This post is about my anger, frustration, pain, anxiety, fear and all that baggage that is associated with my inability to know what to say about my dear sweet friend who attempted suicide yesterday.
But before I get into my shit, I want to direct you to Mr. Doodle's:
Top 10 Reasons Why I Left the Church
Top 10 Reasons Why I Came Back to the Church
Feel free to leave Mr. Doodle a comment or write your own blog post about your top ten reasons you left. If you haven't left the church then write a top 10 reasons why you stay or came back. But by all means, avoid calling people to repentance if they don't agree with you. It's not going to convince anyone. Mr. Doodle has every right to do as he please for whatever reasons he has. As do I and as do you. But just know, if you say I should do things a certain way, convince me first how your life's path can possibly have anything to do with the reality of mine when it comes to your own self-awareness of what I perceive. In other words, if you can get inside my head, you would know what to say to convince me.
I don't have a top ten reason why I left myself. It's more like a top three.
#3 Co-dependency runs rampant and is self-sustaining.
#2 A dogmatic culture of "one life fits all" philosophy.
#1 It's a twisted, abusive, homophobic, fallacy, of conditional love which imposes unnecessary complexity and nuance into the social lives of vulnerable people where there otherwise would be a naturally simple existence. (see #2 & #3)
Yes, I'll say it; my life is still being complicated by the baggage that comes with deeply imposed, completely unnecessary, fallacies of religious belief, which create a complex and nuanced social climate that only an omnipotent god could navigate, a complexity and nuance that must be danced around and walked on like a fucking, god damn, eggshell so as not to frighten the overly sensitive egos of the superstitious, busy bodies. If you are offended by that classification, ponder it for yourself why that is the case. You may have a blog post you could write for your own blog. (Post a link to it in the comments if you like.)
I used to love the word 'nuance'. As a music composer it was the nuance of the performance and harmonic selections that separated a good piece of music from a great one. I used to love the word 'complex' because, as a composer, I could stun my rhythmic sensibilities with layers of poly metered rhythms that was both invigorating and meditative.
But I've learned to distrust these words. I've seen them used against me. Thrown back at me as yet another means by which I am to compromise my feelings, sensibilities, life experiences and just plain life, so that fearful superstitions will not be challenged in their inability to look at anything other than the shadows on the fucking wall.
Navigating these waters, wading through the mud, balancing on a pin head, opening a fucking window, is now this delicate and unattainable "complex and nuanced" perfection that must be played in just the right way or they revoke their love, shut off all dialog, close down all ability to communicate and then they take their ball and go home, a ball that was gifted to them by the one seeking an understanding dialog in the first place. All the while, as they leave, they are screeching the need for empathy and understanding.
Empathy? Yes, amongst the complex and nuanced wash of social engineering is the word empathy, a concept that is imbued, in this case, with conditions that only go one way because only one side of that dialog understands and practices it. The other side can only pay lip-service to it.
I sit and watch with full understanding, yes, even empathy, all of the struggles and fears that have embodied those who can only pay lip-service. And I can understand why they can only pay lip-service, but I can't say a single thing about it. I can't tell them what my path of life has been, I can't talk about my experiences, fears, struggles, joys, loves. I can't even begin to express how our experiences are wrong for each other. All I can do is just listen and let them tell me I'm a perverse and evil miscreant because I cannot believe and live as they do. I understand why they believe and say that but I can't say anything about my reality. They won't listen. They can't listen. They can't understand. They are like little babies who only know the world as it exists inside of their heads. I understand why they can't understand even if the words fail me in explaining it. But I can only sit there for so long before I have been drained of my will to live. I resent having to babysit these adults. I've got a life to live; I can't waste it away trying to open a dialog with unreason. And yet I keep trying. It's leading to insanity.
I have, for the most part, learned to no longer believe that I am a perverse and evil miscreant, but only when I'm rational. But the strange nuanced and complex world of the human psyche can still be triggered into readopting those old beliefs, and often in subtle and gradual ways. Before long, the mind has switched into a new consciousness, into another space, another reality where I only know, understand, and experience these irrational beliefs and nothing else. If the head-space is irrational, I can't think my way out of it. I become the baby who must be babysat. And now I'm the social burden that only a nuanced and complex pandering of my fragile ego can pull me out of. And if I'm lucky, I'll get the empathy I need before I've convinced myself that I must die. This is fucked up!
Nuanced social navigation is an unnecessarily activity when religious dogma is not imposed on a person's identity, thus warping the very reality that is our existence. Life is not complex when religious dogma is not imposed into every aspect of it, especially aspects of life where it cannot offer anything of value, which is all of it.
I would love to say that religious dogma is to blame for this social dysfunction but I can't. All it really does is use us and abuse us and keeps us stuck in it. There is no way around this. We are like this because we evolved to be this way. What I can only hope for is that we will eventually evolve out of it, so that the words 'nuance' and 'complex' can go back to being words to describe aesthetics rather than the navigation of social dysfunction. But, religious dogma doesn't believe in evolution.
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