Lost Cat, Lost Mind

Silo wandered in about five years ago. The first time I picked him up and scratched his head he purred back at me and rubbed his head against my face, his claws moving in and out against my sweatshirt. That was a sign he was comfortable. Unlike many of the others, Silo stayed a long time and became part of our little family. We spent a lot of time together. Silo and I would walk around the neighborhood during the late evenings, exploring the nooks, crannies, and whatever happened to be dropped by others along the curb.

No. Silo isn’t dead. Maybe. I don’t know. He wandered off a few days ago and hasn’t been seen since. I’ve been a complete wreck all week and I’m driving the neighbors crazy, too. The ‘not knowing’ is the hardest part. If I begin to consider the possibilities I end up lost in a maze of horrible outcomes that I have no way of confirming. Then again, he may just meander back home, like he did last time, acting as if nothing is wrong.

I don’t own this cat. No one really does. Silo was always free to come and go as he pleased and I never tried to shelter him from being an outdoor cat or from the hazards that come with a semi-feral existence. Silo knew where the tuna, catnip, and warm blankets were, so he always came home. This time he hasn’t, and I’m worried. I have to remember that he came in as a stray and never expected to be taken captive. He was always free to go and I guess he finally exercised that right.

I miss him. It was nice to see him running down the street when he saw my car pulling up into the drive. I don’t imagine that cats feel as humans do about love and companionship, but they do understand pleasure and pain much the same way we must, and that includes a pleasant realization of what brings that pleasure about.

I hope he comes home soon, but I’m not confident he will. I really enjoyed his company and I can only hope that he found another comfortable place to mooch his needs. It hurts not to have him around and I’m really unsettled right now. I will keep looking for him for another week or so. This really hurts. I love that stupid cat.

Save Internet Neutrality Now!

Congress is about to sell out the Internet by letting big phone and cable companies set up toll booths along the information superhighway. Companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast are spending tens of millions in Washington to kill "network neutrality"; a standing principle that keeps the Internet open to all.

A bill moving quickly through Congress would let these companies become Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow, and which won't load at all based on who pays them more. The rest of us will be detoured to the "slow lane," clicking furiously and waiting for our favorite sites to download.

Tell Congress to Save Net Neutrality Now!

Our elected representatives are trading favors for campaign donations from phone and cable companies. They're being wooed by people like AT&T's CEO, who says "the Internet can't be free" and wants to decide what you do, where you go and what you watch online. The best ideas rarely come from those with the deepest pockets. If the phone and cable companies get their way, the open and free Internet could soon be fenced in by large corporations. If Congress turns the Internet over to AT&T, everyone who uses the Internet will suffer:

* Google users -- Another search engine could pay AT&T to guarantee that it opens faster than Google on your computer.

* iPod listeners -- Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that paid for the privilege.

* Work-at-home parents -- Connecting to your office could take longer if you don't purchase your carrier's preferred applications. Sending family photos and videos could slow to a crawl.

* Retirees -- Web pages you always use for online banking, access to health care information, planning a trip or communicating with friends and family could fall victim to Verizon's pay-for-speed schemes.

* Bloggers -- Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips -- silencing citizen journalists and amplifying the mainstream media.

* Online activists -- Political organizing could be slowed by the handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay a fee to join the "fast lane."

* Small businesses -- When AT&T favors their own services, you won't be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, and Internet phone calls.

* Innovators with the "next big idea" – Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay for a top spot on the Web.

We can't let Congress ruin the free and open Internet that has revolutionized democratic participation, economic innovation, and free speech online.

Let Congress Know that You Want Net Neutrality Now:

http://action.freepress.net/ct/hp2cTN119PRt/

We must act now or lose the Internet as we know it!

Visit http://action.freepress.net/ct/n12cTN119PRg/ to contact your representative, learn more about this issue, and discuss this campaign with other activists. You can take action on this alert via the web at:

http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet/i7xbwbn2pjnx8jd?

Visit the web address above and tell your friends about this! We encourage you to take action by April 10, 2007.

Don't Let Congress Ruin the Internet!

