http://www.dailykos.com/user/snafubar
Diaries published: 178
Comments posted: 12177 (6 days since last comment on Tue Jul 05, 2011 at 10:24 PM EDT)
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Comment frequency: frequent
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Total Comment Ratings: 29547
Most Recommended Diary: They're gone. I was close. I'm still curled up in a ball. (UPDATE), 492 comments, 436 recommends
People Following snafubar: 60
There's a little skull and crossbones where there used to be five bars out of five that measured "mojo"
Here's the comment I'd like to ask the blog moderators (or the one who created the algorithm that triggers the autoban)
When someone says
"That you would uprate a piece of shit diary like this tells me all I need to know about you"
That means someone else wrote a diary, it pissed a lot of people off, but I thought it made a valid point. Five others did; about 190 voted against it.
Now - regardless of what the subject of the diary was (it was about the use of the word "pussy" by men in locker rooms and whether or not it makes sense for women to go on crusades about sexism when that happens)
what is a more significant measure of why/how our society is coming apart
Men using "pussy" in the locker room to insult other men (by *gasp* comparing them to women) and ignoring that women take offense to it
or
A community so shallow that after five years, 12,000 comments, 192 essays/diaries, and 60 people "following" me
that a person's entire worth, character, contribution, or value to anyone can be determined by one or just a few comments on a blog.
If our society is that shallow
if all it takes to learn "all one needs to know" about another person
can be learned by having actually experienced so little of what constitutes them as an individual
perhaps I will be so bold to suggest that the shallowness is our bigger problem.
Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song in 1970 called "The Boxer"
People go where they know they will like things. They avoid things they don't like. Surprisingly, they get the impression that things work pretty well and everybody gets along....until that moment when something rubs them the wrong way and they say
"HEY! That upsets me, we don't want that here"
Well, the other guy obviously did, so now it's a competition over who belongs and who doesn't.
This is not new, this is not unique
but if the answer is always to scatter off where we all see things the same way and build a fence to keep out anyone who doesn't
or make it easier to pick off anyone coming over the top
"community" is starting to lose it's meaning.
That I can be summarily judged a sexist - a person who denigrates, opposes, hinders, ridicules, belittles, or otherwise obstructs to a person just because of their gender - all because I say that the use of the word "pussy" does in itself NOT make me a sexist -
That some people do
may I suggest this may have some bearing on our problem.
I think we've lost the plot
I also told a story how the political left takes a lot of shit for their hysterial overreach on matters that DO have legitimacy; when the minutae is carried so far that somehow the legitimacy of the more important hunt is lost because too may people have been lost in the weeds on a red herring.
Someone who turns down a job candidate because he's a male and she's a female - that's a sexist
The kind of guy who says a woman is nothing more than a life support system for a cunt - that's sexist
the guy who says to become apoplectic because two guys in a locker room where no women were even close called each other "pussy" because - well, that seems to be what guys in locker rooms do -
both those guys may go home and treat their wives and daughters and mothers and bosses and employees with all due respect
And yet still people insist that from the conversation in the locker room, they know all they need to know
Someone who says that it's a fools errand to try to control people's language because it saps energy from other more legitimate sources of the problem
that's not a sexist.
So to dismiss the entire value of one person's contribution to the effort,
to say that such a simple and brief encounter tells one "all (they) need to know about you"
may I suggest that could be a bigger part of the larger problem.
People congregate because we have greater strength together than we have individually.
That the minute we gather we start sequestering ourselves again into smaller groups within the whole
and talking about people as "them" who only moments earlier were part of the "us" that was in league against the other "them"
well, when you meet a guy like me who has few friends and now spends most of his time alone no longer daring to make others
perhaps this example will
nah, who am I kidding. it won't mean a thing
That I do not hate women
that I have stood with them in their defense
that I have given to help them
worked to help them
on an individual basis as people who had as much need as I did and I recognized it
...and never have tried to exclude them merely because they were women
somehow I'm still a sexist because I think it's a fool's errand to go apeshit because some guy used the word "pussy" to describe -
who cares
it wasn't to a woman, it wasn't about a woman
but some woman who had no dog in the fight
was sure that there was a larger fight that needed fighting that day
and knew - without knowing anything else about me -
"all she needed to know about me"
from a dozen comments on one day about one diary
that made sense to enough people to send me on my way.
It's amazing I was able to keep all that a secret for five years, 192 diaries, 12,000 comments, with 60 followers in tow.
For those of you who know me, I have a story that I tell, and I made some overtures in this spirit during the pissing contest that ended in this banning,
you can find examples of this not only in psycology, sociology, history - or your local new outlet -
if a person who is NOT ostensibly a real example of some label he keeps getting slapped with
enough people slap that label on him over and over
enough people ignore him when he says that label is not enough to describe all that he is and what he's about
some day
some moment
some trigger is pulled inside that man (person)
and the words
"well, if I'm going to be taking all the shit for this thing that I don't believe I am,
regardless of how hard I'm trying to show that I am not this thing I am being labelled
I might as well start going out of my way and deliberately engaging in all those things that will surely get me labelled as this thing people are sure I am
and get some fucking mileage for all this grief I'm taking now."
...cross his mind.
My only real strength in this life, being the spiteful bastard I am, is to not become that which people assail me for being, just to prove they didn't get me.
That some people still bang their drum to gather a crowd and scream to them "THERE'S THE WITCH!"...
...to our sober and astute readers, is how people get pushed into places they had no intention of ever going
and why I have little sympathy and less forgiveness for those rubberneckers who slow down at a car crash and say
"Holy shit, look at that! Wow! I wonder how that happened?"
Don't bullshit yourself -
they don't care how it happened.
Because you know
that two miles earlier on that very same highway
only a short distance in time and space from that wicked and horrible wreck that "shocks" them
they were likely engaged in about five of the seven bad driving habits that led to the wreck that now has them stuck in traffic and going so slowly that they can see the mangled bodies bleeding in the mangled cars.
When a guy snaps
either homocide
suicide
or just plain "you're fired, we don't tolerate that"
all the people who think whatever it led to was just unacceptable and unforgivable
...five minutes earlier would have been the very same people who were arguing with that same person for 59 rounds...
...who drew a line somehow at round 60 and said that the OTHER guy had gone TOO far.
and so it goes.
2011/07/11
2011/04/17
Save the lottery tickets. The "ejected" man was pronounced dead.
http://standardspeaker.com/breaking-news/man-involved-in-rt-93-crash-dies-1.1133824
Regarding my last post, I mean no disrespect to this man, his family, or his memory, but my point in posting this is that this should not be a headline.
Two reasons, really; people ought not to be dying for such pointless and preventable reasons - and people who do ought to be put in such a place of prominence that their galactic stupidity and recklessness is held on a level of those who juggle chainsaws.
So, what are you afraid of?
Regarding my last post, I mean no disrespect to this man, his family, or his memory, but my point in posting this is that this should not be a headline.
Two reasons, really; people ought not to be dying for such pointless and preventable reasons - and people who do ought to be put in such a place of prominence that their galactic stupidity and recklessness is held on a level of those who juggle chainsaws.
So, what are you afraid of?
Another day, another car crash. Another ejected driver.
I was expecting to see another fatality here, but no, surprisingly despite being ejected from the vehicle, this man lived. May his injuries not be crippling. I did not see anything in the article that explicitly says he was not wearing his seat belt, but being ejected from the vehicle is an indication.
After the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, I wrote an essay titled "What Are You Afraid Of?" I related people's willingness to send US troops anywhere in the world to "protect us" and "save lives" no matter what the cost in blood and treasure; meanwhile 25,000 people every year still die in car accidents - and still 20 percent of them won't wear a seat belt. Months can pass without reading of a local person killed in the war zone; yet hardly a day can pass in the Standard Speaker without articles recounting deaths from car accidents, violent crime, domestic disputes, a lifetime of unhealthy habits, and a surreal number of house fires.
People fear terrorists and think their lives hang in the balance if the US is not all over the world "protecting" them, yet like this driver, the same people will spend the money to buy a Mercedes-Benz because it's known as a safe car, and still not wear their seat belt.
I suggest that he immediately devote the rest of his assets to buying lottery tickets, because he's just proven he's a wizard at beating the odds.
I also predict those who know me, and those who read this story will use this as yet another example of a person who did not wear their seat belt and nevertheless still lived to tell the tale. (again, may he recover from his injuries, described as "critical")
They will decry the "nanny state" which has the temerity to mandate seatbelt use, while they echo proud libertarian fantasies about wind-through-the-hair motocyclists without helmets and "I don't want to get trapped in my car if there's a fire" nightmares that are always the rare exception to the statistical facts.
Seat belts were not invented by the government. No, they were first invented - and requested - by those pilots who watched their fellow airmen die, not in a fiery obliteration of their aircraft, but in 'survivable' crash landings where they simply bounced too hard off the inside of the cockpit. Carrier landings would be lethal without a seat belt, even if the pilot was perfect.
And so, despite the testimony of Mr. Mulligan, the man who lives on this road and recounts for us the frequency of accidents, and despite the statistics that count the dead 9 to 1 amongst those who forsake seatbelts over those who wear them, this particular accident will probably become another tale recounted at parties for those who want to believe in the 1 in 10,000 exception and ignore the 9,999 headstones.
Ask someone if they want to jump out of their car window at 40 MPH, and they look at you in horror that you dared to even ask such a ludicrous thing. The same people will suggest that they want to get "thrown clear" of the car in an accident and don't realize it's the same proposition. Then there's all that stuff in the way of being thrown "clear", like windshields and dashboards.
I'm sure a quick phone call to anyone at Mercedes-Benz will be able to connect you to any engineer who helped designed precisely this car who will tell you that they do not intend for the passengers to be ejected.
A New York State Trooper visited my elementary school in the early 70's, and told us always to wear a seatbelt. This was old news and a habit already for me, because my dad was a mechanical engineer and refused to start the engine of any car he was driving until all the passengers, including the stubborn ones, were wearing their seatbelts. But the trooper spoke an enigmatic sentence to a then 7-year-old that fascinates me now that I'm in my 40's . He said,
"In my 30 years on the force, I've never had to remove the seat belt from a dead body".
...because if they were wearing one, the person survived the wreck and unbelted themselves, and the ones who weren't wearing one were thrown from the vehicle; and therefore did not need the trooper to remove a seat belt that wasn't there. The only people touching the bodies at that point were from the ambulance crew or the coroner's office.
My congratulations to the survivor of the accident. My only wish is that he doesn't brag about it.
When, if he recovers fully from his injuries, I'd like to meet him some day and ask him if he will wears one after this event or not.
Oh, and "water runoff" does not cause accidents; people not paying attention to water on the road and driving too fast for conditions causes accidents.
All the people who drove through it safely can attest to that.
2011/02/08
People will die. Those remaining will yawn and continue on as before
Blogging is a strange beast; I'm not so deluded to think that before we all had the freedom to say whatever we wanted and be heard by a larger audience than ever before, that the world was more peaceful and harmonious place. But it wasn't so easy then to prove that even though it's easier to talk to anyone than ever before, now there's nothing left to talk about without some form of violence.
I've learned in recent years that most Americans only get along at the level we do because we're too shallow to even know who each other is in the first place. Once we start "sharing" our true feelings, all of this networking tears apart as many relationships as it creates.
We only maintain the most minimal of contact precisely because to know how much we would find out that we hate each other over things we never knew. I have not yet come up with the right word for this yet - the opposite of networking - "splintering", maybe. Although the internet has allowed us to reveal more of ourselves and meet new people with like minds (networking), and in the end made it harder and harder for there to be any interaction at all beyond the weather.
(I was going to say that at least we can still talk about the weather because the weather can't be blamed on anyone, but then I thought in the context of climate change, you and I both know two people can find that as a reason to burn a friendship to the ground)
What is overwhelming me is the realization that given the vitriol, abject hatred, and dehumanizing indifference between total strangers, now lifelong friends who are finding more out about each other than they knew before, and becoming strangers by neccessity. Until we "shared" so much, it was not yet obvious that the only reason any relationship existed was because we didn't know who each other was.
"Friends" I thought I had 25 years ago reintroduce themselves into my life through Facebook, and when I read their profiles I have to close my mouth to keep my keyboard clean. Really? People have somehow never figured out that if one's views on life and society involve a lot of hatred, condemnation, and vitriol of "them" in the abstract, sooner or later one of "those people" will turn out to be someone they once thought of as a friend. One can hate the figurative, rhetorical "Them" as an ambiguous and anonymous construct, but once you find out that a friend you've had for decades falls under the same classification, aw...crap, really?
By then its a little late to walk backwards to that moment when I wasn't "them" in the eyes of a friend.
"oh, well, I don't mean that about YOU, dear friend, but I do have those views about __________ (insert generic classification here)", and they subconsciously switch on the cognitive dissonance and ignore that their old friend is a member of "them".
Cognitive dissonance is a sinister beast; it allows people to internally ignore two contraditory thoughts within their own head. Blogging has now become so personal, with Facebook and Twitter and all manner of political and religous blogs that when the fury and antipathy being expressed about "THEM" suddenly reveals itself as a living, breathing, walking, talking example of humanity with a name and a familiar face - well, now the shit hit the fan, didn't it?
Pointing the fan in a different direction or running it backwards does little to bring the shit back to it's original anonymity.
