Hello. This is my hello post. I am here in large part because of the following feelings and thoughts.
I was raised crazy Christian fundie by a Nazi mom and her procession of phallic wannabe-providers who were, in reality, addicts, crazies, and losers. Because of my utterly-wrecked-from-the-start childhood, my deep brain structures are extremely slow-to-trust gatekeepers over my ability to form human bonds.
I'm pretty sure the above now represents a kind of upbringing which people younger than me could only wish for. That is to say, I'm pretty sure my idea of a wrecked home, back in the 70s, 80s, and as I grew into numeric adulthood in the 90s, was far -- let me not say better, let me instead say "ironically more helpful" -- than what people younger than me, experienced, or experience.
I care about things like a Christian is supposed to. I was always attracted to that sense of justice being a spiritual act - not religious, but spiritual - half of my respect for Jesus comes from the scene where he flipped out and drove big finance out of the temple, the other half, from his acts of mercy upon untouchables which also amounted to civil disobedience.
Becoming atheist as a young adult did not change any of this for me.
However, my morals have always been driven by revulsion. Remember: I'm from a broken home full of some of the worst kind of Americans. My strong sense of what is wrong, what must be fought and prevented and exposed, comes from intimate knowledge of having been wronged in those, or similar, ways.
What I see in those around me, both in acknowledged atheists, and in the more-common mainstream American (who claims, utterly fraudulently, the faith of their parents, for the sake of convenience and conformity, but who are fully atheist - except, perhaps, when whipped to conform on an issue as a voting block or as a brainwashed mass - and, by and large, mindlessly anti-human), is that it seems more common for people to reject the traditional human dignities in an entirely forgivable and predictable act of throwing out babies with bathwater.
After having been raised by a culture so oppressive that it robs you of your will to cling to your own humanity, by demonizing that humanity, those who escape, too often, believe that this nebulous "sense of humanity" was imposed on them as part of the Christian brainwashing.
Bear in mind that the likely majority of self-proclaimed atheists are people who have reached adulthood, gotten out on their own and into the world, and importantly, gotten away from their families - before they embraced atheism. At this point in their lives, they are expected, and inwardly driven, to put the lessons of life so far into a useful context - to cast our experiences as a source of wisdom. If all they have known, all their lives, is that their internal thirsts for dignity, for deep and meaningful human bonds, for a good hard cry every now and then, for recognition, for someone to hear us present our grievances, and so on, are not worth acknowledging - are flaws in need of medication - are symptoms of an uppity, unrealistic idealism - how would those people grow up to be anything but soul-sick?
To the extent that I am criticizing specifically atheist households, this is an observation from the far, far, far outside. I have zero contact with my family because they see me as demon-possessed for abandoning the faith. Moreover, I have zero contact with entire family units which operate, and have always operated, as atheists, or as theists in outward claim only. However, here's why I come to these conclusions (and please be aware, in the list below, that I am deliberately choosing the words "I don't see" because I am aware the greatest problem here might be a continued fear of exposing myself to communities of humans).
- I don't see atheists working to teach their children about being "good Samaritans"
- I see a generation who demands logical proof before they will dignify sympathy and empathy as virtues; relatedly,
- I see atheists comfortable giving informed consent to human rights abuses, and philosophizing that civic responsibility is a flawed concept - in a complete reversal of the traditional trend where education is a liberalizing force, I see atheists dryly accepting harsh realities and confused why they should object
- I see atheists who seem more afraid, not less afraid; who are objectively less driven, not more; who rationalize amoral and antimoral stances toward social responsibility more skillfully, where a Christian would simply spout something which is barely recognizable as a sentence, an atheist will explain in dry, historically-valid, deterministic, bastardized-Nietzsche-flavored apathy.
In short I see atheists as having self-fulfilled the threats insinuated into their minds by their presumably Christian brainwashing -- that a life without faith will be a lonely life where souls do nothing but burn and cry out to nobody.
And I see this as a brain virus, which is largely responsible for the moral cowardice which has so recently accelerated the death of free thought on earth; a dying process nowhere so pronounced as in America.
I see it as self-fulfilling; I was taught there is no love or life outside the faith, and now, despite being a member of a demographic with far superior moral comprehension, as promised, I can find none - at least, very specifically, none for me.
As such I continue to be alone, and as handicapped in my effectiveness, as a person without a community or a creed, is expected to be. Will inevitably be, for the most part, in a social species. And so, I think, do we all.
This is where religious mind control, and collapse of an empire, dovetail with macabre beauty - between Sunday and Sunday, the faithful uphold each other and cast down the unbelievers, with a mutual disgust and distrust both far greater, and far more relevant, than that of natives vs immigrants, or any other disagreement.
Apathy and irony fused into a dysfunctional arbitrariness of self, and a jealous hatred toward anyone who claims to have successfully held onto a fully human identity - that is what I see coming out of the commingling of the wave toward rational secularism, as it drowns its cathartic sorrows well past the self-medication treatment's recommended span.
Hi. I'm really f___ing lonely, and I do _not_ think too much.