Stop the greedy corporate assholes and their legislative servants! This is just another scheme to steal from consumers when the money grubbing assholes have run out of new ideas. Rather than develop new technology, they have decided to go back and start re-charging us for the old.

Corporate profits around the world are at an all time high, while the average wage of workers are declining in some places and stagnating in others. Our politicians don’t give a shit how much we pay for our needs because they don’t pay for anything they receive. We have to speak up now or our liberties will end up becoming too expensive to use. In case you’re wondering, this bill is sponsored by another asshole Republican and Texan, Joe Barton. Can we give Texas back to Mexico? Please?

Fuck you, Mr. Barton!

Here is a link to the proposed legislation: http://agonist.org/annex/net.neutrality.bill.pdf

It's My Fault (Voting Machines)

“It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.” (Tom Stoppard)

Several years ago, I was dating a very bright and interesting woman. Unfortunately, our personalities didn’t mesh well, but at least we managed to part amicably. We still maintain a platonic friendship, and I consider her one of the most powerful and passionate intellects I have ever encountered. She recently revealed that she is still very much in love with me (who can blame her?), but she knows, even without my saying so, that I am not interested in rekindling any old relationships. I have moved on.

Sharon and I were both strong, vocal advocates for computerized voting systems long before they became the norm. We thought that computers would be more efficient, more accessible, and ultimately a more cost effective way to count and tabulate votes, especially in a country of 280 million people and growing. Computer voting would also be relatively tamper-proof and reliable. After all, computers were then starting to do everything from accounting to engineering, so why not voting? It seemed perfectly logical.

What appears as logical at one juncture becomes absolute stupidity at another. Since Sharon and I supported the idea of computer voting many, many things have changed. For example, in 1992, internet connections were still primitive by today’s standards, and voting machines, like other computers would most likely have been ‘stand-alone’ units or small networks that could not be hacked via remote user. The multiplicity of codes wasn’t around then either, and we assumed, falsely so, that no one would try to complicate matters by introducing various codes into what should be the easiest program to write.

The greatest error in our judgment came from the mistaken notion that somehow, someway honesty and principle would govern this process. We lived under the mistaken and childishly naïve assumption that each and every vote mattered as much to the politicians and the corporations that would supply the technology as those votes mattered to us. The perfect idea became subverted by the perfect conspiracy; a scheme so pervasive and bold that very few would believe possible, and with even fewer willing to admit to its implementation in spite of the mass of evidence coming forth on a daily basis.

The American voting system has been bamboozled and usurped by money-hungry corporations in league with partisan political operatives. At times, they are the same persons, operating under blatant conflicts of interest; holding public office, demanding the use of particular machines, owning stock in the companies that produce the machines, and refusing any lawful efforts to have the vote tallies or the machines in question rechecked by objective third-party overseers. We also have our Legislators in Washington D.C. marketing and targeting specific bills and laws designed to encourage the use of these machines under the guise of expanding access to voting, yet the evidence shows the results do not match the promises made. To make matters worse, the owners of certain voting machine companies made public pronouncements to ‘deliver’ elections to particular candidates.

I would like apologize to the American people for advocating computerized voting systems. I did not count on those in charge of our systems being so intrinsically corrupt and partisan. I did not factor in greed and bribery, nor did I imagine my fellow Americans, entrusted with the most noble of functions, to be willing to pervert and subvert that precious cause to selfishness and ruthless political gain. I wish now that every letter and e-mail that I authored on behalf of computerized voting systems could now, retroactively, be deleted from history.

I won’t ever forget this hard-learned lesson. I am so sorry.

(For a comprehensive list of articles and new clips on machine voter fraud, please visit Brad Friedman’s “BradBlog”. He provides detailed links and news accounts from persons intimately involved in election supervision and voter machine programming. You will not see things the same after weighing the evidence presented there. Please donate to his blog if you can.)