Somewhere in my past was the adage that "polite people do not politics, religion, or sex". Sex is the one that, believe it or not, is the least volitile of the three; you can at least be vague and although the conversation dies quietly as long as specific details were left out; but they'll at least get the idea and nobody blushes or leaves the room.
Politics, and now that religion has been "married" (ha!) to it by one political party, has now made almost every innocuous conversation to ultimately be a series of zero-sum equations; for one point of view to "win", the other must "lose". And of course, the views all have to be farther and farther toward the poles and away from one another to have any significant reason to be attractive or repulsive enough to sway people's views in the first place - every comment is a live grenade, and the grenades are bigger, now with more shrapnel!.
What depresses me - and I hate that word "depressed", I wanted to say "demoralizes" because that's more accurate, but it's deeper than that - is that we literally have to lie about who we are and how we feel to have any peace at all.
In a court of law, the crime of perjury is committed even in the absense of evidence; if you know something and you don't reveal it (and it can be proven you knew it and did not reveal it when asked under direct examiniation) that's against the law. But in polite (ha!) conversation, one had better leave all but the most evident characteristics of your personality and beliefs out completely, or already have your path to the exit cleared or some kind of weapon within reach. The more someone knows, the more reason they have to attack you, hate you, or distance themselves from you. As a result, now that we have more ways to communicate than ever before, the conversations have become so shallow and empty of substance that they're effectively worthless. Anything more substantive than that is too volitile to mention at all unless your health insurance deductable has been satisfied for the year.
Makes "freedom" (TM) and "liberty" as professed by all those self-proclaimed patriots kind of a joke: I may have the "freedom" to say a lot of things and the "liberty" to hold certain views, because the civil code is not permitted to interrupt me; but if the crowd I'm standing in at the time I feel inspired to reveal a particular idea simply will not tolerate it, it matters little that the law protects my opportunity to express it.
I got into a flamewar online about religion; people who are absolutely horrified that anyone might belittle or disparage their faith/religion - even if it's not about them specifically, but rather words and actions of another who represents their faith - were feeling put-upon and claimed there was "bigotry" against religion in the room. Those same people have utterly no awareness that it is their own position that has presented a zero-sum situation; their views are sacred, and they must be allowed to assert and defend them; yet at the same time those people don't recognize, or don't acknowledge that it is their view who have excluded, condemned, or ridiculed anyone else.
So.
Guns.
Abortion.
Taxes.
Religion.
Those are all off the table. Of course, they're all still issues that directly or indirectly affect each one of our lives, but now we can't talk about them lest someone be offended. And the frequency with which someone is easly offended (while utterly oblivious to how pointed their views belittle and offend everyone else) is getting too much for me to endure.
I don't mind a conflict when the rules are the same, but that's not what's happening.
Religious people talk of "bigotry" against their faith; yet they have no understanding that if their faith is as much "truth" and "proof" as they insist it is, that makes everyone else but the other members of their faith quite a fool and, according to their faith, destined without hope to quite a miserable eternity. They will tell you not to quesiton or challenge or belittle their faith for they find it offensive; yet they can't understand why it might be offensive to me, that if their faith really is true, my future is going to be horrific and unthinkably tortured. In fact, I am sure that's the point that those who embrace their faith want everyone to know - in the abstract. Christians want all the apostates, atheists, and members of any other religion to know that anyone but a 'good' Christian will face Hell for all eternity - at least to everyone who's not in the room.
When I say to my "friend" - "hey, you do realize that you're talking specifically about me, right?" - suddenly they looked shocked, as if to say, "well, I did not want my friends to suffer, but...(long, awkward pause)...yes, that is indeed what my religion says, you will suffer in Hell".
Gun rights, abortion rights, taxes - they've all become zero-sum conflicts that are as intractable as the alleged tortures of Hell. Either one side wins, and they care not who loses as long as it's not them, or the whole conversation has to be scrapped. If the conversation goes on too long, and suddenly it's obvious that the "THEM" who are so reviled by one group happens to turn out to be represented by a few of the people in that very room...now everyone has to look at the walls, the table - anywhere but directly in the eyes of the others in the room who were just revealed as "them" -
You have your views; I have mine. Generally, we never interact. Each of us has our own 'circle' of influence; people who have interaction and influence on us through their behavior, and we have our own power to affect the lives of others through our interaction with those people we encounter in our daily affairs.
Normally, most of that interaction only occurs at the shallowest levels; "how's the weather", "who won the game last night" kind of stuff; and since not much of that is any big deal, not a lot of conflict arises.
But now that "freedom" (TM) has been somehow adopted to mean that each individual has the unalienable right to think and act on whatever they want without reservation or apology, there's suddenly a lot more of bricks being figuratively thrown at people's heads and a lot more occasions where the room just empties out and acquaintences are abandoned just to keep the violence at bay.
I've grown grim, very grim.
We - humankind - has more ways to communicate, easier ways that happen instantaneously across all boundaries than ever before; and it seems we're only using them to divide each other.
I wrote a blog post the other day that included a change in the name of our country:
"The United States of - You Gotta Be Kidding, Right?"
I've learned in recent years that most Americans only get along at the level we do because we're too shallow to even know who each other is in the first place. Once we start "sharing" our true feelings, all of this networking tears apart as many relationships as it creates.
We only maintain the most minimal of contact precisely because to know how much we would find out that we hate each other over things we never knew. I have not yet come up with the right word for this yet - the opposite of networking - "splintering", maybe. Although the internet has allowed us to reveal more of ourselves and meet new people with like minds (networking), and in the end made it harder and harder for there to be any interaction at all beyond the weather.
(I was going to say that at least we can still talk about the weather because the weather can't be blamed on anyone, but then I thought in the context of climate change, you and I both know two people can find that as a reason to burn a friendship to the ground)
What is overwhelming me is the realization that given the vitriol, abject hatred, and dehumanizing indifference between total strangers, now lifelong friends who are finding more out about each other than they knew before, and becoming strangers by neccessity. Until we "shared" so much, it was not yet obvious that the only reason any relationship existed was because we didn't know who each other was.
"Friends" I thought I had 25 years ago reintroduce themselves into my life through Facebook, and when I read their profiles I have to close my mouth to keep my keyboard clean. Really? People have somehow never figured out that if one's views on life and society involve a lot of hatred, condemnation, and vitriol of "them" in the abstract, sooner or later one of "those people" will turn out to be someone they once thought of as a friend. One can hate the figurative, rhetorical "Them" as an ambiguous and anonymous construct, but once you find out that a friend you've had for decades falls under the same classification, aw...crap, really?
By then its a little late to walk backwards to that moment when I wasn't "them" in the eyes of a friend.
"oh, well, I don't mean that about YOU, dear friend, but I do have those views about __________ (insert generic classification here)", and they subconsciously switch on the cognitive dissonance and ignore that their old friend is a member of "them".
Cognitive dissonance is a sinister beast; it allows people to internally ignore two contraditory thoughts within their own head. Blogging has now become so personal, with Facebook and Twitter and all manner of political and religous blogs that when the fury and antipathy being expressed about "THEM" suddenly reveals itself as a living, breathing, walking, talking example of humanity with a name and a familiar face - well, now the shit hit the fan, didn't it?
Pointing the fan in a different direction or running it backwards does little to bring the shit back to it's original anonymity.
Somewhere in my past was the adage that "polite people do not politics, religion, or sex". Sex is the one that, believe it or not, is the least volitile of the three; you can at least be vague and although the conversation dies quietly as long as specific details were left out; but they'll at least get the idea and nobody blushes or leaves the room.
Politics, and now that religion has been "married" (ha!) to it by one political party, has now made almost every innocuous conversation to ultimately be a series of zero-sum equations; for one point of view to "win", the other must "lose". And of course, the views all have to be farther and farther toward the poles and away from one another to have any significant reason to be attractive or repulsive enough to sway people's views in the first place - every comment is a live grenade, and the grenades are bigger, now with more shrapnel!.
What depresses me - and I hate that word "depressed", I wanted to say "demoralizes" because that's more accurate, but it's deeper than that - is that we literally have to lie about who we are and how we feel to have any peace at all.
In a court of law, the crime of perjury is committed even in the absense of evidence; if you know something and you don't reveal it (and it can be proven you knew it and did not reveal it when asked under direct examiniation) that's against the law. But in polite (ha!) conversation, one had better leave all but the most evident characteristics of your personality and beliefs out completely, or already have your path to the exit cleared or some kind of weapon within reach. The more someone knows, the more reason they have to attack you, hate you, or distance themselves from you. As a result, now that we have more ways to communicate than ever before, the conversations have become so shallow and empty of substance that they're effectively worthless. Anything more substantive than that is too volitile to mention at all unless your health insurance deductable has been satisfied for the year.
Makes "freedom" (TM) and "liberty" as professed by all those self-proclaimed patriots kind of a joke: I may have the "freedom" to say a lot of things and the "liberty" to hold certain views, because the civil code is not permitted to interrupt me; but if the crowd I'm standing in at the time I feel inspired to reveal a particular idea simply will not tolerate it, it matters little that the law protects my opportunity to express it.
I got into a flamewar online about religion; people who are absolutely horrified that anyone might belittle or disparage their faith/religion - even if it's not about them specifically, but rather words and actions of another who represents their faith - were feeling put-upon and claimed there was "bigotry" against religion in the room. Those same people have utterly no awareness that it is their own position that has presented a zero-sum situation; their views are sacred, and they must be allowed to assert and defend them; yet at the same time those people don't recognize, or don't acknowledge that it is their view who have excluded, condemned, or ridiculed anyone else.
So.
Guns.
Abortion.
Taxes.
Religion.
Those are all off the table. Of course, they're all still issues that directly or indirectly affect each one of our lives, but now we can't talk about them lest someone be offended. And the frequency with which someone is easly offended (while utterly oblivious to how pointed their views belittle and offend everyone else) is getting too much for me to endure.
I don't mind a conflict when the rules are the same, but that's not what's happening.
Religious people talk of "bigotry" against their faith; yet they have no understanding that if their faith is as much "truth" and "proof" as they insist it is, that makes everyone else but the other members of their faith quite a fool and, according to their faith, destined without hope to quite a miserable eternity. They will tell you not to quesiton or challenge or belittle their faith for they find it offensive; yet they can't understand why it might be offensive to me, that if their faith really is true, my future is going to be horrific and unthinkably tortured. In fact, I am sure that's the point that those who embrace their faith want everyone to know - in the abstract. Christians want all the apostates, atheists, and members of any other religion to know that anyone but a 'good' Christian will face Hell for all eternity - at least to everyone who's not in the room.
When I say to my "friend" - "hey, you do realize that you're talking specifically about me, right?" - suddenly they looked shocked, as if to say, "well, I did not want my friends to suffer, but...(long, awkward pause)...yes, that is indeed what my religion says, you will suffer in Hell".
Gun rights, abortion rights, taxes - they've all become zero-sum conflicts that are as intractable as the alleged tortures of Hell. Either one side wins, and they care not who loses as long as it's not them, or the whole conversation has to be scrapped. If the conversation goes on too long, and suddenly it's obvious that the "THEM" who are so reviled by one group happens to turn out to be represented by a few of the people in that very room...now everyone has to look at the walls, the table - anywhere but directly in the eyes of the others in the room who were just revealed as "them" -
You have your views; I have mine. Generally, we never interact. Each of us has our own 'circle' of influence; people who have interaction and influence on us through their behavior, and we have our own power to affect the lives of others through our interaction with those people we encounter in our daily affairs.
Normally, most of that interaction only occurs at the shallowest levels; "how's the weather", "who won the game last night" kind of stuff; and since not much of that is any big deal, not a lot of conflict arises.
But now that "freedom" (TM) has been somehow adopted to mean that each individual has the unalienable right to think and act on whatever they want without reservation or apology, there's suddenly a lot more of bricks being figuratively thrown at people's heads and a lot more occasions where the room just empties out and acquaintences are abandoned just to keep the violence at bay.
I've grown grim, very grim.
We - humankind - has more ways to communicate, easier ways that happen instantaneously across all boundaries than ever before; and it seems we're only using them to divide each other.
I wrote a blog post the other day that included a change in the name of our country:
"The United States of - You Gotta Be Kidding, Right?"
2011/01/13
And So It Goes...
I used to post on some popular blogs.
I've learned something.
I really don't exist, none of us do really.
Open your mouth and speak your mind, and you will be told by other people who are also speaking their mind that you should have stayed quiet. They don't seem to see the irony in that.
Who wins these arguments is largely a function of the personality of the speaker, not the merits of the argument, some people simply won't back down and declare themselves winner by raising their own glove in their hand and just insist that it's so far above everyone else that no one can touch it. Then they make it a personal character attack which takes on a very interesting dynamic:
Person A can say to person B that they are "lower than whale shit" "the worst person I've ever known" or you can add to this list because you know where it comes from. Fair enough, it's an opinion.
But if person B actually takes it to heart - meaning they take it personally and become emotional or angry over the matter - then suddeenly person A walks their argument backward and claims that it wasn't supposed to be taken so seriously.
