Cosmic Superdaddy: A Crash Course on Faith
© 2013, [Copyright JPJ Incorporated]
by Jon Penn Junejo-Lemon Pepper
Chapter 1: Show Me the Light
In front of you, there is a dog who lacks a collar. She has no parents, no dreams, and she's crying. It's also raining and she's hungry. According to the mindset of those who conform to the atheist or even agnostic mentality, this scenario alone is one of many that refute the existence of god in our world. Similar to people who adhere to a religious belief, atheists have no problem spreading the plague of their ideas across multiple generations to their offspring. In response to a small child questioning how sure his parent is of the lack of god's existence, an atheist parent has no qualms about explaining: "honey...if there was a god, we would have seen him being carried on an Egyptian throne by four strong, tan men, and he would save that dog from her tragic set of circumstances. There would also be no world hunger, no 90's aids crisis, no racism, discrimination of any kind, or bigotry, and people would generally live carefree lives without the worries of receiving eviction notices, marrying the wrong spouse, or the fear of being raped. If god existed, the dog would be guaranteed a home. We would all be equal without the presence of fame, fortune, intelligence, or arbitrary skill to differentiate us. Now stop asking questions and retire to bed you kindred spirit."
The brain is quite a fanciful creature. It contains machinery capable of processing multiple algorithms, or rules that govern our lives, which adapt according to our preferences in the changing world. On one hand, we live and breathe harmonically as people, embracing how unique and interesting we seem to each other. As individuals; however, our senses and points of view collide. So describes the nonsensical nature of how we live. Why do we have such complex integrated neurological components if they lead to such chaos, brilliance and calamity! Each neuron contains the potential to build houses, link circuit boards, invaginate foundations of large structures, engage in sexual intercourse, and the ability to end someone's life; all this complying with the multitude of large organ systems that allowed me to create this rather obscure run-on sentence. We have the privilege of strategically freeing hostages from terrorists, speaking out against hate crimes, and shot-gunning a beer upside down at a fraternity party all in the same life. It's as if our brain is the host of a virus that never seizes to penetrate our bodies, percolating a varying cycle of disconnected events over and over again. The body is both an innocent bystander and a hostage taken over by an invisible being who makes us watch this cruel game as it's happening in real time. In spite of this way in which we're accustomed to living; however, we are also forced to sit through advertisements promoting Feed the Children, Oxyfam America, and the Clinton-Bush Fund at 4am at some guy's house, drunk, watching people suffer. Our bodies are only a mass of vesicles containing a fluid form of pain. As we learn about the most recent devastation that happened, some of us are both eager and anxious to help.
As our exposure to the advertisement increases, so does our willingness to get involved with the cause. The aftermath leads us to donate resources to the victims, arouse support for the cause from our neighbors, speak publicly at "relief effort" forums, and send letters of inquiry regarding the efforts at hand to our representatives in congress. According to Adam Smith, the root of our philanthropic nature during this time can be attributed to one fact: we all act in our own self-interest in order to gain from society, for society. Therefore; It's our imperative to do so in order to effectively harness what we have in store for the greater good. But if we're all so complex, we must all be as bad as we are good. After all, how is it possible that one state could trump another! Even the bad guys occasionally win in the movies, though they don't always believe they're bad. It's easy to say you want to make a difference. It's even easier to say you want to make a positive impact in the world. But positive is relative. Contributing an action to society that you feel is positive, may in fact be neutral, or negative to an opposing body. When KSM and OBL conspired against the United States, the American public, and the World Trade Center in the days, months, and years before 9/11, they did so according to their own moral compass. It's easy for a cognisicent human being to outlaw the logic of these men as flawed and juvenile; many would say psychotic. But it's harder to justify the circuitry of their brains that led their elaborate planning to destroy the mindset laid out by the American framework. A similar mentality is observed in the intent of gang leaders who recruit underprivileged teenagers to "get theirs" as they say, urging them to sell drugs for themselves, acting in their own self-interest in order to give monetary appreciation to their comrades. It's the cycle geographically concentrated in what seems like one too many locales. They harbor a very simple philosophy which recruiters will inform to their recruits: "sell drugs for me and in exchange, you will never have to work a day-job a day in your life. If you get caught, and you get sentenced to do time, don't worry. We have people inside that will protect you." Who could say no to that pitch?
These potential drug-dealers in training fail to do what any white-collar employee considers a must during job-hunting. This entails following a basic protocol: Asking the right questions questions about the company he's interested in entering, the basic benefits provided by completing the job in question, potential retirement, the 401k, the pension, insurance premium rates down the line. It doesn't matter how much you think of yourself as a lock for your company of choice. If you seem completely content with a job immediately following an offer, your future employer may rescind the opportunity completely, sensing impulsive desperation and a lack of reluctance in your tone. But the naive teenager has nothing going for him which one could partially attribute to his youth. He hasn't experienced fighting in the line of fire; not yet, which retains him as the optimal choice for the recruiter to target, another young mind to mold. An interesting fact is the gang leader doesn't see himself as a negative force in the world. he is simply an intermediary standing between a future drug dealer and a pile of single dollar bills sporadically collected throughout the week. Keep in mind he's not thinking about the cycle he's created in a mal overtone. After all, it's this cycle that allows him to get his chicken dinner at night. He's just another guy. Another corrupted body of the system, failed by his short stick. Of course, he doesn't think he's failed. He simply hasn't achieved success. Not yet. In his mind, he's only a few steps away from it. How could a grown man who wants to make his life better be the epitome of evil personified? Is it his fault that he didn't have a father around to show him how to throw a baseball, or a mother to teach him how to cook something more substantial than the very item that personifies him, i.e. a lukewarm pop-tart?
But it's his fault. He made everything worse by not working productively the way you or I would. He could have made something substantial of himself by saving money at his blue collar job, getting a beer after work like a "normal" person, have drunk sex with his wife, and wake up the next morning dreading the new day to begin. He didn't want that feeling because he felt it limited him. After all, he lives in the fucking projects. If someone asked him about what he thinks about his life thus far, he'd say something along the lines of "...this shit is no joke man. I'm forced to live paycheck to paycheck. Most nights, I get scared for my life. I'll never get used to it. So I'm trying to provide for my family, so we can escape these streets in peace."
These people are not stupid. They just lack guidance. I know it seems that they're unwitting to the perilous roads ahead in light of the difficult day-to-day struggles they face on a daily basis. Their mentality cherishes the fact that if they accept this fact, their life will get better if they work at it. A seemingly arbitrary force will upgrade their life from hell, to limbo, in the same manner a cell phone upgrade always seems to arrive unwarranted. But, unfortunately, there's a catch. In spite of whatever they do, they will never reach the heights that you or I could (assuming you don't live in the hood). The reason doesn't lie in something as stupid as "destiny." You can attribute it to the fact that these people were given the short stick in their life through no fault of their own. It's as you try to burrow your way to the origin of this fate that the atheists claim the basis of their argument for the lack of god's existence.
On the opposite side of the keel, you have people that found religion. For the sake of argument, let's place these people all in one category: the believers. Because even though their religions may be different, these people still manage to have faith in something or someone that they haven't shall we say, met yet. The perception atheists have of believers is that they're schizophrenic. They don't know how to comprehend the fact they truly believe they're speaking in a dialogue with god and not simply, their own conscience. At the end of the day, their belief remains, and resonates in their bodies in spite of any counterarguments they may encounter. Not only does arguing against this pertinent belief in their psychy make it stronger; it also adds fuel to a fire of anger. Thus, one shouldn't be surprised when he's scolded in the aftermath of a religious debate by a rancher in the Midwest to "leave my property...or I'll shoot thee." In order for people to alleviate any malice left by these debates, it must be a priority to find a middle ground. A common misconception surrounds the fact that there is no middle ground. The world's constituents are simply too fucked up to compromise with their beliefs, whether extremely pointed toward the left or right, to be agreeable in their discussions of faith.
The next fork in this road to attain the true identity of a higher power lies in religion, a grouping system used in order to divide factions of faith into highly separatist niche markets. Religion is extremely successful at permitting one's faith to be highly intensified and segregated. It accentuates faith onto an entirely elevated level by eying your belief in god as an "offensive" and all other factions as "defensive," no different than a Boston Red Sox fan. When he supports his team by attending games regularly at Fenway Park, his team's chances of winning the World Series increase 1/20,000 fold which to him is equivalent to a bullion of gold. If he has to make the small sacrifice of praying for his team to succeed in the playoffs, then what does he really have to lose in the long-term?
When a person is part of your religion, he's part of your distant family even if you've never met him. He's inclusive in a long list of people destined for greatness in the afterlife if he's good, and cursed for eternity in the depths of hell if he isn't. There's a certain level of respect given to members of the same religion. When you walk into your church, your mosque, your synagogue, or your temple, you retain your sense of self in spite of blending in with your surrounding worshipers. This beauty allows you to look at your fellow brethren with admiration and accept them as individuals too.
But when you don't fit in with any people in any specific community, you're not praised for your homogeneity; but rather, you're criticized for it. You're told you don't belong to this sect. That in order for your life to contain any purpose, you must join, and be communicated into the room of followers. Should you refuse this offer, they'll unfollow you like a meaningless tool on twitter. You'll be ostracized for not believing. For not drinking the kool-aid and sharing something so powerful in common with your peers. You're an infidel who isn't entitled to the same pursuits and desires as your fellow men. Because they're not your fellow men. They're just men, who you happen to live and eat around with whom you share no spiritual connection.
Yet the consistency of religious upheaval still manages to baffle people. The secret to conflict surrounding the issue isn't egocentric; it's centered on a difference of opinion. At the end of the day, the side with the stronger opinion with the more focused army retains the upper hand.
And women...FORGET ABOUT IT! Women are taken for granted. They're trophies. They always have been. Thorstein Veblen said that you can trace the "desire to acquire trophies" tendency to barbaric times. But the past isn't as concerning. After all, it's the past: done, finished, kaput. No need to unnecessarily revisit what's gone. What's, in fact, concerning is the future. What does the future hold for these women that men take for granted. In order to trace the trajectory of this problem, and where the eventual status of women is headed, we can look at the present. Going past the unequal wages, the biology of women made for child-bearing, those breasts, the high heels men genuinely don't notice, the perversions online which have changed the way men see women sexually, and of course, that ass; then, surely we can come to a conclusion.
Chapter 2: The Personal Flotation Device
Good culture is among the side effects of the presence of women. We'll get to why women are taken for granted in a second. First, a bit about culture.
Culture, which is molded by religious belief, revolves around food that changes your life, good wine that changes your life, and drugs that have, in one way or another, changed your life. Religion-founded culture typically molds the landscapes of thought and the lifestyles of everyday men and women.
Step into the life of the average mid-30's open-minded New York male who's ironically, trying to emulate a Being John Malkovich out-of-body experience of his own.. A common night out with your colleagues from work starts out simple. All 11 of you meet for dinner at a high end restaurant. You trade stories, eat uniquely spiced food, and drink extraordinarily expensive wine. But it's all well worth it; the wine tastes magnificent, and that woman who gave you "the eye" by the fax machine last week seems to be actively flirting with you. But in all honesty, none of that matters. After dinner when you're acquaintances invite you for additional drinks to add to your buzz, you pass, in order to go home and experience true luxury. You clean up, drink a class of Merlot by the fire, and dream about an existence that makes Earth seem like the bottom of a cereal box. To aid your out-of-body experience, you sample some cocaine. This is it. It's coming.
