Atheist Meditations

Social encounters of the last five minutes have set off a series of blogable thoughts. While our neighbors are away, the daughter's fiance - an affable, young chap with a tastefully-tricked, red Dodge Ram - met Cindy on her walk home and detailed his unenviable task. Something had gotten into their trash can and presumably drowned. The nose knows, and this something was a few days damn well past ripe.

He's out there wearing my respirator right now, fishing rotten squirrel corpses out of stagnant water and scrubbing the insides of the plastic dumpster with bleach. I told him that the squirrels were trapped by plastic and water, but he was trapped by the more subtle bonds of relationship. Men who are scooping maggots into a plastic bag are rarely inclined to indulge in the philosophic distractions. Perhaps I was clumsy.

What I had meant to select with that statement was the strength of the bond, a mutual recognizing of it, not to draw parallels between being with his girlfriend and drowning in a rancid pool. Certainly this task sucks, and certainly the motive force that compels one to put on a stranger's respirator and stick one's upper body into a stench and fly infested space is not a weak one. Any of us who are invested in a loving relationship understand how he is trapped by this scenario. Not 'trapped' with a negative connotation, just trapped enough to elucidate the ensnaring motive.

Lets call that Love. As Katharine Hepburn said in a recent A&E Biography I accidentally watched half of, 'a desire to change oneself or do things; to please the one you love.'

What I want to talk about is how Love is both necessary and inevitable in most physical relationships, yet how the intensity of that emotion has virtually zero correlation with the success of said relationship. I want to talk about marriage, meaningful relationships, and spiritual maturity. All the things that go into a relationship that are excluded from the afore defined set. Just because you want to riff on Love like a long-haired 80's rock star in the midst of a 'power ballad', does not mean the relationship will succeed. It's like knowing what what soil, climate, and light are right for planting something, just wanting it to grow is immaterial.

We know relationships implode (or explode, guess it's personal preference.) I do not believe that marriages fail because as Cappellanus's quote 'All Love be Either Increasing or Decreasing.' I think relationships fail because folks are too immature when they enter into them, they don't yet have enough understanding of the world/selves to 'get it.' I'd go so far as to say that the only time relationships actually fail is when one member grows into something more mature or complicated.

Literature is filled with examples of the man who goes off to war or other dramatic experience and then deals with the fact that his wife and him just don't see the world the same way anymore. Feminist Literature has their own paradigm. As Spiritual Beings, we must never be afraid to try to grow into something more, to expand our selves and our understanding.

The main problem is that 17 - 25 is the main time for individuals to make a major leap to a more complicated world-view. Current theories of brain development argue that the human mind is not physiologically capable of higher level moral considerations until sometime in the early twenties.

Some humans want to experience a more complicated reality, some are easily manipulated by their fear of it.

Take the current 'liberal' vs. 'conservative' schlock. I would bet my sideburns that a proud member of the college republicans has never justified selecting a major based on 'I'm trying to find myself,' or 'I'm looking for something that I can be passionate about.' Such Aimless Wanderings are anathema to the conservative movement. Their role-models knew from a very early age what they wanted to do, or what their 'calling' was. The archetype of 'The Seeker' does not exist on their side.

Yet the few rational voices left in the press keep bringing up the disparity between the cultures. Liberals and states that have progressive views on these matters have a much lower divorce rate than the 'red states.' The religious hyperbole of the South won't shut up about 'values', yet they divorce (or murder their wives) at a rate far beyond that of any 'blue state.'

I think it's because of the fundamentalists' foolish belief that seeing a man married at nineteen is somehow a good thing.

Theocracy does not need the level of civic responsibility that Democracy does. In fact, it kinda needs to keep the baseline a few notches beneath most of the twentieth century.

So, us who 'get' liberalism engage and screw during our early twenties, not looking for life partners, just dissipating (the groovitastically pleasurable) primate needs. We read and we dwell and maybe we get depressed, then around three oh we try to accept Mortality and make the most out of who/where we are. We've got a feel for where we are in 'riding the wave' that be life. Let's try to have a good ride.

'Conservatives' (or 'evags' to my more regular readers) are motivated by a sub-conscious knowledge that their belief system makes less sense than a Pepsi commercial. Exciting something, brand name. Exciting excitement, brand name brand name, we all want to be like exciting brand name. Embrace Brand Name. Do not question the word of Brand Name.

I've got two plus hours into this. Please, my friends, 'get' what I'm driving at here. Curse the religiously damaged world that makes these discussions so difficult to initiate.