Well, hey, if it wasn't meant to be taken so seriously, why did person A go to such lengths to grab person B by the ears and make goddamn sure that they FUCKING HEARD WHAT THEY WANTED TO SAY. AND THEY'RE RIGHT, SO WHY HAVENT YOU, PERSON B, STUFU AND GONE HOME YET, YOU MISERABLE PIECE OF SHIT, then it seems rather odd that they were expecting person B to not really take it seriously.
Its a common moment in the life of a parent to remind their progeny that "with freedom comes responsibility". That speech used to be given upon big moments like the aquisition of the young person's driver's license. (of course given the circumstances of our age, that speech obviously doesn't get delivered the way it used to)
But free speech - well, that just has no strings at all.
You can say things that will wind someone up like a childs toy, and when the listener is so apoplectic and unhinged they're even threatening to kill themselves - well, hey - now it's time to put the responsibility not on the one hurling insults, but on the listener to react properly.
That's right, always put the weight on the receiver to give you the reaction you wanted.
So in this analogy, freedom always belongs to the speaker. Responsibility always belongs to the listener, in this case to give the speaker the reaction they were expecting, or at the least, no reaction at all,.
And so I watch the news of the shootings, and for those who have the stomach for it who dig through our news and point out how many tragedies we've had in recent years, it's sad that we as a country have bastardized freedom beyond it's original meaning; it now comes with no responsibility.
You can yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, and now it doesn't have to be a clarion call of something burning - fuck, no - now you can use it as a signal to discharge weapons and still disavow any responsibility for where the bullets land.
And suicides, well, we've absolved everyone from any part in the 30,000 of those every year. Like the people who believe in "evil" as an abstract force in the universe and not a function of people who make choices to commit acts of evil, we have declared mental illness to be some kind of communicative virus that somehow is spread through the aether. (look it up, it's worth the google).
If people who committed suicide had spend their entire life in seclusion, seperate and isolated from humans and the society that humans create, then there is some ground to claim that it's in the water or some mysterious mental wave of dark energy that just grabs some people but not others. Blame it on the chemistry in their brains.
But the people who are labelled "sick" or "ill" or crazy were not raised in seclusion on the moon, they were interacting with people for their entire existence; gathering experiences, lessons, pain, joy, sorrow, elation. Our lives are a dynamic screenplay in progress that is shaped and formed by our social relationships and interactions.
But in 2011, people want to believe that there are just "sick" people out there - the religious chalk it up to Satan and "evil" as an abstract force in the universe. Surely it wasn't a result of any interaction they had, no, not that.
Kurt Vonnegut to lace his writing with the phrase "and so it goes".
It seems the greatest tragedy in the story of the human spirit is that while we have claimed dominion over all the universe and act as if we can solve any problem of nature, we shamelessly surrender that the acts of other humans are the one thing mankind will never have control of.
After all, humans just do whatever they want, and nothing can stop them.
I've had my fill of people who will argue with me for 59 rounds, then claim that I alone have gone too far by taking it to round 60; and then who waste their precious time in round 61 by coming back to tell me that the whole thing was a waste of their precious time.
Priceless.
Pointless, too, but only if you have the objectivity to be that honest. Most get through life by the noble technique of just declaring the other person "wrong", "sick", "sad" or "pathetic" - "lower than whale shit" and then insisting that a smart person would end the argument; they end the argument and claim in the falacy of affirming the antecedent, declare themselves the smarter one.
...the person who was somehow still so smart only moments before while mired in it, but now has been somehow awarded by whatever council in their mind that decides these things to have the higher ground.
There will be more shootings, more suicides, because people just love the freedom to push as hard as they want and then blame everything that falls over and crashes for being weak or unstable.
In a perverted irony, people who write their thoughts out will be arrested and detained because their thoughts sound dangerous.
Of course, the people who aren't speaking their mind are dangerous too, but they're smart enough (or deliberate enough) to keep their mouth shut. People like me speak so that a discussion can be had, while all manner of people who have no fucking clue what they are thinking make pronouncements about how and why and who put the thoughts in someone else's head; while never actually listening to them.
The society of people who surrounded a person for their entire life who put those thoughts in their head will disavow all of it; leaving all the culpability for their words upon the people who's throats they crammed their words down sideways because they had the "right" to speak.
Watch.
People who are honest about how they feel are held against their will because their thoughts sound dangerous.
the ones who are dangerous aren't held, because - well, this is easy - if their thoughts are never spoken, they don't make any sounds at all.
They're smart enough that they know it's stupid to tell anyone what you're going to do if you want to actually do it, they just do it.
So every so often a Jared Loughtner makes himself famous, and the offices of shrinks and cops all over the country are suddenly busy, beause now everyone has to take every angry word as a threat that someone will kill in an at of senseless psychotic violence.
Meanwhile, the senseless psychotic violence continues anyway, because the problem is not who's speaking and who's not, but people care nothing about anyone but themselves. Society has become a zero-sum proposition where person A's freedom must come at the expense of person B; and thus the meaning of the word has been bastardized beyond redemption.
Freedom cannot belong only to some people or it has ceased to be freedom. That' the lesson that America is not learning at this time; society has forgot that even if we dont' agree with each other we are nonetheless symbiotic.
Lewis Thomas wrote "The Medusa and the Snail", within he tells the story of a parasite, the medusa (wasp) whose eggs are laid within the flesh of the snail. The wasp larvae eats the snail with deliberation to gain energy to grow - it saves the snails vital organs for last until the rest has been devoured - and thus gets the most out of the snail. Good for the wasp.
The snail sees it otherwise.
This is an example of a parasitic relationship; where one party gains at the expense of the other.
This country was supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. A place where all parties gain together; their interactions are mutually sustaining, one gives to another, and it is returned in some form to maintain the equilibrium. Otherwise, if one party gains always at the expense of the other, well, we're going to run out of "other" eventually.
So I'll be the guy who lays bare his soul in the blind and foolish hope that somehow humans might realize they are their own worst enemy; we create and perpetuate this misery we think we're so upset by, but we never take responsiblity for it.
In America today, the bastardized concept of freedom is the uninhibited opportunity to shout at whoever you want about whatever you want.
Responsibility for what happens from the echo? Well, that's for everyone else.
And so it goes.
Although maybe not forever.
There have been many great societies throughout history.
Where are they now?
Why do we have the hubris to think we'll be different?
It's our hubris that blinds us to our own faults and failures that will consume us from within.
Wecome back my friends to the show that never ends,
well, sometimes it ends.
You see as an atheist, I believe in the end of the world, only my version has nothing to do with a prophecy or the book of Revelation; there will be no rapture, no place of salvation where some can escape and endure while others suffer and perish.
We all go together, and it seems the reason this is guaranteed to be our fate is because whenever someone has the temerity to suggest something is wrong and needs genuine attention - well, in the "Greatest Country In the World, (TM) 'tis treason to say any such thing. We wouldn't be the Greatest Nation On Earth if such a thing were possible, now would it?
Carry on. This is one man's rambling that we attack each other from within, claim it is precisely what our founders and "G"od himself want (after all, everything is) - and that means if we all die catastrophe or by our own hand, think of how many people will close their eyes and seek comfort in the idea because they're just sure that everything that happens is the will of someone or something we can never understand.
This is why religion scares me - why I see society consuming itself - people see something wrong, they're comfortable with it being wrong...just as long as it's not their fault. They solve this by never accepting anything as their fault.
and so it goes.
Maybe not forever, though.
I've learned something.
I really don't exist, none of us do really.
Open your mouth and speak your mind, and you will be told by other people who are also speaking their mind that you should have stayed quiet. They don't seem to see the irony in that.
Who wins these arguments is largely a function of the personality of the speaker, not the merits of the argument, some people simply won't back down and declare themselves winner by raising their own glove in their hand and just insist that it's so far above everyone else that no one can touch it. Then they make it a personal character attack which takes on a very interesting dynamic:
Person A can say to person B that they are "lower than whale shit" "the worst person I've ever known" or you can add to this list because you know where it comes from. Fair enough, it's an opinion.
But if person B actually takes it to heart - meaning they take it personally and become emotional or angry over the matter - then suddeenly person A walks their argument backward and claims that it wasn't supposed to be taken so seriously.
Well, hey, if it wasn't meant to be taken so seriously, why did person A go to such lengths to grab person B by the ears and make goddamn sure that they FUCKING HEARD WHAT THEY WANTED TO SAY. AND THEY'RE RIGHT, SO WHY HAVENT YOU, PERSON B, STUFU AND GONE HOME YET, YOU MISERABLE PIECE OF SHIT, then it seems rather odd that they were expecting person B to not really take it seriously.
Its a common moment in the life of a parent to remind their progeny that "with freedom comes responsibility". That speech used to be given upon big moments like the aquisition of the young person's driver's license. (of course given the circumstances of our age, that speech obviously doesn't get delivered the way it used to)
But free speech - well, that just has no strings at all.
You can say things that will wind someone up like a childs toy, and when the listener is so apoplectic and unhinged they're even threatening to kill themselves - well, hey - now it's time to put the responsibility not on the one hurling insults, but on the listener to react properly.
That's right, always put the weight on the receiver to give you the reaction you wanted.
So in this analogy, freedom always belongs to the speaker. Responsibility always belongs to the listener, in this case to give the speaker the reaction they were expecting, or at the least, no reaction at all,.
And so I watch the news of the shootings, and for those who have the stomach for it who dig through our news and point out how many tragedies we've had in recent years, it's sad that we as a country have bastardized freedom beyond it's original meaning; it now comes with no responsibility.
You can yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, and now it doesn't have to be a clarion call of something burning - fuck, no - now you can use it as a signal to discharge weapons and still disavow any responsibility for where the bullets land.
And suicides, well, we've absolved everyone from any part in the 30,000 of those every year. Like the people who believe in "evil" as an abstract force in the universe and not a function of people who make choices to commit acts of evil, we have declared mental illness to be some kind of communicative virus that somehow is spread through the aether. (look it up, it's worth the google).
If people who committed suicide had spend their entire life in seclusion, seperate and isolated from humans and the society that humans create, then there is some ground to claim that it's in the water or some mysterious mental wave of dark energy that just grabs some people but not others. Blame it on the chemistry in their brains.
But the people who are labelled "sick" or "ill" or crazy were not raised in seclusion on the moon, they were interacting with people for their entire existence; gathering experiences, lessons, pain, joy, sorrow, elation. Our lives are a dynamic screenplay in progress that is shaped and formed by our social relationships and interactions.
But in 2011, people want to believe that there are just "sick" people out there - the religious chalk it up to Satan and "evil" as an abstract force in the universe. Surely it wasn't a result of any interaction they had, no, not that.
Kurt Vonnegut to lace his writing with the phrase "and so it goes".
It seems the greatest tragedy in the story of the human spirit is that while we have claimed dominion over all the universe and act as if we can solve any problem of nature, we shamelessly surrender that the acts of other humans are the one thing mankind will never have control of.
After all, humans just do whatever they want, and nothing can stop them.
I've had my fill of people who will argue with me for 59 rounds, then claim that I alone have gone too far by taking it to round 60; and then who waste their precious time in round 61 by coming back to tell me that the whole thing was a waste of their precious time.
Priceless.
Pointless, too, but only if you have the objectivity to be that honest. Most get through life by the noble technique of just declaring the other person "wrong", "sick", "sad" or "pathetic" - "lower than whale shit" and then insisting that a smart person would end the argument; they end the argument and claim in the falacy of affirming the antecedent, declare themselves the smarter one.
...the person who was somehow still so smart only moments before while mired in it, but now has been somehow awarded by whatever council in their mind that decides these things to have the higher ground.
There will be more shootings, more suicides, because people just love the freedom to push as hard as they want and then blame everything that falls over and crashes for being weak or unstable.
In a perverted irony, people who write their thoughts out will be arrested and detained because their thoughts sound dangerous.
Of course, the people who aren't speaking their mind are dangerous too, but they're smart enough (or deliberate enough) to keep their mouth shut. People like me speak so that a discussion can be had, while all manner of people who have no fucking clue what they are thinking make pronouncements about how and why and who put the thoughts in someone else's head; while never actually listening to them.
The society of people who surrounded a person for their entire life who put those thoughts in their head will disavow all of it; leaving all the culpability for their words upon the people who's throats they crammed their words down sideways because they had the "right" to speak.
Watch.
People who are honest about how they feel are held against their will because their thoughts sound dangerous.
the ones who are dangerous aren't held, because - well, this is easy - if their thoughts are never spoken, they don't make any sounds at all.
They're smart enough that they know it's stupid to tell anyone what you're going to do if you want to actually do it, they just do it.
So every so often a Jared Loughtner makes himself famous, and the offices of shrinks and cops all over the country are suddenly busy, beause now everyone has to take every angry word as a threat that someone will kill in an at of senseless psychotic violence.
Meanwhile, the senseless psychotic violence continues anyway, because the problem is not who's speaking and who's not, but people care nothing about anyone but themselves. Society has become a zero-sum proposition where person A's freedom must come at the expense of person B; and thus the meaning of the word has been bastardized beyond redemption.
Freedom cannot belong only to some people or it has ceased to be freedom. That' the lesson that America is not learning at this time; society has forgot that even if we dont' agree with each other we are nonetheless symbiotic.
Lewis Thomas wrote "The Medusa and the Snail", within he tells the story of a parasite, the medusa (wasp) whose eggs are laid within the flesh of the snail. The wasp larvae eats the snail with deliberation to gain energy to grow - it saves the snails vital organs for last until the rest has been devoured - and thus gets the most out of the snail. Good for the wasp.