27.7392 minutes later, you're there, one step closer to a higher being. You're having a feeling that no one else could ever dare to take in like you do. The experience is unique enough that it defines who you are, what you'll do and say the following day, and where you see your ideal self. It's a miracle. You go to work the next day knowing how superior you are to everyone because of what you did last night. Enthralled, you decide to keep it yourself to preserve the quality of it. You're also in no rush to start a rumor about yourself that may make its way to the front office. However; unbeknownst to you, what you've done is even worse.
Suddenly, your understanding of the world seems different. The misconception is that your unconscious state has been altered. This notion; however, is an arbitrary one. The fact that a conscious state has been effected is a possibility that many fail to consider after experimenting with drugs, because they've been experimenting with drugs. Minute cerebellum impairments are a thing of the past with recent technological advances targeting, among others, illicit drugs. Suddenly, the rumor that you were so cautious of spreading to your friends in the office like a virus may have unconsciously affected your conscious state. It's a scary phenomenon. Ingesting a substance that may bring you closer to the supreme being: the Gatsby of our time; the Gatsby of all time. He's Neo. The chosen one. The one to whom people express their undying love. He's a public relations mogul. A carnivorous, unnatural force of nature. He must be tangible, right? After all, even Gatsby interacted with those he understood.
The difference between a person's drug-infused and relatively permanent sober states is simply the length of time in which they can feel, hear, and smell the supreme being. During their drug binges, they feel a temporary proximity to a higher power. It's only after years of failing to be in a sober state that they channel their sobriety into a pathway to the supreme being; it's a door sealed shut to their addiction. Some may call it an excuse to remain sober. Others will call it a gateway drug in itself in modern times. Open-minded people like these wish to attain the spiritual connection relgious-minded people intuitively seem to have. But they'll never be able to have it. Because they don't know how it feels to possess a feeling in your psychy that propels an individual to illicit praise to a being they've never met: that's the element of faith. True faith doesn't contain the risk that comes with "pseudo-faith" or faith acquired out of a desire to expand the mind. It's quite unlike soldiers anticipating an I.E.D. in the vicinity of their path because there's no voice shooting a round stating "I might be wrong" in the mind. If you're wrong in Iraq, the decision could be fatal. But in the real world--a world apart from ammunition-related warfare--there's no way to assess if you're right or wrong about your faith. Thus, identifying with a religious affiliation can't really hurt you even if your side loses. Unless of course, you come upon an encounter with a spirit or ghost who contradicts everything you believe to be true, and alters your course of faith. Though highly unlikely, such is the connection a sporadic drug user occasionally seeks. It even helps justify his reason for using and allows him to kill two birds with one stone.
Chapter 3: Conceptual Greatness
In calculus, infinity is hardly ever thought of as something unreachable. A rational function, like for instance "1/x" approaches infinity as the bottom approaches zero. But plugging a zero-value into the function causes it to fold, and become undefined. Since the value of "x" can potentially be an extraordinarily minisule number, such as 0.00000001, the function is referred to as one approaching infinity. But if the function isn't ever defined at zero, how can the mathematical community claim that at one point in the function's cycle, it will indeed reach zero? Because infinity is just a name. It holds a slightly higher status than Paul and John and Karen. The purpose of infinity is to aid humanity in identifying that which does not exist. Simple. But unfortunately, there's a little more to it. In America, more so than the rest of the world, there's a culture of "more." The misconception is that more is never enough. This is hardly the case. In truth, Americans desire to obtain as much as they can get, striving to a path of contentment. It is in that path that the unobtainable becomes a source of temptation, leading citizens astray from a path of contentment, onto a quest for a higher power.
In reality, a belief in religion necessitates the existence of certain provisions. If they are disobeyed, suddenly a psychological chaos is likely in one's mind. The person may attempt to prevent this chaos from being a devastating one. But ultimately, he'll find he has no control over the chaos his belief and faith in god have created through no direct action of his own. The end-game of this is catastrophic. His imperative shifts from attempting to control the chaotic nature of his mind to conceding, and admitting defeat; allowing it to control him. Such is the result of a transmittance of an allele through generations before his time in an effort to find peace, solace, and attain the answer to the age-old question: "how does one possess infinity?"
This world suddenly isn't enough. There must be more out there.
Science allies with this quest for more, launching costly missions into space for the sake of knowledge. But the impetus is to enhance our current world and make it more conducive to facilitating essential tasks; like calling our friends, changing our batteries less frequently, and purifying large quantities of water quickly. All of this is great. After all, the information is taken for granted by the general public, which means organizations like NASA and Space X must be achieving some success at their board meetings. But the vast majority of people don't believe that routing men, women, satellites, and rovers into space will allow contact with a supreme being. That's something that can be done in church.
The problem with attempting to access your quest for excellence in church is, however; the solace you may receive only impacts you. Of course your life may seem as if it has improved during the hour or so of service you've attended. But at the end of the day, you haven't physically done anything. That isn't even the point of attending services; the point is to confirm what you already know. Once a week, you seek and eventually receive a security that informs your conscience that what you believe, who you believe, and how you believe your spiritual code is absolutely, positively perfect. There may be no imperfections in this process unless you deviate it in some way; i.e. being late to Church, not wearing the proper attire, flirting with the women sitting beside you, or viewing a pornographic clip the morning of the service. The goal of going to church is not to challenge your view of god, and is not to fuel counter-discussions regarding the truth of your religion or spiritual belief. If this did occur, in fact; your belief may become even stronger, standing the test of an argument contradicting technicalities of your spirituality. But this never happens. Religious leaders also have a history of adding a philanthropic component to their parish, not confined to simply requesting donations for their church facility. For instance, a Catholic priest may ask his congregation to physically give aid to an ailing nation in the midst of a recent disaster. By associating this relief effort with the church itself, suddenly it doesn't matter what the priest says next Sunday. The attitude behind this notion is "he helped aid a community by asking us to support them. Thus, I will support him, and will strive to adopt everything he says in today's service as my own, personal belief, and will despise all those who disagree." Over time, the church becomes a religious entity of its own. It's members acquire a pay it forward mentality in which they spread the priest's mission to their friends and family members. As each person interacts with significantly more people, the message seems to gain some traction, and now the messenger himself is personally associated with the message he's spreading. Not unlike a virus, the message hooks onto new cells, and begins infecting people at a dramatically more expedient rate.
Chapter 4: Comfort in Security
In the modern day, fear is always prevalent. If you'd ask most people, they would tell you about how glad they are that fear is in their lives. The consensus is that fear is good. It creates a sort of cushion that shields you from the negativity of the world. But more than that, fear makes you aware about your surroundings. The world is a scary place. Imagine that you're a veteran cop who calls Brooklyn home. You've been working with a partner for years out of necessity, because you're always assigned to the rough neighborhoods: Clinton Hill, Hunts Point, Brownsville. But now, all of the sudden, you're partner has dropped dead and a new one has been assigned to ride with you. This time around, she's a 24 year old suburbanite fresh out of the academy who asks you if dispatch codes are important for violent crimes. What does this mean for you?
Well, if you run into heavy fire, you would be forced to shield her. That's scary because when your partner, Patrick, was alive, each of you had a 50-50 chance of coming into direct contact with heavy fire. Now that he's passed on, your new partner has a substantially lower risk. You're compensating for her. You wake up one morning at half-past 5, eat your cereal, brush your teeth, take a shower, and polish your badge. You make the morning commute, arrive at work, drop your car, and get situated with your partner, a somewhat mundane task. On your rounds, you encounter the scene of a drug deal. You see them. They see you. The instant a trigger is pulled, your partner doesn't have to worry, because you're there: her knight in shining armor. Though your life doesn't flash before your eyes, you hear a distant thought. 'Ladies and gentlemen, the flight on board to Paris is set for departure. Checking in all passengers currently seated in-." Your honeymoon. Why are you thinking of this moment now?
Because you have integrity; or, at least the integrity it takes to protect someone else. The truth is that when you put your trust in someone else, you don't have to trust yourself as much. The man who wakes up on Sunday morning wants to leverage his trust, just as the man's partner seeks a barrier between her and the crime she allegedly fights. This is very common on Wall Street. And why shouldn't it be. It created the concept of creditor and the capitalist in ancient Venice. According to Bacon, the system allowed people to lend, as the rough exterior of men prevented free-lending. It takes a lot of faith in order to trust another human being. A tangible person who probably has a different mindset than you do. Maybe he had to convince you first. Maybe you needed a favor and he was the first person in mind. Whatever the case, the fact that you leveraged your trust in him is significant. Imagine leveraging this trust in someone you don't know: giving a confession about a regretful sexual encounter to a Catholic priest, praying to the supreme being, listening to Einstein lecturing about relativity. If only retrograde amnesia were controllable. But we all know that this mechanism of "spilling" the truth to someone else has a tendency to lead to regret. The desire to do so begins with a secret, particularly one that is difficult to digest. The mentality of secret-keeping is to attempt to retain it in your mind as long as you can until some event forces you to transmit it to someone else. At the end of the day, secret-keeping is an art and may be extremely difficult to do. Secrets have two common states or phases: passive-form and viral-form. Passive-form has a significantly shorter incubation period than viral-form. It occurs the moment one encapsulates a feeling about an event. Days after this occurs, a bit of buzz surrounds the secret. The buzz forces the secret to beat inside of your heart like a tambourine. The irony of passive-form's incubation period is that it can be lengthened if one pleases. There is no rule limiting the secret to be kept for a certain time before a person spills. But the reality of life suggests that it isn't conducive to keeping secrets for rather long periods of time. If it were, life would contain an abscess of stupidity because every simple thought that rolled into your head that would survive the incubation period would be divulged. The more common route a secret travels on is viral-form, during which time the buzz surrounding the undivulged secret propels it out of your heart into the mind of some wandering soul. The secret seems like it's no longer a secret since someone else has knowledge of it. The frightening part of this "secret" is that it still is a secret. It's simply a more popular secret, which means though people are aware of the secret flowing around from person to person, place to place, some of them aren't allowed to open it. The fact the secret even exists and is being passed around exclusively may cause those who lack exclusivity to feel quite depressed. After all, entitlement is sweet until you're not it. The secretive nature of open-ended messages creates a covenant which appeals to any overeager adventure-seeker. There's a mystery involved with groups which exclude people; i.e. Skull and Bones, fraternities and sororities, and Hasty Pudding. Religious groups are also enigmatic and contain a flair that draws people in.
