Sinners in the Hands of a Confused Goddess #2: People

[Rupert Giles]

That's right, people.

People in all their myriad diversity.

I hate all of them.

I find that in life, the number one cause of trouble for me is people.

I go out of my way to be nice to them, but they just keep on being jerks and assholes.

Case in point:

Just a few minutes ago I left my comfortable, cozy dung heap of a cave that is my bedroom, and walked down the street about four blocks to the local gas station to buy a thing of coke and some cigarettes.  Boy's gotta have his caffiene and nicotine.

Along the way I passed a woman who was jogging.  A woman who needs to learn what a sports bra is for, but I assume she'll find out soon enough when she begins to rub her nipples off.  I've never seen a pair of breasts bounce so.  That has got to be painful.

But I digress.

When she was about thirty feet away from me I raised a hand to her, palm open in token of friendship, and said, "Good Morning."

Now, you must understand:  I have the kind of voice that men in positions of command, if they don't already have it, would kill to have.  That sort of voice that can instantly go deep toned and project to great distances without having to raise it even slightly.  I know for a fact that when I use this voice friends of mine have been able to hear me several dozen feet away without any problem, and when I raise it the length of a football field is quite doable.

And she ignored me, and continued jogging.

Now, once, that's just circumstance.

But I have found since I moved out of the Heart of the South, Heart of the Bible Belt (I hate Christians, too.  I live with two:  One in Religion and one in Name.  They're evil and asshats.), and into the Heart of Klan Territory (And how suprised was I to learn that the Klan is more active down here than back home.  Atleast it means I can goto more protests.), that people are far less polite and kind.  The things I'd take for granted back home, people responding to an absolute stranger when he wishes them a good morning, or women being shocked when I go out of my way a few feet to open a door for them, are completely unknown here, reacted to with fear and suspicion.

I attributed this at first to a Grey Faced dominated society:  After all, we live five blocks from the Prestigeous University of Florida, an factory in which go various, different bits of meat that are all ground up, processed, and spat out in neat, tidy, orderly packages, all alike.  Ordered containers of meat that go on to lead very productive, contributing lives.

But then I figured that College must be as much an Eristic experience as an Aneristic.  So this could hardly count for the display I had seen.

Then I thought about the fact that this is the '13th' year in Gainesville, and we're expectnig anouther Serial killer.  Except I can't remember if last year was the thirteenth or this one, so I can't be quite sure.

Then I considered the fact that a large portion of the population around me is Christian, meaning only a small portion of the population actually believes that Dogma and gives more than lip service prayers to a blind, deaf, emasculated triumverate diety who has not made manifest is prescense on this plain in millenia.  So why shouldn't they ignore their Neighbour?  Just turn the other cheek, and hell, while you're at it why not turn the whole head and hold your nose at the polite southern boy who can only be recognized as such due to his manners and slight mispronunciation of certain words, and his use of such archaic phrases as, "Yes, sir," "No, sir," "Yes, Ma'am," "No, Ma'am," and not to forget the favorites, "Thank you, sir," and "Thank you Ma'am."

Then I considered it might be my wild appearance, only to remember I'm actually quite normal as far as looks go in this population.  My hair colour is one that could be natural, if you ignore my large, bushy eyebrows which have been compared to those of a character in an anime who sticks pieces of seaweed to his forehead as he has no eyebrows.  Which reminds me of a time at the Tangled Web where I made such mock eyebrows out of cardboard, and proceeded to creature much jockulatiry.

But I digress.

I have tried and tried, as only a man who dabbles with infinity can (oh, and how such others as me have lost their minds staring into the infinite of greys between the black and the white.  I am fortunate that my sanity and I were parted long before my fascination with the innumerable. ), and I cannot wrap my brain 'round the problem so to speak.  I cannot fathom the depths of the mind of the person who cannot return such simple politeness.

Then my mind turned to the current state of affairs in the world:  Fear and Terror seem to be at an all time high, due in large part to a certain Discordian Saint who seems to be doing things in a destructively chaotic way than a ceationally chaotic one.  But I am not here to waste words on minor points of dogma within the Faith that I embrass with all four limbs and my vestigal tail.

