Wednesday, January 26, 2005
SpongeBob, Evil Gay Heathen
How sad to be a right-wing Christian in a world full of homo cartoons and scary nipples
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
And oh my God, you think,
how these people's lives must be one screaming firehose of inexorable,
nipple-torquing, kidney-stabbing pain. I mean, really.
Because then you read about how James
Dobson, the cute little founder of the cute little ultraconservative
rabidly Christian happily neo-homophobic Focus on the Family, actually
stood up and proclaimed, to the media, to the world, with a straight
face, with no sense of irony or shuddering humiliation or an
overpowering sense that he was, in fact, contributing quite nicely to
the overall violent oatmealy ignorance of the planet, came right out
and announced that the wildly popular and much-loved SpongeBob Squarepants cartoon character is, actually and truly, probably gay.
Read the rest here.
COMMENT: Some people should be caged in a padded room. One never ceases to be surprised by ever new solemn expressions of idiocy. These fanatic Christian fundamentalists, and their followers, would really deserve some psychiatric treatment. Is this where the American society is heading to?
Friday, January 21, 2005
From The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James:
"There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are 'geniuses' in the religious line; and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence."
Links to William James' works online and related material here.
"There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are 'geniuses' in the religious line; and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence."
Links to William James' works online and related material here.
Chosen people
Think of the most horrible living organisms you can think of. Those which raise a sense of deep, incontrollable disgust. Leave out for the moment any pious or detached consideration that all living organisms are actually equal, and are only different forms in which life individuate itself. Think of worms or parasites, those animals that, in large numbers, feed on carcasses and corpses and are commonly present wherever you have processes of putrefaction and decay. Or think of those large rats that inhabit the sewages of a city.
If, by hypothesis, any of such species were provided with awareness, they would wonder about the world, they would start to ask questions, and colliding with the absolute silence of the world, they would fill that silence with their own words. Aware of their being subject to death and suffering, they would soon seek ways to have the favour of the powerful forces of nature, considered divine. They would start forms of worship and they would develop a vision of the afterworld to soothe the anguish of death. They would consider their consciousness as a privilege, bestowed from God. They would think God had them in mind when he created the whole universe and that he created them after his likeness.
Throughout history, religions (for instance Judaism, some forms of Christianity and Islam) and ideologies (for instance Nazism, Communism, or the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny) have perpetrated this ancient propensity to fabricated greatness, and have led people to believe they were chosen, saved or simply superior (read here), to bolster and camouflage their hapless and ordinary nature, or crude pursuits of power, or arbitrariness, with contrived noble origins or superior qualities.
When I detect this attitude, in words or in the complacent smile of self-appointed progeny of a contrived Father, or in people proclaiming a superiority by Destiny, I think of cockroaches or worms churning on corpses.
Think of the most horrible living organisms you can think of. Those which raise a sense of deep, incontrollable disgust. Leave out for the moment any pious or detached consideration that all living organisms are actually equal, and are only different forms in which life individuate itself. Think of worms or parasites, those animals that, in large numbers, feed on carcasses and corpses and are commonly present wherever you have processes of putrefaction and decay. Or think of those large rats that inhabit the sewages of a city.
If, by hypothesis, any of such species were provided with awareness, they would wonder about the world, they would start to ask questions, and colliding with the absolute silence of the world, they would fill that silence with their own words. Aware of their being subject to death and suffering, they would soon seek ways to have the favour of the powerful forces of nature, considered divine. They would start forms of worship and they would develop a vision of the afterworld to soothe the anguish of death. They would consider their consciousness as a privilege, bestowed from God. They would think God had them in mind when he created the whole universe and that he created them after his likeness.
Throughout history, religions (for instance Judaism, some forms of Christianity and Islam) and ideologies (for instance Nazism, Communism, or the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny) have perpetrated this ancient propensity to fabricated greatness, and have led people to believe they were chosen, saved or simply superior (read here), to bolster and camouflage their hapless and ordinary nature, or crude pursuits of power, or arbitrariness, with contrived noble origins or superior qualities.
When I detect this attitude, in words or in the complacent smile of self-appointed progeny of a contrived Father, or in people proclaiming a superiority by Destiny, I think of cockroaches or worms churning on corpses.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
I have to remember that a possible Italian translation of "feminised celebrators" could be "femminielli officianti". [12.01.05]
I am considering putting together all the (a)religious poems I have
written in one collection and see if anyone is interested in it. It may
sell well amongst Catholics and perhaps in the Bible belt.
Catholics would be able to use it to exercise their piety to orgasmic levels of self-indulgence, while American fundamentalists could start a banning campaign or issue some American-style fatwa which are a great form of marketing. [12.01.05]
Catholics would be able to use it to exercise their piety to orgasmic levels of self-indulgence, while American fundamentalists could start a banning campaign or issue some American-style fatwa which are a great form of marketing. [12.01.05]
Saturday, January 08, 2005
In the mists of time, God was alone. And quite bored. How could
any decent God defined as Love ("God is love") fulfil the definition if
things and beings, and the privileged ones, humans, had yet to be
created? How could God be love if nobody inhabited the sideral spaces
where he swooshed with his incommensurable powers despite his elderly
look? Certain things are a mystery, son. And yet, God was love. So he
loved himself, for which there was no risk to become blind, in his
case. And out of that onanistic act of love, the world sprung.