The snail sees it otherwise.
This is an example of a parasitic relationship; where one party gains at the expense of the other.
This country was supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. A place where all parties gain together; their interactions are mutually sustaining, one gives to another, and it is returned in some form to maintain the equilibrium. Otherwise, if one party gains always at the expense of the other, well, we're going to run out of "other" eventually.
So I'll be the guy who lays bare his soul in the blind and foolish hope that somehow humans might realize they are their own worst enemy; we create and perpetuate this misery we think we're so upset by, but we never take responsiblity for it.
In America today, the bastardized concept of freedom is the uninhibited opportunity to shout at whoever you want about whatever you want.
Responsibility for what happens from the echo? Well, that's for everyone else.
And so it goes.
Although maybe not forever.
There have been many great societies throughout history.
Where are they now?
Why do we have the hubris to think we'll be different?
It's our hubris that blinds us to our own faults and failures that will consume us from within.
Wecome back my friends to the show that never ends,
well, sometimes it ends.
You see as an atheist, I believe in the end of the world, only my version has nothing to do with a prophecy or the book of Revelation; there will be no rapture, no place of salvation where some can escape and endure while others suffer and perish.
We all go together, and it seems the reason this is guaranteed to be our fate is because whenever someone has the temerity to suggest something is wrong and needs genuine attention - well, in the "Greatest Country In the World, (TM) 'tis treason to say any such thing. We wouldn't be the Greatest Nation On Earth if such a thing were possible, now would it?
Carry on. This is one man's rambling that we attack each other from within, claim it is precisely what our founders and "G"od himself want (after all, everything is) - and that means if we all die catastrophe or by our own hand, think of how many people will close their eyes and seek comfort in the idea because they're just sure that everything that happens is the will of someone or something we can never understand.
This is why religion scares me - why I see society consuming itself - people see something wrong, they're comfortable with it being wrong...just as long as it's not their fault. They solve this by never accepting anything as their fault.
and so it goes.
Maybe not forever, though.
2010/09/30
I'm still there - the laughter turns to tears once again
Two things happened today; Tyler Clementi is in the news because he's dead; and that inspired me to check Street Prophets - only to see I'm still in the FAQ as the poster-child for how atheists are welcome there; my profile links to this very diary and they haven't found it.
having a link to an atheists diary in your FAQ months after you sent him packing is a little wierd...if not pretty shameless, or just blind.
Here's what you've never addressed:
I may go a little deeper on this, given the current headlines about Tyler Clemente who just jumped off a bridge because a video of a gay encounter was posted on a public website.
Fox fucking News - a guy named "Dr." Keith Ablow has summarily exonerated the two students who posted the video and absolved them of all responsibility by saying (ya gotta love this) that the temptation provided by the new electronic media was just too much to resist.
it's not the people's mindset, they weren't bad, it's just that the internet made it so easy to torment someone.
Ha ha ha.
Lets see how far we run wih that
Somebody emailed me and said it's time for me to let this go - it's eating me up inside.
and that's the point
Here - this is a comment left on a Fox news Blog about the dead
Hoo fucking rah.
Just keep pushing, if the other guy falls over, he's to blame for not standing up straighter.
We should make rape legal, then? If the woman could only redirect what she feels as fear, dread, and trauma and remember there could have been a nice juicy orgasm for her if she had just looked at it differently, I guess that will be next?
Why do we even put brakes on cars - I mean, if you hit the other guy, it's surely his faults because he did not get out of your way fast enough.
I've fucking had it - and you all will too when the ends of these means comes around to consume us all eventually as the brakes are slowly disconnected from our society -
This kid who jumped off the bridge was not living in a vacuum on the moon, in isolation for his whole life.
His life - as is mine, yours, and all others who have walked this earth - a function and a component of the societies we live in. Your actions affect mine, mine affect yours - this is called "sybiosis" - we are a mutually interdependent group of organisms who cannot detach ourselves entirely from the environment of people who surround us.
So this fucking bullshit - I would love to let the cocksucker who wrote that see the look on my face - as I could John Fleetguy from Street Prophets and Dear Old Rain Sarah Reed who is still making quilts to "heal people" but says that my thougths of suicide were unacceptable on her blog -
Blame the people for their thoughts, and well - maybe with all this blame on ourselves you'll get closer to understanding why some people jsut say fuck it and turn it all off.
I wish there was a "G"od - because the pious motherfuckers who have told me about "H"im all my life are the ones most likely by any objective, rational, unbiased analysis to have their own wing named after them in the bowels of whatever Hell might look like.
I personally think the only "H"ell that ever will be is the one we make for ourselves; no ethereal forces or divine beings neccessary. We create this pain and misery - the only species on the whole fucking planet with the power to contemplate or reason any of these thoughts, and how often we turn away, throw up our hands in futile surrender and say, "well, that's just the way it is".
Whether "G"od gave us these big brains and opposible thumbs and the power to use both of them, or we evolved from atoms and void to emerge from the primordial slime to become the "smarter" animals, its' still disgusting and shameful how often sober people simply surrender their power - the only power they do have to make a difference - to the fates of the universe that all the other "lesser" animals are helpless victims to.
Shameful.
Tyler Clemeti did not live isolated with no human contact. I did not live this long without interaction with others - and if all of you are simply going to keep throwing any fucking thing you goddamn feel like at anyone you feel like and cry about your freedom to do so, your shame has no bounds as you then wash your hands of all that comes from your actions and blame others for not reacting to it as you had planned.
Pick one - but not both. You either speak your mind and own what comes next, or you had best check with your "G"od about the legitimacy of pushing someone as hard as you like and then blaming the other guy's spine for being so fragile as to break in your grasp.
Frankly, this is one of the easiest reasons to piss on the idea of there ever being a god - he clearly is a sick creature indeed to watch all this bloodlust and misery and claim it to be part of some greater plan, to be revealed only to those worthy of surviving it under certain rules.
I wish there was a "G"od who I could hope would "damn" this kind of shit -
Maybe that is why so many others invented one.
What Street Prophets did to me was entirely in their rights to do - but if they were trying to set an example of what they felt was the proper way to respect other people by weeding out those they thought had gone too far, look back through my posts there and you'll see they missed a few on their own team.
And so it goes.
For some people, anyway. I know in my worldview, Tyler Clemente's torment is over. He's at peace.
And lets count how long it will take for the first Christian to remind us that he's in Hell...
Google "Brad Delp" suicide - you'll find it. There are dozens of them.
Cold, raining, empty here.
Bout average.
having a link to an atheists diary in your FAQ months after you sent him packing is a little wierd...if not pretty shameless, or just blind.
Here's what you've never addressed:
I may go a little deeper on this, given the current headlines about Tyler Clemente who just jumped off a bridge because a video of a gay encounter was posted on a public website.
Fox fucking News - a guy named "Dr." Keith Ablow has summarily exonerated the two students who posted the video and absolved them of all responsibility by saying (ya gotta love this) that the temptation provided by the new electronic media was just too much to resist.
Yet here is the most frightening possibility of all: Wei and Ravi may have had no deep, dark desire to bully and humiliate someone to death at all.
The Web and webcams and Skype and Twitter may have hijacked essentially decent people, kindled some potential for intrigue and eroticism and practical joking that resides in millions and millions of young Americans and turned it in a lethal force.
it's not the people's mindset, they weren't bad, it's just that the internet made it so easy to torment someone.
Ha ha ha.
Lets see how far we run wih that
Somebody emailed me and said it's time for me to let this go - it's eating me up inside.
and that's the point
Here - this is a comment left on a Fox news Blog about the dead
"The person who killed himself was entirely responsible for his decision. "
Hoo fucking rah.
Just keep pushing, if the other guy falls over, he's to blame for not standing up straighter.
We should make rape legal, then? If the woman could only redirect what she feels as fear, dread, and trauma and remember there could have been a nice juicy orgasm for her if she had just looked at it differently, I guess that will be next?
Why do we even put brakes on cars - I mean, if you hit the other guy, it's surely his faults because he did not get out of your way fast enough.
I've fucking had it - and you all will too when the ends of these means comes around to consume us all eventually as the brakes are slowly disconnected from our society -
This kid who jumped off the bridge was not living in a vacuum on the moon, in isolation for his whole life.
His life - as is mine, yours, and all others who have walked this earth - a function and a component of the societies we live in. Your actions affect mine, mine affect yours - this is called "sybiosis" - we are a mutually interdependent group of organisms who cannot detach ourselves entirely from the environment of people who surround us.
So this fucking bullshit - I would love to let the cocksucker who wrote that see the look on my face - as I could John Fleetguy from Street Prophets and Dear Old Rain Sarah Reed who is still making quilts to "heal people" but says that my thougths of suicide were unacceptable on her blog -
Blame the people for their thoughts, and well - maybe with all this blame on ourselves you'll get closer to understanding why some people jsut say fuck it and turn it all off.
I wish there was a "G"od - because the pious motherfuckers who have told me about "H"im all my life are the ones most likely by any objective, rational, unbiased analysis to have their own wing named after them in the bowels of whatever Hell might look like.
I personally think the only "H"ell that ever will be is the one we make for ourselves; no ethereal forces or divine beings neccessary. We create this pain and misery - the only species on the whole fucking planet with the power to contemplate or reason any of these thoughts, and how often we turn away, throw up our hands in futile surrender and say, "well, that's just the way it is".
Whether "G"od gave us these big brains and opposible thumbs and the power to use both of them, or we evolved from atoms and void to emerge from the primordial slime to become the "smarter" animals, its' still disgusting and shameful how often sober people simply surrender their power - the only power they do have to make a difference - to the fates of the universe that all the other "lesser" animals are helpless victims to.
Shameful.
Tyler Clemeti did not live isolated with no human contact. I did not live this long without interaction with others - and if all of you are simply going to keep throwing any fucking thing you goddamn feel like at anyone you feel like and cry about your freedom to do so, your shame has no bounds as you then wash your hands of all that comes from your actions and blame others for not reacting to it as you had planned.
Pick one - but not both. You either speak your mind and own what comes next, or you had best check with your "G"od about the legitimacy of pushing someone as hard as you like and then blaming the other guy's spine for being so fragile as to break in your grasp.
Frankly, this is one of the easiest reasons to piss on the idea of there ever being a god - he clearly is a sick creature indeed to watch all this bloodlust and misery and claim it to be part of some greater plan, to be revealed only to those worthy of surviving it under certain rules.
I wish there was a "G"od who I could hope would "damn" this kind of shit -
Maybe that is why so many others invented one.
What Street Prophets did to me was entirely in their rights to do - but if they were trying to set an example of what they felt was the proper way to respect other people by weeding out those they thought had gone too far, look back through my posts there and you'll see they missed a few on their own team.
And so it goes.
For some people, anyway. I know in my worldview, Tyler Clemente's torment is over. He's at peace.
And lets count how long it will take for the first Christian to remind us that he's in Hell...
Google "Brad Delp" suicide - you'll find it. There are dozens of them.
Cold, raining, empty here.
Bout average.
2010/09/25
I'm still in the FAQ - do they have any idea
how it feels to be a poster child for how atheists are welcome at their site, and almost ten months after they closed the door, still have me listed as proof that atheists are tolerated?
Well, Joe - it's the way you reacted that caused the problem.
yes - re - acted. If you have the courage and the time, look at my diaries from beginning to end - you can start with the one linked to in the FAQ - i only started to change my tune about August of 2009 when one particular blogger broke their own rules (Don't be a jerk or a hater) and nobody called them on it.
Oh, sure - privately they said things like "well, Joe seems rather sensitive, so you best treat him special" - but nobody paid any attention to the routine manner in which he belittled other religions, in particular atheism - and most sadly for me, the guy who invited me to Netroots pointed out that "proselytization is not appreciated and is considered bad taste"
Want to hurt somebody's feelings other than mine? Specifically count the number of biblical verses in JCHFleetguy's posts - in particular, the number of posts per diary/comment - and get back to me.
This was not about building community, or progressive politics - he's a self-professed political Conservative and even whined about how it was not easy for a Conservative at a self-described liberal website.
And that's why I snapped. I saw him in my diaries over and over; it was always chapter and verse, or this absurdist argument that everyone has faith.
he'd screw around with the definintion of faith, like Conservatives screwedd around with the defininton of torture or "freedom" - and that would be the same thread over and over.
SO the link I put to his comment - "anyone without faith would be a suicide victim" - is either an egregiously offensive say to someone months after the person he said it to told him in no uncertain terms that no, John, I - snafubar - do not have faith. I don't want it, it gives me no peace, and yhou have substituted "confidence in things I can understand" for "blind faith in things that can never be explained" - you have ignored the difference and then said "well there's no way I'll come around to your definitions"
And nobody banned him.
he even wrote his own rules for what cookies/troll markers mean - like I said in other threads I sure hope for his sake that he does not start interpreting traffic signals by his own rules. When George Carlin talked about "my brother drives like this" - it was a joke - John still does things his way and simply dismisses standard, agreed upon, conventions.
But in the end, this will always be a blog (my blog) that proves that they simply did not care if I lived or died.
