This morning, while Wes was driving me to work, we ended up behind a beat up Toyota Camry with tinted windows.  The bumper was adorned with the following stickers:

“Other than ending slavery, fascism, and communism, WAR never solved anything!”

“Travel the world.  Meet new and exotic people and KILL them.”

“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of anyone who threatens them.”

Then, on his gas tank, “Planet Fitness”.

My initial response was, “Oh lord, are you kidding me?  I would like a bomb to drop exactly on top of that douche right now.”  Wes said, “I can’t believe he has those stickers on a Camry.  Should it be an F150 or something?”  He went on to comment that this guy’s penis must be super huge.  Like whoa.

I have thought a lot before about the things that people choose to put on their cars.  It is such an odd communication method.  You have very little space to put something that strangers will see for a fleeting moment.  Based on this fleeting impression, people will make judgments about what kind of person you are.  In the world of Bumper Sticker Communication, the answer people usually come to is “hippie” or “douchebag”.

In the case of this guy, I’m fairly certain that “douchebag” totally applies.  I would even go as far as saying “ignorant douchebag”.  Wes and I decided that the first sticker was the best because it was completely incorrect.

Yes, the Civil War resulted in the ending of the institution of legal slavery.  I won’t deny that.  However, I wouldn’t say that war “ended fascism” as there are still fascist dictators all over the place.  The best, by far, though is the idea that we “ended communism”.  First of all, the Vietnam War didn’t go well for the United States.  I wouldn’t really list that as a WIN.  And no, this is not me being liberal and saying that nobody wins in a war.  I mean, we lost horribly and didn’t achieve our goals (could it be because those goals were not particularly defined?  PERHAPS).  In addition, communism fell in the former Soviet Union after a decades long Cold War.  We didn’t bomb the shit out of them until they relented.  The two countries just sat there with missiles pointed at each other for 40 years, running drills about how school kids should get under their desks when the bombs start to fall.

I remember when I first started working at my current job.  I asked my boss why we didn’t purchase materials (at the time) from one of my former employers.  My boss explained that a couple of years prior the president of my company whipped his schlong out on the table and the sales guy from the other company did the same and they sat there and compared whose was bigger (metaphorically, of course).  Apparently, the president of my company won that contest.  Anyway, this is how I see the Cold War.  It really shouldn’t have had war in the title.  It should have been called the 40 Year Paranoid Dick Size Comparison Contest.

So, I wouldn’t really say that war solved any of those things (with the exception of possibly slavery since the Emancipation Proclamation came out of it…but I would argue that the institution of slavery was only the beginning of the mess and that we still haven’t solved the problem of racism which is what slavery was all about).  I feel like the bumper sticker doesn’t really communicate the proper meaning of the word “solve”.  “Solve” indicates that a problem no longer exists after a certain action was taken.  But I digress.

The second sticker cracked me up because it is one of my dad’s favorites.  It’s something he often says whenever the subject of the military comes up.  I probably don’t have to tell you this, but we are not a military family.  At one time, a brief time, I considered doing ROTC at school for pretty much one reason: I was feeling horrifically undisciplined and thought it would be good for me to do something so ridiculously unrelenting and rigidly regimented to get me in shape and get my mind organized. After a little bit more thought though I realized that I would have to give up something major to be able to think that way.  I would have to check out, at least partially, to do whatever my CO would tell me to do…especially if it involved killing people for a reason I didn’t fully agree with or understand.  I knew that doing ROTC would mean being in the reserves for a certain amount of time after school, and seeing that Shock and Awe occurred on my 22^nd birthday, I would have been screwed and horrified.

But the military mindset seems to come down to a combination of the 2^nd and 3^rd bumper stickers.  Our Constitution and way of life is being threatened (so they tell us), so we have to go off to interesting places and kill the inhabitants because the inhabitants won’t just surrender (though they should because America is better).

I know, I know.  I sound like such a hippie, and that’s fine.  I am not a pacifist.  In a lot of ways, I think that the Civil War and World War II had many necessary elements.  It is unlikely that the institution of slavery would have gone away with just a bunch of talk.  It is also unlikely Hitler would have thought better of killing all those Jews (and others).  He had a mission and he had convinced many in his country that his mission was just.  Diplomacy would not have stopped him from carrying it out.  But since then, none of the conflicts have been just nor have they made much sense.  As a member of the American public, you only get parts of the story.  As a member of the military, you get even less of the story (unless you are particularly high ranking).  The military preys on the poor by promising them access to things that more privileged people have (education, medical care, respect) and then once it has them, it leaves them in the lurch when they can’t kill effectively enough anymore.  The treatment of the soldiers who returned home during the most recent war in Iraq reminded me of horse or greyhound racing.  “Oh, I’m sorry, you were unable to catch the rabbit fast enough today.  Bye bye.”  The difference is that there is no gun to the temple. The gun is replaced with lousy veterans’ care and denial of PTSD.

