Well, it's nice to wake up for the second straight day to a fire-and-brimstone-free morning. However, there are likely a fair few (including Harold Camping) that are NOT waking up to an egg-on-face-free morning. Though I AM waking up to another been-to-Mzoli's-free day, as the plan for Sunday failed to materialize. Such as it is.
As I mentioned in my previous post, (oh, and by the way, here is the B.I.N. Laden parody I mentioned), we were supposed to experience the end of the world on Saturday. It failed to materialize (as far as I can see, though it seems people continue to justify that there was an apocalypse in SOME domain and the world will, indeed, end on October 21... after what will likely be a disappointingly tame six months of fire and brimstone), and there a fair few articles about the after-effects, but one of the most interesting articles includes a psychologist's assessment:
"It's very hard for us to say, 'Boy, was I stupid!' " says Elliot Aronson, a prominent psychologist and co-author of the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, And Hurtful Acts.
"The more committed a person is to their prophecy," he says, "the more likely they are to justify that action, and to try to convince people that their belief was in some way right or good."
I mention that simply because a lot of what I have talked about during this thread has to do with psychology and its 'consequences. So with that in mind, let's move on to the two anecdotes I promised:
The first involves a family I stayed with in Elsiesrivier, one of the more notoriously dangerous 'coloured' suburbs in Cape Town. Because the train ends early and the taxi service ends early, there were more than a few instances where I had to walk about twenty blocks through said 'notorious' neighbourhood to get back to where I was staying, and when I arrived safely, it was always 'a miracle' that I survived. But that's not really the story; it just sets the tone.
This family is devoutly Christian. The father is born-again, or some such, saying that he turned to it as a means to getting his anger and violence in check. And from the stories I've heard he's a pretty crazy mofo telling me about numerous times when he let his fists do the talking with some fairly extreme consequences for others (he kind of has to being a white South African in a coloured neighbourhood) and also about the insane shit that he went through while 'fighting the Cubans in Angola' during the early 80s.
Anyway, during one exchange about religion, I was pressed about whether or not I believed in God. I replied that I had no opinion. I was told that that is not possible. I replied that I don't know enough about it to conclude one way or the other, so I just let it be; at the end of the day, whether God exists or not is beyond my comprehension, and it won't affect the way I live my life, so who cares? Just like I don't know enough about quantum physics or string theory or M-theory or the Higgs Boson or who knows what else to have an opinion. Why is it that the existence of God seems to be the one highly contentious metaphysical issue in the world that you have to have an opinion on??
So anyway, as a demonstration of my apparent 'stupidity', the daughter of 17 called in the 5 to come into the room. And she proceeded to put him on the spot: "Wilfred, does God exist?" He had a very wide-eyed anxious look on his face, and didn't answer. She repeated the question. Still the only response was him searching the eyes of everybody in the room (the sister, the mother, and I, all of whom he knew quite well and was very comfortable around by the time). After a third time, he let out a barely audible, totally unconfident 'yeaaaahhhh'. He was then sent from the room and the daughter triumphantly declared, 'there, you see? A 5-year-old!' I could have gone on and told her how completely ridiculous this 'proof' was, but I decided to save my breath because I knew I wouldn't get anywhere. Whenever I need some sort of religious insight, I always turn to Herr Kierkegaard, and this instance is no exception:
"If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd."
"The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever."
But the inquiries kept coming as to how I could not be religious. So one day, I sat down at my laptop, and composed a brief text file, which was basically an outline of the argument put forward by Nietzsche in 'The Genealogy of Morals' that I've already briefly summarized in Part I. After reading through it, the mother said something to the effect of 'if I didn't know you better, I would think that the Devil was in you'. And I immediately launched my usual counter-attack to these sorts of absurd allegations, namely if the sole purpose of the Devil is to corrupt Christians, then surely he would have been clever enough to write a book, claim it was actually written by God, and have all Christians follow it blindly...
Anyway, perhaps the ending of that was rather anti-climactic. I find most religious debates are, since it usually ends with people agreeing to disagree because neither will budge from their position. But let me speak of another thing that happened to me, the irony of which was so incredibly amusing, and everything set up so incredibly perfectly, if anything would have made me religious it would have been that. But then the way Christians proclaim God as dolefully caring and just, rather than a trickster having a rich sense of humour, the god I would be forced to believe in would be nothing like that. If anything I would have to choose a Loki-esque god. But anyway, here goes (this is a cut-and-paste job I sent to a friend of mine from back in January):
A few days ago I had to invigilate on a math exam. When it ended at 7PM I headed to the train station. There, a man with few teeth and whom age had seemingly not been kind to poked his head around the corner and told me that when he saw me, Jesus came to mind, and, predictably, started launching into a monologue that I have heard many times before wherein people talk about how much they had sinned in the past, then found Jesus and dropped all their bad habits because they had given themselves over to God, God was watching, God would judge, etc. So eventually the train arrived, we went our separate ways and whatever.
Today, I got on the train and found that this same guy was coming towards me trying to sell things to various traingoers (as many in this country do), but he hadnt seen me as he was too busy selling. And even despite the narrow passageway, he didnt look up when he squeezed past me standing in the middle of the aisle, but all the while I was observing him. Then a funny thing happened:
I was standing near the end of the traincar, with only about 4 people on each side in the seats between me and the end of the traincar. And as he got to the very end, he turned to a girl who had apparently asked for what he was selling, but instead of conducting himself in an appropriate manner, he took what he was selling (small sealed packages of razorblades) and made an attempt to place it between the rather massive cleavage that was hanging out the top of her shirt. She appeared very disconcerted about it and he quickly righted himself by jokingly saying 'no sorry let me place it in your hand, all the while sporting the sly grin of an old pervert'.
So of course I started to laugh inside at the irony of it: that he had basically confessed to me as if I was Jesus one day, and then, after walking past me as if I wasnt there, proceeded to 'sin' in front of me, all the while, unbeknownst to him, 'God' was indeed watching.
So after this little episode, he started back, noticed me, asked if i remembered him and what we had talked about. I, still quite amused, said nonchalantly 'dont you think thats a bit hypocritical after that?' and nodded in the direction of the 'incident'. So he murmured some excuse that it was her who had asked him to place it in her breasts and he (gentleman that he was) had declined and placed it in her hand instead ('didn't you see?' he asked). After which he quickly changed the subject to loudly mentioning something about my apparent non-committal to religion and slunk away out of the traincar at the next station.
Maybe next time, he'll take a quick look about to see if 'God' is watching before he decides to 'sin' again, no?
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