I came to an astounding realisation at a very young
age. The human race is a bunch of absolute
screaming dicks. We judge people based
on the most spurious of reasons. It can
be the colour of their skin, the religion they follow, the sex they find
attractive or even just being a bit different or odd. So this is the first in a series of articles where
I want to examine why as a species we behave like a bunch of judgemental
dickwads in various ways. Intolerance is
all around us and it makes us weaker as world.
The core message in this series is the fact that you cannot and should
not fight intolerance with even more intolerance and hatred. So I’m going to
start with religious intolerance and more specifically the demonization that I
see going on all over the world.
It may seem odd that although I don’t follow any specific
religion, I am a boring straight Caucasian male I feel the need to write this
series of articles. In fact if my skin
was any whiter I’d be fucking transparent.
But yet again I’ve always been cursed with thinking deeply about
things. It never made sense to me to
believe in something just because everyone else did or because I was told
to. As a child in my early teens I went
to a catholic school, where you were told to simply ‘believe, don’t
question...’ That just didn’t add up to me, why were we not allowed to ask
questions to test the veracity of the whole bible story? Were they hiding
something? Were there some dark parts we were too young to know?
So I did something very few teenagers in my home town ever
did.... I read the bible to see what I thought of it. Then it occurred to me that maybe other
religions may have a better point of view or make more sense. So I read the Torah, the Koran (an English
translation of it), some Hindu texts and so it went on and on. It was my secret, because let’s face it... when your 16-20
years old none of your mates are going to be too impressed with the fact you’re
reading ‘religion’ for fun. Let alone
other religions.
That’s why victimising someone or generalising a person or
group of people just based on somewhat spurious reasons makes no god damned
sense to me. It’s an unfortunate fact
that human beings hate anything or anyone that’s different. Anyone who sticks out and doesn’t move with
the majority or follow the crowd is always in for a tough time. But if we judge others by the cover they come
in then we risk not knowing that the book itself may be rather interesting. So in the same way as the different kids
always had a far tougher time when at school, we often single out those we deem
to be different.
At the moment the current religious group getting hammered
as ‘evil’ are Muslims. So whether its
due to sometimes dressing a little different to the majority in the west. Or the fact that middle eastern languages
sound so different to the sounds within western ones, it means that right now a
demon is needed to blame and tag they’re it! The media portrays them as barely human hot
heads that seemingly have a penchant for world domination and cutting people’s
heads off (with a side order of blowing shit up.) But they aren’t the first religious group to
be vilified based on religion, and they certainly won’t be the last if history
is in any way a judge about the future. They are just one of the most recent in a long
line of creating a group to blame for problems that we perceive cannot possibly
be our fault.
But generalisation is the mother of all fuck ups. Would you judge Christians as a whole on the
actions of beliefs of the KKK? Would you
think these pointy hat wearing motherfuckers are representative of all
Christians? How about the Westboro
Baptist Church? If that sounds too crazy
how about the Salvation Army whose local arm near me has a building with the
phrase ‘To cleanse the world with blood and
fire!’ carved onto it in 2 foot tall letters above the damn door? Can you
imagine if a mosque had that carved above the damn door? It’d be a major news
story all over the western world! So in
a similar way that the aforementioned lunatics are not representative of all Christian
religions (or even the west itself), all Muslims are not evil. That’s a tiny percentage.
Sometimes if you flip the things being portrayed from one
bunch of religious extremists to another you find a lot of similarities. Catholicism has often declared throughout the
centuries that there is only ‘one true god’ and waged religious wars on
unbelievers, it has also had at times in its past a small minority of nutters
who managed to create all kinds of evil in the name of religion. Let me tell you how I see the whole
thing. Every race creed or colour has
more than its own fair share of nutcases and whack jobs who are using any
excuse they can to raise some hell. I’m
lucky enough to have met and talked to people from all sorts of religions, and
99% are normal people just like you and me.
Some may be religious in a sort of loose way the same as many Christians
who may only visit a church once in a blue moon but ‘try to live a good
life’. Some may be very religious and
try to follow what they believe to be the word of god as best they can. So why
do we feel the need to have a bogey man to blame for what sometimes is due as a
direct result of actions by leaders who have acted in our name?
The west often tries its level best to bring ‘civilisation
to the savage hordes’ in the same way it did back in history. It’s a constant within our society, the need
to feel better than someone else. Part of a nationalistic need to be enlightened
enough to bring our lovely warm capitalism to them and make them civilised. (But
not TOO civilised or they may end up richer than us!) I’ve actually heard normally sane and regular
people use phrases such as ‘those heathens need to be wiped out, they can’t be
trusted to not cause shit.’ You know
that’s been tried before, it’s called genocide and as a general rule it hasn’t
worked out too fucking well in the past.
Anyone who thinks wiping out an entire race or religion just because
they feel threatened has bigger issues than whatever religion someone follows
or god they pray to. That’s using it as
just as much of an excuse as radicals and fundamentalists of all religions have
done in the past.
All extremists regardless of their flavour of religion will
warp and twist a book or text to best fit their goals. They need a reason that will seem to make
sense to some so they can do all the damn killing and violence that they
like. That way they can always say it’s
in some god’s name. It’d be far more
refreshing if these types just admitted it’s all just a cover story and what
they really want to do is raise some hell and kill as many people as they can.
