Unity – My Fellow Travelers

Neurons and Synapses

The brain (be it human, or that of another creature) is made up of millions and billions of tiny cells called neurons. These neurons are separate from one another, but also connected.

The real power of the brain lies not in the neurons themselves, but within the connections.

We call these connections synapses. A synapse is the space between two neurons, where information is passed back and forth. Little bursts of energy go from one to the other. This allows billions of individuals, that independently can only do so much, to work together to do the massive work of making the Human brain function.

Humans are like this as well. We always have been, but modern technology makes the comparison even more apt.

The Human species functions like a massive brain. Each of us are independent neurons, going about our business and doing what we can on our own. It is, however, the connections that we make with other beings that really make the world go round.

It is our connection to other Human beings that allows us to be who and what we are.

It is our connection to other Human beings that allows us access to a vast pool of knowledge and resources that one person alone could never hope to amass.

It is also through these connections that we experience each other, and develop emotions, understanding, empathy, and compassion.

Compassion is perhaps the most important of these traits. It is compassion that leads us to do what is right for our species as a whole rather than just ourselves. It is compassion that helps us to understand that the path to true happiness and comfort for one, is the path to true happiness and comfort for all.

We as Humans are all interconnected.

As individuals, we can only do so much, know so much, experience so much. As an interconnected species, however, we have gathered the knowledge of the ages, and our collected experiences go well beyond what any of us could dream.

We should remember this in our dealings with other people. You cannot touch one, without touching the whole. Taking care of one, is taking care of the whole.

Imagine if You Were Powerless

Trigger Warning. I am not sure how to label it beyond that.
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The Trans Community lost a child last week. It’s probably not big news everywhere, it happens so often, but in my corner of the web things have exploded.

On 28 December, 2014, Leelah Alcorn walked in front of an oncoming truck. She was only a few months shy of her eighteenth birthday.

Since then members of the LGBTQ community and their allies have been posting about it on Facebook, Tweeting about it, and writing articles for various websites (such as the link above).

I have seen people label what happened as abuse and negligence, and I have seen people defend her parents as innocent. I am not going to voice my opinion in this article, because that is not what this post is about.

When she decided to leave, she left a message behind in the form of a set of Tumblr posts that were scheduled to post after the fact. Her Tumblr profile is no longer there but the various articles go into detail about what she said.

What has prompted this article however was what I have seen in conversations on Facebook.

I have seen people defend the parents’ innocence, insisting that they were in no way responsible for their child’s suicide.

I have seen people insist that being trans was a mental illness, a delusional disorder. They insisted that the parents were simply doing everything they could. They insisted that it was up to Leelah to dig deeper into her spiritual reserves to find inner strength to persevere just a little while longer.

I have seen people refer to her as delusional, a coward, selfish. They have expressed no sign of empathy or compassion for a child who was so lost that she would take her own life. They only expressed defensiveness because they felt their religion was coming under attack for the role that it played in this child’s death.

They insist that there was no abuse obvious in the stories they have read, or what they have heard from the family, who told CNN that they loved their SON unconditionally, but just couldn’t support THAT religiously.

For the Christians that are out there, that just don’t understand how there could possibly be any abuse in what the family did, or how it could possibly lead to a child’s death, please read on. I present here a thought exercise.

Imagine this:

You were born into a non-Christian family, but you came to know Christ. At a young age, your family found out about it, and forbid you from practicing.

They tell you it is just a phase and will soon pass.

You aren’t Christian, you are just confused.

They love you, but they just can’t accept this part of you.

They don’t let you talk to Christian friends. They look over your shoulder to be sure you aren’t visiting Christian websites. They go as far as to say there is no such thing as a Christian.

Now extend this out to the rest of your life. None of your friends at school, at least the ones you are allowed to talk to are Christian, and they either blow it off, or they actively attack you.

Imagine half of them don’t believe Christianity is a thing, and the other half believe you will burn in Hell for it.

Some are convinced you are going to aggressively recruit them, and verbally or physically attack you for even talking to them once they find out you are Christian.