They cared about the liability if the last thing that I wrote or talked about on Earth before i went through with it was on their blog - because that would be too difficult to plausibly avoid cause/effect. This is why I make no apology. If another soul like mine came along tomorrow, based on their lack of culpabilty for how I wound up changing my attitude, they'd simply play the game the same way again, and someone
you know this, I know this, the statistics bear this out
Someone else will pull the trigger - either on themselves or whoeever cannot get out of the way.
And because I even brought that up, they'll say Im "threatening" = but lets' go one step further -
so even if I was - they'd ignore the threat and plow forward.
Tha'ts not about me - that's about kicking me out because I violated site rulese about being a "jerk" or a "hater" - but like Danish Brethren called me a "terrorist" for saying that if I'm in pain it inspires and fuels my anger, if I say that I'm using it as a weapon.
Got it?
If they hurt me, telling them is to use my pain as a weapon.
If I hurt them, they slam the door.
Thirty thousand suicides a year. More than homicides - did you even realize?
And they'll do it all over again.
I see no evidence that they would change anything.
Well, Joe - it's the way you reacted that caused the problem.
yes - re - acted. If you have the courage and the time, look at my diaries from beginning to end - you can start with the one linked to in the FAQ - i only started to change my tune about August of 2009 when one particular blogger broke their own rules (Don't be a jerk or a hater) and nobody called them on it.
Oh, sure - privately they said things like "well, Joe seems rather sensitive, so you best treat him special" - but nobody paid any attention to the routine manner in which he belittled other religions, in particular atheism - and most sadly for me, the guy who invited me to Netroots pointed out that "proselytization is not appreciated and is considered bad taste"
Want to hurt somebody's feelings other than mine? Specifically count the number of biblical verses in JCHFleetguy's posts - in particular, the number of posts per diary/comment - and get back to me.
This was not about building community, or progressive politics - he's a self-professed political Conservative and even whined about how it was not easy for a Conservative at a self-described liberal website.
And that's why I snapped. I saw him in my diaries over and over; it was always chapter and verse, or this absurdist argument that everyone has faith.
he'd screw around with the definintion of faith, like Conservatives screwedd around with the defininton of torture or "freedom" - and that would be the same thread over and over.
SO the link I put to his comment - "anyone without faith would be a suicide victim" - is either an egregiously offensive say to someone months after the person he said it to told him in no uncertain terms that no, John, I - snafubar - do not have faith. I don't want it, it gives me no peace, and yhou have substituted "confidence in things I can understand" for "blind faith in things that can never be explained" - you have ignored the difference and then said "well there's no way I'll come around to your definitions"
And nobody banned him.
he even wrote his own rules for what cookies/troll markers mean - like I said in other threads I sure hope for his sake that he does not start interpreting traffic signals by his own rules. When George Carlin talked about "my brother drives like this" - it was a joke - John still does things his way and simply dismisses standard, agreed upon, conventions.
But in the end, this will always be a blog (my blog) that proves that they simply did not care if I lived or died.
They cared about the liability if the last thing that I wrote or talked about on Earth before i went through with it was on their blog - because that would be too difficult to plausibly avoid cause/effect. This is why I make no apology. If another soul like mine came along tomorrow, based on their lack of culpabilty for how I wound up changing my attitude, they'd simply play the game the same way again, and someone
you know this, I know this, the statistics bear this out
Someone else will pull the trigger - either on themselves or whoeever cannot get out of the way.
And because I even brought that up, they'll say Im "threatening" = but lets' go one step further -
so even if I was - they'd ignore the threat and plow forward.
Tha'ts not about me - that's about kicking me out because I violated site rulese about being a "jerk" or a "hater" - but like Danish Brethren called me a "terrorist" for saying that if I'm in pain it inspires and fuels my anger, if I say that I'm using it as a weapon.
Got it?
If they hurt me, telling them is to use my pain as a weapon.
If I hurt them, they slam the door.
Thirty thousand suicides a year. More than homicides - did you even realize?
And they'll do it all over again.
I see no evidence that they would change anything.
2010/07/25
191 days and they still don't have a clue
What's so sad about this is that what I'm about to show you is posted in the FAQ under the heading
"Who Speaks For This Site"
...and there I am, an example of how welcome atheists are - and it's been over six months since they banned me.
Banned me for being an asshole, for using words like motherfucker.
That's fine - but the forest they were standing in kept me from seeing all the trees.
Because what I saw was the following:
The rule was "don't be a jerk or a hater" - here's some quotes from the people who still post there and who obviously weren't banned for them:
"anyone without faith would likely be a suicide victim"
(I was also banned for frequently mentioning that it was precisely the kind of belittlement and disdain for my point of view that made me accept that if this is how people really saw me, I'd be doing them a favor by leaving their midst and it would surely be more peaceful for me as well to be dead and not worried about any of it)
my personal favorite, since one of the things that I was told was "unacceptable under any circumstances" was talk of suicide - this comment was made by the guy who, for six months, had gotten under my skin because he was so oblivious to the violence he did to my point of view, while playing victim when I got pissed about it.
"Who Speaks For This Site"
...and there I am, an example of how welcome atheists are - and it's been over six months since they banned me.
Banned me for being an asshole, for using words like motherfucker.
That's fine - but the forest they were standing in kept me from seeing all the trees.
Because what I saw was the following:
The rule was "don't be a jerk or a hater" - here's some quotes from the people who still post there and who obviously weren't banned for them:
"anyone without faith would likely be a suicide victim"
(I was also banned for frequently mentioning that it was precisely the kind of belittlement and disdain for my point of view that made me accept that if this is how people really saw me, I'd be doing them a favor by leaving their midst and it would surely be more peaceful for me as well to be dead and not worried about any of it)
my personal favorite, since one of the things that I was told was "unacceptable under any circumstances" was talk of suicide - this comment was made by the guy who, for six months, had gotten under my skin because he was so oblivious to the violence he did to my point of view, while playing victim when I got pissed about it.
2010/04/03
Thoughts
I think I'm about done with "social networking". I always knew I was different than the other kids, and the more time I spend on facebook and blogs and just my own personal flaw that I ignore the tact not to talk about all the things apparently no one talks about, I'm realizing this fact: I don't know how many of the people I was friends with in my past that I'd be able to be friends with now.
It seems that there is a systematic double standard that always works against my favor:
When someone else tells me their point of view, that's simply their perogative to utilize their freedom of expression and state their opinion.
But somehow the rules change when I speak up, particularly when I happen to hold the point of view that is in the minority, because that means - well - everyone can see that this is far beyond just a polite opinion, I'm just being "provocative".
I'm not so deluded as to suggest my freedom of speech (protected by the First Amendment) is being infringed, like Rush Limbaugh did when he got fired for saying something unpopular on ESPN. Limbaugh was fired as an example of pure, unbridled capitalism: His bosses fired him because they did not want to take the hit to their ratings when he pissed people off. His current job as political windbag and provocateur is also a captialistic enterprise, and not neccessarily the most noble or sublime use of "freedom of speech"; he gets paid a handsome sum because a lot of people like to hear some other guy say the things they know would get them fired if they said it. Democracy only guarantees the government can't shut you up. But the rest of the population will take care of the ones they don't like on their own.
What does this have to do with me?
All these years with good memories, or at least memories I could live with, and now it seems like I am indeed such an outcast and a freak that I should never leave the house except for groceries.
And of course - that earns me a new label - "depressed". Or my favorite: "paranoid". Why is it when you keep standing in the rain they say you're not learning very fast, but when 99 out of 100 people tell you to STFU and you just stop talking altogether because you think everyone hates you, they call you "paranoid"? In both cases, the label is more defeating than the thoughts, and that only makes those who gave it to me demand that I need them more.
A label for me, a career for them, and when they insist that it is not possible for me to heal myself because of my "disease", and I tell them that such a thought is the single most powerful one I could be given that would make me give up completely - the ones who shout it into my ears will only shout louder. They accuse me of hurting others...by telling them how much pain I'm in.
So when you see that the "side effects" for the anti-depressant drugs (expecially Abilify, which is the THIRD drug they insist you should take if the other two aren't enough) - and one of the side effect of that drug is still "Suicide" -
Hey - it isn't the drugs.
It's the society. It tells me I can't feel healthy until they tell me I'm healthy, but when I say their remedies make me feel worse, that's only proof to them of how much more i need.
Hey - if I'm that bad, I'll save the food and energy I'm consuming for someone more worthy and make space for them in my absense.
Holy shit - that sounds like a threat of suicide! Well, lets see here....a long list of people have told me with no ambiguity or equivocation that my ideas are not welcome, I'm outnumbered, and I'm not going to win - but make the best of it!...that's not me sitting in my house being paranoid that I'm not welcome. It's me finally accepting that it's raining outside, and only fools go out to stand in the rain.
Can you see how the rules change to fit whatever side I'm not on?
That's what they call paranoia, depression; I call lucidity and perspicacity. I'm only listening to what they tell me and putting it all together. This country's greatest industry - it's only industry, it seems - is taking people who once gave a shit and convincing them what a fool they are until they stop caring about anything at all. Then they blame them for giving up.
Neat trick.
If I thought fixing me alone would do something, I'd do it. But fixing only me and still leaving everything else as is - knowing that someone else is being crushed and broken as I supposedly heal by shutting all this out - I can't buy that. We won't change what is breaking people, we'll just wrap them in pillows and send them through the gauntlet one more time.
And those of you who are astute and honest with yourselves will have to see that sending me to get "help" doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with whether or not I ever feel better; it's nothing more than a limit on other's liability. If someone is the reason I'm so depressed and they can say, "well, I recognize he needed 'help' and said he get some" then they think they've done their civic duty. The help is never intended to change my state of mind, it only exists for their absolution.
If they really wanted to change my state of mind, they'd recognize their role in forming it, and offer to make changes on their own. That's not what is happening here.
The promise - the delustion - ofhelp exists so that everyone else can maintain the status quo. If I go get "help" that means everyone can now agree that we all knew where the real problem was - me - and now that I've gone to get a tune-up, everyone else can continue on as before without any obligation to change a thing. After all, surely none of my distress could have been their fault; by going to get "help" i've somehow granted them permission to label me deficient and therefore the only thing that needed any modification.
I first went for counseling at the behest of my mother and girlfriend in 1993. I didn't think there was anything wrong with me, and all this stress was just "life". I was told I had a disease; I was told I'd need counseling and medication for the rest of my life or I'd never be happy - and from that moment to this, it seems they were right.
It only seems now that more people have no hesitation telling me not only am I depressed, but they actually become angry with me if I dare hang on to the things that keep me hanging on - insisting that it's dangerous to tell anyone else.
I'm still alive. Whenever I think about the end, about writing a suicide note, I think about some of the conversations I've had online or in person or in the presence of 'professionals' - all who think they know better than I do what is in my head and how to "fix" it - and say,
"well, I had managed to stay alive for 42 years. After listening to you tell me that you - only you, never me - could have the answer - that's when I finally gave up."
But you and i both know that the kinds of personality I'm talking about would never even pause in reading such thoughts; they'd see my death as further proof of how wise they were and how sound their advice was, "if he'd listen to me, he coudl have been saved".
Religion, therapy - just condescending people who are never wrong - they always disavow their handiwork and find absolution in simply saying "The other guy was sick when i found him, the fact that he's dead only means I didn't get to work with him long enough to save him".
And that, dear readers, is why I'm not letting anyone - neither church nor counselor - ever get their hands on me again.
It seems that there is a systematic double standard that always works against my favor:
When someone else tells me their point of view, that's simply their perogative to utilize their freedom of expression and state their opinion.
But somehow the rules change when I speak up, particularly when I happen to hold the point of view that is in the minority, because that means - well - everyone can see that this is far beyond just a polite opinion, I'm just being "provocative".
I'm not so deluded as to suggest my freedom of speech (protected by the First Amendment) is being infringed, like Rush Limbaugh did when he got fired for saying something unpopular on ESPN. Limbaugh was fired as an example of pure, unbridled capitalism: His bosses fired him because they did not want to take the hit to their ratings when he pissed people off. His current job as political windbag and provocateur is also a captialistic enterprise, and not neccessarily the most noble or sublime use of "freedom of speech"; he gets paid a handsome sum because a lot of people like to hear some other guy say the things they know would get them fired if they said it. Democracy only guarantees the government can't shut you up. But the rest of the population will take care of the ones they don't like on their own.
What does this have to do with me?
All these years with good memories, or at least memories I could live with, and now it seems like I am indeed such an outcast and a freak that I should never leave the house except for groceries.
And of course - that earns me a new label - "depressed". Or my favorite: "paranoid". Why is it when you keep standing in the rain they say you're not learning very fast, but when 99 out of 100 people tell you to STFU and you just stop talking altogether because you think everyone hates you, they call you "paranoid"? In both cases, the label is more defeating than the thoughts, and that only makes those who gave it to me demand that I need them more.
A label for me, a career for them, and when they insist that it is not possible for me to heal myself because of my "disease", and I tell them that such a thought is the single most powerful one I could be given that would make me give up completely - the ones who shout it into my ears will only shout louder. They accuse me of hurting others...by telling them how much pain I'm in.
So when you see that the "side effects" for the anti-depressant drugs (expecially Abilify, which is the THIRD drug they insist you should take if the other two aren't enough) - and one of the side effect of that drug is still "Suicide" -
Hey - it isn't the drugs.
