One of “Them”

Everyday I struggle through, fighting the flow, keeping myself from assimilation. Removing limbs to stop infections, like large explosions to suck oxygen away from smaller fires, suicide today to prevent pain tomorrow. Hitting the gas to dig the only deeper into the earth. Perhaps my own grave. No, not quite, though I wish it were. They pull me from the hole I’ve dug myself while trying to get out, but at a price - I see the glory of their ways, through resisted transition. “Never one of them!” I scream in my attempt to preserve my countercultural status quo, as its foundational structure crumbles beneath my feet. My foundation demolishes, yet I stand taller than before, and see farther. It seems not that I have grown, but that the Fog of War has cleared - I am now one, with everything I wished to escape from. One of Them.

Exhaustion

I’ve fought, and fought, and fought,

Exhaustion, never-ending, and for naught,

with its ups and downs,

and even cliches abound,

in the end, destruction comes,

again and again, time to rebuild,

I forgot the conundrums,

and the sadness killed,

I’ve made my way all the way up,

But now I’ve blown up, and I’m tumbling down,

The end nears, depression takes the crown,

But losing, to an odd degree,

Leaves me with a sigh of relief.

What’s true in the mind, is real in consequence. Is it real, only because I think it is? When the world’s spiraling down, and I want to give up, I look for escape. I look for a way to get out. What if it’s only my imagination? What if the only reason anything went wrong is because I made it so? I make mistake after mistake, take hit after hit, fight and lose, again and again. I’ve constructed a reality around myself, a web of lies to protect those around me from who I am. I’ve composed a world so broken, that I don’t know if it even exists. And everyday I watch, piece by piece, as my reality picks itself apart. I watch as my worldview grows from reason to paradox, from indisputable to mythological. The trick to lying, they say, is to believe it when you say it. But if you convince yourself a lie, is it now the truth? A flow of thoughts, and innovation, is now a muck of a broken mirror. Shards of who I was shine through the broken vision of the man that remains. Or is that lost forever, with no chance for restoration? Or did this never exist, is this glimmer of hope, a false positive, a desperate cling to futility? My thoughts are jumbled, my words are stuttered, and my expression is incomprehensible. I speak in riddles, but can it be a true riddle with no solution? I don’t know anything anymore. I burn all that I love, to move, step by step, closer and closer to everything I promised I would never become.

Heart’s Demands

I think about the odds and risks
In response I just utter “tsk”
Though my ignorance is bliss
I think I understand the gist
I may have no belief in fate
Or even God for heaven’s sake
But yet in her I place my faith
Neither of us may be perfect
We may speak our own dialect
But when I think and I reflect
We are better with each other
Than I can be with another
All it took for me was a glance
She’s definitely worth a chance
So I’m falling into a trance
I’ll drop my life out of my hands
And succumb to my heart’s demands.

My parents…

They’re arguing about who’s going to die first. I know neither of them will last forever, my dad’s body scarred by war and my mom with a brain tumor. They both have short term life insurance policies, ending in less than 20 years, but my dad seems to have a feeling they won’t make it that long. He wants to talk about paperwork and burial arrangements, but my mom doesn’t want to even think about it. And here I am… I want my future children to know their grandparents. There must be some health issues my parents are hiding, or this wouldn’t be an issue. I can’t be naive anymore, can I?

Texting: my rant

Texting can be great for some things:

• Instant communication
• Getting phone numbers, addresses, spellings of names, etc.
• Information that might be difficult to communicate over the phone due to static or mumbling
• leaving messages for later, if people are not currently available
• telling someone in advance if you are going to call  them
• Information you wish to deliver instantly, but don’t necessarily need an instant response

Texting can also be terrible for other things:

• Heart-to-heart conversations
• Expressing emotions
• Explaining yourself in less than 160 characters
• tone of voice
• expressing laughter
• Clarity
• Autocorrect/typos
• Un-awkwardly keeping a longer conversation going
• Changing the subject
• Everything sounds serious unless it has “lol” “haha” or “:)” at the  end of it

I wish I could just tell the people that text with me: “Hey, call me :)” without it sounding awkward or weird.  “You said you needed to talk to me? Is everything okay?” Well damn, I didn’t know I needed to be dying in a ditch before I got a call from you.

Religion as a Tool in United States History and Today

This is an essay I wrote. All sources are cited at the end. There are parenthetical in-text citations as well.

