Iraqi police kill boy, 14, over gay sex - my response

I've been meaning to get back to you on this... there's a lot of things that I mean to do, and perhaps some day I will learn to take less on... either way, I wanted to say this:

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about war as a form of social darwinism - it seems to me that in some fashion, war is the inevitable result of overpopulation and density, and exists as a corrective measure which aids evolution. it would seem that the vast majority of the casualties that take place are of the lower classes - generally the elite, the clerics, the politicians, the intelligentsia, and whoever else is at the top of the social heap are long gone by the time that the bombs drop. much in the same way we're planning to get out of chicago before the shit hits the fan... many iraqis were out of there before we came in.

mobility is a hugely interesting thing right now to me - our technological achievements have made it possible for us (of course I speak of the human collective rather than the individual; certainly i acknowledge that not everyone is blessed with the finances to hop onto a jet) to go back and forth with such ease, and even to walk/hitchhike/bus across vast distances. we're able to simultaneously inhabit so many cultures and communities through the internet, through cell phones, satellites and the like we can be involved with any community in any place in time or space, even if it's a recreation of druidic customs that haven't been practiced in hundreds of years that one might now consider outdated. we can tap in from across the world, participating in various aspects of involvement in those communities, which sometimes cross national, political, and social boundaries that used to be much more difficult to span.

the gay community is probably one of the best examples of this - how remarkable it is for me to feel such a strong kinship and bond in understanding the fear that this boy must have felt, the terror that must have been created for him to prostitute himself in the first place, and the chaos that overwhelms the lives of people who feel forced into this corner - the ones who can't or don't leave in time.

i can certainly relate this to the argument that religion as it has been practiced on this planet so far has led to the disempowering of the individual. the idea that a church or other entity is needed to act as the conduit for a spiritual connection is inherently flawed. it places responsibility outside of each person, because judgement for the decision to act was made without that individual's consent or agreement - it is issued as an order, a directive, underwritten by a god that has a clear agenda which has placed the "messenger" of the word of god in a position of power. the argument is further compounded by self-evident circumstance presented as evidence - if god didn't want it this way, i wouldn't be the one sitting in the chair with you prostrate before my feet, i am the master and you are the servant, therefore it is preordained, therefore the will of god, therefore anything I say is the word of god because that's what I'm here for.

i wonder sometimes if logic itself is something that humanity needs to transcend. the arguments are circuitous at best, and are constantly divisional. our need to define, to separate, to divide ourselves from god by sorting and separating has led us to great things - if you didn't have the ability to focus on making beautiful things because you had to milk a cow and churn to get butter, for example, you would have made less beautiful things, and that would be not as good. i prefer this way, where we buy butter and have time to focus on what we like to do. in order to evolve to this point, we have gone through great suffering in the industrial age to create the processes to ship the butter to cub foods where i may swipe my little card to ding some digits in exchange for the agitated cow juice in a box.

i feel (hope) that we are in a place where we are learning as a species to transcend this. certainly that's not been the case so far - we have worse wars, suffering, and misery on this planet than we knew was achievable. our information/news/24-hour/500 channel/google society can tell us ad nauseam of all the horror and atrocity being launched against us collectively. it is my belief that no unenlightened being can be at peace when there is suffering in the world. enlightenment, i believe, is removing oneself from the cycles of fear and drama that perpetrate our human society, rooted in the fear of death and a scarcity mentality. enlightenment involves a deeper connection with nature, the universe, and a sense of interconnectedness that removes that fear of death because that deeper connection reinforces the idea that nothing is without purpose in a scheme much larger than any individual. if I die, it is of perhaps no consequence to the universe, but i also have the power to impact the existence of those around me and those who will come in the future.

to wrap this all up: the worldview that has been taught to our society is flawed at its core. in other words, religion is wrong. perhaps it worked in its time... i have no way of knowing. all i know is my own experience, and when i look around at this world, there is too much needless pain and suffering. our institutions, including government, business, and religion, have become so large that they are collapsing in on themselves. from the rubble we will rebuild a system which makes sense, which seeks to help humanity to grow and evolve like a tree, rooted in the earth and reaching for the stars.

or we will die in a nuclear blitz. either way.

xo

aaron