It's the society. It tells me I can't feel healthy until they tell me I'm healthy, but when I say their remedies make me feel worse, that's only proof to them of how much more i need.
Hey - if I'm that bad, I'll save the food and energy I'm consuming for someone more worthy and make space for them in my absense.
Holy shit - that sounds like a threat of suicide! Well, lets see here....a long list of people have told me with no ambiguity or equivocation that my ideas are not welcome, I'm outnumbered, and I'm not going to win - but make the best of it!...that's not me sitting in my house being paranoid that I'm not welcome. It's me finally accepting that it's raining outside, and only fools go out to stand in the rain.
Can you see how the rules change to fit whatever side I'm not on?
That's what they call paranoia, depression; I call lucidity and perspicacity. I'm only listening to what they tell me and putting it all together. This country's greatest industry - it's only industry, it seems - is taking people who once gave a shit and convincing them what a fool they are until they stop caring about anything at all. Then they blame them for giving up.
Neat trick.
If I thought fixing me alone would do something, I'd do it. But fixing only me and still leaving everything else as is - knowing that someone else is being crushed and broken as I supposedly heal by shutting all this out - I can't buy that. We won't change what is breaking people, we'll just wrap them in pillows and send them through the gauntlet one more time.
And those of you who are astute and honest with yourselves will have to see that sending me to get "help" doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with whether or not I ever feel better; it's nothing more than a limit on other's liability. If someone is the reason I'm so depressed and they can say, "well, I recognize he needed 'help' and said he get some" then they think they've done their civic duty. The help is never intended to change my state of mind, it only exists for their absolution.
If they really wanted to change my state of mind, they'd recognize their role in forming it, and offer to make changes on their own. That's not what is happening here.
The promise - the delustion - ofhelp exists so that everyone else can maintain the status quo. If I go get "help" that means everyone can now agree that we all knew where the real problem was - me - and now that I've gone to get a tune-up, everyone else can continue on as before without any obligation to change a thing. After all, surely none of my distress could have been their fault; by going to get "help" i've somehow granted them permission to label me deficient and therefore the only thing that needed any modification.
I first went for counseling at the behest of my mother and girlfriend in 1993. I didn't think there was anything wrong with me, and all this stress was just "life". I was told I had a disease; I was told I'd need counseling and medication for the rest of my life or I'd never be happy - and from that moment to this, it seems they were right.
It only seems now that more people have no hesitation telling me not only am I depressed, but they actually become angry with me if I dare hang on to the things that keep me hanging on - insisting that it's dangerous to tell anyone else.
I'm still alive. Whenever I think about the end, about writing a suicide note, I think about some of the conversations I've had online or in person or in the presence of 'professionals' - all who think they know better than I do what is in my head and how to "fix" it - and say,
"well, I had managed to stay alive for 42 years. After listening to you tell me that you - only you, never me - could have the answer - that's when I finally gave up."
But you and i both know that the kinds of personality I'm talking about would never even pause in reading such thoughts; they'd see my death as further proof of how wise they were and how sound their advice was, "if he'd listen to me, he coudl have been saved".
Religion, therapy - just condescending people who are never wrong - they always disavow their handiwork and find absolution in simply saying "The other guy was sick when i found him, the fact that he's dead only means I didn't get to work with him long enough to save him".
And that, dear readers, is why I'm not letting anyone - neither church nor counselor - ever get their hands on me again.
2010/03/29
A quote from a friends Facebook page
Facebook - A post by a friend of mine:http://www.thenewamerican.com/
Say what you want but this sounds like the Mark of the
Beast to me! We will NOT be getting one!
National Healthcare Will Require National RFID Chips
Ok, folks - this is what I'm talking about when I say that religion can be as dangerous as it can be transformative. This is someone I know, have known, for 25 years. I admire her. I still like her as a person. But I see her as one who has got "religion on the brain".
First of all, the RFID at best, will be in a "card", just like the one you wave in front of the gas pump to send the bill to your bank account, or the E-Z pass module you can get for your car to go through toll booths without stopping.
But here is a college educated woman who is convinced that
- The government will be requring people to get things implanted under their skin.
- As I remember the Mark of the Beast stories from Revelation, it's supposed to be an easily identifiable mark so that without it no one will be able to do any kind of business of any kind. Given the death threats towards Obama and Democrats in general lately, I'd be frightened more than I can relate in words to see what would happen if Obama were to announce that you must have something implanted under your skin to buy a cup of Latte and a scone at Starbucks, or .30 buckshot at the local gun shop.
- Somehow this will be able to encompass "Woe, to you oh, Earth and Sea, for the Devil sends the beast with wrath. Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the Beast, for it is a human number. It's number is six hundred and sixty-six."
what, so are there 666 transitors in the RFID chip? it only takes 9 digits to give every human on Earth a unique number, so I'm having a hard time rationalizing that a college educated woman can go from this passage in the book of Revelation to thinking that somehow a chip will be implanted under her skin - when the health care bill is not even mandatory.Smart people are buying otherwise unconscionable and incomprehensible lies, and it is shameful to all America that we have people who are this gullilble, and worse - this reactionary.
Joseph Goebbels would have had better luck with the Christian Right in America 2010 than he did with the depressed and vengeful Germans in 1933.
I am ashamed of my country that we have people this easily led, and that they can be led to ideas that are so bizarre, so that they will turn away from ideas that they themselves don't know they should be embodying.
I wonder if my friend can tell me what is in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 25, verse 31-45.
I'll see if any of you are so astute.
2010/03/17
If you care to understand my motivations on this
I'm fairly certain that if any of the regulars or admins at Street Prophets have found this blog that it will only add to their perception that those atheists are just out to piss in the punch bowl and start a fight.
I've given up on trying to change anyone's perceptions. I still ask people to read my first diary and the one I wrote after Netroots '09 and ask how the same guy came to be someone they had to excommunicate by January. I wasn't home alone in the closet reading comic books all that time, I was talking to them.
And now that we're roughly two months past the grenade going off, I've come to one conclusion about it all.
Out of sight out of mind works well for the one with their eyes closed or their back turned. It changes nothing however, about whatever it is that is no longer being seen.
And ultimately, what makes me shivver - literally shivver - is that if you follow the arguments of JCHFleetguy and even the logic of those who gathered in whatever conference took place to lock me out (which I understand involved Pastor Dan) what it means is
...if it all happened again tomorrow and they found another like me, they'd play it out the same way again.
I've given up on trying to change anyone's perceptions. I still ask people to read my first diary and the one I wrote after Netroots '09 and ask how the same guy came to be someone they had to excommunicate by January. I wasn't home alone in the closet reading comic books all that time, I was talking to them.
And now that we're roughly two months past the grenade going off, I've come to one conclusion about it all.
Out of sight out of mind works well for the one with their eyes closed or their back turned. It changes nothing however, about whatever it is that is no longer being seen.
And ultimately, what makes me shivver - literally shivver - is that if you follow the arguments of JCHFleetguy and even the logic of those who gathered in whatever conference took place to lock me out (which I understand involved Pastor Dan) what it means is
...if it all happened again tomorrow and they found another like me, they'd play it out the same way again.
2010/03/10
Day 55.
I'm not doing myself any favors here by giving them the heads up; I'm sure the number would get much higher without my hints.
But it just makes my scalp itch when I think about this.
Here's the "end" of the story.
http://www.streetprophets.com/comments/2010/1/14/141729/556/346#c346
He's gone, JCH. (3+ / 0-)
Recommended by:JCHFleetguy, Sister Quarterstaff of Undeclared Grace, linkage
We banned snafubar.
by Rain on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:40:55 PM PST
I saw that after I answered n/t (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:linkage
To find out about me:
http://braincrampsforgod.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-me.html
by JCHFleetguy on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:58:24 PM PST
January 15, 2010.
I really should let this perpetuate itself a little longer before I post this, but this will tell me if anyone at all is even paying attention.
You see, I cannot post any diaries or comments or delete my old diaries at Street Prophets, but I can still log in (and view hidden comments just like a trusted user - ha!). But I guess their system is designed to turn certain privileges "on" and some "off". So I logged "in" after I started putting these diaries up here and changed the link to my homepage to here.
no one from SP has noticed yet that this is here.
Maybe they're proud of that.
But the thing that just blows my mind is the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the site. The site was started in 2003, I joined in 2007, and aparently my early impressions were so favorable and I was such a likable guy that I was the token atheist (there are others, for sure) they used as an example that Atheists were welcome there.
In fact, the sentence in the FAQ that answers "Who Posts Here?" reads like a "Believe it or not!"
Now here's the count: That link above - the "here" link in the "Who posts here" answer to the FAQ is not my hotlink; it's the Street Prophets hotlink.
They sent me packing and talked defensively about having no choice but to do so; they held vigils to comfort each other (fuck the guy who is so angered and hurt by it that he mentions suicide, he's just WRONG. The rest of them need a group hug and a prayer circle) - and the link is still there that even Atheists are welcome.
Maybe they have a point.
Maybe atheists are welcome there, then they'll needle, belittle, condescend and talk down to them long enough that they eventually won't be, but hey -
...everyone should see now that the guy was clearly broken and lost before he arrived, so the fact that he snapped was only a matter of time and the conversation that sent him over the edge was inconsequential to any of that.
In other words, if it already looks broken, go ahead and break it and it's not your fault.
So - here's the count. March 10 since January 14 is 55 days.
And that's the way it is, on the 55th day since we kicked out that crazy lunatic angry atheist, we're still holding up his first diary as evidence of what a welcoming place that even the atheists (gasp!) are welcome at the Street Prophets.
And let's not forget that the guy I had issues with is a self professed political conservatives, which just goes to show you that although Street Prophets describes it's own "blogfather" as the DailyKos (meaning that they descended from a place of politics that is not averse to dealing with faithful/religious/spiritual issues), they have acted as if they are indeed a place that puts the faith/religion/spirituality first and the politics second.
They know good and goddamn well that I'm not converting to conservatism/the Republican party, so it's OK to tell the atheist to fuck off and they haven't really lost anything.
Maybe in a strict membership count, no.
But I'm still hanging on to the last 20 minutes of my audio recording rant that I've released the first 20 minutes to in my other posts on this blog. You see, I have witheld some of that rant, because in the heat of the moment, standing by myself on that day when I tried to find some sense in talking all that out to myself, I said some things that - although genuine and true and from the heart - I dare not share with anybody on the "outside" (of my skull).
You and I both know there are words that when spoken trigger reactions, and no amount of context, explanation, or elucidation will ever change the perceptions of all the people who just know better what's in my head than I do.
"Well, I don't care what you meant, WE ALL KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY MEAN."
And that, to my astute observers, is why suicide makes so much sense to me.
If what I think and feel and can explain never matters, because someone else can erase, ignore, belittle or betray what I say by claiming they know better...well, then they are the ones who are making it clear that I serve absolutely no purpose in trying to change anything. A tree stump or a rock can accomplish as much, at least somebody can sit on them and rest for a while.
As a sentient being -
as a cogent, lucid, sober person who of his own volition can form rational thoughts and explain precisely what I mean by them,
if I am not permitted to explain nor defend that someone else has misinterpreted my words, or ignored the specific connotations thereof, then I serve no purpose here.
And sadly, it goes one step further than that.
John C Howell/Howard wrote to me personally at my private email and apologized for upsetting me the first time we miscommunicated to each other. To date I've saved him the embarassment of his assertion that we were both having so much fun together in these exchanges (when I explicitly told him back then I was very angry all along). I saw him as a person who was the antithesis of me - if every answer to every question or issue is simply some recitation of "chapter:verse", then there is no conversation that cannot be had by simply picking up a Bible and reading it myself.
It's a surreal, perversion of "freedom of speech". Freedom of speech, in a Constitutional argument, means that (with precise few exceptions; inciting a riot, treason, threats to the president) there is no limit that the government can place on one's speech. Sadly a few people act indignant when their words perterb or enrage other citizens, and they say, "Hey, you can't tell me not to say it!"
...and they are correct. As a citizen, I cannot prohibit their speech. However, they are indeed delusional if they somehow believe that because their speech is protected by law that that also absolves them of the reaction other citizens can have upon hearing it.
This is easy to point out: If you go into a bar with all kinds of Harley Davidsons in the parking lot and lots of guys and girls in leather and you start talking shit about all the whores in the room and how Americans build shitty motorcyles - you'd better have your exits nearby and clear or they probably won't find much of what's left of you.
Yes, it's illegal for them to beat the shit out of you. But then again, you probably calculate that you're going to be a crimson stain on the dancefloor long before the police arrive, so you check your freedom to mouth off at the door and that's how you make it home that night.
On a blog, you're free to mouth off, and some people, like DanishBrethren of StreetProphets even call people like me "terrorists" - for if I say that their words have hurt me personally, then he feels that I'm "holding the site hostage".
Nice.
I guess we can make rape legal now - after all, if the fucking cunt didn't react so poorly to that nice orgasm we gave her, what's the problem, right?
It staggers the mind how the argument got turned around that fast - if we just hammer on the guy who has a bad reaction to what we say and blame him for it - then we're still free to say any damn thing we want to about him, to him, to spite him. It's a great thing.