Religion as a Tool in United States History and Today

            Public figures have historically used religion as a useful tool to unite people behind a cause in the United States. When Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas, he wrote in his diary that he saw “people who would be better freed and converted to our Holy Faith” (Zinn 31). Martin Luther King Jr.’s involvement in the civil rights movement had roots in his Baptist faith, while Malcolm X’s central inspiration for Black nationalism was the Nation of Islam (Griffith). More recently, the religious leader Jim Jones convinced the People’s Temple sect of Christianity believed they were to reach salvation as a part of a mass suicide and murder of over 900 people  that included over 200 children (Chidester i).

             The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” but religion has played a strong role in politics and government regardless. The Pew Research Center, which compiles statistics on religion, shows that evangelicals have voted Republican a majority of the time since 1980, with 70-80% of them voting for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and 70% of them voting for GOP House candidates in 2006. George W. Bush received 61% of the votes of people who attend church weekly, and 89% of the Mormon vote. The statistics show that a majority of the Republican vote is on religious lines. According to John Green, politicians have a relationship with voters based on their religious connections, trading votes for policies related to religious values (Kurtzleben). These said policies are leading to attempts to limit the civil rights of women by cutting funding to basic health care and family planning programs that offer abortions (Thomas and Murray). Religious values are leading to prevent or limit the advancement of the civil rights of homosexuals, especially in the issues of gay marriage and the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy (Wing). As shown historically, specifically in the cases of Christopher Columbus’s colonization of the Bahamas and Cuba, and by Jim Jones in Jonestown, religion has been utilized by powerful figures as a method to harm people, and this is being done today by limiting the advancement of the civil rights of women and gay people.

            On October 11, 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew made landfall in the Bahamas with overwhelming excitement at their new discovery. The natives were just as ecstatic, accepting the newcomers generously with trade (Zinn 32). In Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America, Gary Nash compares aspects of Native American culture and religion to the colonizing Europeans, revealing that Native Americans were actually more culturally diverse and advanced than the invaders, contrary to popular belief. Despite the Native Americans having a great diversity in culture and religion and an advanced concept of morality (Nash 3), Columbus wrote, “it seemed to me [the natives] had no religion” (Zinn 32).

            Throughout Columbus’s Diario, a happy and excited tone is maintained that appears to be comforted by the fact these natives were religion-less and naïve, making them subhuman and uncivilized (Zinn 34). However, Christianity as Christopher Columbus professed it allowed the “killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying [of] the native people” (Zinn 36), “the survivors distributed among the Christians to be slaves” (Zinn 38), all of whom are later noted to have been worked to death. From starving mothers of necessary nutrition until they were unable to produce enough breast milk to keep their infants alive, to directly throwing live infants into rivers and slicing the abdomens of their parents with swords, the conditions of enslavement by Columbus were lethal (Zinn 38). It is not as if this is a case of insubordination or the situation being out of hand. Columbus planned the enslavement of the Native Americans from the beginning. The first day Columbus encountered the natives, he wrote, “They should be good and intelligent servants” (Zinn 32). If these Christians did not view the natives as human, hence making human laws not apply to them, from their perspective, they were following their religion and morals acceptably in their relations with the natives. (Nash 24).

         After the annihilation of the natives on that island, the Christians following Christopher Columbus planned to go to Cuba next. A group of surviving Native Americans who fled from the Bahamas to Cuba warned the Cuban natives that the reason why Columbus and his men were invading and killing them was that they wished for the natives to worship the Christian God (Zinn 40). In fear, the Native Cubans prayed to the Christian God in hopes that He would forgive them. However, when Columbus and his men did come, the Cubans were helpless to resist cold steel with their rather ineffective weapons. The Native Cubans suffered the same fate as the Native Americans that inhabited the Bahamas – death and slavery (Zinn 41). From enslavement to the mass murder of thousands of natives at the hands of a few men, the actions of Christopher Columbus were done with no showing of regret in Columbus’s Diario, as the religion of Christianity that he and his men followed justified these actions.

            In spite of this tragedy, religion has been used in American history as a tool for justice as well. Martin Luther King Jr., who is revered today as the leader of the civil rights movement for racial justice, was a Baptist minister (Griffith 502). In Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. consults and discusses his actions with his fellow clergymen. His Baptist views as a minister influence how he led protests with nonviolence and his aim for Black integration into White society.

             Inversely, Malcolm X was a radical on an entirely different side of the civil rights movement. Malcolm X, as an important spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, was a supporter of Black Nationalism (Griffith 514). The Nation of Islam’s teachings by Elijah Muhammad included a cosmology story claiming Blacks were superior to Whites, and that Christianity was a “white man’s religion and the chief tool of black subjugation.” He found Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent methods to be naïve. In Malcolm X’s Letters from Abroad, which he wrote during his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, his viewpoints began changing in favor of a Middle-Eastern tradition of Islam that was tolerant of White people. Upon his return to the United States, members of the Nation of Islam assassinated him due to his writing about possible religious cooperation.

