Game of Massachusettication

I contemplated whether I should ease into this blogging experience by discussing an injustice that is nearly unanimous in support of eradicating, like AIDS or cancer. But then again, I'm sure I could find some hyper-evangelistic twat that would believe AIDS is God's justifiable wrath on those hedonistic sexual homos that don't follow His word. And what a surprise, I just did.

Anywho, I will eventually get to both of those topics, but today I recollected a burning image that was grilled into my brain from last summer, and I could not forget about it (no, not steak, but god that sounds amazing right now.) I'm not sure what triggered it, perhaps all of the upcoming weddings I have been invited to this summer, or the gossip from my female coworkers about their husbands' bad snoring habits, but I remembered the news conference on television with Mr. Bush explaining his upcoming proposal: the Marriage Protection Amendment. In it (sorry for the YouTube video link, it's a little blurry), you can see a slight smirk on Bush's face as he spews out the same bullshit rhetoric over and over, drawling out the favorite Republican keywords: Americans, tradition, united, sanctity, fundamental, and freedom. Somehow, he let "tolerance" slip in there too; his speech writers must have made bets with each other to see who could do the best job of being ironic by inserting a word into a speech about intolerance. His "diverse" audience, coming from all different types of Bush-supporting Methodist churches backgrounds, sit amongst each other in a state of blissful 1984 comradery, uniformly golf-clapping at every break in Bush's speech where he ends with one of those Republican-copyrighted buzz words. You can almost imagine the halfie Bush is probably growing as he hears himself intelligently recap the anthropologic reasons as to why marriage is critical to civilization; he might even have a full one since he didn't stutter once. As he goes through the talking points, you see clips of the audience head-nodding, looking at each other, and looking at Bush with a twinkle in their eye and a dimple on their rounded cheeks (or at least on those faces lucky enough to have received that concave anomaly from God). They all have a small secret on their minds, and they reaffirm it silently but effectively with each other through the trained skill of ocular intercourse that they probably learned from whatever Bible college they attended. They understand how to communicate a strong emotion to each other sans vocal or physical means, and what they feel and reciprocate in their Christian hearts is a sense of intense, almost sinful, pleasure. The secret, or not so secret to some, knowledge that these fakest fucks possess is that this Amendment will in no way get passed in either the House or Senate. As they emphatically look at each other they know that this whole process, Bush's talking points, the amendment, their presence, is just a formality to appeal to their Bible-thumping gay-fearing God-fearing cohorts back home in their good ol' small towns of America. What better way to round up the troops during a lull in the presidential ratings than to give them exactly what they want: a national amendment that justifies their homophobia. If this partisan rallying cry can help benefit these leaders in any political or monetary way in their respective conservative districts, the actual passing of the amendment becomes the battle of who could care less (I couldn't help myself, I'm listening to Ben Folds right now.)

Thank the flying spaghetti monster that this did not get through in either part of Congress, but as we have all learned from elections past, a shit-ton of states have easily passed their own amendments in keeping the "sanctity of marriage." These proposals have shown that a majority of people in most states agree that marriage should be kept between a man and a woman. In Bush's speech, he recognizes these statistics and uses them to justify creating a national amendment, basically using the argument that the majority is right (somehow, he disagrees with this argument when it comes to approving funding for stem-cell research). But history displays many examples of where the majority is not right, and with the slightest knowledge about our country, you are sure to remember some of these shameful acts.

Moving on from that point, I have pondered the arguments that most sanctity of marriage advocates have continuously doled out to the general public. I will not go into the specifics of all these arguments since everyone has heard them ad nauseum. But basically they fall into two main groups: religious and non-religious arguments. Most of the religious arguments directly refer to biblical passages that condemn homosexuality, adultery, promiscuity, or sex before marriage. Citizens who use these arguments as their main attack on expanding the boundaries of marriage tend to believe that we live in a Christian nation, and because of this we should adhere to the Bible and God's commandments strictly. The separation of church and state does not even cross their minds as being relevant or true, and they would agree that the Bible should be used in synchrony with the Constitution in establishing our laws. When confronted with statistics that show marriage is not so sanctimonious, e.g. the high divorce rate in America, these people offer the argument that if we were to allow gays into this marriage equation, they would increase the divorce rate even more. Of course the religious points are not used as much in governmental affairs, like the amendment, but there are still undertones of them in the non-religious arguments. These points mainly consist of trying to find historical, economic, anthropological, or other secular evidence that show how marriage has improved society and kept it stable. One such argument states that marriage between a man and a woman ensures procreation, which is vital for human existence on Earth. They promote the idea that a nuclear family is the best environment for raising a child and argue that anything less could be physically or psychologically harmful. Regarding the monetary benefits of marriage, they forecast a failing economic future that is burdened with an over abundance of newly weds that might take too much advantage of the tax breaks. The slippery slope argument is applied to the idea that if we were to allow same-sex marriage to occur, we would then have to allow marriage between anyone or anything, e.g., children, animals, and/or inanimate objects.

