The word Tolerance…and Respect

If there’s a post that’ll cost me my low amount of readers, this is it! But what the hell, I live to write!

I had a random thought this morning (an especially dangerous event): Why do we use the word tolerant and tolerance when used with different lifestyles? Why not acceptance? Tolerance by definition means the ability to live with things you don’t approve of, and that’s the root of the problem, why don’t we just approve and move on?

(By the way I’m talking about our run-of-the-mill lifestyles like different religion, sexuality or political affiliation. If your lifestyle involves skinning people alive, you’ll find me really intolerant if not violent towards you.)

It’s not a hard thing to do, if you don’t accept it, there’s a high probability it’s because your God doesn’t like it. That or you’re just a dickhead. Or both, maybe you’re a dickhead and hide behind your god for justification, in which case I say unto thee, welcome Westboro Baptist Church members, have a look around, this site if filled with magic and wonder, or in your words, THE DEVIL!!!

With the obligatory inflaming Westboro comment out of the way, let’s resume.

I will admit to being intolerant about a single thing in my life, and that is intolerance or non-acceptance. I hate the haters. I’m offensive towards the offenders. If you’re a racist, you’re not part of my species and I’ll dislike you for it. If you’re a religious fundamentalist, I hope you suffer in your religion’s many and varied hells.

I mentioned the tolerance bit and I quote George Carlin: “Because we do think in language. And so the quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language.” If we changed the way we speak, I believe we’d sole a lot of problems. Right now, with “tolerance” we’re saying “I don’t like you, but I guess I can live with you, but you stay on your side and I on mine”, when the phrasing and thinking should be “Hey man, welcome! You’re different and that’s awesome!”

I might be naïve, I accept that, and we as humans have proved to be a hateful bunch over the course of our infinitesimal history. Be it race…point of note, I consider the term race to describe ethnicity to be moronic. We can only talk about race if there are other actual races, like Elves and Orcs. Then again, if those existed, we’d have real racism and we’d have killed most of them by now, because that’s what we do.

Back to tolerance. Like I said before, I think religion’s part of the issue. You might not agree with me, but tolerate it while I make my point.

Both Judeo-Christian faith and Islam condemn Homosexuality in its religious texts, describing it as unlawful, sinful, etc., and their followers abide by that, with various degrees of fervor. The Catholic church was pro-slavery as it deemed Africans to be not-people, more like animals, without soul…by the way, any of you out there who believe a cat or a dog doesn’t have a soul can kiss my ass repeatedly. Get a pet, treat it well, love it and you’ll see the soul when you’re on your deathbed and your dog or cat refuses to leave your side.

Religion, mostly Catholics, have been strongly behind anti-semitism, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, etc, even though their religion is mostly based on one guys idea of “let’s all be friends”.

And let’s not talk about the inquisition, shall we? Don’t want to dig a deeper grave for you guys.

And that’s just the Catholics, let’s not get started on the myriad of batshit craziness coming from other religions (Islam for example).

There are many more examples, but my real point is most of our societies, our laws, are based on the moral teachings of those religions, so the opposition to those lifestyles is ingrained into the foundations of our societies. We’ve slowly repealed them, but still there’s resistance as politicians and individuals hold fast to their beliefs, even if their laws are based on the separation of religion and state, also called Laïcité. Nice of the French to sum it up in a single word.

Most religions also state everyone to be God’s children and God being an entity of profound and boundless love, then why does he hate so many things and people? The answer is it’s not god, it’s the people who claim to speak in whatever God you follow’s name, which in most cases are the same people who wrote “the book”. Just think about it, maybe the words are God’s, but someone put them on paper, and I’m betting that someone had his own views on some matters, and did some slight editing to the final product. It’s why women tend to have such limited and submissive roles in the books, because the writers were DUDES!

Having just bashed religion I now come to its defense, since religious “tolerance” or lack-thereof is also a factor to consider. In fact, Gods in their various guises have been the leading causes of death in our history and responsible for war and genocide, mostly on the basis of 2 questions:

1. Do you believe in God?
2. Do you believe in my God?

Currently, Islam is taking a beating around the world, and it’s hated on quite strongly, even though it’s not really its fault. Fundamentalism is responsible, and there are those for every religion (except maybe Buddhism and I’d pay top dollar to see a Buddhist Fundamentalist…), be it Christian (Westboro Baptist Church ringing any bells?), Jewish or Muslim. In fact, speaking for Islam, the mainstream Muslim views Islamic Fundamentalist groups in the same way Christians see the WPC.

Fundamentalism is taking the “word of God” as is presented on the dude-written books literally. Dudes wrote those books while in trance communing with their God or by dropping some kickass acid, so whatever they wrote isn’t to be taken literal.

Judaism has been through hell in the past few centuries for intolerance. Jews were run out of a lot of places for simply refusing to change their beliefs. They were who they were, they believed in something slightly different, thus, they were persecuted. Another point anti-semitists like to cling on is the “they killed Christ” argument, which even the Vatican is against since 1965 and the Second Vatican Council, and which is as intelligent an argument as a Wiccan stating “they burned witches” if one of them started hating on Christians. But for the sake of argument (and to give me another chance to go on a tangent), let’s go over the Christ thing.