Chapter 5: The Chocolate Chat room
Dating in the modern world is a struggle for the common lab squirrel, stowing away her acorns for a rainy winter. Having a decent year, a relatively prosperous career, and a handsome 401(k) to fall back on is included on her current list. Visiting Egypt, the pyramids, sampling middle-eastern food, and finding a good man is on her bucket list. Unfortunately for her, "finding a mate" falls on the bottom of her list. She's forty, single, and she lives in a duplex; juxtaposed to some old woman named Cheryl. What a mundane existence; well, at least as compared to her friends and colleagues whom she considers equal in importance. They're not worried about their careers. They're just concerned that their children are struggling academically, and the roof occasionally leaks, and their spouses tend to have a bit more faith in themselves than they should in regard to housework.
She doesn't share their problems. She just envies them. So she joins a dating site with the hopes of finding Mr. Right. The hopes are cloudy, and her cynicism keeps discouraging her in the weeks following her membership. The only thing motivating her not to cancel her membership: loneliness. Painful loneliness. A few dates later, she thinks she's found "the one." He fits the criteria established by all of her friends' lovers. He must be it. So she moves in, they have passionate sex, get in petty arguments, fight through petty arguments, get married, and start a family. It's the American dream she made a reality. Years later, she's divorced. But how could Mr. Right be wrong? It goes against the laws of nature, which claim that each person is complimented by another. That means that for Julie, this world isn't paradise; it's limbo. But marriage and relationships comprise paradise, don't they? After all, the expressions "trouble in paradise" and "marital bliss" refer to interruptions in the cycle and the cycle itself, respectively. How displeasurable is her existence. Willy Wonka would not be proud. At this point, her only option is to revert to the first cycle, in which she just didn't care. She was a career gal. But the problem with her recent share of experiences chasing marital bliss lies in the fact that she's now further behind from her old life. There's a reason she didn't aim to live like her companions in their poseur, American-dream desiring existences with lukewarm impacts on the world. But she conceded. In the end, she failed to achieve any lasting success in a world that was never hers to begin with. Thus, she's back at square -1. The faults shouldn't completely be attributed to her naiveté; the culture around her should also be blamed since culture forms the way people think about things. For instance, it's not uncommon for young girls to fantasize about getting married to some prince inside of an echoing chapel.
Eventually, to universal avail, this fantasy morphs into a reality. White dresses leave department store shelves; yellow roses are hurled from pre-pubescent children into a narrow aisle; and young men coerce their fellow brethren into taking the final leap of faith. Ultimately, the couple will transfer their desires into a child made as an expression of their love. The hope is, after those final credits roll in their movies of life, that the child will at least be stable. Unfortunately, this is only a hope as the child as a mind of his own. Only time can denote the mark he will make on the world.
Chapter 6: The Ordered State of Disorder
The general public keeps hearing the same story time and time again: "We've learned from our X News affiliate that there has been a shooting at Y high school. There are currently Z victims that we know off. The suspect is still active, and we'll give you more information as we receive it. Such a terrible tragedy. We have Stan Grossman at the scene with additional details. Stan?" This transcends into a week-long discussion about guns, gun rights, gun owners, the suspect's mental illness, and an ignored plea for help. Mental illness is the most significant of these issues, because of its commonality.
Mental illness is the difference between thinking you're normal and knowing you're normal. It's one thing to have the personal belief you're normal, but it isn't until you interact with other "normal" people that you can truly infer that you're blander than the crazy ones. Those wretched souls who shoot down schools, people, and cry ignored pleas. Saying the world is a scary place is a cop-out. Ir's a testament to the aforementioned cushion. Depending on where you live, avoiding trouble can be difficult. It's ironic that these mass shootings tend to occur in suburban cities, while the personal-altercation shootings usually occur in urban neighborhoods; this suggests that suburbanites with mental issues enjoy involving bystanders in their illness. If you hear the smoke detector talking to you, you're considered a schizophrenic. But what if you simply hear a voice communicating with you, associated with nothing. How does that distinguish from the voice inside your own head? If you have an intracranial dialogue with yourself, you're conventionally just thinking; but what if you conclude it's okay to kill somebody when the dialogue adjourns?
Technically, the word normal is relative, like rich and beautiful. How does the shooter know others don't think the way he does? He himself never told anyone what he was thinking before he decided to make his dent. He's a normal individual relative to the few people he associates himself with; a channel which accentuates his insecurities and mental illness. Subsequently, he avoids this channel. He's purposely a recluse. He has everyone of his classmates' phone numbers in his contacts, in spite of the fact no one on campus has knowledge of his first name. He is the least interesting man in the world.
That's his persona. For now. In his mind, with each bullet penetrating the skulls, major organs, skidding over the skin cells of his victims, his reputation and his brand are growing. He's an attention-craved human who covets infamy; his only bout with rational thought is the realization that he lacks the talent and the esteem needed to break out into peoples' hearts in a positive light. He'll settle for the next best thing. As most everyone who knew the suspect will state to the press, "the warning signs weren't evident." Not until after the fact; when detectives will notice the underlying clues: google searches beginning with mass shootings and Eric and Dylan, a diary detailing the plan in its entirety, a suicide note in his back pocket, a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook in his dresser, and of course, the inevitable presence of a Marilyn Manson poster under his bed.
Suddenly, the day that brought tens of families harm, thousands of urban-villagers tragedy, and a young adolescent tremendous joy has its own anniversary. Oh the horror! Banners stating "We Will Never Forget" remain in the school in the years after the incident; in the hope that his objective of being Mr. Popular would never cloud their existence. In other words, he can't win.
At least the government doesn't have another dilemma to deal with. The president speaks at a press conference mourning the recent events. He remembers to include a bit about each relevant issue here, such as: gun violence, mental illness, gun ownership, warning signs, and family. The aforementioned dilemma only occurs in the aftermath of political heydays following politically-charged massacres, such as the 2004 hostage crisis in Beslan. When militants wish to commit destructive acts to free their nation within a nation, the president must weigh both sides of the coin. Should he spark uproar by suggesting he will never give in to the insurgents, or simply, concede?
In the case of Mr. Popular, that discussion isn't necessary. He's not a nationalist nor some self-righteous representative of a group of agreeing people. He's just looking for a form of expression. Because he's got a lot of feeling inside him just aching to get out. To him, posthumously:
Congratulations. I hope you've found your true end, and your reason for living. All those people you killed, well, they would've died eventually, probably in the comfort of their warm beds 70 years from now. But because of you, they reached the same end substantially more expediently. Your life was plagued with hatred coming from a few of your peers with nothing better to do but cloud a young man's soul. AND WE GET THAT. But now, you can't even experience the aftermath of the destruction you created. Poor you--the kid couldn't even catch a break in the end.
In the end, every victim of a massive or local shooting who dies would have died regardless; the real "charity cases" comprise those who survived these horrific tragedies. Ultimately, those who died (particularly immediately afterward) didn't have to live with a severed limb or an excruciating speech impediment for the rest of their lives. Even so, the surviving victims still manage to find their spirituality after the event, thanking the supreme being for letting them live through their traumatic injuries. "Thank god" they say with pride, though they never really come to a true conclusion regarding why. Those who had already known their faith in god seem to even strengthen it further; they show this change by either praying more frequently, attending church on a more permanent basis, or performing missions for underprivileged communities.
Chapter 7: Don't Be Tempted; You May Enjoy Yourself
Fear appeals may have a reputation for encouraging disobedience, but they're still the ultimate parental tool for exhibiting prepotence. The first exposure to seeing the human being who conceived you trying to break you can be a quite traumatic experience; that's exactly why it works. What the parent says doesn't matter. It's all about tone. The tone of aggression in a parent's voice as she says "stop feeding chocolate to the dog" is what sticks in the young mind being molded. A common misconception is that children are happiest in the years following conception. The misconception exists because, well, they just seem to damn happy during this time in their lives. And they are. But they don't know how it feels to get fired from a career, pay taxes, divorce a loved one, or try to sleep during a child's first sleepover.
As children grow into adolescents, young people, and finally, adults, they gradually become aware of how troublesome life can potentially get. The whole world becomes a candy store; one that allows them entry to browse, buy, and experience. The older they get, the more access they have to the store; and yet, ironically, this occurs as they're reaching an age in which younger people see them as examples: miniature cities on hills. This is when desires percolate to unthinkable proportions. This is when being an alderman counts.
According to the parental perspective, growing men and women are likely to give in to their natural instincts, worship hedonistic lifestyles, and lose any moral compass they may have possessed in the process. Such is their justification for using fear appeals to "guide" their children. Parents don't mind when their children ask them why it's improper to drink, engage in unprotected sex, steal from people they come into contact with, and rape people. Red flags shouldn't be raised when these questions start percolating in those young minds, because it gives parents an opportunity to mold their children. It's when children ask them about more gray issues, such as: masturbation, homosexuality, why they must attend church, why it's improper to cheat for a better grade, and in certain contexts, why they can't eat pork. Regulating the paradise the world has to offer has become engraved in the parental framework. It places the youth in a bubble from which their instinct is to escape. But they can't escape. People still wonder why teen angst occurs almost unanimously in all adolescents amidst the mandatory confinement. No one said prison was going to be easy.
Chapter 8: The Best Shape of Your Life
There is one major principle in life which, though many find controversial, controls every aspect of what some people do, and a few aspects of what everyone does: People enjoy obtaining an edge on others. It's the universal way to express the capitalization of a new skill. The rule relies on the fact that in order to gain credibility, one must use hard work as a channel to burrow inside the adults' table. According to a large faction of these people, however; hard work alone may not lead to considerable success.
One noted example can be found in athletics, during pregame rituals. Each team wishes to channel strength from the supreme being towards its players. Every fan becomes entrenched with the truth that their team must win. If it doesn't, they themselves will face repercussions: their house will foreclose, their families will hate them, and worst of all, their faith will be tested. But in spite of how the fans feel, the athletes take the brunt of the heat. They're the ones for whom playing basketball, football, or hockey is more than a pastime, an interest, or even an acquired lifestyle: it's an occupation. Thus, if they lose, they become one step closer to losing their job. To avoid losing, they raise or bow their heads to a higher power, whom they know exists. After all, how could they have gotten where they are without him?
Most of them grew up in rough and tumble neighborhoods with single mothers as caregivers. They didn't have fathers to teach them how to play their game of choice; they had coaches and friends. But in the end, these people are all strangers. The friends, coaches, and fans sitting outside in 20 degree weather, waiting for priceless tickets to be sold and purchased; in the end, they're sitting atop the million-dollar athlete's shoulders. Thus, it would be irreverent for the biggest ball player coming out of the projects not to take the criticism from his coaches, and the support from his fans seriously. With his body falling with the addition of each fan, assistant coach, girlfriend, and relative who seeks to capitalize the athlete for all he's worth, he must find an outlet to lighten the load. Luckily for him, it's very easy to find. No more skipping church. Now, every game, every meal, every workout, and every breath of hungry air begins with a prayer; a command with a polite tone, a request, or a hail mary. The mindset has drifted, from one of self-reliance, to one of self-reliance guided by the supreme being.