“Every citizen of this country should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth, their vote has a much weight as that of any CEO, any member of Congress, or any President.” (Barbara Boxer)

The Game I Hate to Love

I am a terrible golfer. Golf brings out the worst in me. I think I was better suited for divorce than I am golf. Nowadays, the mere mention of pummeling a little white ball for hundreds of yards towards a small cup adorned with a tiny flagpole, drives me insane with rage. Some people, however, relish the relaxing atmosphere of the golf course or the skill involved in the sport, but they haven’t set foot on the fairway with this itinerate duffer. I might change their opinions in regards to golf's calming effects. Needless to say, I haven’t golfed in years and don’t plan to but, believe it or not, I really, really love the game.

You might be wondering right about now what drives me to love the game, considering my ineptitude and overall dissatisfaction with it. I love golf because the company’s owners and other managers in my office, from April until November, spend a good deal of time away from the office golfing. You have no idea how relaxing their absence is for me. I have a lot of autonomy even when they are around, but when they’re gone, I feel much freer. I can finish tasks without being bothered with stupid questions or office gossip. It’s very nice when I’m alone at work. I have the opportunity and liberty to putter around the office doing the odds and ends that need careful attention. Sometimes, I even pull up a chair and take a well-deserved nap. I’m on salary after all.

The other guys here used to invite me on their weekly golf outings and I have to admit that at times I was tempted to subject them to the evil being that is my horrible-golfing self. Fortunately, I found a polite way of discouraging them from asking me to join them. Among my hobbies is boxing, and some time ago, I spent a great deal of time training and sparring in boxing clubs. I was never much good, but the workout did keep me in top condition. On occasions when a brave coworker would ask me to golf I would respond “Sure, but on one condition. If you box three rounds with me, I’ll golf eighteen holes with you.” Personally, I don’t know which venture would end up being more painful, but that one precondition was enough to deter any and all further invites out to the golf course.

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.” (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)

Moving Blues

With the price of gasoline rising beyond belief, I have once again begun contemplating the sale of my small, cozy urban home and moving closer to my office in the north suburbs. The daily commute by car is around 20 miles each way and the trip takes one half hour to forty-five minutes depending on traffic and road conditions. Seeing that I have to make the round trip to work at least 6 times per week, from Tuesday to Sunday, you can only imagine how much money I am having to shell out for fuel.

Now I realize that some people spend much more than I do and travel much further distances daily than I might do in three days, and some of those people aren’t worried about gas prices. Well, all I can say is “Bully for you!” I don’t enjoy paying high gas prices and even though in the spring and summer I can bicycle back and forth with little effort, I am still hard pressed to find any merit in being gouged at the gas pump, no matter how much temporary relief I get from other modes of transport. Thanks to the auto industry and the tire manufacturers, Detroit has a crappy mass transit system, and I cannot even make connections to anywhere near my home, even though I am only a short distance from a major intersection. Buses here are no help to me at all.

Moving, even into a moderate sized apartment, has some definite advantages. First of all, even if there were no net monthly savings, I would be within one mile or less of my office and would save hours of travel time per week. Secondly, most apartments or condominiums I am considering are larger than my home is right now. I have only 800 square feet of living space and a small yard. Thirdly, apartment living would alleviate any extra work involved in repairing, maintaining, and updating a home. I’m at the point where none of those chores attract my interest any longer. I’d rather spend more time reading and studying something new than replacing a toilet or mowing a lawn.

There will be two things that I will miss about my home. I do have a nice little garden and I still enjoy sitting under the lilacs that I planted when I moved in and I love the altheas that bloom in late summer. I like the ‘cottage’ feeling of my home; small, efficient, and not more than I need. I am far from being a Spartan or minimalist, but I still shun owning too much stuff or cluttering my home with too much bric-a-brac. My home is also very cat-friendly and the location is perfect for my indoor-outdoor feline masters. There is little traffic and lots of places for them to explore in relative safety. Moving them would upset their routine. They would adjust with time.

Most of all, and probably the one factor that would prevent me from moving no matter what the cost in fuel, are the various critters and varmints that frequent my home on a daily and nightly basis, seeking shelter, food, and a little scratch on the neck. To be honest, I think it important that I be there for the wildlife and neighborhood strays that seek a meal. They entertain me with their personalities and habits. I would miss that very much. I don’t know of anyone else in my neighborhood who feels as I do or would make the effort to help animals in need.