Promises of great things can do away with skeptical thoughts for those who are approaching desperate.  A few months ago I was driving behind another car that had the following bumper sticker:

“My Marine can pick off your honor student for 30 clicks”

Doesn’t that just explain it all?  It fully admits the stereotype that good soldiers are not book smart and suggests that this is the way it should be.  “While your kid is learning useful information and going on to bigger and brighter things with the power of his brain, my kid is shooting and killing people from far away because the government told him to.”  Skepticism and reason have no place in this mindset.  When the General says jump, you ask how high. When he says kill, you ask how painfully and how fast.  To ask anything else is to be a traitor to your country.  You cannot question and be patriotic at the same time.  If you know too much about the world around you, it may be incredibly difficult to participate in its decimation.

In the ideal world, there would be no need for militaries, obviously.  But that ideal will not be achieved as long as people (and therefore governments) embrace irrationality and faith.  A people must be able to and must want to question their governing bodies.  We can’t just support the invasion of foreign lands and the killing of people just because they say so.  THEY MIGHT BE LYING BECAUSE THEY WANT A WAR (Remember the Maine).  I know that the ideal is not achievable, but I would be happy with an ask questions first model as opposed to what we currently have.

When I see a car like the one I saw this morning, one laden with stickers showing that the person inside blatantly misunderstands history, the underlying concepts that led to the founding of this country, and a complete disregard for the autonomy of other humans, I just can’t help but wonder what they’re really doing.  Clearly the guy is military, but if you don’t give a shit about people then what are you fighting for?  Aren’t you just a government sanctioned murderer at that point?  If you think it’s a joke to go off and kill exotic people, and think that multitudes of people in your own country aren’t as worthwhile ultimately, why should I support or care about you?  Why should I respect you?  Because you’ve got balls?  Asking questions and defending a position in the face of ignorant hate mongers takes just as much courage as pulling a trigger from 30 clicks…if not more, because depending on where you are when you’re challenging that ignorant hate monger, that gun could be pointed at you.

So yeah, likely douchebag sighted this morning.  As for the “Planet Fitness” sticker, I bet he can totes bench press 3 terrorists…on the point of his bayonet.

Wait…no one uses bayonets, do they? How about a musket? No? Too colonial?  Crap.

*Insert Minute Man joke here*

Thank you, and Good Day!

Yesterday I got onto my last train to get home after work.  I only ride it for one stop, so I was only on it for a couple of minutes.  When I got on, I stood in the door opposite the exit side.  Two men were standing on the exit side having a very lively conversation that I, of course, came on in the middle and because the train was noisy, I could only hear a few things here and there.  I don’t normally eavesdrop…at least, I don’t make a point of it when out (eavesdropping was how I got a lot of my on the job training for my current career and we don’t particularly have any rules against it in our home.  In fact, we encourage each other to pay attention to what’s going on at any given time, so yes, I am basically always listening in general), but this conversation caught my ear.

One of the men looked pretty young, possibly in his early 20’s.  The other looked older, probably in his mid to late 30’s.  The young man was explaining that there had been just too many things that the church he used to belong to was doing that was against things that are non-negotiable.

Before I heard the next part, I just assumed that the young man was explaining how he lost his faith, how he was an atheist now or something.  Then the older man said,

“Yeah, I mean, their whole elder structure was totally not even biblically correct.  It’s the Bible!  How are you going to argue with that?”

“Exactly,” said the young man, “You don’t go against the Bible.  I’m going to trust in God and you’ve got to do what the Bible says.  So, I left the church.”

I was astounded; not because it turned out that while these men had generally been so offended by their church that they left, but remained faithful, but because I am still so unaware of the reach faith has everywhere and how most people do not just leap from “My church is full of it” to “and so is religion”.

After I got off the train, I made a stop at the market near the station.  There were long lines and so I was idle for a while.  A group of people who vaguely knew each other were saying hello and after a couple of minutes they were asking each other what church they go to…and they all had an answer.

I continue to be impressed by how skewed my vision of all this is.  Even though I now know (finally) that atheists certainly do not make up the majority of the American public, I still have this lingering sense that most people still don’t really believe.  But lately I’ve had quite a bit of evidence that this is not the case at all.

But perhaps it is all about identity.  How important is the actual belief and practice of belief to most people versus simply calling yourself a person who believes?  When I was growing up and generally surrounded by a whole host of odd things, I suppose I believed in them to a certain extent.  I think it was always a sort of tongue in cheek belief though.  Astrology was not something that I defined myself by.  Sure, I liked a lot of the qualities that are classically assigned to Aries people and liked to believe that I exhibited them.  Even moreso, my mom had this book that talked about each individual day of the year and what a person born on that day is like and man oh man was mine good.  My birthday is the last page in the book and because the year is cyclical, people born on my birthday were supposedly the most evolved…somehow.  Talk about ego stroking.  But all the while as I was reading it, I knew that it was ego stroking.  When I finally let go of all of that, I don’t remember it being horrible and I didn’t feel emptier because of it.  I hadn’t lost community because of it.  My identity remained unchanged (if not a little stronger without all the woo woo stuff getting in the way).