Now extend it out further. The city council has voted in laws saying it is legal to discriminate against you because of who you are. You have committed no crime, but this existential part of your psyche is grounds to take away your rights.

People can legally declare self-defense if they attack you because your beliefs freak them out.

Extend this out further: your state legislature has passed laws saying that Christianity is an affront to their faith and an attack of civil society.

Your very existence is a blight on humanity. They are not only not going to censure your city level law makers, they are passing laws forbidding you from even taking the case to a civil or legal court.

Extend it out further: The national legislature is made up primarily of members of this majority religion. Some of them pay lip service to civil rights, but the rest actively work to codify the abuse you are receiving at the national level.

The Supreme Court, every member of which is this other religion, rules almost unanimously that there is no reason to protect your rights.

It’s your choice to believe in your God. They hold up the handful of Christians in the legislature as examples of why everything is perfectly fine.

Extend this out. The UN pays lip service to civil rights protections, but don’t really give a fuck. After all, they are all in the majority religion, or one of the larger groups.

The fact that it is unofficially, but effectively legal to kill you in the streets like a rabid dog is a primarily domestic issue.

Beyond that, your nation has veto power if the UN did decide to move.

There is a small ray of hope. There are obvious natural allies in the world, people who should understand your plight entirely. There are other Abrahamic religions who are also persecuted. They stand together with each other, and it would be expected that they should stand with you as well. Except they don’t most of the time.

Most of the time, members of these other two religions will pay lip service to having you around. They might even drag you from one party to another sometimes, to prove they have a Christian friend. When your back is against the wall though, they are just as freaked out by your Christianity as the members of the majority religion.

I know this sounds outlandish, but all I have really done is taken a description of the life of a member of the Trans community, and replaced them with religious labels and terms.

Even in places where great strides have been made for gay and lesbian men and women, trans people have been left in the dark. When they speak up, they are told by the LGB community that they are being selfish and asking for too much. I left off the T and the Q, because in this context the L and the G may as well be a bunch of cis straight dudes.

Try looking at the story through different eyes and see how different it looks.

Don’t look at everything from the perspective of the straight conservative Christian who is feeling insecure because someone has said their religion has caused harm to some minority.

Look at it for a moment through the eyes of a scared child, who belongs to a class of people who is a minority within the minority, whose very existence is treated as an abomination, and isn’t even allowed the strength that friends and family could provide.

Then ask if it is such a wild idea that she could have broken, that she could have found herself walking off into the darkness with no beacon to guide her home. The people who were responsible for holding the light up for her were the ones that took it away and left her to wander.

The Argument For Humanist Chaplains

There has been a lot of talk lately about “Atheist” Chaplains, and Atheist groups pushing to get them instated in the US Military. Fox News and other right wing outlets are playing it up as part of their imagined attack/war on and/or persecution of Christianity. I know the word imagined can be seen as inflammatory, but that is what it is. Imagined. That is a conversation for another post.

Real simple, while Christianity is by far the largest, most represented, faith group (or combination of faith groups) in the US Military, other groups exist as well. A lot of military personnel think of themselves as Humanists. With the exception of a few liberal Unitarian chaplains, that are functionally broad minded Christians, there is no Humanist representation among the Chaplain Corps. For that matter, when it comes to issues of accommodation and facilitation, a lot of Chaplains don’t know what is needed to support a Humanist group.

Most of the time, in this situation, the answer would be clear. Track down a phone number or an email address for a fellow chaplain that belongs to that group/category and ask them. The problem is that we don’t HAVE any Humanist Chaplains.

Notice something about the last two paragraphs. I don’t use the word Atheist anywhere in them. There is a reason for that. The groups that are pushing this are not asking for “Atheist” Chaplains. They are asking for “Humanist” Chaplains.

There are different kinds of Humanists, just like there are different kinds of Christians. Look at the difference between Catholics and Baptists, or Methodists and Seventh Day Adventists. They have some basic differences in their beliefs, but their beliefs are similar enough in nature that they can all be comfortable using the label Christian. They also share a common set of concepts and ideas that are derived from these beliefs. It forms a common set of experiences and a common vocabulary with which they can discuss these ideas. It is the commonality that makes them all Christians.