There is also the trouble to fix up and sell the house and I don’t think, considering the current real estate slump, that I’d receive my asking price for it. I would be happy to get out what I put into it at this point. I didn’t buy the home for investment or resale in the first place, but to live in and stay in until whenever. I’m not profit driven in this matter, but I also don’t want to lose money on the deal. The house is paid off, so I’m lucky there.

What to do. What to do.

Labor, Greed, & the Adequate Idea ( in response)

(BlogBlond asked some good questions on the previous post and I thought the response deserved a post of its own. Here goes. My head hasn’t been too clear of late, so please forgive the disjointed ramblings.)

Firstly, it is obvious that Mexicans benefit from coming to US to work. I have no complaint about Mexican labor other than the fact that a large supply of cheap labor drives down the wages of the workforce overall. That is a solid rule of economics called the Iron Rule of Labor Supply. I begrudge the Mexican, Chinese, Hindu, or Polish worker nothing. They work hard and good do work. Problem is, there isn’t enough work and Americans are having to work for less or finding current job markets flooded.

Working in the USA does provide better income than even the best factory jobs in Mexico. A recent study found that Mexican laborers in American-owned factories (in Mexico) did not have any significant increase in standard of living. In fact, some of them are experiencing the same troubles that Wal-mart’s Chinese workforce must endure. The cost of the product doesn’t go down for the consumer either, so where are the profits going? Certainly not to those who do the actual work. The low wage workers of Mexico still cannot afford the products they produce for American markets (many Americans can't either now.)

The Mexican government still operates as did most Latin American regimes until very recently. These governments portray themselves as quasi-socialist, but in fact are nothing more than fronts for the Euro-Anglo aristocracy that has ruled since Cortez. Much of American foreign policy in Latin America is designed to keep these corporate-friendly families in power. Vincente Fox is Irish-Spanish, with no native Mexican blood running through his veins. He is also not a socialist, but a member of the PAN, which is the political equilavant of the American Neocons. Thus, the close ties with GW Bush and Fox’s reluctance to stem immigration.

When one considers the incessant corporate American hatred for Castro, one begins to understand why that animosity runs so deep. Castro, by overthrowing the puppet Battista, defeated the American corporate interests that backed that horrible and abusive regime. We hear the same rhetoric today coming from the right wing regarding presidents Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. It is amazing what gets said when the white-Euros are suddenly no longer in charge. Castro remains the model for the new Latin America; a Latin America that sees through the lies and the exploitative politics of the Pinochets, Allendes, and Noreigas of yesteryear.

As to the Puritans, they seemed to have fared as well as other early colonists, so I’m not going to question their survival skills. The fact that they were required to survive made them survive. I don’t think the British government cared one bit if they made it or not. Either way, they were happy to be rid of them. Always send a crazy or desperate man to blaze a new trail. Rational people are too cautious for that sort of adventure.

The matter of upgrading skills is an important one. I find it insensitive of others who are doing well to point fingers at those who aren’t doing so well and expect them to endure undue hardship in order to achieve something. I find particularly distasteful when those same people, whilst enjoying the profits earned by someone else’s hard work, expect that worker to pay his bills, raise his children, pay his taxes, and then after all that, somehow find the time and resources to provide himself with an education. This becomes even more difficult when wages stagnate, jobs leave the country, and the cost of basic necessities and education continue to rise. One also has to consider the social difference between those who do and those who do not. The narrow-minded don’t take much into account when passing judgments on others in dire straits. The man who has never 'walked a mile in his shoes' now expects other men to run marathons while barefoot. It is crucial to recognize that times and circumstances change.

There is nothing humanitarian about forcing another human being into a difficult position for your own profit. That logic was applied by slave owners who felt that blacks couldn’t function on their own or were too savage to live freely and that slavery was, in their minds, a humanitarian effort to civilize the Africans. The Europeans felt the same way about colonoizing Africa and so did the Americans and Spanish regarding the ‘savages’ of the New World. History has already shown us the real reasons behind colonization. (Hint: It was shiny and metallic.) What could be so wrong with making life a little easier for everyone? It seems to me that the only persons who demand hard work are those who don’t perform it and stand to profit the most form other’s productivity. I see virtue in honest effort, but I find no merit in slaving for others. The logical end of capitalism is not economic freedom for everyone, for there would be no workers, but slavery; the most work for the lowest wage possible to increase profits.