Spirituality was never honestly part of what I considered as my identity.  Wes reminds me that I used to believe and I was resistant to forsaking it completely, but whenever I finally did I felt better for it.  It’s how I feel whenever I get rid of something that effectively closes my mind or stops me from being the ultimate person who I want to be.  Each layer gets cast off and I feel freer.

But religion is a very different thing.  Many are indoctrinated into it from a very young age.  Their impression of themselves is built around it.  If they have reason to doubt their faith, they have reason to doubt themselves.  And if they make the step of leaving everything of faith behind, they are also leaving behind the entire world that they knew.  So I guess it makes a lot of sense why leaving a particular church doesn’t immediately lead to leaving faith altogether.

I had a friend who was going through a major crisis of faith a few years ago.  I couldn’t understand why it was a crisis.  I looked at not being able to believe anymore as some kind of gift he was giving himself.  I thought it should be a happy occasion, “You’re free now!”  But I couldn’t possibly understand.  I have never lost something so fundamental to my sense of self.  Apparently, I have a bit of atheist privilege…something I didn’t even know you could have.

Ginny is an excellent source for me to start to understand what this is like as she has gone through (and continues to go through) this very thing.  It is a world that I have been so far removed from that I still don’t really get it.  I have discovered that my identity is pretty fluid.  I change things, I accept others, I evolve, but I generally always feel like myself.  I have sometimes felt a small sense of loss when friends and I don’t really relate anymore, but it isn’t ever that painful because the people close to me are rocks that keep me grounded in all of it.  I have never been abandoned by anyone or anything that really mattered…and I’m starting to see that this is a privilege and a rarity as well.

I wasn’t raised with having newspapers around regularly.  My parents were NPR listeners.  My friends and my grandparents, however, did get newspapers everyday and I would look forward to visiting with them because I would get to look at the comics section.

Looking back, I don’t know how many of the comics I actually thought were funny.  I must have been amused to some extent, but I can’t honestly say that I really looked forward to Hagar the Horrible or anything.  As a kid I probably just liked the pretty colors on Sundays (thanks God! I’ll be reading that instead of going to church!) and was happy when I got the joke.  Needless to say, I generally skipped Doonesbury, because that shit never made sense to my kid brain.

But for all the comics that I enjoyed (even if just a little bit), there were a few that I despised.  Don’t get me started about how idiotic “Family Circus” or “Ziggy” is.  Still, the cute drawings/bright colors could keep me from becoming completely irate.  One comic, however, could not be tolerated.  That comic was “Cathy”.

I just couldn’t understand how anyone would ever even talk to this woman if they could help it.  Cathy was that coworker that end up talking to while waiting in line for food at the company picnic.  The conversation goes something like this:

Coworker: Oooooh…are those RIBS?!?

You: Yes.

CW: Oooooh, I just love RIBS.

You: Yes, ribs are good.

CW: Oh, but I can’t have any.  They’re just so fatty!

You: I guess.

CW: Oh, but they just look SO GOOD! I really want some ribs.

You: Then I suppose you should have some ribs.

CW: BUT THEY’RE SO FATTY…

You: …

CW: Well, I guess I can have one…and just work out really hard at the GYM!  I’M SO FAT!

You: …

You’ve had that conversation, right?  No?  That’s just my coworkers?  I think you’re lying because television, and the existence of Cathy indicates that this is what women are like.  I mean, we’ve just got so many issues!  According to Cathy, a woman’s daily existence consists of waking up and almost dying without coffee, going to work where you and your female coworkers are all the same (OMG RIBS!) and all the men ignore you.  Then in your free time, you go and feed a hopeless addiction to shoe buying and crying about how swimsuits JUST DON’T FIT.  Then you have dinner wherein you overeat and then feel bad about it and then hide in the bathroom eating chocolate (CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE! ACK!).  Somehow you land a boyfriend and you then spend your days hiding everything about who you are in a desperate attempt to keep him (hence eating chocolate in the bathroom).

And then you die.

Thank goodness for that.  Am I right?  I was quite happy to hear that Cathy kicked the bucket.  What a gift to the next generation!

Side note: Yes, I’m ranting about these things, but I do acknowledge that things like body image, forever seeking a way to be thinner and younger, feeling insecure are all very real issues that people have (myself included)…I just find cheap humor based on the Stereotypical Female to be aggravating.

So, why am I talking about this?  Well, today I, along with Jessie, was involved in a photo shoot for a project called Girls and Ice Cream.  Basically, it was a calendar’s worth of ladies, each one representing a different ice cream flavor.  For instance, I was lemon and Jessie was cookies and cream!  The group of women was made up of people of all shapes and sizes.  The point? To illustrate the beauty and fun of women when they are allowed to simply be who they are.

