Current mood: relieved
OK. This is the post your mom warned you about.
It's the fourth of July again and so I'm feeling pretty anticipatorily aggro.
As many of you know, I am not a nationalist; one could probably call me an anti-nationalist. Most of you don't know the reasons why, though, and so now I will rant. Here goes:
People, I beg you, live for yourself.
We are all born into the same world, led to believe that what we do is insignificant, that we are somehow less than important. At the same time, we are built up in ourselves. The dichotomy leads us to seek higher answers.
I am not talking about Americans; I am talking about everybody.
So what happens is, we are told by our elders that we are part of this great thing that is bigger than all of us. We are better than the animals. We live in the greatest country on Earth and we are here to serve God.
Because we are children, we accept what is said to us as truth, because we trust our elders. After all, they brought us here and are wise and take care of us. We rely on them for our survival.
The problem is, they were in the same situation a few decades before you. Their parents told them they lived in the greatest country on Earth and that they are here to be good and serve God and do big important things as well.
We all are led to believe this.
So, we grow up, and most of us continue to live the way we were raised, good little Christian Americans, racists and Republicans and traditionalists. We fight for self-protection and we fight to preserve Democracy. We go out into the world and tell people that they are wrong and we are right and they need to change their ways in order to be good and live in peace and harmony. We give them food and shelter and clothes to cover their naughty places and teach them to respect God and each other and they thank us and drink Coca-cola and go to church and they are happy. Their culture dissolves into the past and they don't care. They have what they need to live forever and all is good.
Some of us, however, begin to think. We question the things we have been told and attempt to make logical conclusions and connections between what we know. Most of us are mostly ignorant, and never get very far in our search for truth. We become lost and depressed and we wonder what's out there. We become UFO watchers and Heaven's Gaters. We join PETA and Greenpeace and we think we are making a big difference in the world.
Meanwhile, all over the world, children are being born and told that, despite war and poverty, despite unhappiness and hunger, greed, hate, envy, violence, and pain, that we are great people, one of a kind gems in the greatest country in the world, destined for greatness. We googoo and gaga and smile and drool because our loving parents have so much faith in us and we are happy.
But then there are the rest of us. We are the ones who don't form opinions until all options have been explored. We think, make connections, gain synapses, learn truths. We try to explain ourselves to others but nobody will listen. They think we are mean, and grumpy, and cynical, and evil, and rude.
All we are trying to do is save them from their own mass depression.
Here is what we have discovered:
People are the same everywhere. Governments do not control us in any way, despite how powerful they are, when it comes to any significant thing in our lives. Our duty is to fulfill our own needs, physical, creative, spiritual, and emotional. The others have tried since the beginning of time to find the truth and told and retold their myths of higher powers. They write them down and hand out their works. Some of them are charismatic and we believe what they say. They feel good being followed and so they become greedy and power hungry and they take measures to control others and oppress them. They pass this tradition through the generations to their children and their children's children, until the origin of their evil is indecipherable, buried by the dust of centuries.
They change our culture and language to their ends. They make rules that benefit nobody but themselves. They base these rules on basic human nature, bathing in the imminent truths behind our instincts: Don't kill. Don't hurt. Be nice. They say the rules were written by a protective and almighty God.
People follow them blindly and give no further thought to whether or not what they've been told makes any sense. They don't realize that omniscience implies knowledge of all things, past, present, and future, and that this necessarily contradicts the idea of omnipotence, as, if God knows all things in the future, then He is powerless to ever make any decision that He has not already known was going to be made since the beginning of time, rendering Him completely unable to control any thing, big or small. Omniscience=Impotence.
They follow blindly and do good deeds. They read their bibles and Upanishads and I Chings and practice goodness and are happy.
This can be a good thing, as human nature tends to tell us to dominate. For those people who cannot think beyond their impulses, having an authority to make them feel guilty about their instincts is in the best interest of the rest of us. But for us who have no desire to hurt or kill or control, we are left being stigmatized by our lack of "goodness." This is despite the fact that we live our lives in peace, we hurt no one. We are giving and kind and helpful. But we will all rot in Hell because we do not believe in the God of the people.