But why should my fellow citizens fear me?  I am a White, Anglo-Teutonic Male, age approximately eighteen years.  I have achieved majority in this society:  I am deemed to be responsible enough to be given the privelliege and duty of choosing my duly elected officals who govern with my voice.  Why should they fear me, when the Government, or as some would call it, the Reigning Dictatorship, had brought the mass populace to fear those of a Middle Eastern background, the same ethic group who a large majority of the Populace's Saviour was certainly from.

So it cannot be the terrorist actions of a certain radical islamic sect that are to blame for this.

Mayhaps the news media?

If there is one thing I have gathered in my eighteen years upon Eris' somewhat green Earth, it is that our media juggernaughts seem to be obsessed with the darker side of life.  With stabbings and rapings and roberies.  One need only turn on the news in any given city and I am fairly sure that within one week's time of view the nightly edition one will hear about no less than three murders.

Are we Americans training ourselves to fear each other?  After all, which one of those strange faces in the crowded street is going to be the one who will rob me?  To assault me?  To murder me?  To rape me?  Our Media seems to harp on nothing but death and destruction at every turn, with all the myriad miracles of life, its beauty and grandeur, shoved aside, neatly swept up under the carpet like dust that is unseemly for the guests to see at the dinner party, and then promptly forgotten about.

Could this be it?  That our society as a whole is simply growing more fearful of not some definate threat:  Sects, Religious and Secular, within our own society who wish to seem harm done?  Groups in other countries that hate us for our Government's botched meddlings in their affairs?

Could it be that we have changed from fearing only 'Fear itself,' as one great Statesmen put it, and now we fear the unknown.  Or is it that we have always feared the unknown, feared the shadows that dance in the darkness beyond the warming reach and light of our campfires as we primitives, in all our glory, sit around the blaze which we can create though barely comprehend?

Could it be that this fear has been carried along, a seed in our hearts and minds all along, and is only now blooming into flower and its bitter fruit because, in this day and age of a 'Global Village,' where I can send message to my friends in Japan that they will recieve in less than a second, where a single person can, with mind and talent and the back of the All Mighty Dollar, create a weapon so destructive that it gives one the power to take the lives of millions?

Could it be that we have simply grown more fearful because, in our primitive brain that has been carried over through the millenia, through the aeons since life first floundered ashore upon dry land, breathed the air, and found it good, because there is simply more that is variable, more of that unknown quantity, and thus more fear?

But this trait would not have been carried through the generations if it was harmful:  Bad mutations and behaviours have a habit of dying out of a populace.  But on the other hand, those behaviours which do not necessarily relegate to some advantage over the other beasts do not spread through the population.

For this fear to have become so widespread, and thus the instinct that causes it, what use does it serve?  Or rather, what use did it serve our ancestors?

It is true that fear breeds cautiousness, and cautiousness is a good thing:  You want to be cautious when you think there is a leopard on the other side of the tree that has you beat in speed, reflexes, and innate weaponry.  It is true that you want to be cautious when dealing with a strange group of persons who could very well be stronger, healthier, and better armed than you.

But today we are a nation of laws (or some would claim that we are:  You need only watch the news, as I have mentioned, to learn that in this country, atleast, we are not. ), and so what use is there for this fear of the unknown?  We are protected --  More protected than we have ever been in the history of our species.

Despite the existance of weapons that can bring a thriving metropolis to nothing but a crater and a flash of light in a milisecond, despite plagues that we ourselves engineer that can kill in a matter of hours, spread through the air, through touch, and have no cures, we are safer, healthier, and some would argue (though it is not in the hubris of the author to do so) more intelligent than any of the generations that have proceeded us.  So what use can this fear serve?

Tell me this, oh Respected Minds, Great Thinkers, Blessed Theologians.

Why are we so afraid?

And what are we afraid of?

