Being Different

There are Jews in the world.
There are Buddhists.
There are Hindus and Mormons, and then
There are those that follow Mohammed,
But I've never been one of them.

"Every Sperm Is Sacred", lyrics Palin/Jones

Being different is hard enough. When you are only similar to, say, ten percent of other people, you find it hard to relate fully to other people. And when a major poll finds that people like you are the least likely to be elected president, it us discouraging. No one would choose to be that different, would they?

Yet people choose to reject things everyone else seems to just accept. Everyone else rushes to the grocer for bread and milk prior to a snowstorm, but you know your rations are sufficient. People crowd for a chance to be on the local TV news, but you understand the pointlessness of it. Fans camp out for hours for tickets, but you are content with a lesser prize that fits better into your lifestyle.

We make decisions in life that differ from other people, sometimes drastically. Those decisions are not wrong merely because they are different. In fact, we often feel that, in absence of any evidence to the contrary, we may as well be just as right, or more right, than the rest of them.

So what if we took one of the most universal beliefs, namely, the idea that some greater intelligent force has us captive to their power, and decided to question its meaning?

Atheists are people who choose to reject unfounded assertions that some greater god-force has any meaningful reality. Atheists are like the character in the Monty Python slit cited above, except we reject one additional god. We are just like people who don't believe in Greek gods, or Egyptian gods, or Norse gods, but for us, it's any gods.

Just by making that one choice, though, we invite hatred. For some reason the idea of someone thinking outside the "God box" scares the daylights out of people. When we seek equality, we are dismissed as too different. We are distrusted. We are disenfranchised. Not to a horrible, detestable degree - yet. But enough to be noticed.

We saw the Jews. We saw the Irish. We saw the Negroes. We saw the women. We saw the gays. We paid attention. And we learned.

My hope is we can more swiftly dispense with the claptrap of drama and indignity connected to accepting those who are different, and begin appreciating, rather than fearing, the diversity we share.

Because you, in some way, are as weird, different, and special as I am.

I hope that you comment, and share this. I hope to address the questions people have, the concerns they lodge, even the hatred they carry. Please suggest topics for future posts.