            Despite popular thought, great and direct negative physical consequences of religion in the United States are not only hidden hundreds of years deep in history books. According to Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown, the Christian sect known as the Peoples Temple had a huge following and was similar to and accepted by other Christian sects such as the Pentecostals as legitimate (Chidester 15). However, on November 18, 1978, their history abruptly ended in 918 deaths when a mass suicide and murder occurred (Chidester xii). This event was especially shocking at the time, but when analyzing the values behind their religion, the cause surfaces. Like all religion, it was not all with negative consequences. There were some worthwhile attributes to the Peoples Temple, as Jones consistently promoted the equality of women, Blacks, and poor people (Chidester xxi). A criticism of the Peoples Temple is that Jones was willing to allow children to die for the cause of socialism. However, tying economics to religion was a popular idea in that day, as Ronald Reagan said, “I would rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God” (Chidester xxiii). David Chidester ties the two figures together by describing the irony in that “Jones wanted children to die to save them from capitalism, while Ronald Reagan wanted children to die to save them from communism” (Chidester xxiii). Concepts including gender equality, Black integration, socialism, communism, and religion with economics were radical, but fit well into other mainstream churches of the time. Most of these 918 people in Jonestown believed that Jim Jones was the second coming of Christ, and that he would lead them to salvation (Chidester 16). This belief that their leader was a deity is what led to the blind following of his orders, including the ones to kill their children then commit suicide. This is a testament to the power religion has over individuals, and displays the level and precision of control that can be exhibited over a large group of people when religion is utilized as a tool. As shown by the events that occurred at Jonestown, even in recent history, this type of power over the mind is capable of leading to irreparable harm.

            Largely, the evangelical Republican Party leads against civil rights for women and gays. An all too popular argument by conservatives is that the United States is a Christian nation, and should therefore be founded on Christian values. However, many of the pivotal founding fathers were Deists, not Christians (Wilson and Reill), such as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. Another argument is that the Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase “under God” and that “In God We Trust” is printed on American currency. However, these phrases were not added until the 1950s (US Department of Treasury) as a result of the Cold War. Once again, the United States did not have any of these traits upon its conception and therefore was never intended to be a Christian nation. Hence, there is no requirement for religious values to be embedded in American government, law, and politics, and furthermore, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” (1^st Amendment).

            The Republican Party has heavily targeted women for discrimination since they gained control of the House in 2010. As a part of their conservative Christian values, they believe that women should be married and at home with the kids, taking part in a specific gender role (Garofalo). This was the justification for Commissioners C. Paul Smith and Kirby Delauter to cut the Head Start program, “which provides early childhood education to the children of low income parents” (Garofalo). What these commissioners neglected to realize is that nearly four in ten mothers bring home the majority of the family’s earnings, and that many low-income households cannot be sustained on a single income and even struggle to make ends meet with two incomes. A study done in California found that “society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children.” Not only is this diminishing the rights of low-income women, but this is decreasing the benefits of society and making it extremely difficult for low-income families that require more than one income to survive.

            Additionally, the House Republicans passed a measure in February to strip funding for Planned Parenthood (Thomas and Murray). Planned Parenthood is a sexual and reproductive health care provider, providing health information on birth control, body image, emergency contraception pills, pregnancy, relationships, sexuality, sexual orientation and gender, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and Women’s Health (Planned Parenthood). Important health care Planned Parenthood provides include “gynecological exams, breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraceptive services, abortion care, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, and HIV testing and education to three million women, men, and adolescents” (Planned Parenthood). The main scrutiny Republicans have with Planned Parenthood is that less than one percent of its overall services include abortions, which are against their religious values. Considering the millions of people that would be affected by the cuts to Planned Parenthood, most of which are not in any relation to abortion whatsoever, since one in five American women utilizes a Planned Parenthood service in her lifetime (Planned Parenthood), the detrimental effects of their religious views greatly outweigh the supposed benefit. Abortion is legal in every state in the United States, and Planned Parenthood is an important health center for women’s reproductive health in general. From breast and ovarian cancer screenings being cut to contraceptives and other important health care, the Republicans seem to be targeting female reproductive health to damage it, only in order to get across their own ideals about abortion (Planned Parenthood).