Lastly, the unseen hand that wishes to remain unseen in all things is the hand that acts passively. To abet a criminal all I have to do is nothing. If I do that nothing from a safe distance, and I have no contact with the obvious perpetrators of said crime, then who is know that I am involved? This is quite a good plan until someone actually thinks about it. We charge absentee parents with abuse via neglect all the time. So too, should be be blaming the government for permitting anarachy at our borders. One has to ask why they would allow anarchy. I follow the money. Greed has a way of making people do very evil things in the world around them. Greedy people live without regard for others, as does anyone else whose addictions to sex, power, drugs, or gambling obscure the existence or well being of anyone who gets in their way. Greed is an illness that creates sociopaths. They truly believe that they are entitled by some divine right or principle to exploit others for profit.

One of my coworkers once wisely said “The price of freedom is that you will have to put up with all kinds of crooks trying to hustle you out of your dollar.” That’s a fact of life. The lovers of money didn’t create freedom. Freedom and liberty simply unleashed the money lovers onto everyone else. Capitalism didn’t create the freeedom, the freedom created capitalism as a side effect of allowing people to freely deal in goods, ideas, and services. In a rational society, that innate greed is not praised or envied, rather it is carefully regulated to assure that the inevitable abuses do not occur. We regulate many vices and greed should be no different.

Spinoza defined ‘intuition’ as the ability to use adeqaute ideas to see things for what they really are. He also doubted that many people were endowed with this ability and that those who don’t have it will, out of their own passions, staunchly defend any façade that serves their own interests. The modern-day capitalist relies on slick marketing and pseudo-philosophy to keep us all very busy on his behalf. To quote John Maynard Keynes, "Capitalism is the amazing notion that the wickedest of men will do the wickedest of things for the benefit of everyone."

Rant over for now.

Kol Tuv

It's About Cheap Labor, Stupid!

The deliberate neglect of our border security remains a passive means of continuing the search for cheaper labor. The basic rule of labor supply states that where there are too many workers and too few jobs, the wages are driven down. Now, who does this benefit? It doesn’t benefit the workers, because their sweat and toil doesn’t possess the earning power it used to, irrespective of skill and productivity. When wages are driven down, costs of living are not, and the worker ends up in the hole. Ideally, if labor costs are driven downward, the saving would be passed onto consumers. I’m still waiting for that to happen anywhere in the world.

Now the individual coming to America might have been seeking a new life of freedom and economic opportunity, but that’s not why he was allowed to enter this land. America is sold as the ‘land of freedom’, but it’s never been a land of freedom at all, unless you mean ‘freedom to work’. The Puritans did not come here to establish religious freedom for others. They were forced out of England because their beliefs were do detestable to the Enlightened English mentality that they ended up as ‘convicts’ shipped to the New World in the hope they would either die or at least never come back to British soil. Britain was more than happy to kill both birds with the same stone, ridding itself of unwanted ideas and populating its newly acquired colony in the same fell swoop. Then, as now, it was about moving a labor force into the right position to suit the needs of colonialism and enterprise.

In response to the working man’s loss of earning power, the good capitalist says “So what? Let him go back to school!” Well, our insensitive money-hungry friend is part right. A better education usually demands better pay and benefits. That’s only half the story, however. If that labor problem exists in one sector, then it is possible that the worker can move into another line of work, even reeducate himself, and move on. But what happens if more than just one or even many labor sectors are saturated with available workers? It means that the choices this worker has become strained even further, as the wages and availability of jobs in these other fields are downgraded, either through the import of labor or the export of the job. The business class wins, shifts the blame onto others, and the working class loses out every time.