The same goes for Humanists. There are Secular Humanists, Buddhist Humanists, even representatives from various different spiritual traditions that think of themselves as Humanists first.

I myself am Buddhist. I practice a Humanistic form of Buddhism. This is to say that I am a Humanist first and a Buddhist second. That is true for most of the practitioners of my religion. Humanism is a part of who and what we are.

I am a Humanist. Humanism is the core of my morality. Humanism is the foundation of my beliefs and influences my every action, and my every decision. It is what provides me strength in times of suffering, and support in times of grief. It is the source of my spirituality. For me, it very much plays the same role as any other faith or religion does for others.

I would like very much to have a chaplain available that knows the language that I speak. One that can understand the way I think, the way I look at the world. One that is not going to look at me differently because my source of morality, my source of faith, my focus on life does not have or require a specific divine entity.

I am often alienated by the very community I serve because they do not understand the way that I look at the world. They make comments disparaging my faith as if it were not even real. They question if people who think the way I do can even understand concepts such as awe, wonder, or even joy and sadness. They say things without even realizing it that make me effectively “Other,” an outsider. And there are no Chaplains in our armed forces that can support me fully, because the military would rather pander to the concerns and fears of the Christian majority than actually fulfil their promise to support the troops in their spiritual needs.

I think the simplest summary of the situation is this: A faith group that doesn’t have Chaplains wants Chaplains. They have an endorsing authority that meets all the prerequisites. They have men and women they are willing to endorse that meet all the prerequisites other than having an authorized endorsing agent. If these people were allowed to become Chaplains, they would still be in the vast minority. Christians would not be harmed in any way. Those who profess to be Humanists would greatly helped. Religious freedom in the military would be improved.

When the subject first came to public light, there was a massive freakout, and politicians started playing the issue to their advantage by “Championing the Christian Cause.”

Basically, those politicians intentionally muddied the water, and changed words in order to freak out their base and use that fear to get more votes. I am not pointing fingers, because Republicans and Democrats alike lined up to say “We will protect your rights.” And by protecting their rights, they meant their feelings. In order to protect people’s feelings, they would proceed for multiple years to stomp (or rather renew their stomping with great vigor) on the rights of others who were not like them.

They would replace the word Humanist with Atheist, because the word Atheist scares people. They would insist that the military already had counselors, entirely discounting the need for actual Chaplains all together. They would propose bills to create a position for an “Atheist Chaplain,” knowing full well it would get no support and serve merely as a punching bag for them to attack to get more votes.

First off, no new positions are needed. The current Chaplaincy has the infrastructure and guidelines to support an interfaith community if they so choose. We already have Chaplains that are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist (Pretty much numbered in order from largest to smallest group). These are not four “positions,” or four “staff corps.” They are all Chaplains. They all have the same job description. Other than denominational and religious requirements placed on them by their endorsing agents, they all have the same rules and guidelines.

No new position is needed. They simply need to look at the organizations that have come forward and presented their credentials as endorsing agencies, and pick at least one. I am not saying they should just give it away. I am saying that they should verify that the organization meets their requirements, and move forward in partnership with them. They should treat them the same as they do any of the other two hundred or so endorsing agents.

Humanists are not all Atheists. Atheists are not all Humanists. A Secular Humanist Chaplain however would be able to understand the needs and thought processes of other Humanists. They would better understand where they gain their strength, their will the fight, their moral compass.

And briefly, for those who don’t know, and haven’t figured it out from the label yet, rather than our belief or disbelief in a particular deity or creative spirit (in the entity sense, rather than the metaphorical sense), it comes from our belief in our fellow man. We are driven by our belief in the potential that rests within us all. We believe that we should do what’s right because it is right and not because there is any reward in it. We believe that our most sacred duty is to work to create a better world for ourselves and our fellow man.

Want to know what the funniest part is? There is as much push back from the Atheist Community on this as there is from the Christian Community, because they have bought into the same damned notion of an “Atheist Chaplain,” as the Christians have. No, the Atheists for the most part don’t care if they have a Chaplain. Labels matter.

