Hurt

You weren't there.
You didn't call.
You haven't given reasons.
What's going on?

Opium

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

We so often misquote this phrase and spin it into something it is not.

Here is the real thing.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Marx was not calling for a casting off of religion, though he was anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. This is not a bitter phrasing. He was passing on to his followers the key to world domination. Religion, to Marx, was the key to success. A secular religion where the opressed pray to a god of government, a government of the people.

Me vs. The Liberals

I do find it somewhat funny/ironic that I fancy myself as an artistic type, am studying liberal arts, and hang out with a lot of liberals, but am myself rather conservative in my scope and reasoning. As well, it's not unknown that I have a fair amount of dislike for the left-wing. Why? Because they take the easy road of attacking religion as a reason (earlier today I read an article that called faith and "infantile concept") rather than admitting their own unhappiness.

Earlier today I was pondering the gay-marriage debate and was once again struck by how proud and stubborn humanity is as a whole. I do see the legalization of gay marriage as being damaging to society, but I now see how it will damage society. Often, and I have myself iterated these ideas before, the ultimate social decay will come in the form of the eventual legalization of prostitution, child-exploitation, bestiality, necrophilia, suicide (more a stemming from the abortion issue), &c. While these may happen, the real social decay will be much more subtle, as the aim of it is to destroy religion. Years ago changes were made to the laws that would allow businesses to be open on Sundays. The idea that was presented at the time was that if your business wanted to be open on Sunday and your employees were willing to work on Sunday, then you were free to do so. No one would be forced to work on Sunday. Today Sunday availability is the difference between having a job and not having a job. Presently we are being fed the line that religious societies that oppose homosexual unions for moral reasons "won't have to perform the unions if they don't want to". In the not too distant future, if homosexual marriage is permitted, these societies will be criticized, ostracized, and punished in various forms, legal, political, and social, for not participating.

A few weeks ago in my communications class we covered Queer Theory. The idea was, roughly, that all definitions for gender and sexuality can and ought to be decoded and recoded without meanings, or that the recoded meaning would be a sort of reflecting pool of self-definition where just because two men have sex, it doesn't make them gay. In attempting to find the aims and purpose of this theory I was told that there doesn't need to be a purpose and was criticized for "the need to see progress" after asking why it would be better. When I continued to press for some indication of how a society without names is better a question was thrown back at me along the lines of "who would be ostracized in a society like this? Isn't that better?" While I had no ready response, I realized later, as I pondered on it, that the people who would be cast out, the new fringes and outsiders, would be the people who believe that humanity has its source in the divine, that God has expectations for our behavior, and that some things are actually wrong.

In the end, abortion, gay marriage, drug use, corporate cover-ups, they're all just ways we attempt to legitimize our actions in an attempt to fill the loneliness in our souls. We're too stubborn to admit we're unhappy because we're doing things wrong. If there wasn't a need to legitimize things, if the secular liberal community really is content to free themselves of shackles and chains of preconcept and names, then why would the idea of marriage even be an issue? Why not dismiss marriage as an "infantile concept" left over from the barbaric eras of religious tyrany? It is, after all, a convention of relious patriarchal heterosexual society.

We all want to be loved.

A Quick Note on Notes

I went online to pull out the lyrics for The Watchmen's "On My Way" off the amazing album Silent Radar. Now, it's not exactly that the lyrics as sung on the album, and this song in particular, are difficult to make out, but I just wanted to see them written out. You know, helps you digest it, or something. I was surprised to find that three out of the four sites I went to had an ellipsis (...) instead of the line "spray my brains". I suppose I can understand peoples' aversion to blatant suicide references, escpecially particularly graphic ones like this, but who are you helping if you helping by taking it out? I find it really confusing in light of the fact that the profanity in "Any Day Now" is still intact. Whatever.

I admit I was thrown a little when I first registered this line. I was lying down listening, but not really paying attention, just enjoying the melody, when the line "I kiss the barrel, spray my brains" jumps out of nowhere. I found it particularly jarring since the song almost carries itself with a hopeful, retrospective groove that would usually be the "I made it through it all" kind of song, especially with lines like "I've grown up big and strong" and the title "on my way". It becomes something altogether more disturbing and really truthful about the mindset driving suicide. When you're in that place, in that mindset, it is escape. Suicide holds this hypnotic apeal as a way of "growing up" or "getting over it" and "moving on", for lack of a more refined vocabulary at the moment.

If you don't own the album, go get it. If you do, listen to the song again and see what I mean.