Leading up to the shoot, we gave our preferences for which flavor we would like to be.  I picked lemon, not because I am such a huge fan of lemon sorbet, but because I felt that the flavor fit my sarcastic personality.  Also, I like bright colors and it seemed like the most “classic pin up” flavor for me.  After we got our flavors, we were basically told what time to show up.  We were encouraged to bring our own costume and makeup ideas.  We had a huge amount of creative input with our shoots.  In fact, most people brought their outfits, said, “I was thinking this” and the photographer said, “Oh wow! Awesome.  We’re going to do that.”  There is something completely empowering and exciting about being able to be sexy on your terms and be rewarded for it.

What do sexy woman-of-any-size positive photo shoots and Cathy have in common? Nothing.  That’s something that made me so happy about the shoot.  Instead of an event lamenting how we are close to powerless to stop ourselves from eating evil, fattening ice cream, we were instead representing ice cream.  We were claiming it!  I have rarely met a person who doesn’t like ice cream.  It makes people happy, and I would much rather be associated with literally being it, rather than have it be some sort of horrible tempter sent to make us less acceptable for human consumption.

I debated if I was going to start this off with a long discussions of the important ideals the Care Bears taught us.  That would have likely turned into a discussion about My Little Pony and Rainbow Bright…and then, as I dated myself as an obvious child of the 80’s, I would wait to see how long it would take for my audience to either stop reading or barf, and really, is that what Polyskeptic is about? Room exiting barf inspirations? I don’t think that’s in the mission statement.

Instead, let’s just get to the point: I’m going to talk about apathy.  See what I did there? There’s no Apathy Bear, sillies.  Could you imagine?  Apathy Bear would be such a downer…even more of a downer than Grumpy Bear (or whatever he was called…the blue one with the rain cloud on his stomach…stylish and totes goth)…to the rest of the group.  They’d all yell “CARE BEAR STARE!” and Apathy Bear would look at them, raise an eyebrow and say, “Whatevs” and the evil whatever (Old Man Jenkins?  No…that’s Scooby Doo) would win.  Thanks a lot, Apathy Bear.

Oh lord, I’m writing about them anyway aren’t I…DAMN IT!  OK, I’ll stop.  Onto useful content!

Last night as Wes, Jessie and I were coming home from a lovely little bar in Old City, Wes and I were debating about various topics relevant to reason and religion and such and Jessie said that she thought she had gotten on the Express Train to not giving a crap.  She was raised Catholic.  Catholic turned to nondenominational Christian and then at some point she just gave the whole thing up and went right to, what she calls, Apathy-ism.  Later she would explain that she doesn’t even want to label herself as an atheist because it is still having a definitive label about you in relationship to a god and that she simply has no interest in living life from a theistic point of view, even if it is one of non-belief.  Basically, she has completely rejected religion and god in every way possible. (This is a lot of paraphrasing, so Jessie can feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong!)

When she first said it, I said that I didn’t want to be on that Express Train.  But then I realized that I had already been there and come back from it.  As I mentioned before, non-belief was a matter of course for most of my life.  It was second nature.  It was easy to continue a secular lifestyle because I was very lucky to have gone to school in the Philadelphia public school system…

Never thought you’d see anyone type that, did you?

I went to a really excellent school, but that’s beside the point.  Religion did not make any kind of appearance EVER in my daily activities.  Well, there was this one time when I was in elementary school and this very strange man came in to be a substitute teacher.  He asked us all to draw a picture of what we thought God looked like.  As a 7 year old, I felt that this was royally OUT.  I remember having a general sense of “That is not supposed to be talked about here…and besides, God doesn’t look like anything because…I don’t think there really is one…” and then I drew a picture of the solar system.  I don’t remember what other people drew, but I do remember a lot of people looking confused about the assignment.  I recall being a little upset about it, but luckily that was a rather isolated event.  Something like that would never infiltrate my elementary or highschool education again.  In highschool I had a biology teacher who was all about evolution and genetics.  We had to read The Double Helix for class.  He didn’t mention Creationism…EVER…because it was a science class.  Looking back, I wonder if there were any students whose parents were up in arms about that.  There never seemed to be any issue.  No one yearned for “the other side of the story” to be told.

My point here is that I was apathetic about religion and other people’s views because they didn’t touch my life particularly.  I think I had developed the attitude “Whatever you want to believe is fine” because I didn’t particularly think that there was anything harmful about that…because I didn’t really think anyone believed it anyway.  I was sheltered and felt safe in assuming that I was living in a secular society that only showed its religion around Christmas and Easter.  So, I was apathetic because I didn’t think there was any particular debate.