Think about it. Where would this nation have been without the Chinese rail workers, or without Europeans, dreaming of land and farms, to make the push west? Would the Union have survived without newly arrived German and Irish immigrants filling the ranks of the Union Army? Would our factories and sweatshops have flourished without Eastern Europeans? I tend to think that American industrialists and the war machine (same guys) of the day manipulated immigration policy to meet political and commercial ends. Immigration was about importing labor.

Nothing has changed.

From Brooklyn to Okinawa (My Father's Secret Life)

At some point shortly after the Dec 7^th bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the entry of the United States into the Second World War, my father shaved off his beard and peyos, put away his tefillin, kissed his parents goodbye, and joined the armed forces in hope of fighting the Nazis on their own turf. I don’t know much else about those five years of his life save that he survived and lived to tell very little about it. What I share now was made known to me in bits and snippets of conversations with those who my father confided in during his lifetime. Like most things, my father simply refused to tell me or couldn’t find the words or heart to do so.

I was left with nothing more than fading memories of aging men, their vague recollections of the times, and the context of the events surrounding his military service. I had to somehow piece it all together at some point. Even his closet friends knew almost nothing of his time in the service, never actually saw him in a uniform, or without his levush (traditional clothing) upon his return. He remained apart and away for only as long as it took to do what he felt was right. His beard grew back and his life went on, but I am told that the war changed him in many ways. Having no details of who he was before the war, I can make no comment as to comparisons.

My father went through basic training somewhere in Kansas and was assigned to an engineering battalion. Much to his dismay (or luck), he was not sent to Europe, but to the Pacific. Early on in the war, Jewish soldiers were not sent to Europe because the officers knew that Jewish prisoners of war would be summarily executed upon capture. At least this is what I am told. It makes sense. In any case, my father was not a designated combatant, though he did see combat on more than a few occasions. They did issue him a rifle (he somehow kept it upon his discharge and it was stored in a closet), but I don’t know if he ever used it. His war was fought with a shovel and cement trowel.

Cpl. Aronovitz worked alongside some 2000 other ‘engineers’ building airstrips on islands recently captured from occupying Japanese forces. Immediately after a beachhead was cleared by Marines and barrages from Navy gun-ships, my father’s battalion would land and begin pouring concrete for an airstrip. It was grueling work and often had to be done under the hot sun, in swarms of mosquitoes, and intermittent gunfire from the surrounding jungles, which had not yet been completely cleared of Japanese defenders and snipers. Try doing your job while bullets are being sent your way.

Father kept his old uniforms in the same closet he did his rifle and some other personal items; some of those family heirlooms from Europe and other precious objects he picked up along his way through life. I was not permitted to see the contents of his private treasury, but being curious I did so anyway, and was surprised to find some of these uniforms riddled with bullet holes! This truly shocked me. I know what my father looked like when undressed, as I had seem him any number of times at either the mikveh (ritual bath) or when swimming without his shirt on, and I can assure you, he was never wounded. This question led to my first and only conversation with my father about his experience, and the only time he ever spoke to me regarding the war.

The sneaking-into-the-closet incident occurred shortly after my bar mitzvah, and the question lingered in my mind for some 10 years on before I finally amassed enough courage to ask him outright. It was right after the bris-milah (circumcision) of my second son, E.C., and my father and I were both drinking quite a bit in honor of the simcha (celebration). It was at that point that, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I decide to ‘pop’ the question. My father looked at me with a stunned sort of expression and said “You want to know? So I’ll tell you, but only because of the vodka.”

“The Japanese were very tough and even our best troops had a hard time dislodging even a few of them. I never met one face to face, but I did see many, many dead Japanese soldiers on the islands where we put down airstrips. I felt rachmones (pity) for them because I knew they weren’t going to win the war, and were going to keep fighting no matter what. I could never hate them the way I hated the Nazis yimach shemum (may their names be erased).”

He continued.

“Every day that it didn’t rain and most days even when it did, the weather was hot and we had to work out in the open sun without shade for hours at a time. We would only wear uniforms at night when it cooled off a bit or during days when we weren’t working on the runways. Sometimes our shirts would be draped over clotheslines we set up for laundry or on scarecrows we put up to fool the Japanese snipers. On several occasions Japanese fighter planes would strafe the airfields with machine gun fire and manage only to massacre our clean laundry. This is how my shirts and pants got the holes. I still thank God I wasn’t wearing them very much at all. I kept them so I shouldn’t ever forget.”

