Month: August 2013

When You Say “Support Our Troops,” Think About What That Actually Means

General rule of thumbs:

If you are not prepared for people to voice their opinion, avoid making controversial posts.

If you have comments to make about the troops, and you have troops on your friends list, assume that they are likely to see those comments. Assume that there are going to be times that they cannot hold their tongue.

And when you make comments about the troops, remember that they do not all think the same. Even if what you are saying is something that is agreed upon by about half the troops (that is a higher percentage than you can actually expect for us to agree on anything), the flip side of that is that about half don’t agree.

Supporting the Troops does not automatically mean supporting the regime that is sending them to die.

Supporting the troops does not mean buying into every bit of ra ra Jingoistic propaganda that you see.

It sure as hell doesn’t mean blowing the troops off when their opinions don’t match the image that you have in mind of how they should think and act and feel.

I hold my tongue on a lot. I hold my tongue on most things. There are limits however beyond which I have a moral obligation as a member of the United States Armed Services, as a Citizen of the United States of America, and as a plain old Human being to speak up and say something.

If I see posts that are purely religious in nature, I am generally going to ignore them. It is your right to hold whatever religious beliefs you want. I am not going to judge that.

I ignore a lot of posts that are just plain dumb, or misinformed unless it is something I can actually be of help on in some way.

I generally try to avoid offending people whenever I can.

However, when I see posts talking about the constitution, about people’s rights, about what a person thinks it means to support our troops, those are kind of things I have to speak up on if I disagree. They are things that are very personal to me, and quite often have a direct impact on me and my way of life.

When people say “Support our Troops,” I am one of those troops.

When people say “The troops fought and died for your right to do such and such,” we also generally fight and die for your right not to do it as well.

When people speak about freedom of religion, and how something is trampling their rights, Freedom of Religion is Freedom to practice ANY religion, not just yours.

When someone says that preventing them from trampling someone else’s rights is taking away their rights… There is a world for that, and it is plain old bullshit.

I am opinionated about certain things, but as a general rule they are things that I am very passionate about for one reason or another. When it comes to issues of what our troops fight and die for, that one is about as personal as you can get.

The Amazing Great Ape

The idea of evolution seems to scare some people.

For some, it is as if they believe that accepting evolution is to abandon their faith.

For others, it is as if they feel that if they accept that they are categorized as apes, that they will suddenly no longer be able to control their behavior, that they will somehow become more animalistic.

It is as if they believe that somehow, if Human kind is a mere animal, then that makes him less special. That makes his position in the world less prominent.

To me, the idea that a single species could manage at the same time to evolve the ability to stand upright, opposable thumbs and fingers, and the ability to reason at the level that we do all at once is… Well, it is miraculous. It is amazing. It is a thing which is rare and beautiful in the universe.

Our closest cousins in the animal kingdom have opposable thumbs, and the ability to stand upright for a time, but they do not reason at the same level that we do. I mean, sure they can puzzle through simple tasks and even use tools, but they are primitive and their communication skills and social boundaries do not allow them to come anywhere near close to what we have achieved.

Our closest peers, on an intellectual and emotional level, possess the ability to reason as we do. Their societies are much like ours were in the Stone Age. They can talk amongst themselves. They can plan things between families. They can even use tools. They can even communicate with us once a common medium has been decided upon. They however do not have opposable thumbs (or any fingers/claws at all for that matter), and they cannot walk upright.

All of the creatures I have mentioned so far are mammals. Perhaps the next most intelligent creature however, because they themselves are not mammals, even though they can communicate amongst themselves, reason somewhat well, and use and create tools, and even though they have ways to bypass the need for opposable thumbs… Well, we see them as a tasty snack. Sorry guys.

My point is, even if we are animals we are still Humans. Even if Humans are apes, we are still the most elevated among the Great Apes. We have still built civilization. We are still capable of communicating with each other at great distances. We are still capable of reaching out to our fellow creatures and elevating some of them as well. We are still very much the masters of our world and our destiny.

Even if we are animals…
Even if we did evolve from some primordial muck over the course of millions of years…
We are amazing.

What is more amazing? The idea that some creature got lonely and decided to create friends, or the idea that we amongst all the millions upon millions of possible species that ever existed, we among all of those things that fly in the air, and walk on the land, and swim in the sea, that we were the ones to stand up and walk forward proudly into the darkness of night and on into the glorious dawn of the new morning and eventually to the stars?

I think that is pretty fucking brilliant personally.

I think that if the single most amazing thing on the face of the planet is going to shake your faith, then maybe you need to rethink things a bit.