Spiritual tourists, that’s sort of what we are. When I came back here to live I looked up the anarchist within the first week. We had a long walk and talk. He said something I didn’t quite understand but managed to fill in the blanks. I told him after we’d been walking and talking for a while that the last time I saw him he’d been in the seminary for six years and where did he stand now with Catholicism. He told me he was an atheist. I noted surprise at how far that pendulum had swung. He explained that he was a political atheist and went into something about dogma and control of the masses. What he didn’t answer was the more personal question.
I call myself an agnostic. I guess maybe for political reasons, I don’t know. What I really mean is I don’t swallow a significant amount of the judeo-christion mythology to have any faith in it. I absolutely have all the components of the ethic, well, shit, all the components of the ethic that I find ethical, but it’s not like I replaced them with other ethics from other places. I don’t see the ethical absolute in an eye for an eye, and it has to be absolute because there is no room for compromise in that ethic. That alone would send me from the church; I see the ethic as a more substantial piece of the spiritual body than faith. I see charity as meaningless without ethic, altruism without ethic is just picking a side in a war and being nice to it, and I could go on with pillars and foundations of western religions and suggest each one is made of straw without a solid ethical core.
So Eastern religions then? Yeah, I know some things about them, some likable things, but I’ll always be an outsider not being to swallow some mythology is vastly different than not knowing what there is to swallow, so taking a small bite of what is offered and saying ‘this is good’. Of course it’s good, a host who wants you doesn’t start off with shit appetizers.
I don’t know precisely why the anarchist didn’t say he was void of faith or belief or god, but I can guess. God is a convenient term like love or schizophrenia, a word that covers a broad base of symptoms that are similar to a variety of things. Multiple personality disorder is pretty specific and it’s what most people think of when they think schizophrenia, but MPD is rare and schizophrenia is not. Racing heart, pulse, constant ideation, desire, attraction, sex that’s what most people think of as love and are crestfallen when that wears away and they are left with an intimate stranger. God as a gray bearded Caucasoid in the heavens is as hard to swallow as an eight armed elephant head or, for that matter, a brown bearded Semite in the sky. If those were the only definitions I’m an atheist, a cynic and a shrink.
We could have a fun game of coming up with other options from silly to profound, I think the first place peoples feelings would get hurt would be with definitions of love. We’d just be playing. The bald truth is I don’t know and whereas I’m good at playing cynical, I’m not a cynic.
Yeah, I forgot what I was doing, puttered around came back read Nashs latest and the above song got stuck in my head. I’m sure it’s a relief to someone if not only me. The song is probably more acceptable. Standard etiquette dictates that it’s impolite to talk about politics or religion. I think etiquette is in favor of either the Violent Femmes or having girl troubles up the ass or both. At least I can’t think of any particular rule of etiquette as clearly against the Femmes or girl trouble as I can regarding religion and politics.
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