Then, after I figured out that there was a pretty big fucking debate, I became apathetic because it was just too difficult for me to engage anyone about it.  I have historically been a non-confrontational person, but not because I actually thought that everyone’s views were worthy of respect, but because I just hated having people upset with me and was scared of putting my neck out there.  The few times I participated in a discussion about religion, I ended up just conceding because clearly it was way more important to the religious person to be right.  That was generally my point of view in any argument about a hot button issue.  I didn’t feel equipped to engage.  I didn’t feel that I knew enough.  When someone would confuse me with a bad argument, I didn’t assume it was a bad argument.  I assumed that I was too stupid to be in the debate in the first place.  I mistook passion for knowledge and logic.  Conflict has often made me uncomfortable just being around it so I adopted the opinion that everyone should just shut up about it…not because it didn’t matter, but because listening to it drove me crazy.  When someone of faith was questioned in front of me, it undeniably would result in personal attacks from the theist to the atheist and proclamations that these were their beliefs and no one gets to question them.  Something something that’s what Hitler did something something else.  I would want to scream “YOU ARE WRONG” but was too cowardly to do so.  To enter the fray would be to become an enemy of sorts and I just wasn’t comfortable with that.  So I decided not to care.  “Well, I guess that’s fine…”

I struggled with apathy with a lot of things.  I didn’t want to officially proclaim which side I was on with various issues because I didn’t want to alienate people from me.  I mean, I have always been pro-choice, pro-civil rights for all, regardless of race, gender, creed (yes, creed…I might not value your creed, but I don’t think you should not be able to get married or get a job or vote or whatever else just because of it), or sexual orientation, pro-social programs to help the poor and otherwise disenfranchised, etc., but I never wanted to talk about it.  I didn’t want to fight about it…because I thought that everyone I knew basically agreed with this stuff and I didn’t think any of it was being particularly threatened.  An America where progress was moving toward attainment of all these things was the America I assumed I was in.

Then the World Trade Center was attacked and I hoped against all hope that we as a country would not be idiots about it, that we wouldn’t simply retaliate and wrap ourselves in American Flags and cry about our freedom…well, we all know how that turned out.  When I turned 22, the war started and I found myself caring quite a bit.  I didn’t want to…but I couldn’t help it.  My apathy about that eroded and I started getting in people’s faces about theirs.  I alienated some people from me, and that’s ok. 

In the last couple of years I have found that my apathy about everything else has begun to erode too…pretty drastically.  I don’t find it easy to stay quiet anymore.  I don’t respond well to blatant spreading of misinformation, fear mongering, obvious displays of privilege (when the person displaying them is completely unaware of it), and simple unapologetic (often willful) ignorance.  I fully admit that I am ignorant about a lot of things, that I don’t know very much about a vast array of topics…but I want to learn.  I want to understand.   And I will call people on things when I disagree.

This process of learning to care again has been amazing and also sometimes depressing.  My eyes are open; I am receptive to seeing more…but sometimes when you start to really see things, disappointment is quick to follow.  But in the end, I would rather care and be aware and sometimes completely and utterly irate than to spare myself that anger and be unaware of the truth in things.  The apathy that used to keep me isolated and friendly, even with people who I really didn’t need to have around (fo’ realz), was making me feel dead to the world.  Now I feel alive, if not sometimes completely crazed about the state of the world I am living in.  I’ll take it for now.

Jessie is really only apathetic about the god stuff.  She cares quite a bit about a lot of important things.  I can understand not wanting to give a shit about god after having it beaten into your head for years and years.  I certainly don’t begrudge her that.  She knows considerably more about that existence than I do (hence my continuing ignorance throughout my teens and early twenties).  My life would look very different if I ever had to monumentally reject something that definitive in my life.  Her comments last night just got me thinking about how much I do want to care…about everything…about how I think I do want to make a difference.

And what the fuck was I doing in my twenties?  Yeesh.  Well, for me, the thirties seem to be the new twenties, so let’s get living!

Since I’ve gotten my daily quota of thinking and writing extensively about zombies out of the way, I thought I would write about something really crazy: The usefulness of protest.

When I was 15, I was in that phase that a lot of white children of Baby Boomers go through, the “Idolizing the late 60’s” phase.  You know what I’m talking about, right?  “Oh man, I wish I could have gone to Woodstock.” “Music was so much better then.  Monterey Pop?  Man!” “Protests are really awesome.  Look at what college was like back then.  Peace, man.  The will of the people!”  And so on and so forth.

One day there was some announcement that there were going to be big budget cuts for the Philadelphia public school system.  Big surprise, I know.  So someone somewhere organized a protest and students were encouraged to walk out during class to participate.  I decided to go with some friends because I figured it was time to put my non-existent money where my mouth was.  I took the “dreaded” unexcused absence because I’m a bad ass…apparently.  A bunch of students wussed out and got early dismissals so that the protest wouldn’t count against their PERMANENT RECORD.  Way to be committed, guys.

Anyway, I get there and found a bunch of people outside City Hall screaming incoherently, waving around signs that said things like “We are the future!” and “Abortion is wrong! Here is a photo of a bloody fetus!  This is totes relevant!”  Someone brought a paper mache Grim Reaper with no explanation of who was dying.  I’m assuming it was my chances at a better education or something.