(There was one other Aronovitz who fought in the war and was killed in the Battle of Saipan. He is related to us. My father, however, never knew him.)

I had hoped that this conversation would lead to more conversation, but I was to be once again disappointed. My father was never accused of talking too much. We never spoke of it again. Perhaps I should have always gotten him a little drunk first.

My Voice Matters, Too

The true believer may conjure in his mind all sorts of excuses, projections, and rationale with which to assuage his own inner concerns as to why any person would willingly choose to leave a particular faith that so many have come to embrace as eternal and abiding truth, and although in many cases it would be correct to apply such justifications, such generalizations are generally misguided and cannot address the core questions as to the veracity of any religious or supernatural claims, nor do they address the very personal nature of heresy.

It is generally the support system i.e. peers, family, etc. that keeps many of the faithful in line. That is the most basic form of social control. It is only the most intellectually and emotionally courageous who are willing to risk it all and leave the relative comfort of the world they know for the other world they want to discover. Maybe it was a pretty girl that opened his soul to the possibility. So what? People of faith interact with beautiful people all the time and sometimes even on an intimate level and don’t leave their entire religion because of a sexual encounter. How weak is your belief system that a mere roll in the hay can brush it aside? Sexual desire is not an adequate reason to leave a religion; there has to be something much deeper going on. The purpose of any evangelical, were he worth his weight in Bibles, would be to find out what exactly it is that drives some people away. Yet, too few really do that.

The internet affords one an open line of communication and a rare opportunity to get to know the inner workings of those who have already left that faith. I know that the religious faithful wonder aloud amongst themselves and talk about us, though usually in a jocular or condescending manner, but seldom does anyone from the religious world talk to us as equals. I feel sometimes like the elderly person in the nursing home, listening in on a conversation regarding his care, and hearing himself being referred to in the third-person while standing right in front of the participants.

Heretics and apostates are not mentally ill or emotionally stunted. Most of us, no matter what faith we were raised into or what stimulus caused us to rebel against the training of our youth, make our decisions to stay or leave based upon normal, every-day human concerns. It is accurate to say that our personalities do not take kindly to random and mindless conformity, and our ability to think ideas through and recognize truths and falsehoods that emanate from that conformity, does engender a social handicap of sorts. Many of us hold a natural dislike for the common, provincial mindset. We are likely to be at odds with any number of cultural or national trends. That makes us no less human, however. Every religion began with someone doing something radical and unpopular.

It is also assumed by the flock of the faithful that their leaders possess some kind of ‘gift’ for understanding the world, people, and God. This ‘gift’ takes many forms and is considered both the ‘voice of experience’ or ‘divine spirit’. Either way, the spiritual leader is somehow endowed with the schooling and a miraculous form of grace to become infallible and all-knowing in the eyes of his followers. Some even call themselves ‘doctors’. If these evangelical leaders are, in fact, spiritual doctors, then it behooves them to listen to their patients and not treat them offhandedly. It is a classic case of ‘god-complex’. Literally.

We heretics are not your enemies either. We are not out to destroy religion or to stop others from believing or worshipping as they choose, as long as that faith doesn’t demand the eradication or oppression of those with differing viewpoints. I bear no hopes of ever changing anyone’s mind. I do not believe that believers are any less human than I or any less devoted to the things any person would love and enjoy. I have no interest in converting anyone to or convincing anyone to accept the tenets of Naturalism or Atheism. I do, however, take a very personal interest in communicating my own perspective, and not have my side of the story told for me by others who don't know me at all. My voice matters.

If evangelicals believe that the endeavor to bring this heretic back into the ranks of the holy faithful is an Act of Kindness; then they must manifest that effort in a kind manner, and drop the deflection, condescension, and superiority complex that widens that divide. It’s not doing them one bit of good. In return, I will do my best to treat them with the same deference and respect that both their religious faith and my naturalistic ethics demand we bestow upon other human beings, regardless of belief.