It isn't about being sneaky to be violent; it's about going stealth, in order to survive! Remember, there are huge cultural differences here. I can imagine this being used by Africans, brought to the US in slavery. And I KNOW Jews, traveling with the Spanish, went undercover to avoid the Inquisition! There's a HUGE tradition of Crypto-Judaism here in New Mexico. I have a friend whose whole family thought they were Catholic for several generations, but they had these "peculiar" rituals nobody else seemed to do.
Look, I believe in secular HUMANism. I put the HUMAN ahead of the secular, ok? I live in the real world, where something like ninety percent of everybody is wrapped up in some divinity thing. I don't know why and it doesn't seem very useful to me, in the modern age. And neither does nationalism. I don't think we can afford all this artificial "us/them" crap anymore; it's gonna kill ALL of us.
So, I try to first see the HUMAN, y'know? But I see her without all the bells and smells of religion. And that's not easy for a person who spent the first seventeen years of her life in a fundamentalist, literalist xian church. My whole brain and identity formed around all that hoopty doo; it's not easy to untrain those synapses.
I have friends of all and no faiths. I love them. We don't argue.
Yeah, there are a few Muslim crack pots who have made life really hard on the rest of us, especially other Muslims.
And Timothy Mc Veigh was a xian. So's the Ku Klux Klan, etc.
Frankly, as a mixed race, disabled, low income Queer woman in the USA, I'm a HELL of a lot more scared of white, xian men than I am of Muslims. They've done me the most harm, all of my life. And I know they wish me dead.
I don't think my Muslim friends wish that for me. I think they wish, for my own soul, that I'd convert because, of course, that's how religions tend to work. But we laugh and cut up until soda squirts out our noses and have earnest conversations until the wee hours. Same with my Mennonite friends (talk about a strict and gender segregated religion! go hang out with some "white cap" Mennonites for a few years! I have a lot of respect for those women. I'm just not STRONG enough to live as they do!).
I don't want to hate or be mad at anybody. That's WHY I'm a HUMANist.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I don't think so. I'm old. I'm all crippled up. I have rotten, black, broken teeth. I'm fat. I'm ugly. People think I'm peculiar because I'm smart. Some are scared of me; some harass me. Quite a few abuse me. So, it's not like I haven't been around the stupidity of humans most of my life.
I guess I have to believe in something, so I try to believe in life, and humans. Am I in the wrong group?
Look, I believe in secular HUMANism. I put the HUMAN ahead of the secular, ok? I live in the real world, where something like ninety percent of everybody is wrapped up in some divinity thing. I don't know why and it doesn't seem very useful to me, in the modern age. And neither does nationalism. I don't think we can afford all this artificial "us/them" crap anymore; it's gonna kill ALL of us.
So, I try to first see the HUMAN, y'know? But I see her without all the bells and smells of religion. And that's not easy for a person who spent the first seventeen years of her life in a fundamentalist, literalist xian church. My whole brain and identity formed around all that hoopty doo; it's not easy to untrain those synapses.
I have friends of all and no faiths. I love them. We don't argue.
Yeah, there are a few Muslim crack pots who have made life really hard on the rest of us, especially other Muslims.
And Timothy Mc Veigh was a xian. So's the Ku Klux Klan, etc.
Frankly, as a mixed race, disabled, low income Queer woman in the USA, I'm a HELL of a lot more scared of white, xian men than I am of Muslims. They've done me the most harm, all of my life. And I know they wish me dead.
I don't think my Muslim friends wish that for me. I think they wish, for my own soul, that I'd convert because, of course, that's how religions tend to work. But we laugh and cut up until soda squirts out our noses and have earnest conversations until the wee hours. Same with my Mennonite friends (talk about a strict and gender segregated religion! go hang out with some "white cap" Mennonites for a few years! I have a lot of respect for those women. I'm just not STRONG enough to live as they do!).
I don't want to hate or be mad at anybody. That's WHY I'm a HUMANist.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I don't think so. I'm old. I'm all crippled up. I have rotten, black, broken teeth. I'm fat. I'm ugly. People think I'm peculiar because I'm smart. Some are scared of me; some harass me. Quite a few abuse me. So, it's not like I haven't been around the stupidity of humans most of my life.
I guess I have to believe in something, so I try to believe in life, and humans. Am I in the wrong group?
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