Long story short, first I was extremely confused and then I was extremely disappointed.  I got the distinct impression that the organizers of the protest didn’t really have a useful plan.  They just wanted to yell and scream and not effectively tell the government where exactly they should get the extra money from.  Now, I’m not saying that it wasn’t likely true that there was money bleeding everywhere into useless crap, but the presenters at the protest did not educate anyone who attended.  I left knowing nothing more about the budget cuts than when I arrived, which was very little to begin with.  To make things worse, I’m fairly certain that they cut the budget.  It was hard to tell since we were always scraping for money anyway.  Needless to say, I came away from it with a view of protests that was pretty grim.

To me this seemed very different from something like the civil rights protests on the 60’s.  It seemed to me, from a hindsight perspective of course, that the purpose of those marches was pure visibility.  We are here.  We are strong.  We are organized.   We deserve to participate equally in society.  We are a threat because of our commitment and because of our numbers.  Perhaps it seemed useless because the vast majority of students attending were under 18.  We couldn’t vote.  We weren’t a threat to anyone.  The worst we could do was to not show up to school and I don’t know that this would hurt anyone other than ourselves.  I remember that contemporaries of mine were up at the podium “delivering speeches”.  But apparently they had not been given the memo that a speech is generally not a lot of yelling “It’s our money and we want it now!”  I was being represented by dolts who had clearly missed the point.  I think the organizers thought that if City Hall saw that students themselves were outraged that they would listen.  But they’re not going to listen if you’re acting your age and not saying anything.  In addition, perhaps the protest I attended lacked that sense of danger and sacrifice that has made other ones so much more meaningful.  Absolutely nothing was going to happen to us.  We weren’t going to get arrested (unless we turned violent, I suppose).  No one was going to come out and mow us down with water or gunfire.  We were just there being a pain in the ass for a while…but not a particularly notable pain in the ass.

So I figured I’d pack up my hippie skirts and love beads and never go to a rally or a protest again.

Recently though, especially after following the various Occupy movements, I began to think again about the role of protest and its usefulness.  I remember hearing a lot of comments about the movements pertaining to the fact that they didn’t really have a cohesive message/collective definitive goal.  I mentioned this to a friend and he said that he didn’t want them to decide on a message because when ultimate goals and uniform messages are chosen, they become divisive.  The power of the Occupy movements was the sheer number and diversity of people involved.  I saw the wisdom in what he was saying.  The general idea behind the Occupy movements was that most of the country is in the 99% and our interests should be served.  The interests of the 1% are irrelevant to the vast majority of the voting public, and yet you would not know that looking at public policy.

I started to understand.  Visibility is key.  In the beginning, you need enough organization to give people a reason to join you, but not so much that people get turned off.  When you want people to know you are here and you care that they see you, you want as many people of as many varying backgrounds as possible.  I think that perhaps the protest from way back when was a failure because there just weren’t enough voting adults there to show that these screaming kids are echoing what their parents want and what everyone should want for their population’s education.  Unification would only have been successful had it appeared that kids parents told them to walk out and were now walking along beside them.

As I mentioned before, in a few weeks, I, along with Wes, Shaun and Ginny, will be attending the first ever Reason Rally in Washington, DC.  I am really freaking excited and I think I’m excited because of this new understanding of the purpose of organizing just to be seen.  We are currently in a very strange time politically…or at least it seems rather new and peculiar to me (but that is likely because I am only now becoming really aware of things).  With Rick Santorum appearing to be a viable candidate for president, I find that I have a little seed of terror growing in my heart.  Our country is so very young and yet one of the main underlying ideals of its founding is being continually threatened.  A United States without separation of Church and State is a country that I would be unable to recognize.  And yet, it’s already happening as the open assault on women’s autonomy over their bodies is viciously attacked, as Constitutionally aware teens are being publically torn apart for wanting their public schools free from a faith they do not share, as politicians are chastised for not being Christian as if that has anything at all to do with the American government and what it was meant to be.  I look forward to this humongous gathering of atheists, humanists and secularists.  I want us to take the place by storm and point out definitively:

We are here.  We are strong.  We are organized.

And while I don’t hope for any kind of idiotic violence or ignorant displays, I do recognize that non-believers are threatening.  Not because we’re going to do anything to you but because we exist and many of exist morally, awesomely and well.  Many of us, if not most (I’m just admitting that I certainly don’t know every non-believer out there.  If the Awesome Atheist is any indication, there are definitely some of us who are Grade A Assholes…the A is for Assholes.  That’s how you know it’s real.) are normal, law abiding pleasant people.  All we want is a government that represents everyone’s interests and the only government that can do that effectively is a secular one.

Will you be joining us?  Here’s a bunch of great info to help make that possible from Blag Hag!

