More Miscellaneous Thoughts
by Michael Kirwan — February, 2014
I'm pretty persnickety about words and
how they're used. I actually cringe when I hear someone say "conversate"
when they could have used "converse." It's just one of the many
things that bother me. It's just another example of how linguistic
carelessness demeans communication, the most valuable tool available
to mankind.
Recently, I watched a few of those "true crime"
mini-documentaries. You know, "Cold Case" and "Unusual Suspects,"
programs of that nature. Anyway, the narrators continually referred
to certain emotional quandaries as "love triangles" when they were
patently no such thing. The arrangement being described might be
more accurately depicted as an arrow or a v or ^ or whatever the
official words for the greater than/less than mathematical symbols.
A "triangle" suggests (at least to me) that at least two of the
interconnected characters are in love with two of the other parties
comprising the trio. Two women in love with one man just doesn't
create a triangle. If the two women were also in love with each
other, then the criteria for comparison to that geometric structure
would be met. I know it shouldn't be a big deal, but when the
announcer, who's ostensively representing the "voice of authority,"
blithely mislabels the very crux of what set the crime in motion, it
irritates me. Old man yelling at the clouds again... Hahaha!
The other day, I was half-assedly listening to
what was billed as a debate between a religious figure and an avowed
atheist on Public Radio. The whole argument (a mild disagreement
really) was very unsatisfying for me. The point should have been
raised that it's not the existence of a "god" that's really in
question but instead the acceptance of the concept of heaven and
hell (add purgatory and limbo for devout Catholics and future
creatures for those who favor reincarnation). If the heaven/hell
scenario doesn't resonate on a rational level and if the contention
of specific destinations for afterlife "souls" appears ludicrous,
then the question of whether or not a "god" exists becomes
absolutely pointless. If the likelihood of a heaven as portrayed by
the believers seems far-fetched, then there would be no imperative
to placate any particular "god" persona by following certain arcane
rules. I just can't get on board with the idea of an afterlife
myself. I don't see the purpose of it. Sure it was a sly tool to
socially control the ignorant masses in the early days of
civilization and for encouraging poor slobs to accept their life of
suffering and general injustice with the promise of good times once
you're dead. But ultimately, it doesn't make any sense. The very
belief that humans are entitled to an unprovable and totally
illogical "second act" smacks of species hubris, arrogance, and mass
delusion. That more people don't even question the fundamental
premise of heaven/hell (or becoming a god of your own world,
populating it by spawning with your many sister-wives — as is the
Mormon paradigm as I understand it — a fever dream of an unpopular
pimply teenager if ever there was one) is very disheartening. Once
you reject the notion that impossible-to-verify individual "souls"
are assigned to rather silly mystic locations after death, the
existence of a supreme deity becomes completely moot.
Am I the only one who sees this
"home-schooling" movement as a ploy to essentially advance
incestuous child molestation? These kids are indoctrinated by
non-professional instructors to accept as fact that Noah somehow got
his hands on a breeding pair of koalas. So, how easy would it be to
convince youngsters that it's natural for parents to engage in
god-sanctified sexual conduct with their children? The kids are
isolated from outsiders, and there aren't any peers or counselors or
teachers to tell or report such activity. There's this "us against
them" mentality providing an extra layer of dependency wherein the
parents are the sole source of information. The parents spend a big
chunk of time where the adults otherwise would engage in grown-up
interaction or relish some solitude. The children are exempted from
normal socialization and become unable to see themselves as
individuals apart from their families or learn how to operate in
real world situations. This kind of arrangement is not that much
different from what went on behind the other closed doors of the
Catholic Church using the old, trusted, authority figure ruse. I
think that in twenty or thirty years we'll see many home-schooled
"graduates" coming forth with tales of hard-core, incestuous
relationships with their parents. I'll probably be dead by then, but
maybe some serious attention will be brought to this disturbing
probability beforehand.
So, again I'm listening to Public Radio. It's
primarily a news station and I don't really enjoy it all that much.
It’s story repetition, spending a lot of time discussing topics of
little interest to me, and the passionless exercise of trying to
make both sides of a controversy equally valid. If anybody knows of
an extremely liberal, free station in the Los Angeles area, please
feel free to let me know. Anyway, there was mention of an official
government panel or commission tasked with studying and coming up
with tactics to prevent the deaths of children aged 2 to 12 in their
home environments (for some bizarre PC reason the interviewee
avoided using the term “MURDER”) due to neglect and... well, being
killed at the hands of their caregivers. The "expert" cited reasons
such as poverty and drug use, but shockingly, at least to me, no
mention of religion. I've read so many horror tales in the "crime"
section at the Huffington Post about kids being murdered in
"exorcisms" or killed/tortured/damaged due to "biblical
punishments." Does no one remember ANDREA YATES? She bumped up the
statistics considerably when she drowned her EIGHT children in a
freak religious fervor. I guess the commission and the NPR folks are
scared of getting the religious nuts’ attack dogs on them. If you're
sincerely serious about reducing/eliminating the mortality rate of
America's children in their own homes, not taking a much closer look
at the more extreme religious practices and sects in this country
will pretty much renders your efforts toothless. By only pointing
fingers at the most obvious causes (i.e. poverty and drug use), it
seems, to me, both lazy and cowardly.
Later, Michael |