The supreme being coupled with talent is what will bring the next Michael Jordan into the NBA; not talent alone. It must be this way. After all, how popular is atheism in professional sports leagues? There must be a reason, more than psychological, for this trend correlation between prayer, talent, and success. Though subservient analysis
Chapter 9: Form is Just a Formality
In learning the fundamentals of any sport, it's particularly important to familiarize yourself with the basic motions. For instance, a basketball-beginner must add a new set of algorithms to his credo upon taking up the sport: dribble dribble, pass, set screen, pass, pass, shoot, score. The only differences between the amateur and the professional are the presence of spectators, television sets, boom mics, a crew of announcers, and the occasional release of confetti in the aftermath of victories. The game may seem perplexing to an outsider; but it can be beaten. After all, even the gambles of Vegas can lead to a calculated win.
Earth is where these games are conceived. When Dr. James Naismith conceptualized a sport in which participants would hurl a ball into a basket, nobody believed how complex it would one day become, being televised in hundreds of countries generating billions of dollars. Billions with a B. In a game in which anomalies are the norm, good form is crucial. Most games are decided by free throws, in which players must travel into a different time. A time in which their fathers, brothers, and coaches taught, reinforced, and retaught them B.E.E.F: balance, eyes, elbow, and follow-through. The world is no different. Citizens use algorithms in order to navigate. And in a bad, bad world, knowing which ones to use can be a lifesaver. Regardless of how well the algorithms are used, one may still be forced to endure failure. Mom and dad reassure you that though adversity may occasionally tap you as its next victim, you will most certainly succeed more than you fail. This advice doesn't tend to compliment the tantalizing advice your friends may give you regarding the same things; but it doesn't hurt to get a new perspective on an issue of interest.
In earth, your success:failure ratio tends to hover around 50%. The idea that a world in which your failures trump your successes, or your successes trump your failures, refers to the two extremes of culture: Hell and Heaven. Even the very notion of these extremes may dictate every action a person, or a group of people take. And why shouldn't it? It's refreshing to witness people think and act with an intent that swifts in sweet harmony. A generalized way of thinking which occurs in unison. Getting a chicken dinner was supposed to expedite more energy. In harmonic motion, intent is synchronous. It leads to getting in the right place, at the right time, with an end in sight. Regardless of how it may seem on the surface, the intent is always rite. In a world of extremes, form is generally insignificant. A professional basketball player convicted of murder shoots bricks in hell. Pride, love, life, and intent are all insignificant in both extremes. The key to salvation is repentance. What is the litmus test administered to determine whether the repenter has truly repented?
In our world, when we shoot with perfect form our shots are accepted, regardless of whether or not they actually fall through the hoop. In other words, we settle for less than or define success as enough or satisfactory or getting by. People find comfort in each of these words. They precipitate excuses justifying the lack of desire to achieve at home, after "work," which only happens from 9 to 5. During this time, the idea is you should spend time with the family you've created from no cue, with your companion. Why? Because that's what you're supposed to do. That's what society deems as normal or acceptable or the bare minimum which of course, suffices.
Chapter 10: The Beauty of Ferality
Genie's father had it made. He was a flight mechanic in the aftermath of World War II, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression. He had a family for whom he vehemently cared. Such passion can often times be volatile, and make cet person feel emotionally detached and vulnerable in bouts with emotional hemorrhages.
One day, as his mother was walking alongside his son, she was hit by a truck. Cause of the crash: drunk driver, volatile, looking for a way out. According to Genie's father, his son was responsible for the fatality. Genie's father had to retaliate, peacefully. After all, how dare his son walk beside his grandmother in the glow of the mid-day sun. Such a hot, shiny atmospheric energy must have reflected across the boy's tiny forehead onto the driver's windshield, blinding him, exasperating his drunkenness.
According to the father, peaceful retaliation consists of action. Action administered in order to prevent the inevitable, from being inevitable. The most significant act will act as a safeguard and protect little Genie from harm. Ironically, it is during the moments in which he was most cautious that endangered Genie the most. On one day in particular, Genie made a mistake that tested her father's logic and his parenting skills. She became constipated. The liquid diet imposed on her by her father in order to minimize the risk of her choking didn't allow her to exercise her muscles of mastication. This was his test; his opportunity to shine. When he would be at barbecues, he could gloat about how he handled this situation, showing a glow on his face as he would tell it. His solution: Castor oil (the full bottle). And the award for father of the year goes to...
The truth is Genie's father was scared. Wouldn't you be freaked out if his situation presented itself to you? It's easy to say that he handled the circumstances of his mother's death completely wrong; he folded under pressure, he wasn't able to grieve properly, because he didn't know what the word "proper" even meant in the traditional sense of the word. Because proper is no different than "normal;" and "normal," as we know, doesn't exist in society's idea of the word in the first place. Because at the end of the day, were all fucked up. Everyone goes through shit; thus, that shit isn't a defining factor. You can't expect to view yourself as someone who was given the short stick in life, because, well, that would imply you're just another "normal" person. In other words, who cares.
Chapter 11: Turning Lemons into Lemon Extract
Earth contains a stigma of condemnation. Our ancestors were condemned here, their ancestors simply wanted them to have better lives. But in that mess of rivalries, holy wars, and cancers, one thing remained: legend. The knowledge of survival of a past race, which supposedly strengthens the current one. The legend is always a well-written one, inclusive of all details. From the macrocosm of being stranded on an island for days, to the minuscule contents of a day's porridge.
This memory lives in our hearts and lingers with the taste of gin. The memory of a prior time completely unlike this one, in which people were banished for the color of their skin, exiled for their beliefs in indigenous objects, ridiculed for their affinity towards cured beef. Amidst all the strife, however; one aspect of the past resonates in the legend-the aforementioned strength. People capitalize on the tumultuous nature of their father's times and use the rigidity as fuel to the fire of their successes. This is good, because the nostalgia prevents them from becoming forgetful of the land they've colonized when it was beginning to acquire some history.
Earth was never meant to be a place of amusement; it was simply created, according to legend, to bring-forth a lukewarm existence for its first two inhabitants, Eve and Adam (insert surname here). Both of them could have had it good: keys to the kingdom, God as an ally. But they fucked it up. It's unfortunate that one poor decision led to their banishment into a Seinfeldesque world about nothing. But one day, their normal routine transformed. Suddenly, their oatmeal contained a little more sugar. The weather became a little bit sunnier, and limited options regarding how each subsequent day should be spent spanned. Earth no longer became a place of certainty. It became fun to be an Earthling.
But in a world of welfare, prostitution, and gambling, sometimes certainty is missed. In order to create certainty, we utilize the notions of "destiny" and "predetermined," "calling" and "predisposed." It makes our life substantially simpler to know that in spite of all the complexity that surrounds our life, particularly in the choices we have access to make, and the decisions we commit, that all along, a force is guiding us to tilt toward a certain direction.
Chapter 12: Selective Pressures of Beauty
There is no greater joy in a parent's life than the birth of a child. It eclipses all other pleasures experienced before the conclusive positive feedback cycle. "Get the epidural ready!" the nurse exclaims. "We need an anesthesiologist in here, stat."
Meanwhile, the parents-to-be look at each other, pondering their pasts, making presumptions about the unforeseeable future, and cry. "We've come so far from our first date." The epidural is in, all visitors are asked to leave momentarily while nature, or the supreme being, takes its, or his course. This is normality; The American Dream that men and women had strived to achieve in due time. Biologically, it is the reason they were conceived in the first place, and allot the transfer of genes from their generation to the subsequent one that they, in fact, created. It is the reason they eat breakfast every morning, and watch the day's events on their local news channel. The parents are attempting to bring an innocent, prepubescent being into an unforgiving world in which people don't think twice. In some cultures, it's illegal to even think once. Thus pain will never be preventable. From the moment they unleash the twelve year old fetus they made together to it's first sleepover, school day, or prom, they will constantly regret their decision, because their child's choice to engage in fun may have just put her life in jeopardy. Why? Because people don't think twice. Not even before they empty their Spam folder. Someone could accidentally push them towards an oncoming train. Or maybe they were born with an illness that "nuts" or the presence of "bees" accentuate.
Chapter 13: Viral
Nobody is amused with viruses. But that's what makes them so successful in penetrating innocent bystanders. They do what they do perfectly, and after they beckon you to fight them, and you win, you feel good, because beating a virus is like slaying Godzilla: tumultuous, exciting, and rewarding.
Their ability to penetrate almost any substrate makes them especially virulent. They contain a reputation that suggests, in spite of any barrier, they will still attempt to replicate their DNA, and submerge it into a neutral cell, making it a viral one. This spider-venomous effect beckons someone to cease it; otherwise, all hell will break loose. Mayhem will blend into normal.
Though viruses unleash hellish effects on the cells they tend to effect, it should be noted that, in their minds, their intentions are probably well-thought. That being said, it would seem that viruses aren't much different from people. In her mind, even the neighborhood serial killer believes it's her duty to kill, in order to spread a message. Her cognitive abilities may not be on par with those of the average human, but why should that stop her? She doesn't necessarily know that they are. And why should a little deficiency, like a mental illness, prevent someone from executing her full potential? After all, America lauds itself on being inclusive of these very people, even opening venues specifically of people with mental illness such as the Special Olympics.
And yet, in spite of these ongoing festivities, some men and women simply can't contain their overt nature within themselves. They resort to brainwashing young men to blow themselves up in the name of the supreme being. As if this will cure the world's problems; or more importantly, their world's endurances.
People had this very mindset when they decided to form groups of villagers. They decided to author books just like this one, and agreed to write them in the name of the supreme being. In order to spread the legend, they ensured that the being will never appear in daylight. Thus, not only will the legend's half-life be preserved, but the books will also contain symbols of hope.
Killing is inevitable, and no one has ever doubted this fact. But if a code of conduct were written in order to prevent unnecessary violence, the world would be in fact, a more productive world. That's just what happened. And amidst the violence caused by the conflicts of two or more creeds, each precincts world must have been better off.
The decentralization of each author, and each book; however, leads to inter-creed strife. And that strife, in turn, makes the world less safe, and significantly more fearful. As such, we were forced to defend our own families, cultures, friends, faiths, and creeds. Due to the decentralization that none of us has truly witnessed from conception, the types of people we attempt to coddle from the others are separate from one, unilateral being, which, though almost entirely unique, has this one thing in common and in unison: to save each and every soul with all of our hearts, because in the end, fighting each other is what the enemy wants us to do. It creates a diversion, and a justification that empowers the enemy, and not any one person, to effortlessly fight a war against mankind. The only button the enemy has to press is 2:00 for popcorn.
To disperse blame on ourselves, our parents, or their parents for teaching us their creed is to engage in futility. It's important to ask questions, though, which question why the supreme being would give us such an imperfect message, and ask us to cherish it as if it is, in fact, a perfect one. If Sun Tzu were alive today, he would probably attribute the deceptiveness of the creeds as necessary, to enable a first-mover advantage in each borough of the ancient world.
Lastly, if we were all truly destined to obtain and remain our faiths in different, separatist creeds, with different leaders who conflict with each other; causing the likelihood of each message being the correct one of being equal, then why are our brains so complex, and so mechanically and chemically advanced, to even ponder the thought that maybe, we are in fact missing something in this picture? Why aren't we each lobotomized in order to better facilitate the penetration of each message into our neural circuits?
