Measuring The Strength Of Your Convictions

I had one of those days again today. You know the type. It all started with Facebook.

Of course it did.

As usual, I was checking my News Feed for the god-knows-what'th time, minding my own business by creeping on everybody else's, rapidly scanning over the boring statuses for pictures of girls in swimsuits (seriously spring and summer, come on), when I found the following gem that had been shared by one of my acquaintances:

"Well that doesn't seem so bad." - The four rational people left on earth.

If there was EVER a reason to boycott something....?

Yeah, I can't do this anymore. The person who posted this is no longer my (Facebook) friend (yeah, take that, asshole). This goes for similar future posts as well. When somebody shares something like this, I will remove them from my virtual life, and, in doing so, will unavoidably enrich my real-life life. It logically follows that if I delete everybody from my virtual life, that my real-life life would be at its best. While I can't argue this, I am a slave to Facebook in the same sense that each of you are... The absolute sense. Thus, as I'm unable to remove Facebook in its entirety, I've chosen to remove the parts of it that make me the most upset: the idiots.

It's a tall order. There are LOTS of them. Infinity, or more, early calculations are leading me to believe.

I don't mean to come off as an elitist, or even as somebody that places myself above these people. I believe, with every ounce of my being, that if you read the things that I write or post or share and they make you feel the way that I felt when reading the aforementioned post, you should do exactly the same thing that I do and delete my ass. I'm not joking... Get rid of me. As I do, you have the inherent right to surround yourself with people that make you happy and bring good things to your life. It's a fundamental drive of human behavior... Pursue the good, remove the bad. 

A lot like this, kind of. 

Brad Pitt taught us a lot that wild night. If somebody or something that you encounter in your life is dragging you down, kill it. Metaphorically, of course. Unless you're good at hiding bodies, in which case I'd like you to shoot me a quick message sometime because I have some people I'd like to talk to you about. 

The point is this: there is nothing in the world that is more infectious than an idea. I know that this is true because Leonardo DiCaprio says it in one of my favorite movies. When the idea is a good one, the world becomes better for it (until the idea's pioneer gets arrested for naked insanity). When the idea is a poisonous one, well, I write a blog about it.

Oh, and it seems to spread like a goddamn wildfire (the idea, not my blog).

Which is what brings us here. I recently shared my feelings about a picture so uniquely ignorant that it inspired me to get all political and stuff. As a general rule of thumb, my mind works in a highly analytical way. Unfortunately, that seems to come at the cost of a great deal of creativity. I am not a person who typically generates great ideas out of thin air; I usually need to be inspired, even if it's not in the positive sense of the word. 

In my last entry, I saw something awful and was inspired to call out its bullshit. I was hoping that part of my persona wouldn't be back quite so soon. 

And yet... Ugh... Here I am. I probably should have known better. 

And of course the topic is a sensitive one. In case you didn't have your reading glasses, or just didn't even bother with the text from the first picture I posted, please allow me to summarize the content for you: there is a movement afoot that aims to discourage people from accepting certain coins worth a dollar that do not contain the phrase "In God We Trust" on them, because this apparently is the beginning of Obama getting rid of God, or something. 

Tommy and I have pretty compatible worldviews. It's no stretch

to say that you'll probably see this look again.

In general, people tend to have some pretty wild misconceptions about the president's capabilities, but that's for another blog. The most painful part of reading the God-coin post is finding out how much energy and emotion people are willing to invest in something that, if they're just able to put it into perspective, shouldn't matter to them at all. 

I'm bad at a LOT of things, but I'm generally very proud of my ability to put things into perspective. It's not always easy; it requires the ability to ascribe an appropriate emotional value to an event or other stimulus, and that's a slippery notion in and of itself. Emotion is a purely subjective phenomenon, something that each of us experience uniquely, so it logically follows that the emotional value that we assign to the things that we encounter in our lives will be very, very different. 

So, if I truly understand that, what right do I have to make a fuss about all of this? None, maybe. But there are a couple of things that are worth discussing, at the bare minimum, and, as I mentioned in my very first post, this is MY blog, and if you want to talk during it, you're going to have to raise your goddamn hand and leave a comment like everybody else.

And so, justified or not, I'm going to verbally attack (gently) those who are, as I see it, overreacting to this. Fortunately, my intention is not so much to maliciously belittle as it is to provide some constructive criticism.  We, as human beings, suffer from some pretty bizarre psychosocial afflictions, but you have to examine them a little to understand just how absurd they really are. I'm going to go off on what could seem like a tangent here for a second, but I will bring things back around to the God-coin abomination eventually, and we should have some real fun in the process. I promise!

"That hurts, Gene. You know how 

important my word is to me."

