help out my friend (WOLFGIRL7!! Go check her out, darnit!) with getting some things across about religion, prejudices, and judging people without knowing more about them.
Honestly, I feel I tend to leave my ideas in the dark too much, even though I talk about speaking my mind. So, I'm going to seize the opportunity (aka when I've already got all my Animation work done for the quarter. woot!) to get some things across. First of which being the idea of judging people without knowing them.
Now, this is something that tends to bug me a little. Probably 'cause I tend to be in that category that noone dares to talk to because I might ruin their rep or something (no, this is NOT a "woe is me" moment. I couldn't care less what they think of me). Now, what exactly happens when people do that? You know, stereotype or put labels on people? "Oh, she's blond. She must be an idiot. I only talk to smart people." Believe it or not, there are PLENTY of brilliant blond people. They even lead countries (Germany's Prime Minister happens to be a blond woman). "She's asian, she must not drive very well." Who cares? I doubt not ALL asians drive poorly (though, I know some asians tend to tease themselves over this quite a lot. haha..). And for the love of God, not all black people are ghetto, in gangs, and/or kleptomaniacs. My best friend happens to be black (to put it in simple terms. She's actually..like..Native American/Black/White/random other stuff-ness...). But that doesn't mean she goes around killing people, stealing your stuff, doing drugs, and hangin' around with the "wrong crowd."
Which, by the way, also gets me a little peeved. "Wrong crowd?" No, I'm not particularly thrilled with some of the people who are in gangs and hanging out with other people who do drugs and such. But who a person hangs out with does not determine who they are. Yes, some of these people really do have some issues, but what is a gang anyway? We say gangs are horrible, but a gang is more like a gathering of a group of friends. So ALL gangs or absolutely horrid? The gangs around here don't even do anything, really. One or two actually do some really bad things, but most of them just hang out at night in the neighborhood, laughing and snacking (...sounds like my group of friends..).
Anyhoo....-ding- New topic! Where I wanted to go with all this is kind of leading into religion. We're so caught up in who's religion is right that we've stopped caring about the actual people. Now, I'll say right now, even though I love my dad, he's can be such a butthead when it comes to "the Christian way." He never once stops to think for just a second that someone could be nice just because. To him, if you're nice, you must be Christian. And the other way around, a Christian must be nice. Now let's just put it this way, not ALL Christians are nice. And not ALL nice people are Christian. I actually hang out with plenty of people who are, in fact, NOT CHRISTIAN. And they're some of the best people ever. One my friends is Buddhist, and she's probably the sweetest person ever. On Homecoming, she went over to the flower store during dinner, bought a bouqet, and gave every girl a rose, and the two guys the tops of a rose to put in their jackets. When there were some left over, she went over to another group of friends going to the dance, and gave them flowers, too. Now doesn't that make you wanna say: "Awwwwwwwwwww!" haha...yea. We all did, so it's okay. haha...
And just to get it out there, I'm so sick of people dubbing pagan religions "the devil's worship." I'll let you know right there that I tend to take insults to them as a stab at my mom. My mother follows a pagan religion. She's..like...neo-Druid or something...I really don't understand it very well myself. But when people go around talking about how horrible those religions are, I get really really pissed. "Oh, Halloween is such an UNGODLY day." Okay, well, it's not a day of worship, true. But in their sense of understanding, it's not going against God, either. It's just the day marked as having the thinnest veil between our world and the spirit world. And to them, this doesn't exactly mean that they're worshipping a day when all ghosts and ghouls go running around rampant, torturing everyone. It's the day of harvest and a day of coming closer to loved ones that have passed. We've turned it into a day where we dress up and go around asking for candy (which, when you think about it, really is mimickry), where it originated as being that you would put out offerings for the dead spirits. Of course, I have NOTHING wrong with dressing up, and I don't think they do, either. My mom makes us costumes (though, she's recently being driven out of her mind with some of them..haha), and we love it.
So, my point is that once again, you shouldn't judge people by their religion. It's horrible. We aren't gonna get ANYWHERE if we keep yelling at each other about who's path of belief is better. When you think about it, we sound like a bunch of kindergarteners arguing over who's parents are better and cooler. "Oh, my God is wayyyyy better than your Gods. Look what my God does!" and "Oh yeah? Well, my Gods can do all this stuff that your God clearly can't. And guess what my God lets me do? I don't see your God being very lenient in the rulebook."
"Psh...guess what? There IS NO GOD!" "You're stupid!"
I'm not kidding. When you put it like that, it really does look stupid, doesn't it? 'Cause from there, it just goes into name-calling. "You're stupid." "You like boogers." "Oh yeah, well you like to eat...VEGETABLES." I mean, really. Does this sound ANY different from what we argue about with religion? "You're stupid." "You're a devil-worshipper" "You're an uptight hypocrite that's only ruled out of fear."
Have I made my point yet? Or must I continue? I certainly hope you get the idea.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that all of our arguments over which religion is better is retarded, and if we're trying to achieve World Peace, it's not gonna happen by getting EVERYONE to convert to one single religion. That'd be like saying the entire fate of the earth lies in getting every single person (what? every person in some BILLIONS of people???) to swim in the Arctic Circle naked. Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't go swimming in that water even WITH clothes on. I'd probably die of hypothermia on contact or something. And no matter what, there'd still be at least 5 other people who would not, under any circumstance, go swimming in the Arctic Circle naked. You'd have to be crazy to do so.
We're not going to achieve World Peace if we're too busy making fun of the what other people are. There's no pleasing the masses, you know. People make fun of black people, and why I have NO idea. Scientifically speaking, everyone's skin is brown. They're just all different shades of brown depending on how much melanin your cells (melanocytes, to put a name to them) are making. And guess what? The amount of melanin your melanocytes make CAN be altered from too much sun exposure. If you're originally a pale person, and you live somewhere in the tropics, your body might just go: "hmm...I don't have enough protection from this amount of UV exposure. How about I up the amount of melanin produced so that I don't end up with skin cancer?" And thus you now have a tan person. Tada. So now that the secret's out that we're all different shades of the SAME COLOR, can we just get along?
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