Maybe, the enemy is:
© 2013, [Copyright JPJ Incorporated]
by Jon Penn Junejo-Lemon Pepper
Chapter 1: Show Me the Light
In front of you, there is a dog who lacks a collar. She has no parents, no dreams, and she's crying. It's also raining and she's hungry. According to the mindset of those who conform to the atheist or even agnostic mentality, this scenario alone is one of many that refute the existence of god in our world. Similar to people who adhere to a religious belief, atheists have no problem spreading the plague of their ideas across multiple generations to their offspring. In response to a small child questioning how sure his parent is of the lack of god's existence, an atheist parent has no qualms about explaining: "honey...if there was a god, we would have seen him being carried on an Egyptian throne by four strong, tan men, and he would save that dog from her tragic set of circumstances. There would also be no world hunger, no 90's aids crisis, no racism, discrimination of any kind, or bigotry, and people would generally live carefree lives without the worries of receiving eviction notices, marrying the wrong spouse, or the fear of being raped. If god existed, the dog would be guaranteed a home. We would all be equal without the presence of fame, fortune, intelligence, or arbitrary skill to differentiate us. Now stop asking questions and retire to bed you kindred spirit."
The brain is quite a fanciful creature. It contains machinery capable of processing multiple algorithms, or rules that govern our lives, which adapt according to our preferences in the changing world. On one hand, we live and breathe harmonically as people, embracing how unique and interesting we seem to each other. As individuals; however, our senses and points of view collide. So describes the nonsensical nature of how we live. Why do we have such complex integrated neurological components if they lead to such chaos, brilliance and calamity! Each neuron contains the potential to build houses, link circuit boards, invaginate foundations of large structures, engage in sexual intercourse, and the ability to end someone's life; all this complying with the multitude of large organ systems that allowed me to create this rather obscure run-on sentence. We have the privilege of strategically freeing hostages from terrorists, speaking out against hate crimes, and shot-gunning a beer upside down at a fraternity party all in the same life. It's as if our brain is the host of a virus that never seizes to penetrate our bodies, percolating a varying cycle of disconnected events over and over again. The body is both an innocent bystander and a hostage taken over by an invisible being who makes us watch this cruel game as it's happening in real time. In spite of this way in which we're accustomed to living; however, we are also forced to sit through advertisements promoting Feed the Children, Oxyfam America, and the Clinton-Bush Fund at 4am at some guy's house, drunk, watching people suffer. Our bodies are only a mass of vesicles containing a fluid form of pain. As we learn about the most recent devastation that happened, some of us are both eager and anxious to help.
As our exposure to the advertisement increases, so does our willingness to get involved with the cause. The aftermath leads us to donate resources to the victims, arouse support for the cause from our neighbors, speak publicly at "relief effort" forums, and send letters of inquiry regarding the efforts at hand to our representatives in congress. According to Adam Smith, the root of our philanthropic nature during this time can be attributed to one fact: we all act in our own self-interest in order to gain from society, for society. Therefore; It's our imperative to do so in order to effectively harness what we have in store for the greater good. But if we're all so complex, we must all be as bad as we are good. After all, how is it possible that one state could trump another! Even the bad guys occasionally win in the movies, though they don't always believe they're bad. It's easy to say you want to make a difference. It's even easier to say you want to make a positive impact in the world. But positive is relative. Contributing an action to society that you feel is positive, may in fact be neutral, or negative to an opposing body. When KSM and OBL conspired against the United States, the American public, and the World Trade Center in the days, months, and years before 9/11, they did so according to their own moral compass. It's easy for a cognisicent human being to outlaw the logic of these men as flawed and juvenile; many would say psychotic. But it's harder to justify the circuitry of their brains that led their elaborate planning to destroy the mindset laid out by the American framework. A similar mentality is observed in the intent of gang leaders who recruit underprivileged teenagers to "get theirs" as they say, urging them to sell drugs for themselves, acting in their own self-interest in order to give monetary appreciation to their comrades. It's the cycle geographically concentrated in what seems like one too many locales. They harbor a very simple philosophy which recruiters will inform to their recruits: "sell drugs for me and in exchange, you will never have to work a day-job a day in your life. If you get caught, and you get sentenced to do time, don't worry. We have people inside that will protect you." Who could say no to that pitch?
These potential drug-dealers in training fail to do what any white-collar employee considers a must during job-hunting. This entails following a basic protocol: Asking the right questions questions about the company he's interested in entering, the basic benefits provided by completing the job in question, potential retirement, the 401k, the pension, insurance premium rates down the line. It doesn't matter how much you think of yourself as a lock for your company of choice. If you seem completely content with a job immediately following an offer, your future employer may rescind the opportunity completely, sensing impulsive desperation and a lack of reluctance in your tone. But the naive teenager has nothing going for him which one could partially attribute to his youth. He hasn't experienced fighting in the line of fire; not yet, which retains him as the optimal choice for the recruiter to target, another young mind to mold. An interesting fact is the gang leader doesn't see himself as a negative force in the world. he is simply an intermediary standing between a future drug dealer and a pile of single dollar bills sporadically collected throughout the week. Keep in mind he's not thinking about the cycle he's created in a mal overtone. After all, it's this cycle that allows him to get his chicken dinner at night. He's just another guy. Another corrupted body of the system, failed by his short stick. Of course, he doesn't think he's failed. He simply hasn't achieved success. Not yet. In his mind, he's only a few steps away from it. How could a grown man who wants to make his life better be the epitome of evil personified? Is it his fault that he didn't have a father around to show him how to throw a baseball, or a mother to teach him how to cook something more substantial than the very item that personifies him, i.e. a lukewarm pop-tart?
But it's his fault. He made everything worse by not working productively the way you or I would. He could have made something substantial of himself by saving money at his blue collar job, getting a beer after work like a "normal" person, have drunk sex with his wife, and wake up the next morning dreading the new day to begin. He didn't want that feeling because he felt it limited him. After all, he lives in the fucking projects. If someone asked him about what he thinks about his life thus far, he'd say something along the lines of "...this shit is no joke man. I'm forced to live paycheck to paycheck. Most nights, I get scared for my life. I'll never get used to it. So I'm trying to provide for my family, so we can escape these streets in peace."
These people are not stupid. They just lack guidance. I know it seems that they're unwitting to the perilous roads ahead in light of the difficult day-to-day struggles they face on a daily basis. Their mentality cherishes the fact that if they accept this fact, their life will get better if they work at it. A seemingly arbitrary force will upgrade their life from hell, to limbo, in the same manner a cell phone upgrade always seems to arrive unwarranted. But, unfortunately, there's a catch. In spite of whatever they do, they will never reach the heights that you or I could (assuming you don't live in the hood). The reason doesn't lie in something as stupid as "destiny." You can attribute it to the fact that these people were given the short stick in their life through no fault of their own. It's as you try to burrow your way to the origin of this fate that the atheists claim the basis of their argument for the lack of god's existence.
On the opposite side of the keel, you have people that found religion. For the sake of argument, let's place these people all in one category: the believers. Because even though their religions may be different, these people still manage to have faith in something or someone that they haven't shall we say, met yet. The perception atheists have of believers is that they're schizophrenic. They don't know how to comprehend the fact they truly believe they're speaking in a dialogue with god and not simply, their own conscience. At the end of the day, their belief remains, and resonates in their bodies in spite of any counterarguments they may encounter. Not only does arguing against this pertinent belief in their psychy make it stronger; it also adds fuel to a fire of anger. Thus, one shouldn't be surprised when he's scolded in the aftermath of a religious debate by a rancher in the Midwest to "leave my property...or I'll shoot thee." In order for people to alleviate any malice left by these debates, it must be a priority to find a middle ground. A common misconception surrounds the fact that there is no middle ground. The world's constituents are simply too fucked up to compromise with their beliefs, whether extremely pointed toward the left or right, to be agreeable in their discussions of faith.
The next fork in this road to attain the true identity of a higher power lies in religion, a grouping system used in order to divide factions of faith into highly separatist niche markets. Religion is extremely successful at permitting one's faith to be highly intensified and segregated. It accentuates faith onto an entirely elevated level by eying your belief in god as an "offensive" and all other factions as "defensive," no different than a Boston Red Sox fan. When he supports his team by attending games regularly at Fenway Park, his team's chances of winning the World Series increase 1/20,000 fold which to him is equivalent to a bullion of gold. If he has to make the small sacrifice of praying for his team to succeed in the playoffs, then what does he really have to lose in the long-term?
When a person is part of your religion, he's part of your distant family even if you've never met him. He's inclusive in a long list of people destined for greatness in the afterlife if he's good, and cursed for eternity in the depths of hell if he isn't. There's a certain level of respect given to members of the same religion. When you walk into your church, your mosque, your synagogue, or your temple, you retain your sense of self in spite of blending in with your surrounding worshipers. This beauty allows you to look at your fellow brethren with admiration and accept them as individuals too.
But when you don't fit in with any people in any specific community, you're not praised for your homogeneity; but rather, you're criticized for it. You're told you don't belong to this sect. That in order for your life to contain any purpose, you must join, and be communicated into the room of followers. Should you refuse this offer, they'll unfollow you like a meaningless tool on twitter. You'll be ostracized for not believing. For not drinking the kool-aid and sharing something so powerful in common with your peers. You're an infidel who isn't entitled to the same pursuits and desires as your fellow men. Because they're not your fellow men. They're just men, who you happen to live and eat around with whom you share no spiritual connection.
Yet the consistency of religious upheaval still manages to baffle people. The secret to conflict surrounding the issue isn't egocentric; it's centered on a difference of opinion. At the end of the day, the side with the stronger opinion with the more focused army retains the upper hand.
And women...FORGET ABOUT IT! Women are taken for granted. They're trophies. They always have been. Thorstein Veblen said that you can trace the "desire to acquire trophies" tendency to barbaric times. But the past isn't as concerning. After all, it's the past: done, finished, kaput. No need to unnecessarily revisit what's gone. What's, in fact, concerning is the future. What does the future hold for these women that men take for granted. In order to trace the trajectory of this problem, and where the eventual status of women is headed, we can look at the present. Going past the unequal wages, the biology of women made for child-bearing, those breasts, the high heels men genuinely don't notice, the perversions online which have changed the way men see women sexually, and of course, that ass; then, surely we can come to a conclusion.
Chapter 2: The Personal Flotation Device
Good culture is among the side effects of the presence of women. We'll get to why women are taken for granted in a second. First, a bit about culture.
Culture, which is molded by religious belief, revolves around food that changes your life, good wine that changes your life, and drugs that have, in one way or another, changed your life. Religion-founded culture typically molds the landscapes of thought and the lifestyles of everyday men and women.
Step into the life of the average mid-30's open-minded New York male who's ironically, trying to emulate a Being John Malkovich out-of-body experience of his own.. A common night out with your colleagues from work starts out simple. All 11 of you meet for dinner at a high end restaurant. You trade stories, eat uniquely spiced food, and drink extraordinarily expensive wine. But it's all well worth it; the wine tastes magnificent, and that woman who gave you "the eye" by the fax machine last week seems to be actively flirting with you. But in all honesty, none of that matters. After dinner when you're acquaintances invite you for additional drinks to add to your buzz, you pass, in order to go home and experience true luxury. You clean up, drink a class of Merlot by the fire, and dream about an existence that makes Earth seem like the bottom of a cereal box. To aid your out-of-body experience, you sample some cocaine. This is it. It's coming.