To make matters worse, where we are born is considered to be the defining characteristic of us. I am from Virginia, which means, necessarily, that I should like NASCAR and the Redskins, the Civil war, hot summers. I should not buy groceries on Sundays, or drink, or have sex in any way other than man-woman, man on top. I should go to bed at a decent hour. I should believe in lower taxes. I should believe that war helps the economy. I should believe that abortion is wrong. I should believe that animals don't have emotions or thoughts. I should believe that how dark one's skin is is a measure of their intelligence. I should believe that hate is natural. I should believe that if someone kills a person, I should kill them back. I should believe that certain words are evil, and that to say them is bad. I should believe that love is not to be given to anyone besides a person of approximately the same age as me, whose skin color is similar enough to mine as to not be offensive, and whose sex organs are not the same as mine. I should believe in the almighty power and grace of God, without whom none of this would exist: The God who tests us by planting false evidence of eras before the dawn of man. The God who is constantly judging us for the things we say and do and think. Etc.
Most of all, I should believe that men have died for my rights. That if it weren't for brave young men who stood up for me, I would be a slave to whatever evil power was in existence at the time they died.
I have been told all of this, because I live in Richmond. You have been told the same thing. You live in New York, Istanbul, Jakarta, Tokyo, Bundoora, Swaziland, Paris, Guadalajara, and the Netherlands.
And so people grow up, and when they are still too young to know better, but too old to sit on their laurels and not make a difference, some strife happens in the world between two old guys in suits, somewhere in some office. They get angry. Someone comes and tells them that the other guy is wrong, and that he is so wrong that if we don't stop him, we will become his slaves. They are told that the other guy wants to take our things away. They are told they are nothing more than a little speck, a part of the machinery that is their country. They are told that it is their duty to fight and die for the rights of those who are a little younger or older than them, or infirm, or female, or lame. If this isn't convincing enough, they are told they will get health insurance, a place to live, lots of money, a college education, adventure, and happiness. They are told they will be transformed from the useless maggots they were born as into something noble.
And so they sign up. They go overseas and set their sights on some other kid who has been told the same thing, but by a person who speaks a different language, whose skin is a different color, whose god has a different name, whose mom and two children think he's a hero, whose loved ones cry every night and pray for his return, and they shoot him dead.
He bleeds the same color as you do.
When all is said and done, one of the armies wins and the other loses. Lots of children are dead and we all jump for joy. Our freedom is preserved. Our freedom which we were born with. Our freedom, which has been ordained to us by our DNA, through procreation of the species. Our freedom, which we cannot help having, no matter how hard we try.
It is not only our right to do what we wish, it is our duty, and our compulsion. We can no more stop ourselves from exercising freedom of speech than we can stop ourselves from breathing.
Yet, these people tell us that they have given this to us, that we somehow owe them for their generosity.
And we believe them.
And every year, to thank them for their giving nature, for allowing us to be ourselves, we blow things up. We scream and laugh and blow things up. We drink lots of beer, hoot and holler, drive on the wrong side of the road, say and do obnoxious, hyperactive things, beat up dissenters, declare on high that yes, we do live in the greatest country in the world and if you don't like it then get the fuck out and go back to France with the other pussies and Go back to Mexico with all the other bums you Fucking Nazi Communist Pinko Fag, and blow things up. Go anywhere besides our precious, holy, clean, safe, happy-go-lucky, right and honest and good America, because we don't take kindly to the likes of you in these parts, Pilgrim.
What they don't realize is that we are freer than they are. We have freed ourselves from the prison of nationalism, patriotism, religion, racism, sexism, ageism, murder, rage, ignorance, anger, aggression, and envy: Granfalloonery of all sorts. And although we can't fulfill the great dream of owning more and more things, because there just isn't enough to go around, we are genuinely happy, because we are true to ourselves. And so we keep on keeping on, doing all the things we always do, knowing full well that nothing we say or do or post on a blog is going to make any little bit of difference and that the world will always be the same depressing, hot, angry, oppressive hellhole that it has been since the dawn of time. And we are happy.
Amen.
Currently listening :
The Fury Of The Aquabats
By The AquabatsRelease date: By 28 October, 1997