On My Way

Change yourself, not me
Vicious fighter, I�ll agree
Nervous anger, scotch part water
I�'ve recovered fine, it'�s me

I'�ve grown up big and strong, on my way back on

Wear my halo
It'�ll make you think like me
I fell hard though
But I�'ll get back up on, you'�ll see

I�'ve grown up big and strong, on my way back on

In my town, I remember
Fought to break my mind down
Paid my toll, conscience clear
My conscience is clearer

I�'ve grown up big and strong, on my way back on

Seven times the man I'�ll ever be
Like a God on Sunday
Kiss the barrel, spray my brains
All gone now

I�'ve grown up big and strong, on my way back on

My Second Rate Hell

They took you away from me and you started to fade
like you'd never been there at all
never allowed to hold on to you
it all gets taken away anyway

Missed the bus, locked the keys in the truck
same old story you've heard before
couldn't make it to the station
wasn't welcome anyway

Can't feel anything
Always been too tired to admit I'm loney but things are like that
Aren't they?

The Holes in Everyone

I've come to the conclusion in preparing for my final exams that the ultimate wall any secular philosophy will find itself pressed against when attempting to grasp the world is its understanding of theology. The inability to grasp, or apathy towards grasping, the essence of the divine or the divine as a source of origin and influence is what hinders these philosophers from actually being able to succeed at what they are attempting. Granted, many aren't really attempting anything, and that by their own admission. Anyway, they construct almost every argument on the foundation that the divinists are categorically wrong about the source of humanity, even if this construction is by assumption or omission and not directly stated. As I sit here reading through lecture notes I consistently see hypotheses about what it is that makes humans different from the rest of the creatures on earth. Among most, Althuser being a possible exception, there is the basic assumption that humans are different in some way. While Althuser does ask "what if we aren't different", none that have been popularized by the institutions seem to swallow their pride and ask "what if religion is right? What if the essential human element is divine and not behavioral?" See, the most common answer about what makes humans unique is that we are symbol using creatures, but as we've analyzed the nature of a symbol it really is anything with meaning. Well, animals use symbols. Peacock feathers are a symbol that other peacocks understand and use to communicate. Wolves wandering around urinating on things are using a symbol parallel to a barbed wire fence and "no trespassers" sign. We are not alone in being symbol using creatures. Something else makes us different.

Because we always go looking

Near Fantastica

The pink pills are for your sanity
we are buried in the earth because we can’t beat gravity
and you are still here because you’re an important part of the computer
you are still here because you couldn’t bring yourself to pull the trigger
I am your fuzzy bear
picture everyone in their underwear
I am your fuzzy bear
picture everyone
down in the valley where no one ever sleeps
someone is having a yard sale and man those wings are cheap
you could get away
I think it’s time you took a holiday
I am the only one who cares
and I will always be right here
near fantastica

Dream the dream of your attrition
we have no name for your condition
we will be needing you for a little while longer
you are an important part of the computer
after this mission we will let you go
after this mission we will help you to forget everything you know
I am your fuzzy bear
picture everyone breathing real air
I am your fuzzy bear
picture everyone
down in the valley where the lambs grow into sheep
someone is saying something that’s sinking because it’s too deep
but you could get away
I think it’s time you took a holiday
I am the only one who cares
and I will always be right here
near fantastica

I havn't seen you because you havn't seen me

I think if I were to relate the past few weeks in even the most clinical of terms it would appear overly melodramatic. You probably just wouldn't believe me. Plus this would start sounding like a random Livejournal and no one wants that for non-voyeuristic reasons. On a tangent note off of that, I still do have a growing list of random Blogs and Livejournals that I read on occasion for purely voyeuristic reasons. I'm not going to hide it, I like knowing peoples' secrets.

One of the things that I would most certainly have written about, had I been capable of really writing at the time, would have been the injury of my hand. I broke some pottery at work and cut open the webbing on my right hand when I went to pick it up. I felt like I was going to be fine, but my boss made me go and get stitches (the first in my life) which would up being more painful and irritating over the following days than just the wound would have been. I also have a stack of paperwork to fill out if I want to get paid for the days I couldn't work because the stitches made my hand all bruised and swollen. (Yes, I do intend on blaming most things on the stitches rather than the injury as I did almost the exact same thing to my left hand a year ago, only with a knife.)

One of the other reasons that I'll give you, one of the non-melodramatic reasons, would be the arrival of finals time and also the purchase of World of Warcraft. It has been absorbing large quantities of my time, but seeing as I'm not sleeping well and my lung infection is returning due to the cold (danggit, some of the melodrama still slipped in) I've got plenty of free time that would otherwise be spent wishing I were dead-ish.

That's the update. I also caught about 15 minutes of Lost and wished upon many wishes that I'd seen it from the beginning. Oh well, I'll get it on DVD right after I get around to buying Firefly.