Christians are uncomfortable with the idea. Atheists are uncomfortable with the idea. I imagine some other religious groups may be as well (mostly because of the labeling). Humanists however need this.

Just remember, allowing other people the same rights that you have does not diminish your rights. Disallowing other people rights that you have however does eventually diminish your rights. If we allow anyone to be treated as less than human, it will eventually come back to us.

Building a Strong Foundation

I was looking to verify something else, when I stumbled upon this link:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/secede.asp

It is important to remember, in political discourse, that we all have a right to voice our opinion even if that opinion is unpopular, or even a little fringe.

As with the petitions that this link talks about however, it is also important to remember that while 100,000 people may seem like a lot of people (the largest number of signatures any of the petitions got was a little over 100,000), they still represent less than 1% of the population of any of the states involved.

The secessionists have a right to speak, but the rest of us need to remember that we as a nation are still relatively unified and should continue to be as we move forward as a nation.

We need to put aside all the petty bickering, and look at the real issues. We need to ignore the media for a few days and look at what is going on in our cities and towns and neighborhoods.

We need to get together as neighbors and move forward to repair our nation’s economy and to create strong communities, regardless of political affiliations.

The community, especially the neighborhood, and even more closely our households and families, are the most basic unit of society. If you look around, you will see that most likely your neighbor has the same wants, needs, and worries as you do. This is true even if you are a Democrat and he or she is a Republican (or some other combination of politician ideologies). At the community level we can work together to make our neighborhoods healthier and stronger.

By building up our communities and making them cleaner, safer, and more self-sufficient, we are creating a solid foundation. After all, communities are the building blocks of larger communities. They are the building blocks of a nation. If the foundation is more firm, then the nation will be stronger.

The first step is to address how you look at your neighbor. Do not look at them and think they are White, or Black, or Asian, or Arab. Do not look at them and think they are Catholic, or Muslim, or Baptist, or Atheist, or Jew. Do not look at them and think they are wealthy or poor. Look at them and think “They are my neighbor, my brother, my sister, a part of my community.”

Really, truly, everything else flows from this one little change. This one little detail in the way that you look at the world is the basis for everything else that needs to be done to repair the world that we live in.
From there, start a dialogue. It may not be easy at first, but be patient. The first step is just to communicate. Talk. Discuss whatever you want. This may sound pointless, but it is not. It helps to establish a consistent language between you and them.

We live in a world that has been divided consistently by the media and by the people who run the political parties. This division has lasted long enough that two people who follow two different political ideologies quite likely speak two different languages that sound so similar that when they collide it is explosive. Two people can use the exact same words and mean two totally different things. This is part of the healing process. This is part of the damage that must be undone.

As you continue to communicate, look to the community and see what is needed. Are the streets dirty? Are the street lights damaged? Is anyone in your neighborhood going to bed hungry at night? Is there anyone that does not have a bed? Even if they have no house, they are still a part of the community and should be lifted up and cared for.

As a member of the community, you will know better than any bureaucrat what the needs of your community are. And what you don’t know, others will. Dialogue will still be important at this point. It will still be important all along, and for the rest of eternity. Never let the dialogue end. It is what strengthens the bond of the community and makes it an extended family.

If there are people who are hungry, then decide how to help them. Are there the resources to feed them? Are there any empty lots that could be made into gardens? Depending on the time of year, and the annual weather patterns, a community garden can go a long way towards eliminating hunger. If you eliminate hunger, and homelessness, then you effectively eliminate poverty. Those are the two things that will hold an individual back the most. If you must fight to survive, then you have little energy for other things. If you have food and comfort, then you can survive most other things.

If the street lights are broken, then they can be repaired. If the city refuses to repair them, then the people must. There is a group in Detroit that is doing just that. They are not only repairing the streetlights, they are upgrading them to run on solar power.

If the streets are dirty, then the people can work together to clean them.