            A Republican state representative from Georgia, Bobby Franklin, presented a piece of legislation aiming to change the legal term for rape, stalking, or domestic violence “victim” to “accuser” (Wing). While all other victims of crimes are referred to as victims, Franklin’s proposed legislation would delegitimize claims by women to rape, stalking, and domestic violence, and replace these victims with mere accusations. Since these crimes would no longer have “victims” in their legal terminology, rape would effectively become a victimless crime. This is the result of religious values pushing male supremacy over women, and in this case, most embarrassingly over rape victims.

            The trend of utilizing conservative Christian values to limit the rights of individuals is not limited to women. The policies influenced by these values also harm gay rights. Bobby Franklin, the same Republican state representative from Georgia, speaking on the topic of the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, said:

“The Bible says it’s a capital offense… You want someone with unrepentant criminal behavior? And it’s not just that, neither should adulterers, neither should thieves, neither should a lot of things. The church is full of sinners, but we’re told in 1^st Corinthians it rattled off the homosexual, the adulterer, the thief, the liar, and such were some of you, but you’ve been washed, you’ve been justified and so forth. It’s now what you were. You’re not punishing a thought. But do you want an unrepentant drug dealer in the military? Same thing” (Wing).

From the above quote, it is abundantly clear that Franklin is attempting to pass legislation based on religious values. Franklin also compares an “unrepentant drug dealer” to gay people, as if being gay is a crime in itself. These religious values are dangerous, as common knowledge dictates that it is this type of thinking  that lead to an extermination of homosexuals in Germany by Hitler (along with Jews, mentally deficient, and other types of people as well) not too long ago. By comparing a drug dealer to a homosexual, Franklin effectively states that he believes homosexuality should be illegal and deserving of jail time. Franklin’s religion is justifying his attempts to limit the rights of gay people.

            Throughout the history of the United States, religion has been used as a justification for various deeds – from the slaughter of Native Americans to the civil rights movement for racial justice. Religion’s values continue to be a justification and a tool, currently being used to limit the civil rights of women and gay people. Christianity, as practiced by today’s conservative Republicans, promotes a lack of tolerance along with gender and sexuality discrimination. This endangers the United States because a large part of the reason why people migrated to the United States was for equality and tolerance, as “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” However, this is exactly what these religious individuals are attempting to do – set the laws of the United States according to their understanding of Christianity.

Works Cited

“Religion in the 2010 Elections.” PewResearchCenter Publications. Pew Research Center, 03 Nov. 2010. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.

Garofalo, Pat. “Republican Officials Cut Head Start Funding, Saying Women Should Be Married And Home With Kids.” ThinkProgress. Center for American Progress Action Fund, 16 Feb. 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.

 Thomas, Shawna, and Mark Murray. “House Passes Measure Stripping Planned Parenthood Funding.” First Read from NBC News. MSN, 18 Feb. 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.

“Planned Parenthood Action Center.” Planned Parenthood Action Center. Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc., 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.

 Wing, Nick. “Georgia Lawmaker Equates Gays With Criminals, ‘Unrepentant’ Drug Dealers.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 09 Feb. 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.

Zinn, Howard, and Anthony Arnove. Voices of A People’s History of the United States. Second ed. New York: Seven Stories, 2009. Print.

Chidester, David. Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the People’s Temple, and Jonestown. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2007. Kindle.

Nash, Gary B. Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America. Fourth ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. Print.

Wilson, Ellen Judy., and Peter Hanns. Reill. Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. New York: Facts On File, 2004. Print.

“History of ‘In God We Trust. ’” U.S. Department of the Treasury. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Sept. 1961. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.

Griffith, R. Marie, ed. American Religions: A Documentary History. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Kurtzleben, Danielle. “Religion and Party Affiliation Go Hand in Hand.” US News & World Report. U.S.News & World Report LP, 20 Apr. 2011. Web. 25 Apr. 2011.

timepassingby asked: I like your insight on my society post. And I totally agree with you when you say we should change it. But I think many people are too scared to change. And we have come along way with change and I do think we should still continue with the change.

Society will change no matter what we want. All we have the power to do is attempt to influence how those changes work out. People are scared of change, and people have always been scared of change, utilizing and keeping close with what they know to try to resist the change. Whether it’s the rights of colored people, women, or gay people, I feel we are generally moving in the right direction, which is away from discrimination and towards equality and freedom of both the body and the mind. Of course, there are people who will do anything to prevent these differences from continuing. I think it’s simply because people are hard-wired to fear that which they do not understand, so either they will stop people from asking questions or will make up an explanation to suit themselves.