So little time, so much to argue against all of these points. Since we do not live in a theocracy, and we do have an amendment in our Constitution that separates church and state, I do not feel it is necessary to debate Biblical arguments against gay marriage when debating laws in our government. I'm sure I will have another time and place for that. I basically want to show that any secular argument against allowing gay marriage has no valid points.

Wow, another late night and long blog. I am getting addicted to this. This will have to be another two-parter.

Until then, peace, love, and rock & roll.

-Nate

Un-Apathetic Manifesto Part Deux

    Refreshed from a nice night of sleep, I will try to finish out this ever rambling proposal of my beliefs and goals for this blog.

    As I ended my last entry, I wrote about the idea of helping people fulfill their lowest physiological levels of need by becoming a physician. Above that, and somewhat corresponding to Maslow's pyramid, it is essential for humans to have a communal environment that promotes their societal and familial needs. The idea that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights is the most vital paradigm that can fulfill the majority of these desires. If we do not as a society treat this as true, or have unacceptable exclusions, then we are not effectively facilitating people in giving them the best life possible. I feel that it is on this level that I need to start speaking up for any injustices that could be changed. This should be effective on all direct and indirect fronts of my life, where I see that a wrong could be righted.

    Of course, issues that affect my life personally will somewhat take more precedence over indirect ones. Unfortunately this is part of human nature, and I will be unapologetic about certain things that innately rouse my enthusiasm. But along with emerging from apatheticism (yeah, I know it's not a word, but it should be) I will strive to inform myself about cruelties in the world that are not sexy to be passionate for. I feel that all of these goals are essential to fulfilling my need of becoming more helpful to others while I am still able to. It may be partly altruistic, it may be slightly selfish, but overall my teleological aim with writing this blog is to ultimately do "good" for more people.

    From paper, or should I say computer screen, to action is the next step for trekking into ex-apatheticism (yeah I'm really stretching these words). I truly hope that I can start to involve myself in more organizations, discussions, debates, and political procedures to further my goals. By possibly setting an example for others, I want to instigate other "apathetics" of all generations to speak out, through any means of communication. It is the only way that we can see a change in the injustices occurring throughout our world.

 

    I'm feeling really cheesy after writing this, but surprisingly, feeling cheesy feels good! It's a palatable experience that I just may live through. I promise that from here on out I will write about more seducing topics, ones that will tickle your unapathetic fancy.

 

    Peace, Nate

Un-Apathetic Manifesto/Reasons as to why I’m jumping on the already laden bandwagon of blogging

I like to keep things concise, but I feel as if this first blog will become a long, drawn out rant of literary taboos and clichés before my very own eyes (haha) because of the amount of time that has passed since I have written anything personally motivated. I have spent the last four years of college reading blogs, news articles, journals and publications without responding in any communicative way. Although I do express my views on certain issues to friends frequently, I feel somewhat apathetic for not representing myself on a fuller scale. I have a great amount of passion for events that are occurring on a spectrum of levels, from personal to global, but yet I don't always voice my opinion to a greater extent.

In the past, I have found myself reserved about some issues because of the lack of change or progress that was occurring. I reasoned that if no one else was able to produce satisfactory results, I could do nothing more to further the agenda. I was also careful about what I said to certain people, because I was more worried about their opinion of me than telling them the truth. These things have plagued me from speaking up for years. But certain events in my life have drastically increased my motivation to speak out, and blogging is the first step in hopefully many more that will lead me out of apathy. I truly feel that if I can at least produce some change, on some level, it will become an unstoppable force inside of me to keep doing more.

Overall, what do I want? So far I have not stated exactly what issues I want to be un-apathetic, or pathetic, for (heh…slightly lame joke). Well, the general philosophy that I try to adhere to is doing the most good for the most people. From an epidemiology standpoint, this is basically their version of the golden rule, considering that they are trying to eradicate the most harmful diseases that affect the most people. For me, it nicely circumferences all of the specific viewpoints I have on almost all issues. Most people would agree that doing good for a lot of people is, well, a good thing. But I probably tend to go farther than some people in saying that in every aspect of my life, I want to help people. Help and good are definitely vague terms that can be manipulated to mean almost anything. Personally, my career aspiration of becoming a physician is based on the notion of helping people at their most basic physiological levels. As in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the most basic biological functions of physical health need to be fulfilled before achieving higher functions and needs like safety, love/belonging, esteem and self-actualization. Although I do not ascribe to the whole system of this "needs pyramid", I do believe that humans cannot function properly or to their full potential without having obtained essential physical necessities.

wow...so reading back over this I realized that I am definitely starting to ramble, and that it's 4am. So...this will be one of those part one, part deux, sort of posts. Peace