I'm just going to come right out and say this: human beings have some pretty wacky tendencies that are slowly but surely sucking every last bit of goodness from this world. Here's one way how: as a living organism, we have a number of fundamental needs. Renowned psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow touched on this with his world-famous "Hierarchy of Needs," which looks like this:

Doc Maslow was a brilliant man, and he was a bit of a revolutionary for setting up an easily interpretable visual analogy representing the order in which our human needs must be met. For those of you who pursued a more difficult and/or more useful degree than I did, the basics of what you're looking at above are as follows: much like the creation of a physical structure, the upper levels are useless without some sort of foundation. As it applies psychologically, Maslow theorized that more abstract needs, or those higher on the pyramid above, can not be pursued until those concrete needs on the lower levels were met. For example, while it would be lethal to go for extended periods of time without food or water, most of my friends (myself included) have sadly gone considerable durations without any semblance of morality, achievement, respect, or sexual intimacy, even if we'll lie when confronted about it. 

"Four times in the last three days, Gene, and they all told me

I was the best they'd had in all of the universe. No joke."

Maslow hit the nail on the head with his hierarchy, but he died in 1970, and there is a big difference between a psychologist and a psychic. He also had a very positive view of human beings, so no amount of intelligence could logically have led him to predict that people in the 21st century would be quite so batshit fucking insane. Because I've had the honor of living in these nonsensical times, I've decided to help ol' Abraham out by adding what appears to be the most essential need humanity has ever known. The amended hierarchy looks like this:

This is HUGE for most people. In any argument regarding something that people feel passionately about, it is virtually guaranteed that all parties involved would rather commit violent public suicide in the name of their cause than admit that they were wrong. If they do eventually, miraculously become better, more mature individuals and concede the argument, they will vehemently defend their reasons for being wrong, highlighting some bullshit research or something so that they can pass the blame to somebody else, because if you look hard enough, you can find research supporting just about anything. For example, there is an abundance of research on both sides of the "Do Violent Video Games Cause Violent Behavior" debate. Some of it says yes, some of it says there's really no correlation, and some of it says they actually provide the child with an outlet for violent behavior. It really depends on the subjects, the researchers, the methods, and how well the experimental design is able to account for other causes. All of these things cannot be absolutely true all at once, so the real explanation is that there's something else causing all these results. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that, like most of our problems, it's probably just shitty parenting. That subject, however, is for a blog or twelve of its own. 

The problem that all of these things together create is that of a phenomenon called "confirmation bias," and to a watcher of people, it is just goddamn fascinating. In short, confirmation bias is our tendency to seek out and welcome data or information that supports our own feelings, all the while ignoring any and all evidence that disproves those feelings. We do this a fucking lot, and I do mean all of us. We're hardwired to do this. Being right feels very good, and being wrong sucks. It's the fundamental difference between whether you have a decent grip on reality or you're just kind of shitty at life in general. The more often you lose your arguments, the closer to the latter you fall.

Ok. Now that we've discussed that, let's make our first left turn around this excessive race track of logic and tolerance and work our way back to that elusive finish line of holy-shit-get-to-the-fucking-point-already.

As it pertains to politics and religion, we need our beliefs affirmed badly. We are this way because there is a LOT at stake when it comes to these subjects, and they're the ones you're judged most severely for should you find yourself locked in a disagreement with somebody. Unfortunately, because being right is so important in these subject domains, yet absolute proof is difficult to come by, a couple of very costly things are also true: 

1) These subjects are the ones that people are least likely to alter their own feelings toward, and it takes far more evidence that is, ironically, much more difficult to find.

2) It is much more difficult for people to even tolerate individual differences in these areas, mostly because your feelings in these areas are rooted in some of your core values. Every attribute you possess says something about you, but these beliefs tend to more accurately capture the very essence of "you." Thus, simply knowing that somebody doesn't see this your way creates a sort of internal conflict for you where you really need to know how anybody could be ok with being THAT wrong. 

Left turn.

Here's my theory: the harder you press your beliefs on other people, especially those who adamantly and effectively reject your advances, the less secure you probably are in said beliefs.

Pictured: The universal expression of the belief-

pushers  somehow still reading this blog.

Human beings, at their core, are just intellectually advanced animals, and our most fundamental, paramount internal drive is that of self-preservation. This isn't to say that everybody who tries to recruit you to their cause is doing it out of self-interest, but a lot of them are, and you know them when you see them because they just can't fucking let it go. What they're really after isn't your salvation, it's your validation. It is the concrete that will allow them to solidify the shaky foundation on which their entire belief system is built. They need it because said belief system is, as mentioned before, a part of who they are, and as such is very, very difficult to abandon. These people are infinitely more likely to choose anger and bewilderment in response to your lack of compliance. Anger is easy and convenient. These people are inherently drawn to it for that very reason. 