As I mentioned yesterday, while I am not new to considering myself an atheist, I most certainly am new to really thinking critically about it, reading and writing about it.  In the past, when I kept a LiveJournal, I would mention it here and there, but it wasn’t something that I particularly engaged people about.  Wes also has been an atheist forever and so there wasn’t really any debate about it at home.  We both thought the same and were comfortable in that.

When I met Shaun he was wearing one of many atheist themed t-shirts that he owns.  He was the first very out atheist I had ever met.  Not to say that Wes and I (or a few of our other atheist friends) were hiding it, but it wasn’t something that we actively advertised.  When the subject of religion came up, we would always announce our atheism immediately, without shame.  But we didn’t have t-shirts and buttons to show it.  I used to have a Crazy Eddie’s Electronics t-shirt that I really liked…but…that doesn’t seem to be relevant here.

It was around then that I started adding several prominent atheist/skeptic bloggers to my Google Reader.  I asked for suggestions of more and Shaun pointed me here.  What I found was, well, a lot of stuff that was over my head on first glance.  I would have to read sections of posts over and over again to understand them.  As I read and got to know Shaun more, I realized that it wasn’t that these things were over my head, but rather that Shaun (having earned an undergrad degree in religious anthropology and a Master’s degree in philosophy) simply had a breadth of knowledge that would take me an eternity to catch up on.  What I’m saying is, I read really slowly and don’t prioritize reading in my daily life.  I’ve been trying to finish The Stand for over a year.  It’s going to happen!  I BELIEVE IN MYSELF.  It’s not that I don’t see the value (far from it…I have started to change my bad reading habits this year.  I have started with keeping up with several blogs), it’s just that I have a lot going on, so I pick what is the best or most satisfying use of my time at any given moment.

So when Shaun asked me to start blogging here, I think I initially laughed at him.  Or, at least, I did so in my head.  I do that a lot.  I thought about it though and decided that it would be a good experience, and that it would encourage me to write more, both here and on my other blog.  He said that he wanted diverse points of view on here, which apparently meant his, Ginny’s point of view fueled by her past and her current master’s program, and my “hilarious” one.  OK, I’ll bite.  I can see the value in that.  I mean, who doesn’t enjoy hilarity?

I’ve written a couple of posts, and I’m happy with them.  But seeing them next to Shaun and Ginny’s both cracked me up and intimidated me.  Note that it isn’t stopping me, but there was something odd about seeing it in such stark contrast.  As I wrote my most recent post, I kept thinking, “Oy, I’m about to make some statement about religion…Do I even know what the hell I’m talking about?  Eh, probably not, but once I get into the part about the New Age, well…no one’s going to touch that with a ten foot aura.”

Can one measure auras in feet?  Can they be measured in metric, or is that too logical? Clearly they should stick with imperial units, but instead of feet, they should be measured in fathoms…or even better, hogsheads because…what the fuck do you use hogsheads for anyway and why is there a conversion for them in every composition book?  TELL ME!

Right, so, intelligent discourse. 

So as is the seeming tradition, I was having a morning text conversation with Shaun as I ate my cereal at my desk at work and he commuted to his job.  These conversations are an infinite source of entertainment for me as the subjects are never predictable.  Today I mentioned my insecurity about being the idiot writer on here and this is what ensued:

Me: Good morning! After reading through your and Ginny’s posts from the weekend, I am once again feeling like the dumb one.  But if my role is comic relief, then so be it!

Shaun: It’s not like we are actually smarter, it’s just that we tend to be less hilarious.

Me: I think seeing the posts next to each other showed me the stark contrast.  Not that I’m not writing things with depth, I am just aware of how little I actually know.

Shaun: Well, if we were posting on a blog about chemistry or toilets, the tables would be quite turned!

Me: Haha, awesome. I’m glad this is the legacy I have created for myself.

Shaun: Your arcane toilet knowledge is legendary!

Me: You know, it’s something I’ve worked really hard at.  Soon bathroom activities will be incomprehensible like in Demolition Man and people will yearn for a simpler time.  I will be able to tell those stories.  It’s called the Folk Process, or something.

Shaun: So, in the future we won’t take shits? That’s either awesome or disturbing, but either way it is fodder for science fiction.

Me: Dude, I don’t know how the three seashells work either.  I’d be screwed in that future.

So, as you can see, Shaun has invited a person who references Demolition Man in text message when it’s really not warranted to write here.  Here’s the promise I will make: I will continue to read and learn, and I will always try to back up my statements with evidence.  But really, there’s a whole lot I don’t know.  I realize everyone can (and should) say that, but I’m talking contextually to the rest of this blog.  I think that writing here will inspire me to go after more knowledge.  Sometimes gaining this knowledge will drive me nuts (I have been going through a period of growth recently where I keep getting disappointed in people and feeling hopeless about the world, but I think it will result in me feeling stronger), but ultimately, it’s always worth it.  Choosing ignorance never makes sense to me.  Why would you want to be in the dark when you don’t have to be?  Because it’s easier?  I suppose, but that never seemed easy to me because I always knew that the answers were there if you wanted them…and I always want them.

