Easter Sunday

Today is a peculiar day. It's a day whose religious implications pass by us almost unnoticed: Even if we're aware of what the holiday celebrates, I don't think we stop to reflect on what it really means.

Today is Easter Sunday, the day when Jesus conquered Death. By now, it's a story that's been re-told, re-imagined, re-arranged so many times that we hardly even think about what it's trying to say. This story is getting old. It's getting too old for us. It doesn't seem to mean very much, not anymore, not to us. But we're not the people whom this story is for. We're not the target audience.

The story of Easter was meant for people to whom Death is not a distant threat, not someone who waits at the threshold of old age, not a snarky skeleton with a scythe or a woman in black robes. The story of Easter was written for those to whom Death is an enemy; for those who live in constant fear of plague and famine and bullets. Because death may be a natural thing, and it may be something that we can accept and talk about and understand, but ultimately, it is destructive. Death ends things. We can wax poetical about it, but at the end of the day, death hurts – not so much its victims as it hurts those who are left behind. But we can't hope to understand this. I don't understand it. I have never seen the ugly face of death up close – the random, pointless, indiscriminately cruel face of death – and I pray I never will.

The story of Easter is written for those who have seen that face. It is written for those who have seen people crucified by the Romans, slaughtered in the World Wars, burned by napalm, taken by the Black Plague. Those people are not us.

But if there's one thing we should take away from the story of Easter, it's that those people are still out there, and to them, this story is still meaningful. It doesn't matter that Jesus came back; that's not the important part. What matters is that things got better, that things will get better.

And so, the true meaning of the story is this: If we work hard, if we live our lives with grace and virtue and compassion, then there may come a day when nobody needs to hear it.

A nasty habit of reblogging

It's a bad habit and I should stop, but I just can't help quoting this piece from Slacktivist:

>>[R]ights are meaningless unless they apply to everyone. “Rights for me, but not for thee” doesn’t really mean I have rights either — just tenuous, fragile privileges I can enjoy and defend until such time as thee and me switch places.>>

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

--Dr. Keith M. Kent

sometimes it's really hard to get out of bed in the morning and i don't know why i even try. i think this is why i should though.

Cut off his hand!

So here's a thought. When I was younger, I spent a lot of time thinking about the Middle Ages, as young people are wont to do. Now, when I read and learned about their legal system, it struck me as odd how steep the punishments were for stealing, as opposed to - in our view - much worse crimes, like murder or rape. Stealing was considered one of the worst crimes, punishable by gruesome execution, maiming, and the like.

Now, a lot of people attribute this to cultural differences and talk about "honor" and stuff, but I think the reason behind the steep punishments for stealing is actually far simpler: In a society of medieval tech level, killing or raping people - at least people who matter - is actually kind of hard, especially without anyone finding out. Even just murdering your oafish neighbour requires you to actually get close to him and try to hit him with a club or something, which means that murder is inherently pretty dangerous to pull off.

Stealing, on the other hand, is really, really easy. In a country with medieval tech level, the only thing that'll stop you from stealing is if someone is physically blocking you from it. Medieval locks could basically be picked with anything vaguely toothpick-shaped, and it's not like they had any more sophisticated burglar alarms than - usually poorly trained and mistreated - guard dogs. And that's just trying to steal valuable, expensive things - trying to nick some guys' fancy bronze knife that'll fetch you food for a week is as easy as reaching a hand into his coat pocket when he isn't wearing it.

So, to compensate for how easy it was to get away with theft, people made the punishment really, really steep, to try and discourage people from pulling off what was arguably one of the easiest crimes you could commit. Gradually, security improved and peoples' situations improved, so there was both less of an incentive to steal, and a lot more work involved in doing it. Today, you wouldn't steal a car or a TV because it's a lot of work, and there's a high risk of being caught.

...you see where I'm going with this?

Stealing a car or a TV is hard. It requires prep-time and a well laid out plan to get from "see car" to "sell car to shady guy in Poland". On the other hand, downloading a movie or a song is ridiculously easy. It requires no work, there's a minimal risk of being caught, and it's overall just not terribly dangerous.

So society has responded by going medieval on our asses. Sure, there's no killing or maiming of pirates, but that's just because our legal system is nicer overall: The punishment for piracy is still highly disproportionate. So we're back to the same morally confusing system: Surely it's worse to beat someone up and steal their stuff, than it is to download their music? Surely people in the middle ages thought it was worse to murder someone in cold blood than to take his shiny knife and leg it, but people weren't very likely to just randomly murder someone outside a wartime situation ("war" in this case also including family feuds, which were basically wars between small-scale nations). They were, on the other hand, probably tempted to nick shiny stuff all the time.

The punishment for theft was so steep precisely because it was so common. It is the same with piracy in our age.

And it's a retarded system. It didn't work for the Middle Ages, and it won't work for us.

Sharing A Talk

I don't necessarily agree with every little detail, but he has a very good point: There is a lot we can learn from religion without necessarily becoming religious.

Reblogging

All the cool kids are doing it.

Here's something I want to share:

Letter To 1962

The Male (Homosexual) Gaze

Related to previous topic:

Maybe this is what a lot of homophobia is rooted in, as well? Like, a lot of dudes, when they hear their friend is gay, react like this:

"Oh. Uh, so, um. Am I turning you on right now?"

It's like they're afraid that the gay dude will turn them into a sexual conquest, and men don't want to be sexual conquests. Women don't either, of course, but society tells them that it's okay. Men are deeply afraid of being objectified.

Sidenote:

This would be the thing I would hate the absolute most if I were gay. It's like suddenly, people think you're this weird pervert who gets turned on by 50% of the human population, all of the time, always. It would suck.