27.7392 minutes later, you're there, one step closer to a higher being. You're having a feeling that no one else could ever dare to take in like you do. The experience is unique enough that it defines who you are, what you'll do and say the following day, and where you see your ideal self. It's a miracle. You go to work the next day knowing how superior you are to everyone because of what you did last night. Enthralled, you decide to keep it yourself to preserve the quality of it. You're also in no rush to start a rumor about yourself that may make its way to the front office. However; unbeknownst to you, what you've done is even worse.
Suddenly, your understanding of the world seems different. The misconception is that your unconscious state has been altered. This notion; however, is an arbitrary one. The fact that a conscious state has been effected is a possibility that many fail to consider after experimenting with drugs, because they've been experimenting with drugs. Minute cerebellum impairments are a thing of the past with recent technological advances targeting, among others, illicit drugs. Suddenly, the rumor that you were so cautious of spreading to your friends in the office like a virus may have unconsciously affected your conscious state. It's a scary phenomenon. Ingesting a substance that may bring you closer to the supreme being: the Gatsby of our time; the Gatsby of all time. He's Neo. The chosen one. The one to whom people express their undying love. He's a public relations mogul. A carnivorous, unnatural force of nature. He must be tangible, right? After all, even Gatsby interacted with those he understood.
The difference between a person's drug-infused and relatively permanent sober states is simply the length of time in which they can feel, hear, and smell the supreme being. During their drug binges, they feel a temporary proximity to a higher power. It's only after years of failing to be in a sober state that they channel their sobriety into a pathway to the supreme being; it's a door sealed shut to their addiction. Some may call it an excuse to remain sober. Others will call it a gateway drug in itself in modern times. Open-minded people like these wish to attain the spiritual connection relgious-minded people intuitively seem to have. But they'll never be able to have it. Because they don't know how it feels to possess a feeling in your psychy that propels an individual to illicit praise to a being they've never met: that's the element of faith. True faith doesn't contain the risk that comes with "pseudo-faith" or faith acquired out of a desire to expand the mind. It's quite unlike soldiers anticipating an I.E.D. in the vicinity of their path because there's no voice shooting a round stating "I might be wrong" in the mind. If you're wrong in Iraq, the decision could be fatal. But in the real world--a world apart from ammunition-related warfare--there's no way to assess if you're right or wrong about your faith. Thus, identifying with a religious affiliation can't really hurt you even if your side loses. Unless of course, you come upon an encounter with a spirit or ghost who contradicts everything you believe to be true, and alters your course of faith. Though highly unlikely, such is the connection a sporadic drug user occasionally seeks. It even helps justify his reason for using and allows him to kill two birds with one stone.
Chapter 3: Conceptual Greatness
In calculus, infinity is hardly ever thought of as something unreachable. A rational function, like for instance "1/x" approaches infinity as the bottom approaches zero. But plugging a zero-value into the function causes it to fold, and become undefined. Since the value of "x" can potentially be an extraordinarily minisule number, such as 0.00000001, the function is referred to as one approaching infinity. But if the function isn't ever defined at zero, how can the mathematical community claim that at one point in the function's cycle, it will indeed reach zero? Because infinity is just a name. It holds a slightly higher status than Paul and John and Karen. The purpose of infinity is to aid humanity in identifying that which does not exist. Simple. But unfortunately, there's a little more to it. In America, more so than the rest of the world, there's a culture of "more." The misconception is that more is never enough. This is hardly the case. In truth, Americans desire to obtain as much as they can get, striving to a path of contentment. It is in that path that the unobtainable becomes a source of temptation, leading citizens astray from a path of contentment, onto a quest for a higher power.
In reality, a belief in religion necessitates the existence of certain provisions. If they are disobeyed, suddenly a psychological chaos is likely in one's mind. The person may attempt to prevent this chaos from being a devastating one. But ultimately, he'll find he has no control over the chaos his belief and faith in god have created through no direct action of his own. The end-game of this is catastrophic. His imperative shifts from attempting to control the chaotic nature of his mind to conceding, and admitting defeat; allowing it to control him. Such is the result of a transmittance of an allele through generations before his time in an effort to find peace, solace, and attain the answer to the age-old question: "how does one possess infinity?"
This world suddenly isn't enough. There must be more out there.
Science allies with this quest for more, launching costly missions into space for the sake of knowledge. But the impetus is to enhance our current world and make it more conducive to facilitating essential tasks; like calling our friends, changing our batteries less frequently, and purifying large quantities of water quickly. All of this is great. After all, the information is taken for granted by the general public, which means organizations like NASA and Space X must be achieving some success at their board meetings. But the vast majority of people don't believe that routing men, women, satellites, and rovers into space will allow contact with a supreme being. That's something that can be done in church.
The problem with attempting to access your quest for excellence in church is, however; the solace you may receive only impacts you. Of course your life may seem as if it has improved during the hour or so of service you've attended. But at the end of the day, you haven't physically done anything. That isn't even the point of attending services; the point is to confirm what you already know. Once a week, you seek and eventually receive a security that informs your conscience that what you believe, who you believe, and how you believe your spiritual code is absolutely, positively perfect. There may be no imperfections in this process unless you deviate it in some way; i.e. being late to Church, not wearing the proper attire, flirting with the women sitting beside you, or viewing a pornographic clip the morning of the service. The goal of going to church is not to challenge your view of god, and is not to fuel counter-discussions regarding the truth of your religion or spiritual belief. If this did occur, in fact; your belief may become even stronger, standing the test of an argument contradicting technicalities of your spirituality. But this never happens. Religious leaders also have a history of adding a philanthropic component to their parish, not confined to simply requesting donations for their church facility. For instance, a Catholic priest may ask his congregation to physically give aid to an ailing nation in the midst of a recent disaster. By associating this relief effort with the church itself, suddenly it doesn't matter what the priest says next Sunday. The attitude behind this notion is "he helped aid a community by asking us to support them. Thus, I will support him, and will strive to adopt everything he says in today's service as my own, personal belief, and will despise all those who disagree." Over time, the church becomes a religious entity of its own. It's members acquire a pay it forward mentality in which they spread the priest's mission to their friends and family members. As each person interacts with significantly more people, the message seems to gain some traction, and now the messenger himself is personally associated with the message he's spreading. Not unlike a virus, the message hooks onto new cells, and begins infecting people at a dramatically more expedient rate.
Chapter 4: Comfort in Security
In the modern day, fear is always prevalent. If you'd ask most people, they would tell you about how glad they are that fear is in their lives. The consensus is that fear is good. It creates a sort of cushion that shields you from the negativity of the world. But more than that, fear makes you aware about your surroundings. The world is a scary place. Imagine that you're a veteran cop who calls Brooklyn home. You've been working with a partner for years out of necessity, because you're always assigned to the rough neighborhoods: Clinton Hill, Hunts Point, Brownsville. But now, all of the sudden, you're partner has dropped dead and a new one has been assigned to ride with you. This time around, she's a 24 year old suburbanite fresh out of the academy who asks you if dispatch codes are important for violent crimes. What does this mean for you?
Well, if you run into heavy fire, you would be forced to shield her. That's scary because when your partner, Patrick, was alive, each of you had a 50-50 chance of coming into direct contact with heavy fire. Now that he's passed on, your new partner has a substantially lower risk. You're compensating for her. You wake up one morning at half-past 5, eat your cereal, brush your teeth, take a shower, and polish your badge. You make the morning commute, arrive at work, drop your car, and get situated with your partner, a somewhat mundane task. On your rounds, you encounter the scene of a drug deal. You see them. They see you. The instant a trigger is pulled, your partner doesn't have to worry, because you're there: her knight in shining armor. Though your life doesn't flash before your eyes, you hear a distant thought. 'Ladies and gentlemen, the flight on board to Paris is set for departure. Checking in all passengers currently seated in-." Your honeymoon. Why are you thinking of this moment now?
Because you have integrity; or, at least the integrity it takes to protect someone else. The truth is that when you put your trust in someone else, you don't have to trust yourself as much. The man who wakes up on Sunday morning wants to leverage his trust, just as the man's partner seeks a barrier between her and the crime she allegedly fights. This is very common on Wall Street. And why shouldn't it be. It created the concept of creditor and the capitalist in ancient Venice. According to Bacon, the system allowed people to lend, as the rough exterior of men prevented free-lending. It takes a lot of faith in order to trust another human being. A tangible person who probably has a different mindset than you do. Maybe he had to convince you first. Maybe you needed a favor and he was the first person in mind. Whatever the case, the fact that you leveraged your trust in him is significant. Imagine leveraging this trust in someone you don't know: giving a confession about a regretful sexual encounter to a Catholic priest, praying to the supreme being, listening to Einstein lecturing about relativity. If only retrograde amnesia were controllable. But we all know that this mechanism of "spilling" the truth to someone else has a tendency to lead to regret. The desire to do so begins with a secret, particularly one that is difficult to digest. The mentality of secret-keeping is to attempt to retain it in your mind as long as you can until some event forces you to transmit it to someone else. At the end of the day, secret-keeping is an art and may be extremely difficult to do. Secrets have two common states or phases: passive-form and viral-form. Passive-form has a significantly shorter incubation period than viral-form. It occurs the moment one encapsulates a feeling about an event. Days after this occurs, a bit of buzz surrounds the secret. The buzz forces the secret to beat inside of your heart like a tambourine. The irony of passive-form's incubation period is that it can be lengthened if one pleases. There is no rule limiting the secret to be kept for a certain time before a person spills. But the reality of life suggests that it isn't conducive to keeping secrets for rather long periods of time. If it were, life would contain an abscess of stupidity because every simple thought that rolled into your head that would survive the incubation period would be divulged. The more common route a secret travels on is viral-form, during which time the buzz surrounding the undivulged secret propels it out of your heart into the mind of some wandering soul. The secret seems like it's no longer a secret since someone else has knowledge of it. The frightening part of this "secret" is that it still is a secret. It's simply a more popular secret, which means though people are aware of the secret flowing around from person to person, place to place, some of them aren't allowed to open it. The fact the secret even exists and is being passed around exclusively may cause those who lack exclusivity to feel quite depressed. After all, entitlement is sweet until you're not it. The secretive nature of open-ended messages creates a covenant which appeals to any overeager adventure-seeker. There's a mystery involved with groups which exclude people; i.e. Skull and Bones, fraternities and sororities, and Hasty Pudding. Religious groups are also enigmatic and contain a flair that draws people in.
