FuzzyGeff's brother and I used to be pretty good friends.
Now I can barely stand him.
I had an epiphany about it just now.
We both went out into the world and promptly learned different lessons from very different schools.
He's no perception of how thin the veneer of civilization is, having never really peered beneath it.
I saw that underbelly. It's not a happy place. It's terrifying.
He's never and he's not afraid of kicking at the rickety scaffolding holding civilization up.
Me? I am loathe to move even the smallest brace lest it prove to be the keystone of the entire edifice.
It's why I stopped attacking the idea that Western Civilization is, at its core, a Christian society. The framework of Christian values is what shores up the whole thing, and one dismantles it at civilization's peril.
Yes, there's some decorative and non-load bearing parts that can be discarded (we've done so before) but we need to start looking hard at what's essential to our Civilization and be absolutely certain to never jar those mounts loose. We might discover that some of the non-load bearing items we've thrown away were, in fact, redundant load paths placed there in case of a failure.
Click here to submit $0.00 US for a lifetime subscription
Posts
Comments
Ah... FuzzyGeff's brother. That is an interesting subject. He used to be one of my best friends also, but somewhere along the line either he changed or I did or both. He was always the kind of person who used to intentionally push people's buttons just to get a reaction from them. I am less tolerant of that than I used to be. But there is more to it than that. He's a sort of "failure to launch". He's never really lived on his own away from one or the other of his parents and fully self supported. He's always had a sort of safety net and has never really hit bottom hard the way I have or you have. He's been in the position where he's gotten more from Uncle Sam than he's given, or at least hasn't seen years where he paid more in federal taxes than he made gross at his first job. He hasn't really had to depend on his own job to keep a roof over his head or food on his table. Where he's seen the ugly reality under the pretty facade that the government and happy shiny people put up it has mostly been through vicarious exposure from people like us.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, I don't fear poking holes in the wallpaper. I don't think I'm important enough or have the power to bring down the system. Sometimes I get angry enough that I would if I could just to do it. But mostly I'm just trying to get by. As for Xtian values. I'd be more likely to buy that it holds up anything if it weren't stuck in a quagmire of hypocrisy and obvious ridiculousness. Fear of eternal damnation seems to be offset by the idea that people can just "sin" and be forgiven. The only concession I'll readily make is that being able to rely on a crutch to get past worry about what happens after this allows many of the feeble minded sheeple and a lot of people who really should know better but choose not to, to face the fact that this is all there is and after it is done, that's it. Or in the words of Jim Morrison "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn".
Anyway, despite me being a heretic, civilization seems to carry on. And not to be conceited but FuzzyGeff's brother has a lot less ability to upset the apple cart than I do if I work at it. I've got more assets, more firepower and better people skills to lead people "astray". He tends to be abrasive enough that he would unlikely be able to get people to follow him like a pied piper of doom even if he was so inclined.
"As for Xtian values. I'd be more likely to buy that it holds up anything if it weren't stuck in a quagmire of hypocrisy and obvious ridiculousness."
DeleteI'm talking about the structure, not the walls, facings or facade. There's a lot that can (should?) be removed from Christianity to have a truly egalitarian civilization. But the very idea that there should be an egalitarian civilization springs organically from those self same Judeo/Christian ideals.
You don't, for example, see such civilizations developing from Hindu or Islamic beliefs, do you?
That's why I'm against the throwing the baby away with the bathwater approach that most hatheists espouse.