[Malaul]

I attributed this at first to a Grey Faced dominated society: After all, we live five blocks from the Prestigeous University of Florida, an factory in which go various, different bits of meat that are all ground up, processed, and spat out in neat, tidy, orderly packages, all alike. Ordered containers of meat that go on to lead very productive, contributing lives. this reminds me offa section fropm BIG U by Stevenson.,,


and as for the scared thing,,,
Humans are mean and dumb for the most part


thats notta good combination

WHy  be nice and have to expend emotion adn energy when you can be nasty and keep that energy for better things like jogging or blowing shit up...

[Rupert Giles]

I attributed this at first to a Grey Faced dominated society: After all, we live five blocks from the Prestigeous University of Florida, an factory in which go various, different bits of meat that are all ground up, processed, and spat out in neat, tidy, orderly packages, all alike. Ordered containers of meat that go on to lead very productive, contributing lives. this reminds me offa section fropm BIG U by Stevenson.,,


and as for the scared thing,,,
Humans are mean and dumb for the most part


thats notta good combination

WHy  be nice and have to expend emotion adn energy when you can be nasty and keep that energy for better things like jogging or blowing shit up...

If it upsets them, startles them and alarms them, freaks them out in some way, what sort of Discordian would I be if I didn't do it?

[Malaul]

being nice to folks confuses em more than ignoring them or being mean

most humans are just so small minded that they cant get over themselves

I love to get all ^^gothed^^ out and go help little ladies cross the street or open doors for business men

What?
Wahts she doing?
Why is she opening that door for me?
Doe she think I cant do ti myself?


its hard for people to accept kindness as well as give it

HEnce my hatred for most of the human race~!

[Rupert Giles]

being nice to folks confuses em more than ignoring them or being mean

most humans are just so small minded that they cant get over themselves

I love to get all ^^gothed^^ out and go help little ladies cross the street or open doors for business men

What?
Wahts she doing?
Why is she opening that door for me?
Doe she think I cant do ti myself?


its hard for people to accept kindness as well as give it

HEnce my hatred for most of the human race~!

My true reason for my hatred of my 'fellow' 'man', can be traced to the fact that it's MY oxygen, and no one is paying me to use it.

Not that I care any more.

[illusion]

Some days I love people, and most days I don't.

Many is the year I spent awash in police reports and victim compensation request forms. So I know what we're afraid of. We are afraid of each other........and quite rightly so. The interesting thing is that the more I deal with violence and pain, the less afraid I become. I still don't much like people, but at least I'm not afraid.


PS: Didn't some start a people hating thread in the Mindfuck forum a while back?

[Rupert Giles]

Some days I love people, and most days I don't.

Many is the year I spent awash in police reports and victim compensation request forms. So I know what we're afraid of. We are afraid of each other........and quite rightly so. The interesting thing is that the more I deal with violence and pain, the less afraid I become. I still don't much like people, but at least I'm not afraid.


PS: Didn't some start a people hating thread in the Mindfuck forum a while back?

But you see, I have more than just a simple hate of people.

I loathe them.

To me, hate is an abstract concept.  You can hate something you know absolutely nothing about.

But to loathe something, someone you must have an intimate knowledge of the thing in question, on not only how you feel about it by who you feel that way.

The Nazis hated the jews.

I loathe the Nazis.

People hate missing the bus.

I loathe people.

And I once again do not form a coherent point.

But any thread eventually devolves to a point where either the Nazis or Hitler is invoked, and at that point...

[Wishfarple]

But why should my fellow citizens fear me? I am a White, Anglo-Teutonic Male, age approximately eighteen years.

Dude.  Don't you get it?  


You're THE MAN.  

Or, at least you WILL be in about 20 years.  

Whereas I'll just be an old pollock/dago/towelhead.  
Fuck.  
Oh well.  At least I get good food.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

CC, if I were running anywhere I'd give you a scathing look and keep going, because I never run unless there's something seriously wrong, or if I feel like it.  

I don't like people either, and having random strangers trying to be friendly to me is just weird, mostly because most of them get scared off before they try.  Or at least I've been told I give off a certain, distinctive "Don't touch me!!!" vibe.

Anyway, by all means be nice to the scared creatures.  I'm sure they won't appreciate it.