Chapter 5: The Chocolate Chat room
Dating in the modern world is a struggle for the common lab squirrel, stowing away her acorns for a rainy winter. Having a decent year, a relatively prosperous career, and a handsome 401(k) to fall back on is included on her current list. Visiting Egypt, the pyramids, sampling middle-eastern food, and finding a good man is on her bucket list. Unfortunately for her, "finding a mate" falls on the bottom of her list. She's forty, single, and she lives in a duplex; juxtaposed to some old woman named Cheryl. What a mundane existence; well, at least as compared to her friends and colleagues whom she considers equal in importance. They're not worried about their careers. They're just concerned that their children are struggling academically, and the roof occasionally leaks, and their spouses tend to have a bit more faith in themselves than they should in regard to housework.
She doesn't share their problems. She just envies them. So she joins a dating site with the hopes of finding Mr. Right. The hopes are cloudy, and her cynicism keeps discouraging her in the weeks following her membership. The only thing motivating her not to cancel her membership: loneliness. Painful loneliness. A few dates later, she thinks she's found "the one." He fits the criteria established by all of her friends' lovers. He must be it. So she moves in, they have passionate sex, get in petty arguments, fight through petty arguments, get married, and start a family. It's the American dream she made a reality. Years later, she's divorced. But how could Mr. Right be wrong? It goes against the laws of nature, which claim that each person is complimented by another. That means that for Julie, this world isn't paradise; it's limbo. But marriage and relationships comprise paradise, don't they? After all, the expressions "trouble in paradise" and "marital bliss" refer to interruptions in the cycle and the cycle itself, respectively. How displeasurable is her existence. Willy Wonka would not be proud. At this point, her only option is to revert to the first cycle, in which she just didn't care. She was a career gal. But the problem with her recent share of experiences chasing marital bliss lies in the fact that she's now further behind from her old life. There's a reason she didn't aim to live like her companions in their poseur, American-dream desiring existences with lukewarm impacts on the world. But she conceded. In the end, she failed to achieve any lasting success in a world that was never hers to begin with. Thus, she's back at square -1. The faults shouldn't completely be attributed to her naiveté; the culture around her should also be blamed since culture forms the way people think about things. For instance, it's not uncommon for young girls to fantasize about getting married to some prince inside of an echoing chapel.
Eventually, to universal avail, this fantasy morphs into a reality. White dresses leave department store shelves; yellow roses are hurled from pre-pubescent children into a narrow aisle; and young men coerce their fellow brethren into taking the final leap of faith. Ultimately, the couple will transfer their desires into a child made as an expression of their love. The hope is, after those final credits roll in their movies of life, that the child will at least be stable. Unfortunately, this is only a hope as the child as a mind of his own. Only time can denote the mark he will make on the world.
Chapter 6: The Ordered State of Disorder
The general public keeps hearing the same story time and time again: "We've learned from our X News affiliate that there has been a shooting at Y high school. There are currently Z victims that we know off. The suspect is still active, and we'll give you more information as we receive it. Such a terrible tragedy. We have Stan Grossman at the scene with additional details. Stan?" This transcends into a week-long discussion about guns, gun rights, gun owners, the suspect's mental illness, and an ignored plea for help. Mental illness is the most significant of these issues, because of its commonality.
Mental illness is the difference between thinking you're normal and knowing you're normal. It's one thing to have the personal belief you're normal, but it isn't until you interact with other "normal" people that you can truly infer that you're blander than the crazy ones. Those wretched souls who shoot down schools, people, and cry ignored pleas. Saying the world is a scary place is a cop-out. Ir's a testament to the aforementioned cushion. Depending on where you live, avoiding trouble can be difficult. It's ironic that these mass shootings tend to occur in suburban cities, while the personal-altercation shootings usually occur in urban neighborhoods; this suggests that suburbanites with mental issues enjoy involving bystanders in their illness. If you hear the smoke detector talking to you, you're considered a schizophrenic. But what if you simply hear a voice communicating with you, associated with nothing. How does that distinguish from the voice inside your own head? If you have an intracranial dialogue with yourself, you're conventionally just thinking; but what if you conclude it's okay to kill somebody when the dialogue adjourns?
Technically, the word normal is relative, like rich and beautiful. How does the shooter know others don't think the way he does? He himself never told anyone what he was thinking before he decided to make his dent. He's a normal individual relative to the few people he associates himself with; a channel which accentuates his insecurities and mental illness. Subsequently, he avoids this channel. He's purposely a recluse. He has everyone of his classmates' phone numbers in his contacts, in spite of the fact no one on campus has knowledge of his first name. He is the least interesting man in the world.
That's his persona. For now. In his mind, with each bullet penetrating the skulls, major organs, skidding over the skin cells of his victims, his reputation and his brand are growing. He's an attention-craved human who covets infamy; his only bout with rational thought is the realization that he lacks the talent and the esteem needed to break out into peoples' hearts in a positive light. He'll settle for the next best thing. As most everyone who knew the suspect will state to the press, "the warning signs weren't evident." Not until after the fact; when detectives will notice the underlying clues: google searches beginning with mass shootings and Eric and Dylan, a diary detailing the plan in its entirety, a suicide note in his back pocket, a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook in his dresser, and of course, the inevitable presence of a Marilyn Manson poster under his bed.
Suddenly, the day that brought tens of families harm, thousands of urban-villagers tragedy, and a young adolescent tremendous joy has its own anniversary. Oh the horror! Banners stating "We Will Never Forget" remain in the school in the years after the incident; in the hope that his objective of being Mr. Popular would never cloud their existence. In other words, he can't win.
At least the government doesn't have another dilemma to deal with. The president speaks at a press conference mourning the recent events. He remembers to include a bit about each relevant issue here, such as: gun violence, mental illness, gun ownership, warning signs, and family. The aforementioned dilemma only occurs in the aftermath of political heydays following politically-charged massacres, such as the 2004 hostage crisis in Beslan. When militants wish to commit destructive acts to free their nation within a nation, the president must weigh both sides of the coin. Should he spark uproar by suggesting he will never give in to the insurgents, or simply, concede?
In the case of Mr. Popular, that discussion isn't necessary. He's not a nationalist nor some self-righteous representative of a group of agreeing people. He's just looking for a form of expression. Because he's got a lot of feeling inside him just aching to get out. To him, posthumously:
Congratulations. I hope you've found your true end, and your reason for living. All those people you killed, well, they would've died eventually, probably in the comfort of their warm beds 70 years from now. But because of you, they reached the same end substantially more expediently. Your life was plagued with hatred coming from a few of your peers with nothing better to do but cloud a young man's soul. AND WE GET THAT. But now, you can't even experience the aftermath of the destruction you created. Poor you--the kid couldn't even catch a break in the end.
In the end, every victim of a massive or local shooting who dies would have died regardless; the real "charity cases" comprise those who survived these horrific tragedies. Ultimately, those who died (particularly immediately afterward) didn't have to live with a severed limb or an excruciating speech impediment for the rest of their lives. Even so, the surviving victims still manage to find their spirituality after the event, thanking the supreme being for letting them live through their traumatic injuries. "Thank god" they say with pride, though they never really come to a true conclusion regarding why. Those who had already known their faith in god seem to even strengthen it further; they show this change by either praying more frequently, attending church on a more permanent basis, or performing missions for underprivileged communities.
Chapter 7: Don't Be Tempted; You May Enjoy Yourself
Fear appeals may have a reputation for encouraging disobedience, but they're still the ultimate parental tool for exhibiting prepotence. The first exposure to seeing the human being who conceived you trying to break you can be a quite traumatic experience; that's exactly why it works. What the parent says doesn't matter. It's all about tone. The tone of aggression in a parent's voice as she says "stop feeding chocolate to the dog" is what sticks in the young mind being molded. A common misconception is that children are happiest in the years following conception. The misconception exists because, well, they just seem to damn happy during this time in their lives. And they are. But they don't know how it feels to get fired from a career, pay taxes, divorce a loved one, or try to sleep during a child's first sleepover.
As children grow into adolescents, young people, and finally, adults, they gradually become aware of how troublesome life can potentially get. The whole world becomes a candy store; one that allows them entry to browse, buy, and experience. The older they get, the more access they have to the store; and yet, ironically, this occurs as they're reaching an age in which younger people see them as examples: miniature cities on hills. This is when desires percolate to unthinkable proportions. This is when being an alderman counts.
According to the parental perspective, growing men and women are likely to give in to their natural instincts, worship hedonistic lifestyles, and lose any moral compass they may have possessed in the process. Such is their justification for using fear appeals to "guide" their children. Parents don't mind when their children ask them why it's improper to drink, engage in unprotected sex, steal from people they come into contact with, and rape people. Red flags shouldn't be raised when these questions start percolating in those young minds, because it gives parents an opportunity to mold their children. It's when children ask them about more gray issues, such as: masturbation, homosexuality, why they must attend church, why it's improper to cheat for a better grade, and in certain contexts, why they can't eat pork. Regulating the paradise the world has to offer has become engraved in the parental framework. It places the youth in a bubble from which their instinct is to escape. But they can't escape. People still wonder why teen angst occurs almost unanimously in all adolescents amidst the mandatory confinement. No one said prison was going to be easy.
Chapter 8: The Best Shape of Your Life
There is one major principle in life which, though many find controversial, controls every aspect of what some people do, and a few aspects of what everyone does: People enjoy obtaining an edge on others. It's the universal way to express the capitalization of a new skill. The rule relies on the fact that in order to gain credibility, one must use hard work as a channel to burrow inside the adults' table. According to a large faction of these people, however; hard work alone may not lead to considerable success.
One noted example can be found in athletics, during pregame rituals. Each team wishes to channel strength from the supreme being towards its players. Every fan becomes entrenched with the truth that their team must win. If it doesn't, they themselves will face repercussions: their house will foreclose, their families will hate them, and worst of all, their faith will be tested. But in spite of how the fans feel, the athletes take the brunt of the heat. They're the ones for whom playing basketball, football, or hockey is more than a pastime, an interest, or even an acquired lifestyle: it's an occupation. Thus, if they lose, they become one step closer to losing their job. To avoid losing, they raise or bow their heads to a higher power, whom they know exists. After all, how could they have gotten where they are without him?
Most of them grew up in rough and tumble neighborhoods with single mothers as caregivers. They didn't have fathers to teach them how to play their game of choice; they had coaches and friends. But in the end, these people are all strangers. The friends, coaches, and fans sitting outside in 20 degree weather, waiting for priceless tickets to be sold and purchased; in the end, they're sitting atop the million-dollar athlete's shoulders. Thus, it would be irreverent for the biggest ball player coming out of the projects not to take the criticism from his coaches, and the support from his fans seriously. With his body falling with the addition of each fan, assistant coach, girlfriend, and relative who seeks to capitalize the athlete for all he's worth, he must find an outlet to lighten the load. Luckily for him, it's very easy to find. No more skipping church. Now, every game, every meal, every workout, and every breath of hungry air begins with a prayer; a command with a polite tone, a request, or a hail mary. The mindset has drifted, from one of self-reliance, to one of self-reliance guided by the supreme being.