And to a point they're right - but lets' not allow them to masturbate themselves any longer into claiming that it's still an "open" community. It's open to people who don't say "ouch". Go along to get along, and if you can't do that, the door is over there. And if you don't walk through it on your own, we'll throw you through it and it will pooch you out into the parking lot when it hits you as it closes.
Now I'm not ever going to defend Rush Limbaugh - but to illustrate a point: Rush Limbaugh got fired by ESPN for saying something racially provocative during his time there. He cried on his own radio show that "There is no freedom of speech in thsi country". Um - Rush? Your freedom of speech was not infringed; surely the government had no more to do with his firing than they did in his getting hired in the first place. His bosses at ESPN fired him because they did not want to face the economic or social consequences of Limbaugh's words pissing off a lot of their paying subscribers or customers who patronized their advertizers.
And so in this context, I present my life - the reality of my living, breathing, conscious, corporeal form that can read or listen to the words of others and respond to them - as a counter to "free" speech.
Sure it's an open community, but if you piss us off, we're going to ask you to leave.
"But what if my reaction was because one of your own pissed me off?"
"That's our perogative; its' our site. It's a 'safe place' for people of faith"
"That means that people of faith do have privilege over those who don't?"
"It means we reserve the right to declare by our own rules who was right and who was wrong"
"and what happens to the parties after your judgement?"
"We don't care. That's our privilege."
And so it goes. In a larger context I have had other accuse atheists in general of "attacking" faith - like when the ACLU files a suite to object to the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance, or to hear a Christian prayer at the opening of a courthouse session, or when there is a manger scene placed at the seat of civil government for all citizens. That, according to some Christians, is evidence that faith is "under attack" in America.
Why is it so egregious that a person who does not hold to any faith object to having faith waved in my face? Do you think I could run around town and claim that "G"od was a fraud and that churches are a place where only fools and liars gather and nobody would object?
This is where democracy may ultimately meet it's match.
That's a mouthful, ain't it? Yes, what I am saying is that democracy can fail. And Democracy (captial D) can fail when the respect for what it means is lost. Democracy is not merely means to an end - the Protestants who founded this country did not escape the rule of the British throne simply so they could create an environment that was precisely as exclusionary as the one they left behind. The men who founded this country declared that freedom was more important than religion, so that each individual must be left to find their own faith and method of demonstrating it.
John Howard was entitled by law to speak his mind.
Street Prophets can grant him deference and privilege to say it on their forum.
Street prophets can even exclude others who they feel violated their rules of decorum in their reaction to John Howard's attitude.
But what none of them has the capacity - whether or not the right to do so exists - is to somehow manipulate, control, censor, or otherwise have any certainty over how anyone else reacts to those words.
That's what got lost.
What Street Prophets said to the blogosphere, the liberal/progressive voters they serve, and anyone else who happens to trip over their site by accident is that their faith, their harmony as a site came before the feelings of one lone man (or two or three of us as one other got excommunicated and they strongly admonished a third).
That disappoints me. I'm sure they dont' care I'm disappointed, that's one of the privileges they exercised in my excommunication - out of sight, out of mind.
But I'm still here.
I'm going to carry this around for who knows how long. It's not healing now - since I still see my name show up every now and then and the whole thing is referred to in couched references and hushed tones.
And in the end, the mother fucker - yes, I want you to envision his mother crying through her tears begging him to stop because that's how I felt - was smiling, and confident, and not concerned about anyone but his own right to just keep on going.
That's fine, John. You can legally do that.
And some other people will simply silently slink away.
Others you can wind up and taunt for a while and they'll make a scene, and then the group chapperone will escort them out.
But in the end, there you were, a child of "G"od, and you effectively said, "hey, man, I don't care what my words or actions make you feel, I have a right, and I feel an obligation to make you feel them, and if you have a problem with that, I don't care"
And this is supposed to be a guy who, by virtue of his noble religion, is a better man than I. Remember - I'm the guy who lost my temper - I must have been sitting alone in the vacuum of space while sequestered on the Moon, right? It wasn't like I was a guy who was lauded in the group only a few weeks or months or for two years before - somehow I just turned into a fucking monster and NOBODY can figure out how or why.
At least that's their story and they're sticking too it.
Good luck with that.
After all, I'm probably the only guy in the history of mankind that has ever lost his temper and acted out inappropriately, right? Surely, now that they've thrown me off the boat and sailed further away from me, there will never be another.
If it were that easy to believe the problem belonged to me and only me, the suicide would have been a forgone conclusion a long time ago. If I really felt that all the blame was mine alone - all those shrinks I'm not going to any longer can tell you that I'm a purely reactionary person. If I was pro-active, I'd be able to get past this.
It's all good. Other people can continue to masturbate their brain that things are precisely the way they see them - and only that way - and they need not adjust anything nor consider any alternatives. They're right, and everyone else is wrong.
They will act shocked if you accuse them of that, but in truth, the stand they took in this instance proved that is exactly how they see it.
Them good. Someone else bad.
On the night I was last held captive against my will in a "hospital" the "doctor" asked me "Do you have suicidal thoughts?"
I said, "Yeah. All the time. But I'm (was then) 37 years old. I've had suicidal thoughts since I was 16. So that's an unbroken streak of over twenty years of successfully dealing with those thoughts, isn't it?"
They kept me for four days, and I was finally discharged "against doctors orders".
Street Prophets kicked me out for mentioning suicide. And I've already put up the link where the unforgivable gaping asshole who drove me to that point had months earlier had insisted that he knew so much about who I was and what my existential beliefs meant that anyone who really did feel as I said I did MUST be suicidal - but he was not admonished for saying so.
John C Howard can insist that anyone without faith must be suicidal and he gets a pass.
But if I, after having had this dickhead wave himself in my face for six months say that his words make me feel so insignificant and belittled and ignored that I wish I was dead - well, now I've gone TOO far.
God, I'm still waiting for you to rule on this one.
I can only assume that your silence on these matters must mean I was right all along and you're not there in the first place. Because I've tried to find you, God. You haven't said a goddamn thing to me, God. (ironic, eh?)
And so I start my count.
Six months after a prick with a Bible in his hand declares for me that anyone who does not have faith must be suicidal, two months after the people who claim they are an open forum for even atheists excommunicated a guy for saying that he felt suicidal thanks to the hypocritical asshole with the Bible kicked me out, they still have my first diary up as an example of how welcome the place is to atheists.
Go back and read that diary, if you would - please.
Then read a few more of what I wrote.
I didn't come in there to burn the place down and tell them they're all full of shit.
In fact, the diary I wrote in August is most hard to explain.
Three years later: Catharsis, inspiration, friendship, renewal. Thank you all.
How did the guy who wrote that in August of 2009 become a guy who was so angry at the very same people that they had to throw him out by November?
Surely it was because there was something inherently wrong with me. Surely it had nothing to do with the reality that I blogged there constantly during those months. How many diaries and comments did I write in those months?
How many of them were put on your front page?
Boy, that guy just snapped, didn't he? Must have been something in the water. There's no way that such a radical change could have been the result of the people he was spending most of his time with during those months.
The defense rests, God.
One last thought that I keep forgetting: There is a thing called "troll rating". This can be applied to comments or to cookiejars (first comment by an author in a diary) to express the sentiment that the comment is just so egregious and flagrantly in violation of the spirit of the website, or just so vulgar and counter-productive, that it should be "hidden" from all but the site admins and the "trusted" users.
Not once in all my comments and diaries I posted during the two years I was at the Street Prophets did even ONE SINGLE COMMENT get a hide rating from ANYONE.
But somehow they had to ban me outright. That one says something to me; I don't know what you will think it means. But here were a group of people who never once took the opportunity to use the tools that were put at their disposal to give feedback and moderate the discussion; yet somehow a discussion was so far afield that although not one single person felt the need to ever hide a single comment, two users had to be banned.
And the guy who ostensibly started it all - JCHFleetguy - he says that he still thinks the whole thing was a wonderful exercise and healthy for all parties involved. Oh, isn't it just great that everyone who wasn't kicked out all came together for the group hug!
Wow. How little things change over the centuries, eh? Us: Good. Them: Bad.
Continue on.
Dear God, I wish I could believe in you so that I could have some candid conversations about matters here on Earth. I think some of your followers have a lot of reason (and yet sadly they appear to have little actual intention) to ask your forgiveness.
But I don't see that happening; it's too easy for them to blame others and move on.
Let me know how that works out for you.
Not real easy on this end.
But that's the way "G"od wanted it, right?
This must be all part of "H"is plan.
Good luck with that.
We all know that whatever happens to the guy who wrote this diary, that sick bastard was broken and rotten long before he got to Street Prophets. They had no bearing on him what.
So.
Ever.
And if you can believe that,
well I want the drugs you're doing and ask you how you can take them and still pass the test.
Faith? Is that the drug?
Sorry, I can't take that pill, it makes me feel like a hypocrite.
But it just makes my scalp itch when I think about this.
Here's the "end" of the story.
http://www.streetprophets.com/comments/2010/1/14/141729/556/346#c346
He's gone, JCH. (3+ / 0-)
Recommended by:JCHFleetguy, Sister Quarterstaff of Undeclared Grace, linkage
We banned snafubar.
by Rain on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:40:55 PM PST
I saw that after I answered n/t (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:linkage
To find out about me:
http://braincrampsforgod.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-me.html
by JCHFleetguy on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:58:24 PM PST
January 15, 2010.
I really should let this perpetuate itself a little longer before I post this, but this will tell me if anyone at all is even paying attention.
You see, I cannot post any diaries or comments or delete my old diaries at Street Prophets, but I can still log in (and view hidden comments just like a trusted user - ha!). But I guess their system is designed to turn certain privileges "on" and some "off". So I logged "in" after I started putting these diaries up here and changed the link to my homepage to here.
no one from SP has noticed yet that this is here.
Maybe they're proud of that.
But the thing that just blows my mind is the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the site. The site was started in 2003, I joined in 2007, and aparently my early impressions were so favorable and I was such a likable guy that I was the token atheist (there are others, for sure) they used as an example that Atheists were welcome there.
In fact, the sentence in the FAQ that answers "Who Posts Here?" reads like a "Believe it or not!"
Who posts here?
The quick answer is "anyone who wants to". There are a wide variety of people writing diaries and comments on Street Prophets. They include adherents of almost all systems of belief, sometimes including Atheists (see this diary). The majority of people posting here fall on the liberal side of the religious and political spectra. However, people of Conservative views are also quite welcome to come and share with us, as long as they do not attempt to interfere with the site mission. If you are polite, you will be treated politely. Unfortunately, there are some who post comments or diaries with the sole purpose of provoking others. These people are called trolls. Some tips and techniques for dealing with trolls are described below.
Now here's the count: That link above - the "here" link in the "Who posts here" answer to the FAQ is not my hotlink; it's the Street Prophets hotlink.
They sent me packing and talked defensively about having no choice but to do so; they held vigils to comfort each other (fuck the guy who is so angered and hurt by it that he mentions suicide, he's just WRONG. The rest of them need a group hug and a prayer circle) - and the link is still there that even Atheists are welcome.
Maybe they have a point.
Maybe atheists are welcome there, then they'll needle, belittle, condescend and talk down to them long enough that they eventually won't be, but hey -
...everyone should see now that the guy was clearly broken and lost before he arrived, so the fact that he snapped was only a matter of time and the conversation that sent him over the edge was inconsequential to any of that.
In other words, if it already looks broken, go ahead and break it and it's not your fault.
So - here's the count. March 10 since January 14 is 55 days.
And that's the way it is, on the 55th day since we kicked out that crazy lunatic angry atheist, we're still holding up his first diary as evidence of what a welcoming place that even the atheists (gasp!) are welcome at the Street Prophets.
And let's not forget that the guy I had issues with is a self professed political conservatives, which just goes to show you that although Street Prophets describes it's own "blogfather" as the DailyKos (meaning that they descended from a place of politics that is not averse to dealing with faithful/religious/spiritual issues), they have acted as if they are indeed a place that puts the faith/religion/spirituality first and the politics second.
They know good and goddamn well that I'm not converting to conservatism/the Republican party, so it's OK to tell the atheist to fuck off and they haven't really lost anything.
Maybe in a strict membership count, no.
But I'm still hanging on to the last 20 minutes of my audio recording rant that I've released the first 20 minutes to in my other posts on this blog. You see, I have witheld some of that rant, because in the heat of the moment, standing by myself on that day when I tried to find some sense in talking all that out to myself, I said some things that - although genuine and true and from the heart - I dare not share with anybody on the "outside" (of my skull).
You and I both know there are words that when spoken trigger reactions, and no amount of context, explanation, or elucidation will ever change the perceptions of all the people who just know better what's in my head than I do.
"Well, I don't care what you meant, WE ALL KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY MEAN."
And that, to my astute observers, is why suicide makes so much sense to me.
If what I think and feel and can explain never matters, because someone else can erase, ignore, belittle or betray what I say by claiming they know better...well, then they are the ones who are making it clear that I serve absolutely no purpose in trying to change anything. A tree stump or a rock can accomplish as much, at least somebody can sit on them and rest for a while.
As a sentient being -
as a cogent, lucid, sober person who of his own volition can form rational thoughts and explain precisely what I mean by them,
if I am not permitted to explain nor defend that someone else has misinterpreted my words, or ignored the specific connotations thereof, then I serve no purpose here.
