Our government funded educational system doesn't really celebrate and encourage excellence, of course it wasn't designed to. The control is to shape people into compliant automatons who run the hamster wheel of work and consume and don't rock the boat more than they can afford to.
I will admit to railing about that loud stubborn minority of, narrow minded bigots who trot out their elitist ways, flailing to keep something that is just theirs, because they feel they are somehow most right. I find people who protect archaic memes to be off putting and less humane or less enlightened than those of us who are rational, intelligent and flexible. You see, I am guilty of their game, but backwards. I value intelligence, a lot. My own and intelligence in others. The world would be too boring if there weren't thoughtful discourse that constantly questions the rules of the game and my place in it. So it's time to question my position. Is my hate for what I perceive as willfully stupid people really justified? And do I have more right to truth than they do?
There are people who fear to turn themselves inside out for the sake of finding truth, maybe it's like polyamory, it isn't for everyone. There are people who never really question the beliefs they carry, or the traditions they practice. Does that make them less valuable and unworthy of my passionate defense? No. Not really. Everything serves a purpose and has value.
So, to focus on resolving this, I intend to thoughtfully entertain the points of view I find so horrible. I mean, to prove that acceptance is the answer. Can I listen quietly, without judgement and without allowing myself to check the "monster" box, thereby dehumanizing those I feel better than. Can I refrain from the very thing I accuse them of? Can I see their humanity beyond their ideas?
How can I cry freedom, freedom and still allow them the right to think, feel, and act, directly against it. I'm not saying I am going to stop advocating against injustice. I just want to look at what harm I may be causing by the attitude and desire to act directly against their freedom.
We talked about Feminism and the harm it does. It takes a lovely idea that women can be trusted to make decisions about their own lives then marginalizes those who use their right to choose, to let a man be their head, or stay home with their kids. There is a point when the fighting becomes so radical and so far from realistic that they just sound like 3 year olds having a tantrum about getting a smaller cookie. That's how the traditionalists sound when they whine about Marriage. They say "Marriage is our toy and you can't play with it or have one just like it cause our gods love us more." or When angry African Americans act like they own "Civil Rights" so no one else can use it. Or when we stand with our rainbow flags and signs long after the violence stops, crying about whatever it is we will be crying when that day comes.
Not to minimize the struggle, of any of these groups and not to say their jobs are finished but at some point we all have to look around and remember we are all human beings. At some point the ferocity of the struggle is less useful. We get so used to waving our flags and shouting our slogans, we don't know when we have won. And it is in this way that the intelligent and the less intelligent among us are equal. We all cry to be heard, to seem valuable, to belong, to be seen and recognized as fully human. With all our stubborn wrongness and messy process be want to know that we have a right to be here and that it is ok to be who we are, even when we are wrong and frightened.
Does that mean any one group has a right to snatch the rights of others away by their actions? Absolutely not. Does it mean we have a right to close the mouths of others for our comfort? No. But it does mean that maybe a realistic look at the fundamental demand is in order. What is real equality going to look like? Is it you getting more rights than me because your people have been more picked on? Is there entitlement attached? Then it isn't equality. It's letting go of fear and remembering that ideas don't make a person valuable. What makes a human human is that they are here presenting as homo sapiens. Since we are all sort of stuck here together we ought to fight less and listen more. A fundamentalist said that to me, maybe I should listen.
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