protect and save.

We desire something to look up to, something we see as bigger and better than ourselves. This may be merely a byproduct of the Judeo-Christian tradition we are raised in, but it seems to be more of an innate trait we possess, part of the social bonding process we are genetically encoded for. Through much of Western culture’s history it was God and Jesus that we looked up to most, these divine and amazing creations of our imaginations that made us feel safe and powerful, and who we could try to emulate and aspire to become, even if it was only in our imaginations.

With the rise of a more secular population, and even more importantly a more inherently secular view of the world held by even religious people, the supremacy of religious models has fallen away, deposed by our latest creations, our heroes and villains. We desired something new, something closer to ourselves, something tangible yet still greater than us and equally able to protect or terrify. More like us, more human, more attainable, more rooted in our current real world, they capture our imaginations and our emotions more than even God can at this point. Our hero worship is based on our desire to be something more than we are and to have power over a world in which our power is seemingly little. We emulate them, we imagine what our own super powers would be, how we would effect our worlds with that power, and how we would be safer and better liked if we had them.

We have more power than we give ourselves credit for though. We may never fly by ourselves, but we have created machines that take us to the skies and beyond. We can’t stop bullets with our chests, but we can stop them from being fired with some empathy and some intelligent diplomacy. The powers that we do posses in our lives may not capture our imaginations quite the way shape shifting, telekinesis, space/time continuum manipulation, or unfettered physical strength do, but we are not powerless over our worlds. Will we take part in the world around us? Will we effect change through the powers we do posses; the power to communicate, to empathize, to imagine, to love.

We can choose to be super if we wish to be, the question is; will we choose to be a super hero or choose to be a super villain? The world is in our hands, no Gods or Super Heroes will appear to bail us out, and the only villains out there are ourselves. The choices we will make will save us or destroy us, and it is our imaginations that will shape our choices and tell the story.