And sadly, it goes one step further than that.
John C Howell/Howard wrote to me personally at my private email and apologized for upsetting me the first time we miscommunicated to each other. To date I've saved him the embarassment of his assertion that we were both having so much fun together in these exchanges (when I explicitly told him back then I was very angry all along). I saw him as a person who was the antithesis of me - if every answer to every question or issue is simply some recitation of "chapter:verse", then there is no conversation that cannot be had by simply picking up a Bible and reading it myself.
It's a surreal, perversion of "freedom of speech". Freedom of speech, in a Constitutional argument, means that (with precise few exceptions; inciting a riot, treason, threats to the president) there is no limit that the government can place on one's speech. Sadly a few people act indignant when their words perterb or enrage other citizens, and they say, "Hey, you can't tell me not to say it!"
...and they are correct. As a citizen, I cannot prohibit their speech. However, they are indeed delusional if they somehow believe that because their speech is protected by law that that also absolves them of the reaction other citizens can have upon hearing it.
This is easy to point out: If you go into a bar with all kinds of Harley Davidsons in the parking lot and lots of guys and girls in leather and you start talking shit about all the whores in the room and how Americans build shitty motorcyles - you'd better have your exits nearby and clear or they probably won't find much of what's left of you.
Yes, it's illegal for them to beat the shit out of you. But then again, you probably calculate that you're going to be a crimson stain on the dancefloor long before the police arrive, so you check your freedom to mouth off at the door and that's how you make it home that night.
On a blog, you're free to mouth off, and some people, like DanishBrethren of StreetProphets even call people like me "terrorists" - for if I say that their words have hurt me personally, then he feels that I'm "holding the site hostage".
Nice.
I guess we can make rape legal now - after all, if the fucking cunt didn't react so poorly to that nice orgasm we gave her, what's the problem, right?
It staggers the mind how the argument got turned around that fast - if we just hammer on the guy who has a bad reaction to what we say and blame him for it - then we're still free to say any damn thing we want to about him, to him, to spite him. It's a great thing.
And to a point they're right - but lets' not allow them to masturbate themselves any longer into claiming that it's still an "open" community. It's open to people who don't say "ouch". Go along to get along, and if you can't do that, the door is over there. And if you don't walk through it on your own, we'll throw you through it and it will pooch you out into the parking lot when it hits you as it closes.
Now I'm not ever going to defend Rush Limbaugh - but to illustrate a point: Rush Limbaugh got fired by ESPN for saying something racially provocative during his time there. He cried on his own radio show that "There is no freedom of speech in thsi country". Um - Rush? Your freedom of speech was not infringed; surely the government had no more to do with his firing than they did in his getting hired in the first place. His bosses at ESPN fired him because they did not want to face the economic or social consequences of Limbaugh's words pissing off a lot of their paying subscribers or customers who patronized their advertizers.
And so in this context, I present my life - the reality of my living, breathing, conscious, corporeal form that can read or listen to the words of others and respond to them - as a counter to "free" speech.
Sure it's an open community, but if you piss us off, we're going to ask you to leave.
"But what if my reaction was because one of your own pissed me off?"
"That's our perogative; its' our site. It's a 'safe place' for people of faith"
"That means that people of faith do have privilege over those who don't?"
"It means we reserve the right to declare by our own rules who was right and who was wrong"
"and what happens to the parties after your judgement?"
"We don't care. That's our privilege."
And so it goes. In a larger context I have had other accuse atheists in general of "attacking" faith - like when the ACLU files a suite to object to the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance, or to hear a Christian prayer at the opening of a courthouse session, or when there is a manger scene placed at the seat of civil government for all citizens. That, according to some Christians, is evidence that faith is "under attack" in America.
Why is it so egregious that a person who does not hold to any faith object to having faith waved in my face? Do you think I could run around town and claim that "G"od was a fraud and that churches are a place where only fools and liars gather and nobody would object?
This is where democracy may ultimately meet it's match.
That's a mouthful, ain't it? Yes, what I am saying is that democracy can fail. And Democracy (captial D) can fail when the respect for what it means is lost. Democracy is not merely means to an end - the Protestants who founded this country did not escape the rule of the British throne simply so they could create an environment that was precisely as exclusionary as the one they left behind. The men who founded this country declared that freedom was more important than religion, so that each individual must be left to find their own faith and method of demonstrating it.
John Howard was entitled by law to speak his mind.
Street Prophets can grant him deference and privilege to say it on their forum.
Street prophets can even exclude others who they feel violated their rules of decorum in their reaction to John Howard's attitude.
But what none of them has the capacity - whether or not the right to do so exists - is to somehow manipulate, control, censor, or otherwise have any certainty over how anyone else reacts to those words.
That's what got lost.
What Street Prophets said to the blogosphere, the liberal/progressive voters they serve, and anyone else who happens to trip over their site by accident is that their faith, their harmony as a site came before the feelings of one lone man (or two or three of us as one other got excommunicated and they strongly admonished a third).
That disappoints me. I'm sure they dont' care I'm disappointed, that's one of the privileges they exercised in my excommunication - out of sight, out of mind.
But I'm still here.
I'm going to carry this around for who knows how long. It's not healing now - since I still see my name show up every now and then and the whole thing is referred to in couched references and hushed tones.
And in the end, the mother fucker - yes, I want you to envision his mother crying through her tears begging him to stop because that's how I felt - was smiling, and confident, and not concerned about anyone but his own right to just keep on going.
That's fine, John. You can legally do that.
And some other people will simply silently slink away.
Others you can wind up and taunt for a while and they'll make a scene, and then the group chapperone will escort them out.
But in the end, there you were, a child of "G"od, and you effectively said, "hey, man, I don't care what my words or actions make you feel, I have a right, and I feel an obligation to make you feel them, and if you have a problem with that, I don't care"
And this is supposed to be a guy who, by virtue of his noble religion, is a better man than I. Remember - I'm the guy who lost my temper - I must have been sitting alone in the vacuum of space while sequestered on the Moon, right? It wasn't like I was a guy who was lauded in the group only a few weeks or months or for two years before - somehow I just turned into a fucking monster and NOBODY can figure out how or why.
At least that's their story and they're sticking too it.
Good luck with that.
After all, I'm probably the only guy in the history of mankind that has ever lost his temper and acted out inappropriately, right? Surely, now that they've thrown me off the boat and sailed further away from me, there will never be another.
If it were that easy to believe the problem belonged to me and only me, the suicide would have been a forgone conclusion a long time ago. If I really felt that all the blame was mine alone - all those shrinks I'm not going to any longer can tell you that I'm a purely reactionary person. If I was pro-active, I'd be able to get past this.
It's all good. Other people can continue to masturbate their brain that things are precisely the way they see them - and only that way - and they need not adjust anything nor consider any alternatives. They're right, and everyone else is wrong.
They will act shocked if you accuse them of that, but in truth, the stand they took in this instance proved that is exactly how they see it.
Them good. Someone else bad.
On the night I was last held captive against my will in a "hospital" the "doctor" asked me "Do you have suicidal thoughts?"
I said, "Yeah. All the time. But I'm (was then) 37 years old. I've had suicidal thoughts since I was 16. So that's an unbroken streak of over twenty years of successfully dealing with those thoughts, isn't it?"
They kept me for four days, and I was finally discharged "against doctors orders".
Street Prophets kicked me out for mentioning suicide. And I've already put up the link where the unforgivable gaping asshole who drove me to that point had months earlier had insisted that he knew so much about who I was and what my existential beliefs meant that anyone who really did feel as I said I did MUST be suicidal - but he was not admonished for saying so.
John C Howard can insist that anyone without faith must be suicidal and he gets a pass.
But if I, after having had this dickhead wave himself in my face for six months say that his words make me feel so insignificant and belittled and ignored that I wish I was dead - well, now I've gone TOO far.
God, I'm still waiting for you to rule on this one.
I can only assume that your silence on these matters must mean I was right all along and you're not there in the first place. Because I've tried to find you, God. You haven't said a goddamn thing to me, God. (ironic, eh?)
And so I start my count.
Six months after a prick with a Bible in his hand declares for me that anyone who does not have faith must be suicidal, two months after the people who claim they are an open forum for even atheists excommunicated a guy for saying that he felt suicidal thanks to the hypocritical asshole with the Bible kicked me out, they still have my first diary up as an example of how welcome the place is to atheists.
Go back and read that diary, if you would - please.
Then read a few more of what I wrote.
I didn't come in there to burn the place down and tell them they're all full of shit.
In fact, the diary I wrote in August is most hard to explain.
Three years later: Catharsis, inspiration, friendship, renewal. Thank you all.
How did the guy who wrote that in August of 2009 become a guy who was so angry at the very same people that they had to throw him out by November?
Surely it was because there was something inherently wrong with me. Surely it had nothing to do with the reality that I blogged there constantly during those months. How many diaries and comments did I write in those months?
How many of them were put on your front page?
Boy, that guy just snapped, didn't he? Must have been something in the water. There's no way that such a radical change could have been the result of the people he was spending most of his time with during those months.
The defense rests, God.
One last thought that I keep forgetting: There is a thing called "troll rating". This can be applied to comments or to cookiejars (first comment by an author in a diary) to express the sentiment that the comment is just so egregious and flagrantly in violation of the spirit of the website, or just so vulgar and counter-productive, that it should be "hidden" from all but the site admins and the "trusted" users.
Not once in all my comments and diaries I posted during the two years I was at the Street Prophets did even ONE SINGLE COMMENT get a hide rating from ANYONE.
But somehow they had to ban me outright. That one says something to me; I don't know what you will think it means. But here were a group of people who never once took the opportunity to use the tools that were put at their disposal to give feedback and moderate the discussion; yet somehow a discussion was so far afield that although not one single person felt the need to ever hide a single comment, two users had to be banned.
And the guy who ostensibly started it all - JCHFleetguy - he says that he still thinks the whole thing was a wonderful exercise and healthy for all parties involved. Oh, isn't it just great that everyone who wasn't kicked out all came together for the group hug!
Wow. How little things change over the centuries, eh? Us: Good. Them: Bad.
Continue on.
Dear God, I wish I could believe in you so that I could have some candid conversations about matters here on Earth. I think some of your followers have a lot of reason (and yet sadly they appear to have little actual intention) to ask your forgiveness.
But I don't see that happening; it's too easy for them to blame others and move on.
Let me know how that works out for you.
Not real easy on this end.
But that's the way "G"od wanted it, right?
This must be all part of "H"is plan.
Good luck with that.
We all know that whatever happens to the guy who wrote this diary, that sick bastard was broken and rotten long before he got to Street Prophets. They had no bearing on him what.
So.
Ever.
And if you can believe that,
well I want the drugs you're doing and ask you how you can take them and still pass the test.
Faith? Is that the drug?
Sorry, I can't take that pill, it makes me feel like a hypocrite.
2010/02/03
I finally figured it out.
Suicide.
Hey, 30,000 people every year in the Greatest Country In The World (TM) come to the conclusion that it's just the thing to do.
So how does the country deal with it?
"YOU! YES YOU! GET HELP!"
Did you see it?
Here - look at it again - see if you see it this time?
"(you) GET HELP! (from somewhere else, not from me)!"
There it is. Whenever I'm in a one-on-one conflict with some person, the answer is always for me to concede that I need "help" (never specifically defined what that actually is) and therefore, if I get "help" from somewhere else, the person I'm having the conflict with one-on-one is off the hook. Presumably, after the "help" does whatever it does that "help" is supposed to do, then I'll be in such a state that they will find me more agreeable.
And there it is - that's what the 30,000 have figured out. If the answer to all conflicts is that I am to be sent away to become more malleable and agreeable to others so that they don't have to change, then all problems are solved.
Just be more agreeable to everyone else,
get the "help" to become more agreeable from someone else,
and when I come back all better (read: more like everyone else - as if the way everyone else treats each other is working SO well) - then life is good.
Some people assail me for being so argumentative and combative. There is an alternative to that as well - I can be quiet.
I can stay quiet.
And they don't like that plan either.
There is no way to make these people happy.
And that may have some bearing on our situation.
Hey, 30,000 people every year in the Greatest Country In The World (TM) come to the conclusion that it's just the thing to do.
So how does the country deal with it?
"YOU! YES YOU! GET HELP!"
Did you see it?
Here - look at it again - see if you see it this time?
"(you) GET HELP! (from somewhere else, not from me)!"
There it is. Whenever I'm in a one-on-one conflict with some person, the answer is always for me to concede that I need "help" (never specifically defined what that actually is) and therefore, if I get "help" from somewhere else, the person I'm having the conflict with one-on-one is off the hook. Presumably, after the "help" does whatever it does that "help" is supposed to do, then I'll be in such a state that they will find me more agreeable.
And there it is - that's what the 30,000 have figured out. If the answer to all conflicts is that I am to be sent away to become more malleable and agreeable to others so that they don't have to change, then all problems are solved.
Just be more agreeable to everyone else,
get the "help" to become more agreeable from someone else,
and when I come back all better (read: more like everyone else - as if the way everyone else treats each other is working SO well) - then life is good.
Some people assail me for being so argumentative and combative. There is an alternative to that as well - I can be quiet.
I can stay quiet.
And they don't like that plan either.
There is no way to make these people happy.
And that may have some bearing on our situation.
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