Another favourite argument is why don’t Muslims do more to stop
these extremists? Well let me answer
that with a question: When was the last time you tried to stop the KKK or the
Westboro Baptist church? (...and no... posting something on line or writing an article does not
count!) Have you ever taken direct action
to stop them? The vast majority have
not...
If all religions had never existed as of tomorrow morning,
you would still have these exact same people doing the exact same things with
just another excuse used to verify to both themselves and others that they
aren’t evil really... just following orders (regardless of whether they think
those orders come from a god or somewhere else.
How many schizophrenics have claimed they only wiped out a family
because a voice in the TV made them? Is
that any different really? It doesn't
really matter where someone thinks the message they follow comes from, whether
it be from a god, a religious book, the fucking TV, or the Teletubbies, people
will always find a way to justify their evil.
So how do we stop these people? Do we bomb the shit out of them and try to
bring ‘civilisation to the heathens’ again? Because that hasn’t really worked out
too well in history. People who are
different cultures to yourself are not somehow less than you. To think that will only lessen the person you
are. But yes there are those such as
ISIS that want to kill and use a warped version of their religion to do so. Do we fight intolerance with even more
intolerance? Intolerance we back up with
bombs and drones and all sorts of other weapons no western power wants to admit
they use? Against often countries that
have nothing...zip...zero. This is the
equivalent to a 16 year old kid stamping on a 5 year old kids sand castle. No we don’t fight the likes of ISIS with even
more intolerance backed with nasty weapons, ironically you fight them by
showing tolerance and letting them become the Westboro Baptist church of Islam.
So don’t worry, nutcases of any religion always burn themselves out once they
have to do the boring things like create a working infrastructure of hospitals,
roads, schools, income tax etc. Without
these no country is sustainable and so logically ISIS will burn itself out as
most people have worked out. But alas those that make the weapons would far
rather we all keep fighting and shooting and bombing each other so they keep
diving into huge vats of money like Scrooge McDuck.
So what god someone follows is of no consequence, I feel
they should be able to follow whatever god they like without persecution. If someone wants to pray to Mickey mouse they
should be able to, what anyone else things is immaterial. If someone gets something positive out of
something and it isn’t harming anyone else why are we so bothered? So no one should ever have to live in fear of
intolerance that forces them to live grouped up in ghettos to protect
themselves. Wherever you have
intolerance towards a group they inevitably band together for protection and
support. If you were in their position
would you honestly say you would do anything different if you had a gauntlet
such as that to wade through every single day of your life? Or would you one day decide it’d all be far
easier and less stressful to be around others similar to yourself who are also
being persecuted?
Always put yourself into the other person’s shoes and ask
yourself how you would behave and react if you were in their position. Would you go in all high and mighty and
‘raise some hell and show those nutcases who’s boss’ or would you like 99.9% of
people simply roll over, try to ignore the crazies and get on with your life as
best you could? Chances are the media
would be simply telling you to roll over and take it like a good little boy.
But let’s not forget many of these crazies are crazies that
we have created, or at the very least our leaders have. Back in the gulf war we rounded a shit load
of people up and stuck them in a huge camp (one of many) most without trial and
many were innocent it was later found of ANY wrongdoing. These places them basically became a terrorist
version of Harvard or Oxford University.
The innocents, angry as all hell and being locked away with a bunch of
fucking violent lunatics became desensitised and learned how to ‘fight back’
from these very same crazy bastards.
Fast forward to Gulf War 2 (the sequel...now with even bigger
explosions!), and the west hires these very same people at a rate of $300 a day
to fight and do all the nasty shit we don’t want to admit to doing. Then magically we are told ‘hey guys! Iraq is
sorted now...we can all fuck off home!’ Only
it wasn’t.... it really wasn’t. We
handed over control to the new government and they then stopped paying these
guys their $300 a day. Now after a good
few years living like fucking kings they missed the lifestyle that money
brought them. So when what was eventually
ISIS went to them and said ’hey guys we’ll hire you...but only for $200 a day’
they jumped at the chance. Half don’t
even know who they are fighting for or even that it differs from their reasons
of simply making us pay for shutting them in a camp with a bunch of fucking
crazy bastards. Simply put we helped to
create a problem and exacerbate an existing one through a combination of bad
foreign policy, corrupt politicians taking back-handers from the military
industrial complex and even in some cases, just some downright evil stuff.
Can you say if you lived in Iraq and a bunch of guys broke
into your house with guns, raped your wife and daughters, killed your sons then
slammed you into a prison full of mad bastards who want to kill everyone that
it wouldn't leave you damaged? That one day you wouldn't turn around and simply
not be able to take any more and turn to the dark side? There’s never been a side in any war yet that
has not committed war crimes, if you think otherwise your fooling yourself.
It’s time that we realised this isn’t about religion, that’s just an excuse.
Don’t blame the innocents for those who just need a thing that makes them not
appear to be the psychotic fuckers they really are who could twist any book,
even Barbie goes to Toyland, into a reason to wipe people out. Never generalise ... anyone who says ‘All
[insert object of irrational hatred here] is [insert insult] is a bloody fool. That’s offensive to us all as human beings;
we should all be allowed to be proud of who we are. No matter what that may
mean. But we fear that which we can’t or
don’t understand, so maybe the key is to try and understand others better. Maybe then we’ll find that those we fear aren't
so very different to us after all.
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