Left turn. Stay with me...

So this God-coin thing is bugging the shit out of me. Here's why:

1) It's being shared over and over again via the world's most influential medium and it's not even entirely true. This rumor was squashed a few years back when they discovered that, indeed, a single batch had accidentally been put into circulation missing the phrase "In God We Trust." The rest of the coins? A simple design change now has it wrapped around the outside of the coin instead of on the faces, where they also moved the secular phrase "E Pluribus Unum," a reference to the idea that our one nation is made up of a number of unique individual states, to allow for more badass artwork on the faces of the coin. You could make the argument that they moved it because they want to hide it, but I could counter with some food-for-thought argument pulled out of my ass like "Perhaps they wanted that phrase to surround our coin the way that God's love surrounds us like a warm embrace in the sunshine," or some shit, and I wouldn't necessarily be wrong. You see, the location is yours to interpret as you will. If you are a belief-pusher who has made it this far in my blog without punching a hole in your computer, my guess is that you'll disregard my explanation in favor of your own (see: bias, confirmation). 

2) Let's pretend for a second that we really were getting rid of that phrase on our coins. How bad is this really? Before you answer, I'd like you to consider a couple of things. First, how badly do you believe that God wants his name plastered all over what most people would consider to be the physical representation of human greed? I'm not a Christian, but I grew up in a Christian household and went to church most of my life, and the God that was always presented to me probably wants money to be the last thing in the WORLD that would ever remind you of him. I believe that the big guy in the sky probably gives right about zero fucks about what we do with the design of our currency, or roughly the same number of fucks that these people give about atheists, who are required to use a currency with a motto stamped on it that they simply don't believe in. Which brings me to my next point...........

3) Our currency doesn't really seem like the most important, relevant, or effective place to express personal beliefs, so why can't it be neutral? Every American, if paying in cash, has no choice but to use these coins and bills, but America is not what it once was (white Christians and slaves with no say anyway), and it's ok for our currency to reflect that. It's better than ok... It's right. The atheists out there aren't lobbying for the phrase "God isn't real" or "Fuck yeah, Science" to appear on the coins, they just want to be regarded as equal human beings with real live feelings and emotions, just like you. Wouldn't that be something? How do you think God feels about that?

4) Most importantly, if you're the type of person who's worried about God disappearing from our nation, whether it be on our currency, on our courthouses, or in our schools, don't be. It really is that simple, and I'll help you do it. If you're worried for your own sake, then I challenge you to find some measure of strength, solace, and confidence in your own beliefs. You don't need to see the word "God" on a coin to enrich your spiritual life. You need a bible, a group of people with similar values to hold you accountable, and a level head on your shoulders. Dr. Josh's prescription advises that you introspect, reflect, and then go out into the world and treat people well, and when/if they ask you why you're so happy, give them a taste of your testimony. If they want to know more, tell them. They'll want what you have, but not if it's bitterness and an elevated sense of self-importance. If God wanted to be forced on people, I have reason to believe that he'd probably just do it himself instead of entrusting the task to a species quite as incompetent as ours. I can tell you from personal experience (mine) that there are assholes (me) out there that are so ridiculously stubborn that if you overexpose them to something before they're ready, they won't handle it the way that you were hoping for. In the end, it's likely to hurt you far more than it will them, especially if they're your child.

Speaking of which, if you're upset that they're not praying in school or whatever anymore, please get your shit together. They're not denying the existence of God, either. You are your child's biggest role model... If you are present and loving, no person will have a more profound impact on their life than you will, no matter what. Live a life that they want to emulate. When other kids tell them things that your family doesn't believe in, sit down and have a serious conversation with your child, and don't pull the "Stay away from little Ronnie" speech that's going to make him really, REALLY want to hang out with Ronnie. Talk to him about why exactly this is going on and why people have different beliefs. Kids are scary smart, and they don't miss nearly as much as we think they do. They don't get enough credit for that. Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert, but as somebody who's spent a lot of time around kids (without actually having any of my own), I can offer at least some testimony that looks like this: You will be downright amazed at the types of positive responses you will get if you just put a little bit of faith in them.

Pictured: Maybe too much faith.

Try this: model good behavior for them, educate them about why you do the things you do, and see what kinds of decisions they're capable of making. Then talk to them about those decisions, and see what they choose to do from there. They don't need to have a rehearsed, generic, and utterly meaningless prayer at school to become good Christians, they need you to show them why they should be. 

Yes, it is that simple. Now go out into the world and pour your energy into things that matter. This God-coin issue is hazardously illusory in significance, and it has caused me to write more than any man or woman should ever have to read. For that, I apologize. If you'll excuse me, I need to pour my time and energy into looking for something else to get upset about.