Don't Look Now

Admittedly, I am not in a good mood today. Everyone had a hard time getting up this morning; I found out that the radio station I’ve been listening to on my drive in to work is switching to a Top 40 format, getting rid of my favorite morning talk show; and then I got a link to a news story, several months old, that shows how closed-minded the city I live in is. (Of course the last part was made perfectly clear during the most recent elections, during which the whole place basically turned into some scary, homophobic nightmare.)

This news story, it seems, came at the precise moment to fill my irritability containment receptacle to its capacity and push me over the edge. And while it’s several months old—the situation occurred in November—what it describes is too much for me not to rant about.

It seems there was a billboard installed in our fair (ha!) city, leased by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and taken down about a week later because of numerous complaints that the city received from its residents. And by numerous, they mean around 90. (The current population of Rancho Cucamonga is over 170,000.)

“Wow, that must have been some offensive billboard,” I hear you saying. What despicable acts against humanity was it trying to promote? What vulgar language were the children of the Jewel of the Inland Empire going to be exposed to? What powerful, brainwashing message of hate was it cleverly implanting in our fragile, susceptible brains?

“Everyone who doesn’t believe as we do is going to hell.”

No, sorry, that was on the marquee of a church. Actually, the billboard read: “Imagine No Religion.”

Outrageous, right? I mean who are those Godless, Hell-bound people to tell us that there’s another way of looking at things? And to quote that heretic who once compared himself to Jesus?! Not only should the billboard have been removed as soon as anyone with half a Bible spotted it, but the offenders should have been appropriately punished. Maybe we could have had them burned at the stake in the center of Victoria Gardens – in that area where they put the Christmas tree each year. That way we could accommodate a nice sized crowd and people could do some shopping afterwards. All the food vendors could set up carts to make it more convenient for the masses. Ah, well, maybe next time.

That is, unless they’ve learned their lesson and decided to abandon the idea that freedom of speech will be tolerated in as closed-minded a city as this one. During the November elections, numerous intersections played host to small crowds of people who had nothing better to do with their time but stand on a street corner—sometimes with their small kids in tow—and wave signs of bigotry and hate toward fellow human beings to persuade others into taking certain rights from them. Yes, it’s a glorious city.

So, lie-bearing signs of hate all over the city then were not offensive, and were just a show of support for one side of an issue on the ballot, right?

The freeway I drive to and from work each day has recently acquired a new billboard—two-sided, so you can’t miss it in either direction—that talks about needing Jesus. When I saw it I thought, “Hm. Someone spent money on that.” I wasn’t offended, even though it’s not what I believe and I would prefer to see cute images of cats or bunnies instead. But it would never even occur to me that I should be offended by it. It doesn’t speak to me, oh well, let’s move on. It won’t change my mind (Aha! Maybe I’m not as susceptible to advertisements as we thought!), and it doesn’t scare me. Why should someone’s opinion about what they choose to believe offend me?

And as I don’t think that I have any special powers in this area, I believe others should be capable of the same. If you don’t like to look at something, read something, watch a show, listen to certain music – really, do anything that is available by choice, don’t. Don’t look at a billboard that states something that disagrees with your sensibilities. Don’t go to church if you’re going to be disrespectful toward the people who believe its teachings. But if you’re the one at church, don’t walk out to the first person you see and tell him he’s bad because he wasn’t in there with you. People in general really need to stop being so easily offended by…everything. How about trying to be more accepting instead?

...Peace, Love, and...

So many different things have been on my mind lately that I’ve been wanting to really say something about (meaning, of course, write something about) that they’ve gotten me to a point of a rather jumbled, confused tone on what seems to be a Frankenstein’s monster-like concept mashup. (Yes, even the description falls into that category.)

“Well, sort through it and speak your mind,” I hear you, my imaginary audience, say.

“But—" I start to whine, then stop, quickly reminding myself how much I hate to hear whining.

That’s part of the problem, though—not the whining, I can keep that under control, most of the time—the wading through all of life’s noise and being able to articulate its effect on me in pieces. Because let’s face it, life doesn’t come at you one event at a time. When something happens—good or bad—the rest of the world doesn’t stop so you can acknowledge it and assess the impact. Life doesn’t stop for anything – until it finally does, at which point it’s really not to help us be able to slow down and tidy up emotionally.

This has been the prevailing topic for me lately, a thought at the back of my mind as I weave my way through the days of life both mundane and exciting. (And they really can be both, can’t they?) It’s so simplistic, it may sound naïve or childish. And some of you may think I’ve fallen and hit my head on something hard or become the victim of some cult. But when you break things down to the most basic way of looking at them, life is short and unpredictable. Why is it that we, the supposedly most intelligent creatures on Earth, have such a difficult time respecting and valuing life? Everyone’s life is finite. So, we’re all in the same boat (as living beings). And this is where everything starts.

I don’t understand why it’s supposedly human nature to dominate others, to push those who are weaker, to take advantage of those less intelligent, to take things from people simply because we want them too, to fight and kill others because they have a different ideology from ours…That last one, of course, those who know me well enough will (probably shake their heads and wonder why my parents didn’t just have me brainwashed by a specific religion when I was younger) recognize as one of (yes, Christopher, one of) the most baffling topics for me. And I suppose the other traits could be argued as simple animal instincts (even though we’re supposed to be so much better than animals), but to devise ways to see each other as different...And as such, of course someone has to be better, someone has to be right.

It just seems pointless to spend the short amount of time we have here worrying about, or trying to change, fight and destroy what someone else believes if it doesn’t happen to align with what we do. And that can’t be argued by comparing us to other animals. It’s not about survival or any sort of physical threat. It’s our choice to perceive things as we do. And I think it’s sad that one of the prime examples of how great our minds are is also what causes so many problems for us in the world. Are human beings too complex to ever really know peace? Do we over think (and “under feel”) things?