[Jared] I don’t know yet that I can say that I want to spend forever with him. Forever seems like such a very long time. But, seriously, what would be the problem with just aiming forward and seeing what happens when we face, together even, each new challenge life offers us? What happens if we don’t flinch in the face of adversity because we’ve got each other’s back?
[Tempest] Then you have what’s called a relationship.
[Jared] You really do have a way with stating the obvious.
[Tempest] And sometimes I think you really are a moron when it comes to matters of the heart. You’ve done this before. No reason why you can’t do it again.
—from "Notes to Purgatory3"
Archive for » March, 2009 «
31
March
Category: 2010
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31
March
Anyone who tries, succeeds in some way. Anyone who doesn’t try, will always fail. Those offered a chance for success but turn it down to pursue failure should go ahead and stop wasting everyone else’s air.
Category: 2009
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08
March
I find it interesting to wonder what position we would be if the worldview was primarily Native American rather than Judeo-Christian. I doubt that we would be dehaling with such language extinction or the damage we have done to our world as a whole.
Overall, I have to say this is an excellent point. However, I think it misses the trees for the forest that has grown up today around the Native American myth. Today we see all these tribes as merely cogs in the Native American machine, but “back in the day” these tribes didn’t see each other in such a positive, embracing, dance-around-the-fire-together-for-solidarity perspective. They slaughtered each other, enslaved each other, wiped out ecosystems before migrating moving on to new conquests, and promoted their own cultural imperialism over other peoples. The New Age sweat lodge peace pipe mythology that we have built up today over the Native Americans and our national guilt to pay into the reparations of a “dislocated people” is the basis for perpetuating this good, wholesome, earth-centered masquerade is not enough to convince me that the Native American worldview would be any better (or any worse, for that matter) than the Judeo-Christian worldview that dominates our country today.
Category: 2009
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08
March
The fact that Washington wasn’t a real Christian is really neither here nor there. It is his myth that is much more important to American history than his reality. And it is in this myth that we find language shaping perception again—exactly as we’ve been discussing here, right? From the whole "cannot tell a lie about the cherry tree" to the man’s religious beliefs, we have this kind of awe that is reserved for deities and saints built up around ol’GW. It is against some people’s national mythology (or national religion) to disparage the name of a hero—or, in some cases, to merely tell the truth about them—and they will get all up in arms about it. Quite frankly, it doesn’t make Washington any less of a national hero that he wasn’t a Christian by orthodox standards. But don’t try telling a nationalistic fundamentalist that. They might think you’re a Communist or something.
Category: 2009
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