Don’t doubt though, when the next generation of people change, I would not be surprised if we greatly disagree with their sexual tendencies and trends. It is likely the next generation of children will be exposed to sex and drugs and alcohol at a much younger age than we were, and that they will be much more liberal than we are when dealing with these entities. We might think we’re fine with it until we notice our children’s sense of morality does not align with ours as greatly as we would like. This is fine though; we don’t have to agree with everything, for everyone is outdated eventually.

Don’t judge a person based off their Tumblr.

tumblradikk:

Tumblr shows the different sides of a person not often shown in person. It’s a personal diary, a blog, and a way to escape reality. You’re behind a computer screen, free of the harsh criticisms faced in their everyday life. People vent, bitch, complain, reflect, praise here and it doesn’t mean that they are like that in person. They just need a place where people will listen, for once.

(Source: christianreus / Via llanamielle)

(via lfcock-deactivated20110908-deac)

More and more hate mail, giving one response.

______________________________________________________________

I post pictures of attractive women.

= I’m perverted.

I’m fascinated by interesting art.

= I’m weird.

I’m liberal.

= I have no values.

I’m an atheist.

= I’m an immoral, godless heathen guiding you to hell.

You see what your issue is? You stereotype me based on my posts. You don’t know why I post something, so you assume the worst. It’s a slippery slope. Who says my posts reflect who I am? You? I post what I want to, and you do not know the reasons; if I wanted to create a blog for which the sole reason was to display my personality, I would have done so. I did not. Even if you were right and my blog reflected the type of person I am, who are you to interpret it and judge me?

Furthermore, there’s a button at the top right corner of the blog. It looks like this:

If you click it, my posts will no longer show up on your dashboard, and you will no longer painfully have to endure the “creepy/perverted and quite honestly weird” posts of mine.

______________________________________________________________

You know, lots of vulnerable, depressed people are out there. When you attack their very personality as such, it is very easy to demoralize them, and it might even be a factor in what pushes them over the edge to attempt suicide. To bully someone is an absolute disregard for humanity.

I’m much stronger than I once was, so I deal with these without much issue, but please do not send these types of comments to others. You never know if that’s just one of many messages being sent to them that are going to drive them to depression.

To people being bullied, on and offline:
Please don’t take what they say seriously. There’s a few things they do to have maximum effect. They act like they know you, like they can interpret the things you do or say to show you how terrible you truly are. Sometimes, it’s easy to give in and believe them, and feel horrendous. Don’t do this; it is exactly what they want, a reaction.

There was a time in my life when I was depressed. I attempted suicide twice. It was due to people who expressed how worthless I was and how much inconvenience my existence caused them. They contained pure hatred towards me, and it was due to my South Asian skin color and (at the time) religion of Islam. I figured that if I’m that terrible, and anger people that much, I have no reason to continue to exist. I made it out of that though, and now I can see much more clearly. I’m much stronger and will never allow people to affect me that way again. No doubt though, lots of the things done and said to me will never be forgotten, and leave a scar that will forever exist in my mind and affect my actions.

Forget the haters and the bullies. To anyone going through a hard time, no matter your race, religion (or the lack of, like me), sexuality, gender, or anything else: know this:

It gets better.

Ask thethinkman a question

Anonymous asked: sorry but a lot of your posts are inappropriate, awkward, and really kinda disturbing.

Is your knowledge of mathematics extensive?

Like Physics, it’s not where I’d like it to be, but in the coming years it should be a lot better. I am good with math up until calculus and statistics. I’ll be done with Calculus 2 and Differential Equations by the end of this calendar year though.

But, be aware of this my friend, it is always important to be skeptical. As a young child my first introduction to science outside of the classroom was with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. In it he taught me a very important lesson with this single bit:

“There is an idea—strange, haunting, evocative- one of the most exquisite conjectures in science or religion. It is entirely undemonstrated; it may never be proved. But it stirs the blood. There is, we are told, an infinite hierarchy of universes, so that an elementary particle, such as an electron, in our universe would, if penetrated, reveal itself to be an entire closed universe. Within it, organized into the local equivalent of galaxies and smaller structures, are an immense number of other, much tinier elementary particles, which are themselves universe at the next level, and so on forever- an infinite downward regression, universes within universes, endlessly. And upward as well. Our familiar universe of galaxies and stars, planets, and people, would be a single elementary particle in the next universe up, the first step of another infinite regress.”

BUT, he goes on to say, that there is not a shred of valid evidence to support this bit of speculation. It cannot be known. So, I do not believe it. I doubt it, and regard it as speculation. But I allow for the possibility that it is true, without holding on to it with faith, even if it would make me feel better.

I made the mistake of belief without evidence once. I’ve lost the ability to hold faith.