Stay tuned for a detailed critical essay of Judge Dredd.  Now that will be some fine literature!

I remember sitting in a World History class in highschool when we were doing a section about organized religion.  We were talking about the five major religion.

I grew up near Fabric Row in Philadelphia.  Historically this part of town is very Jewish.  In the early days of the 20th century, Fabric Row was part of a very large marketplace that was primarily run by Jewish families.  Today there is still a highly concentrated Jewish population there.  When I started school at 5, I was introduced to  the kids of the neighborhood…who were mostly Jewish.  As I got older, this didn’t particularly change.  I was among them.  My mother’s entire family is Russian Jew.  My father, I suppose, would be Catholic if only because his father was 100% Italian and in his words, “When you’re Italian, you’re just Roman Catholic…it doesn’t really mean anything”.  So, I’m half Jewish, but the “right” half to become a citizen of Israel, if I so desired…and also to avoid “Shiksa” status, if you care about such things.  This was basically the case with all of my friends.  In addition, very few of the Jews I knew were particularly religious.  They participated in rituals and went through their bar/batmitvahs, but no one seemed to actually care about “God” itself.  None of them prayed as far as I knew.  The most I heard anyone talk about religion is when they were whining about having to eat matzo during Passover.

Meanwhile, while my mother liked the idea of the cultural side of Judaism, she didn’t believe in any of it.  Instead, she was into astrology and the New Age.  My parents were both in EST (a New Age group that was very popular in the 70’s and 80’s)…

Side note: So, I totally went to look up a page on EST so that I link information about it here and all I found was that the founder used to be a used car dealer and is now on the run from the law.  HOT!

Anyway, my parents eventually rejected EST because, while a lot of the ideas that they were teaching were good (personal control and responsibility), it turned out that they were full of crap.  But, my mom still thinks about astrology and numerology and things like that.  This was very prevalent in my life when I was very young.  Also prevalent was the idea that organized religion was a pox on the world.

When I was five years old, my dad took me out walking around on South Street.  A middle aged man came up to me standing with my dad and spoke to me directly.  He  went to hand me a lollipop but before he let me take it, he asked, “Do you take Jesus to be your Lord and Savior?”

Without skipping a beat, I looked the guy in the eye and said, “I’m not really into Jesus.  I’ll take the lollipop though.”  My dad was astounded.  And looking back, I mark this as my first point of consciousness about my atheism.

So, for those following along, my perspective on religion/atheism at the time was that the biggest religion in the world was Judaism but that it was pretty meaningless because everyone was an atheist anyway.  I honestly believed that atheists were the majority.  Even more hilarious, I thought atheist Jews were the majority.  In addition, what I did know of spirituality in my own home was a spirituality centered around the stars, the spiritual significance of numbers and possibly crystals and past lives.  I was raised that the Universe will give you the things you want if you ask for it.  It was magic and I liked the idea of it…but I don’t think I ever really believed in it.  Needless to say, I had a peculiar and incorrect view of the world.

So I’m sitting in this class and it is revealed to me the Judaism is the smallest religion of the “big five”.  I was surprised.  Part one of my peculiar world view gone.  Then I got older and when I was a senior in highschool I was suddenly made aware that really very people I knew were atheists and that they found atheists utterly insulting.

I wrote an essay in for English about how I didn’t see why anyone needed prayer to be officially sanctioned in school.  It was in response to an article I read about a group of teens that formed a prayer group that would meet before school everyday.    The teens started the group because they felt deprived not being able to pray during class time.

I didn’t get it.  I mean, couldn’t you just pray to yourself during math class or something?  So…I wrote about it and the essay was handed out to the entire class (without my name) to be workshopped as a piece of writing.

Oy…it was a poorly written piece in my opinion.  But, of course, no one was getting on my case about the syntax or bad structure.  They were all up in arms about my disrespect for religion.  Suddenly I looked around the room (no one knowing that it was me who wrote it) and saw room full of people completely offended and hateful about the fact that I didn’t see prayer in school as appropriate.

I graduated and then went to Drexel and met Wes.  At the time, I was identifying as an atheist, but I still had the remains of liking the idea of the stars dictating my destiny and getting what I wanted from “The Universe”.  I don’t really remember how it happened that I lost the last of this, but I don’t remember it being cathartic.  It was just another thing that I got rid of when I thought about it rationally.

I am happy to be more aware now, to finally be joining in the “New Atheist” party.  I sort of regret that I am so late to it, but better late than never, right?  As I have started reading many atheist bloggers, I finally feel a sense of community in that aspect of my life.  Next month, just after I turn 31, I will be attending the Reason Rally and I have to tell you that I am really quite excited about it.  Before now, I don’t know that I ever defined atheism as an important thing about me to myself, but as I see the country inching towards theocracy I find that it is highly important.

Like I said, better late than never.