I was raised crazy Christian fundie by a Nazi mom and her procession of phallic wannabe-providers who were, in reality, addicts, crazies, and losers. Because of my utterly-wrecked-from-the-start childhood, my deep brain structures are extremely slow-to-trust gatekeepers over my ability to form human bonds.
I'm pretty sure the above now represents a kind of upbringing which people younger than me could only wish for. That is to say, I'm pretty sure my idea of a wrecked home, back in the 70s, 80s, and as I grew into numeric adulthood in the 90s, was far -- let me not say better, let me instead say "ironically more helpful" -- than what people younger than me, experienced, or experience.
I care about things like a Christian is supposed to. I was always attracted to that sense of justice being a spiritual act - not religious, but spiritual - half of my respect for Jesus comes from the scene where he flipped out and drove big finance out of the temple, the other half, from his acts of mercy upon untouchables which also amounted to civil disobedience.
Becoming atheist as a young adult did not change any of this for me.
However, my morals have always been driven by revulsion. Remember: I'm from a broken home full of some of the worst kind of Americans. My strong sense of what is wrong, what must be fought and prevented and exposed, comes from intimate knowledge of having been wronged in those, or similar, ways.
What I see in those around me, both in acknowledged atheists, and in the more-common mainstream American (who claims, utterly fraudulently, the faith of their parents, for the sake of convenience and conformity, but who are fully atheist - except, perhaps, when whipped to conform on an issue as a voting block or as a brainwashed mass - and, by and large, mindlessly anti-human), is that it seems more common for people to reject the traditional human dignities in an entirely forgivable and predictable act of throwing out babies with bathwater.
After having been raised by a culture so oppressive that it robs you of your will to cling to your own humanity, by demonizing that humanity, those who escape, too often, believe that this nebulous "sense of humanity" was imposed on them as part of the Christian brainwashing.
Bear in mind that the likely majority of self-proclaimed atheists are people who have reached adulthood, gotten out on their own and into the world, and importantly, gotten away from their families - before they embraced atheism. At this point in their lives, they are expected, and inwardly driven, to put the lessons of life so far into a useful context - to cast our experiences as a source of wisdom. If all they have known, all their lives, is that their internal thirsts for dignity, for deep and meaningful human bonds, for a good hard cry every now and then, for recognition, for someone to hear us present our grievances, and so on, are not worth acknowledging - are flaws in need of medication - are symptoms of an uppity, unrealistic idealism - how would those people grow up to be anything but soul-sick?
To the extent that I am criticizing specifically atheist households, this is an observation from the far, far, far outside. I have zero contact with my family because they see me as demon-possessed for abandoning the faith. Moreover, I have zero contact with entire family units which operate, and have always operated, as atheists, or as theists in outward claim only. However, here's why I come to these conclusions (and please be aware, in the list below, that I am deliberately choosing the words "I don't see" because I am aware the greatest problem here might be a continued fear of exposing myself to communities of humans).
- I don't see atheists working to teach their children about being "good Samaritans"
- I see a generation who demands logical proof before they will dignify sympathy and empathy as virtues; relatedly,
- I see atheists comfortable giving informed consent to human rights abuses, and philosophizing that civic responsibility is a flawed concept - in a complete reversal of the traditional trend where education is a liberalizing force, I see atheists dryly accepting harsh realities and confused why they should object
- I see atheists who seem more afraid, not less afraid; who are objectively less driven, not more; who rationalize amoral and antimoral stances toward social responsibility more skillfully, where a Christian would simply spout something which is barely recognizable as a sentence, an atheist will explain in dry, historically-valid, deterministic, bastardized-Nietzsche-flavored apathy.
In short I see atheists as having self-fulfilled the threats insinuated into their minds by their presumably Christian brainwashing -- that a life without faith will be a lonely life where souls do nothing but burn and cry out to nobody.
And I see this as a brain virus, which is largely responsible for the moral cowardice which has so recently accelerated the death of free thought on earth; a dying process nowhere so pronounced as in America.
I see it as self-fulfilling; I was taught there is no love or life outside the faith, and now, despite being a member of a demographic with far superior moral comprehension, as promised, I can find none - at least, very specifically, none for me.
As such I continue to be alone, and as handicapped in my effectiveness, as a person without a community or a creed, is expected to be. Will inevitably be, for the most part, in a social species. And so, I think, do we all.
This is where religious mind control, and collapse of an empire, dovetail with macabre beauty - between Sunday and Sunday, the faithful uphold each other and cast down the unbelievers, with a mutual disgust and distrust both far greater, and far more relevant, than that of natives vs immigrants, or any other disagreement.
Apathy and irony fused into a dysfunctional arbitrariness of self, and a jealous hatred toward anyone who claims to have successfully held onto a fully human identity - that is what I see coming out of the commingling of the wave toward rational secularism, as it drowns its cathartic sorrows well past the self-medication treatment's recommended span.
Hi. I'm really f___ing lonely, and I do _not_ think too much.
I'm very sorry to hear about your childhood, everyone deserves better than that.