The supreme being coupled with talent is what will bring the next Michael Jordan into the NBA; not talent alone. It must be this way. After all, how popular is atheism in professional sports leagues? There must be a reason, more than psychological, for this trend correlation between prayer, talent, and success. Though subservient analysis
Chapter 9: Form is Just a Formality
In learning the fundamentals of any sport, it's particularly important to familiarize yourself with the basic motions. For instance, a basketball-beginner must add a new set of algorithms to his credo upon taking up the sport: dribble dribble, pass, set screen, pass, pass, shoot, score. The only differences between the amateur and the professional are the presence of spectators, television sets, boom mics, a crew of announcers, and the occasional release of confetti in the aftermath of victories. The game may seem perplexing to an outsider; but it can be beaten. After all, even the gambles of Vegas can lead to a calculated win.
Earth is where these games are conceived. When Dr. James Naismith conceptualized a sport in which participants would hurl a ball into a basket, nobody believed how complex it would one day become, being televised in hundreds of countries generating billions of dollars. Billions with a B. In a game in which anomalies are the norm, good form is crucial. Most games are decided by free throws, in which players must travel into a different time. A time in which their fathers, brothers, and coaches taught, reinforced, and retaught them B.E.E.F: balance, eyes, elbow, and follow-through. The world is no different. Citizens use algorithms in order to navigate. And in a bad, bad world, knowing which ones to use can be a lifesaver. Regardless of how well the algorithms are used, one may still be forced to endure failure. Mom and dad reassure you that though adversity may occasionally tap you as its next victim, you will most certainly succeed more than you fail. This advice doesn't tend to compliment the tantalizing advice your friends may give you regarding the same things; but it doesn't hurt to get a new perspective on an issue of interest.
In earth, your success:failure ratio tends to hover around 50%. The idea that a world in which your failures trump your successes, or your successes trump your failures, refers to the two extremes of culture: Hell and Heaven. Even the very notion of these extremes may dictate every action a person, or a group of people take. And why shouldn't it? It's refreshing to witness people think and act with an intent that swifts in sweet harmony. A generalized way of thinking which occurs in unison. Getting a chicken dinner was supposed to expedite more energy. In harmonic motion, intent is synchronous. It leads to getting in the right place, at the right time, with an end in sight. Regardless of how it may seem on the surface, the intent is always rite. In a world of extremes, form is generally insignificant. A professional basketball player convicted of murder shoots bricks in hell. Pride, love, life, and intent are all insignificant in both extremes. The key to salvation is repentance. What is the litmus test administered to determine whether the repenter has truly repented?
In our world, when we shoot with perfect form our shots are accepted, regardless of whether or not they actually fall through the hoop. In other words, we settle for less than or define success as enough or satisfactory or getting by. People find comfort in each of these words. They precipitate excuses justifying the lack of desire to achieve at home, after "work," which only happens from 9 to 5. During this time, the idea is you should spend time with the family you've created from no cue, with your companion. Why? Because that's what you're supposed to do. That's what society deems as normal or acceptable or the bare minimum which of course, suffices.
Chapter 10: The Beauty of Ferality
Genie's father had it made. He was a flight mechanic in the aftermath of World War II, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression. He had a family for whom he vehemently cared. Such passion can often times be volatile, and make cet person feel emotionally detached and vulnerable in bouts with emotional hemorrhages.
One day, as his mother was walking alongside his son, she was hit by a truck. Cause of the crash: drunk driver, volatile, looking for a way out. According to Genie's father, his son was responsible for the fatality. Genie's father had to retaliate, peacefully. After all, how dare his son walk beside his grandmother in the glow of the mid-day sun. Such a hot, shiny atmospheric energy must have reflected across the boy's tiny forehead onto the driver's windshield, blinding him, exasperating his drunkenness.
According to the father, peaceful retaliation consists of action. Action administered in order to prevent the inevitable, from being inevitable. The most significant act will act as a safeguard and protect little Genie from harm. Ironically, it is during the moments in which he was most cautious that endangered Genie the most. On one day in particular, Genie made a mistake that tested her father's logic and his parenting skills. She became constipated. The liquid diet imposed on her by her father in order to minimize the risk of her choking didn't allow her to exercise her muscles of mastication. This was his test; his opportunity to shine. When he would be at barbecues, he could gloat about how he handled this situation, showing a glow on his face as he would tell it. His solution: Castor oil (the full bottle). And the award for father of the year goes to...
The truth is Genie's father was scared. Wouldn't you be freaked out if his situation presented itself to you? It's easy to say that he handled the circumstances of his mother's death completely wrong; he folded under pressure, he wasn't able to grieve properly, because he didn't know what the word "proper" even meant in the traditional sense of the word. Because proper is no different than "normal;" and "normal," as we know, doesn't exist in society's idea of the word in the first place. Because at the end of the day, were all fucked up. Everyone goes through shit; thus, that shit isn't a defining factor. You can't expect to view yourself as someone who was given the short stick in life, because, well, that would imply you're just another "normal" person. In other words, who cares.
Chapter 11: Turning Lemons into Lemon Extract
Earth contains a stigma of condemnation. Our ancestors were condemned here, their ancestors simply wanted them to have better lives. But in that mess of rivalries, holy wars, and cancers, one thing remained: legend. The knowledge of survival of a past race, which supposedly strengthens the current one. The legend is always a well-written one, inclusive of all details. From the macrocosm of being stranded on an island for days, to the minuscule contents of a day's porridge.
This memory lives in our hearts and lingers with the taste of gin. The memory of a prior time completely unlike this one, in which people were banished for the color of their skin, exiled for their beliefs in indigenous objects, ridiculed for their affinity towards cured beef. Amidst all the strife, however; one aspect of the past resonates in the legend-the aforementioned strength. People capitalize on the tumultuous nature of their father's times and use the rigidity as fuel to the fire of their successes. This is good, because the nostalgia prevents them from becoming forgetful of the land they've colonized when it was beginning to acquire some history.
Earth was never meant to be a place of amusement; it was simply created, according to legend, to bring-forth a lukewarm existence for its first two inhabitants, Eve and Adam (insert surname here). Both of them could have had it good: keys to the kingdom, God as an ally. But they fucked it up. It's unfortunate that one poor decision led to their banishment into a Seinfeldesque world about nothing. But one day, their normal routine transformed. Suddenly, their oatmeal contained a little more sugar. The weather became a little bit sunnier, and limited options regarding how each subsequent day should be spent spanned. Earth no longer became a place of certainty. It became fun to be an Earthling.
But in a world of welfare, prostitution, and gambling, sometimes certainty is missed. In order to create certainty, we utilize the notions of "destiny" and "predetermined," "calling" and "predisposed." It makes our life substantially simpler to know that in spite of all the complexity that surrounds our life, particularly in the choices we have access to make, and the decisions we commit, that all along, a force is guiding us to tilt toward a certain direction.
Chapter 12: Selective Pressures of Beauty
There is no greater joy in a parent's life than the birth of a child. It eclipses all other pleasures experienced before the conclusive positive feedback cycle. "Get the epidural ready!" the nurse exclaims. "We need an anesthesiologist in here, stat."
Meanwhile, the parents-to-be look at each other, pondering their pasts, making presumptions about the unforeseeable future, and cry. "We've come so far from our first date." The epidural is in, all visitors are asked to leave momentarily while nature, or the supreme being, takes its, or his course. This is normality; The American Dream that men and women had strived to achieve in due time. Biologically, it is the reason they were conceived in the first place, and allot the transfer of genes from their generation to the subsequent one that they, in fact, created. It is the reason they eat breakfast every morning, and watch the day's events on their local news channel. The parents are attempting to bring an innocent, prepubescent being into an unforgiving world in which people don't think twice. In some cultures, it's illegal to even think once. Thus pain will never be preventable. From the moment they unleash the twelve year old fetus they made together to it's first sleepover, school day, or prom, they will constantly regret their decision, because their child's choice to engage in fun may have just put her life in jeopardy. Why? Because people don't think twice. Not even before they empty their Spam folder. Someone could accidentally push them towards an oncoming train. Or maybe they were born with an illness that "nuts" or the presence of "bees" accentuate.
Chapter 13: Viral
Nobody is amused with viruses. But that's what makes them so successful in penetrating innocent bystanders. They do what they do perfectly, and after they beckon you to fight them, and you win, you feel good, because beating a virus is like slaying Godzilla: tumultuous, exciting, and rewarding.
Their ability to penetrate almost any substrate makes them especially virulent. They contain a reputation that suggests, in spite of any barrier, they will still attempt to replicate their DNA, and submerge it into a neutral cell, making it a viral one. This spider-venomous effect beckons someone to cease it; otherwise, all hell will break loose. Mayhem will blend into normal.
Though viruses unleash hellish effects on the cells they tend to effect, it should be noted that, in their minds, their intentions are probably well-thought. That being said, it would seem that viruses aren't much different from people. In her mind, even the neighborhood serial killer believes it's her duty to kill, in order to spread a message. Her cognitive abilities may not be on par with those of the average human, but why should that stop her? She doesn't necessarily know that they are. And why should a little deficiency, like a mental illness, prevent someone from executing her full potential? After all, America lauds itself on being inclusive of these very people, even opening venues specifically of people with mental illness such as the Special Olympics.
And yet, in spite of these ongoing festivities, some men and women simply can't contain their overt nature within themselves. They resort to brainwashing young men to blow themselves up in the name of the supreme being. As if this will cure the world's problems; or more importantly, their world's endurances.
People had this very mindset when they decided to form groups of villagers. They decided to author books just like this one, and agreed to write them in the name of the supreme being. In order to spread the legend, they ensured that the being will never appear in daylight. Thus, not only will the legend's half-life be preserved, but the books will also contain symbols of hope.
Killing is inevitable, and no one has ever doubted this fact. But if a code of conduct were written in order to prevent unnecessary violence, the world would be in fact, a more productive world. That's just what happened. And amidst the violence caused by the conflicts of two or more creeds, each precincts world must have been better off.
The decentralization of each author, and each book; however, leads to inter-creed strife. And that strife, in turn, makes the world less safe, and significantly more fearful. As such, we were forced to defend our own families, cultures, friends, faiths, and creeds. Due to the decentralization that none of us has truly witnessed from conception, the types of people we attempt to coddle from the others are separate from one, unilateral being, which, though almost entirely unique, has this one thing in common and in unison: to save each and every soul with all of our hearts, because in the end, fighting each other is what the enemy wants us to do. It creates a diversion, and a justification that empowers the enemy, and not any one person, to effortlessly fight a war against mankind. The only button the enemy has to press is 2:00 for popcorn.
To disperse blame on ourselves, our parents, or their parents for teaching us their creed is to engage in futility. It's important to ask questions, though, which question why the supreme being would give us such an imperfect message, and ask us to cherish it as if it is, in fact, a perfect one. If Sun Tzu were alive today, he would probably attribute the deceptiveness of the creeds as necessary, to enable a first-mover advantage in each borough of the ancient world.
Lastly, if we were all truly destined to obtain and remain our faiths in different, separatist creeds, with different leaders who conflict with each other; causing the likelihood of each message being the correct one of being equal, then why are our brains so complex, and so mechanically and chemically advanced, to even ponder the thought that maybe, we are in fact missing something in this picture? Why aren't we each lobotomized in order to better facilitate the penetration of each message into our neural circuits?
Maybe, the enemy is: