First off: Very good premise for this thread, thank you.
Anyways, I broke my right leg when I was around 13 years old during a football game at my school. To make that anecdote short, first time I experienced the "bliss" of using a morphine derivative at the hospital. That pain could be so remarkably combated made me interested into how drugs worked on the brain. Also, remembering back to that event, I remember how a lot of other drugs prior to being administered the morphine derivative were utterly useless and had very little, if any, effect on my pain.
I remember a time, I must've been around 10 or so, when an older brother of mine wore a track suit all the time, so much so, his track suit started to smell. My mother was unable to convince my brother to change clothes, because he liked the track suit so much. I guess she snapped or something, because she took a pair of scissors and cut his track suit up ... while he was wearing it. My 2 younger siblings were convinced she was trying to kill my older brother with the scissors. I sat down at the time and was just shocked. I lost a great deal of faith in my mother that day, that she would be so careless, and it also said a great deal of her character by how my 2 younger siblings reacted.
We had a lot of pets growing up, most of them were euthanized after my mother grew tired of them or some other arbitrary reason, or when the pets became what I can only describe as mentally ill. One dog had a litter, when I was around 9 or 10, and because my mother didn't have the money (did I mention I we were very poor?) to take the puppies to the doctor to have them euthanized, She sent us instead up the mountain Kirkjubøreyn, and told us to kill them. So me and 2 of my older brothers did. We took the puppies and smashed their heads in by throwing that at a boulder and dug them under some gravel nearby. If anything can scar the imaginary soul, then this would be it. I remember also how the dog reacted after we came back home, and she obviously could smell her puppies, but they were nowhere in sight. That only deepened my sorrow. That dog became euthanized as well after it had attacked a child. The child was mostly unharmed, thankfully.
When I was around 13 years old I read the 2 versions of The Ten Commandments in my 5th re-reading of the Bible and upon noticing how different they were, started my road to apostasy. Got the ball rolling, so to speak. And after a lot of mental turmoil and fear of Hell I had come to the conviction that everything supernatural didn't exist 4 years later at the ripe age of 17. My very Christian parents, especially my mother, were outraged when I came out the closet, as it were, and used threats to try and change my mind (as if beliefs work that way). I can see now that, from their perspective, they were trying to save my immortal soul from Hell - so they cared, in a sort of twisted way. But I didn't have that insight then that I have now, and it only made me an angry atheist that left the house I grew up in shortly after coming out.
We, as a culture, live pretty close to nature. We hunt pilot whales when they swim in our fjords. I like hiking in the mountains just for the view and peace of mind that it gives me. We slaughter our own sheep in cellars, I've helped with slaughtering lots of sheep, although I hear that is starting to phase out into slaughterhouses now. I've caught and eaten my own fish plenty of times.
Anyways, I broke my right leg when I was around 13 years old during a football game at my school. To make that anecdote short, first time I experienced the "bliss" of using a morphine derivative at the hospital. That pain could be so remarkably combated made me interested into how drugs worked on the brain. Also, remembering back to that event, I remember how a lot of other drugs prior to being administered the morphine derivative were utterly useless and had very little, if any, effect on my pain.
I remember a time, I must've been around 10 or so, when an older brother of mine wore a track suit all the time, so much so, his track suit started to smell. My mother was unable to convince my brother to change clothes, because he liked the track suit so much. I guess she snapped or something, because she took a pair of scissors and cut his track suit up ... while he was wearing it. My 2 younger siblings were convinced she was trying to kill my older brother with the scissors. I sat down at the time and was just shocked. I lost a great deal of faith in my mother that day, that she would be so careless, and it also said a great deal of her character by how my 2 younger siblings reacted.
We had a lot of pets growing up, most of them were euthanized after my mother grew tired of them or some other arbitrary reason, or when the pets became what I can only describe as mentally ill. One dog had a litter, when I was around 9 or 10, and because my mother didn't have the money (did I mention I we were very poor?) to take the puppies to the doctor to have them euthanized, She sent us instead up the mountain Kirkjubøreyn, and told us to kill them. So me and 2 of my older brothers did. We took the puppies and smashed their heads in by throwing that at a boulder and dug them under some gravel nearby. If anything can scar the imaginary soul, then this would be it. I remember also how the dog reacted after we came back home, and she obviously could smell her puppies, but they were nowhere in sight. That only deepened my sorrow. That dog became euthanized as well after it had attacked a child. The child was mostly unharmed, thankfully.
When I was around 13 years old I read the 2 versions of The Ten Commandments in my 5th re-reading of the Bible and upon noticing how different they were, started my road to apostasy. Got the ball rolling, so to speak. And after a lot of mental turmoil and fear of Hell I had come to the conviction that everything supernatural didn't exist 4 years later at the ripe age of 17. My very Christian parents, especially my mother, were outraged when I came out the closet, as it were, and used threats to try and change my mind (as if beliefs work that way). I can see now that, from their perspective, they were trying to save my immortal soul from Hell - so they cared, in a sort of twisted way. But I didn't have that insight then that I have now, and it only made me an angry atheist that left the house I grew up in shortly after coming out.
We, as a culture, live pretty close to nature. We hunt pilot whales when they swim in our fjords. I like hiking in the mountains just for the view and peace of mind that it gives me. We slaughter our own sheep in cellars, I've helped with slaughtering lots of sheep, although I hear that is starting to phase out into slaughterhouses now. I've caught and eaten my own fish plenty of times.