Every little bit helps. Every hour that you spend improving your neighborhood and improving your community is an investment in the future. Every bond of friendship that you make, regardless of differences in ideology, is an investment in the future of Humanity as a whole. Every garden you plant is an investment in food security. Every house you build or repair is an improvement in someone’s life.

Our world has some problems. Our nation has some problems. We all know this. We can work together though to help each other and to make our own little individual parts of the world better.

No contribution is too small. If you are afraid that you lack what it takes to start, then you must put those ideas aside. Every last one of us should do what we can, even if we do not see immediate results. If we stand together, and move together, then others will slowly start to follow.

Now is the time for people to stand up, and stand together, and take control of the future of their communities. Don’t ask your neighbor “Are you a Republican,” or “Are you a Democrat,” or “Are you a Christian,” or “Are you a Buddhist.” Ask only “Do you want to make this community better?”

When it comes to ideologies and beliefs, that is the only question worth asking, and the only one that makes a difference. We are all human. We all know what it means to make our community better. When we stop looking at the horse and pony show that is national politics, and start looking at our home, we all see the same thing.

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.

We are Freaking Out Over Nonsense

So… I see a trend, and it is not just on the right.

People are picking up on “scandals” and “outrages” that are being fed to them by their respective “wings” of the media.

People are getting all worked up on little things that are at most slights, and offenses.

People are freaking out over things that are flat out not true and have been debunked a thousand times over, because their favorite pundit is still pushing the issue.

You know what else is happening as a result?

It is a heck of a lot easier for the media to conveniently overlook some pretty heinous stuff. It is a heck of a lot easier for the media to run horse and pony shows while the real news is overlooked, ignored, or worst yet, flat out changed.

Stephen Colbert has a slogan for his show: “When news breaks, we fix it.” There is a reason for this. He is a satirist, and that is how he sees the real “news” media most of the time.

If we are taking the horse and pony show, and seeing it as real news; If we are accepting all the little nit picking details as controversy; then it is a hell of a lot easier for the media outlets to feed us the party line. It is a lot easier for them to make out normal people as criminals and heroes as villains.

We have wars going on that are not legal under international law. These wars are only called wars when it is convenient, such as when they want to invoke the espionage act.

We have secret laws: you know the thing that once sent famous politicians into a frenzy because they were introduced in other countries. These secret laws are being used to clamp down on first, fourth, and fifth amendments.

We have journalists under investigation by the FBI and CIA for… Yeah, journalism. Peaceful activists are on FBI watch lists, and potential whistle blowers dare not speak up without fleeing the country first (or at least preparing to do so).

Let me ask you this: What is a bigger issue, protecting your already existing right to say “Merry Christmas” that no one is trying to take away, or the fact that pretty much all of our online communications and the meta-data on all of our phone calls is being stored away in a massive database out in the desert? Now, which one have you heard more about on the news?

More Alike Than Different

I just posted this to facebook a few minutes ago. I figured it was long enough, and an important enough statement that it should be put here as well for those who don’t like to waid through the mess that is their facebook wall.

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I know that I have people following me that are both Occupy and Tea Party. I see what you guys are all posting, and most days it is the exact same stuff. I know there is a lot that the two sides do not agree on, but there is a lot that you do.

I know that both sides love their country.

I know that both sides would do ANYTHING to protect our constitution.

I know that both sides are tired of the role that money is playing in politics.

I see only one MAJOR problem with the above statements. It should not be “both sides.” The two groups need to get over their minor differences and work together based on the major things they have in common. The whole “right wing, left wing” illusion is nonsense. It thrives and survives because the people in power spend a LOT of money to keep it in the public eye.

Stop looking at eachother as “conservatives” and “liberals,” and start looking at eachother as “Fellow Americans.”

The problem, a long time ago, stopped being “the left” vs “the right.” In fact, the more I look at history, the more I doubt it wever was. The problem is that the rich wish to be powerful, and they have the money to make it happen. The rich spend that money to increase their power.

For those who think of themselves as “someday rich,” capitalism in its current form is a zero sum game. The guys that are rich now are going to do everything they can to stay that way. The game is rigged. The only way to unrig it, is for all of us to work together.