No, they didn’t kill the guy, the Romans did, but since Romans became the church, they didn’t want to have that on their conscience so they shifted the blame; something powerful people across the ages have been very apt at doing. If Jewish were responsible it was of convincing the people there of voting against Christ’s release, if we follow the story (which by the way, point of note, the Bible is not a history book, it’s a book stories and metaphors like any other religious text. Believing it to be history is the same as believing Heracles’ twelve tasks to be historic fact). Why did they do that? Simple, to their eyes, and by “their” I mean the Temple Caste, Christ was a nut who managed to convince a hell of a lot of people out of their religion. To their eyes, Christ was the same as those “The End is nigh” nuts you see in every major city across the globe. Image if Christ came back: we’d ignore him on the street and probably call him blasphemous. Same thing now as it was back then.

Also another point of note (and again, assuming History here): if Christ hadn’t died on the Cross, do you really think a whole religion would’ve spanned? Not really, he’d probably have died of old age and be forgotten like many other religious leaders doomed to the oblivion of anonymity. From this point of view, Christians should LOVE JEWS, Romans, and even more so Judas. Without them, the stage play would’ve ended disappointingly.

I trash Benedict XVI a lot for generally being an ass. Sorry, but that’s what I think about this hateful, hateful man. But the guy did repeal this vision of events in his book Jesus of Nazareth.

Hate towards religions stems from focusing on the negative aspects and not the good ones, in the text and not the spirit. In fact, things would be a lot better if you stopped taking your queues from the tomes and focused on the spirit of the teachings. Judaism is about trailblazing, about forging your path, being yourself and defending your right to be who you are. Christianity is about acceptance, about loving one another, about being one big happy family. Islam is about conquering yourself and becoming a better person. People focus on the Jihad and the war on infidels, but did you know the Quran mentions a few other more important Jihads? Before going out to war against the infidels, the Quran requires you to wage war on yourself, with the inner jihads, to conquer your failures, your inner darkness your shortcomings. In essence, before going out to spread judgement, you must first reach enlightenment. Another side note, I’m a strong believer in that the war on infidels, the outer jihad is not so much about going after the non-Muslim as it is going after the false-believers WITHIN Islam. Makes a lot more sense…

Those who hide behind their religion are another point to consider, and I’ll go with Catholics, Jews and Leviticus. Leviticus is their main source material for the “God hates fags” messages…yet, they only pay attention to that part of Leviticus, picking just the parts that support their claims and not the rest of the crazy bullshit written there and trust me there’s tons of crap like “anyone who curses his parents is to be put to death”. I haven’t seen much news of parents killing their kids because the cursed them, have you? So, if you’re going to go by the letter on some stuff and just wing the rest, you’re not following your religion, you’re hiding your stupidity behind it.

And with Darth Benedict’s abdication, I won’t go into the rant about religious leaders saying stupid and hateful stuff.

Now that I’ve bashed and defended religion, let’s move on to the next topic, thought.

Our values may come from religion, but we are people, capable of our own independent thought, capable of weeding out the bullshit, so it surprises me how easily some people are influenced, how they can be convinced hating someone for who they believe in or who they like, or both, is a good idea, and not only that, but the right thing to do. We all speak of peace, we all want world peace, but a lot say it but don’t include those different than tem in that peaceful view, and that’s wrong. If you’re reading this and you hate, or just “tolerate” other types of people, just think about this: how boring would the world be if we all thought the same, if we acted the same, if we talked the same way, if we believed the same things? There would be no learning, no teaching, no moments of clarity, no catharsis, no wonder, no awe, and no mysteries to uncover. In essence, if everyone was the same, there wouldn’t be much of a point living, now would there?

The thought brings me back to the word, as we can only think as well as our language. Tolerance isn’t the answer, it’s a start, but it’s a stopgap solution, a political correct one, letting you hate without being outed as a hater. Acceptance, approval and inclusion are the ways to go. We’re all people, we’re all human, there’s no point in hating each other, now is there? Hate people for who they are, for being dicks, not for being Christian Dicks or Homosexual Dicks or even Comunist Dicks, because political views are also often “tolerated”.

I’ve ranted on and on now, and I’m starting not to make much sense, which means I should probably stop. I’ve given you a glimpse into how things work in my head, and yeah, I know, it’s frightening place. I’ve also given you plenty on what my beliefs are, and while I don’t condone shoving my beliefs down anyone’s throat and I seriously dislike people who do; I do feel I needed to share this and maybe hope you’ll read something that convinces you out of being a tolerant person and make you an accepting and welcoming one.

As an old song said: We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who’ll make a brighter day, so let’s start giving…and accepting one another.

Till the next time I have a random thought…

And yes, I know, I’m a hateful bastard. Hate me for that, I’ll accept it 🙂

Sources:

• George Carlin: Doin’ It Again Quotes (IMDB)
• Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics
• We Are the World