On being good for goodness sake.
I live a mere 9.1 miles from my job. It takes me slightly over an hour of metroing and busing (or busing and busing) to get to my job. This means, in the approximately 129 days I have traveled to my current employer, I have logged at least 258 hours of mass transit, not taking into consideration delays, broken trains, no-show busses, or times I just couldn't take it anymore and started to walk home only to realize how truly psycho an idea this really is. 258 HOURS. This strikes me as an insane amount of time to be doing something so wholly unpleasant. I am fairly certain that Magellan circumnavigated the globe in less than 258 hours. I am also fairly certain Magellan's ship didn't smell like urine or curry or lurch uncontrollably all the time. Actually, it probably did all these things, with the exception of the curry smell…But if a curry smell DID start wafting through the air, I bet it at least had the decency to wait until after 9 AM, so the crew didn't think it was going to toss their 16th century equivalent of Cheerios' over the port bow.
What bothers me so about mass transit is that there is no turning your face away from the city or its inhabitants. They are right there, in your face, v. often being unpleasant—throwing newspapers at my head (the only proven use for The Express to date), fighting, belching, probably coughing or sneezing or positively reeking of Ax body spray. It's an all-out assault on the senses. It smells like pee, it's loud, it jostles you over the bumpy roads and lurches to an abrupt stop every block. And just when I think it can't get any worse, when I am squeezed next to a large person and my bag, no matter how I try to maneuver it, just doesn't fit thanks to the girth of my commuting neighbor, I look up to see an ad asking me to not believe in anything, just don't be an asshole for the sake of not being an asshole. A quaint holiday message brought to me courtesy of Karl Marx?
This "advertisement" or whatever the hell it is, is aptly placed. I can't think of a better place to tell people that God hasn't forsaken them, he (she) indeed does not exist and therefore cannot forsake you. The only proof you need of it is to look at the sad person sitting next to you. But be nice to them, because it is the Proper Thing To Do. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/12/godless.holiday.ap/
Part of me understands that this Campaign for the Belief in Nothing is only a natural, inevitable reaction to the craziness that has given us "intelligent design" as a subject of a science class and what appears to be constant retelling of the Scopes' Monkey Trial, 80+ years after the fact. I dig that the American Humanist Association has the right (and $40,000) to say what they want (oh, that Bill of Rights of ours…).
But.
Call me a cynic, but appealing to people to be good for its own sake with no incentive is bollocks. No giveaway? No "man is made in god's likeness and we are all his children" to justify not being a scourge upon humanity? No discount at Whole Foods? No promise of a federal stand-by line of credit worth billions? Come on. Maybe the humanists are unaware that most bus riders can't, won't, or just don't see the point of reading the final destination of the very bus they are boarding. And that's not even an ad. It's a word and a number. In lights.
Ninety-one percent of Americans believe in God. So, by my public-ivy trained brain, I would wager that 91% of Americans would find this ad somewhat offensive. Faith is not religion. Religion is politics with a robe. It tells us what to think, how to pray, what Bible verses to read and memorize. Like politics, it gives us conflict, from the Crusades to modern times. Faith gives us strength. It can give compassion. It can give a sense of purpose. This ad, to me, attacks faith, not religion. And frankly, what's so bad about faith? Faith is something sacred and private. It is beyond the realm of advertising. Anything to try and breach that is just in bad taste.
I don't have $40,000, just a SmartTrip card and a hope, buried v. v. deeply inside the cynic, that there is more to this world than 258 hours of lurching, urine, and ads blasting faith as illogical, uneducated , or unnecessary. So, in short, I'll be an asshole if I want to be, when I deem it necessary and fitting to the situation. And I'll keep my faith if I want to, if that's OK with you.
What bothers me so about mass transit is that there is no turning your face away from the city or its inhabitants. They are right there, in your face, v. often being unpleasant—throwing newspapers at my head (the only proven use for The Express to date), fighting, belching, probably coughing or sneezing or positively reeking of Ax body spray. It's an all-out assault on the senses. It smells like pee, it's loud, it jostles you over the bumpy roads and lurches to an abrupt stop every block. And just when I think it can't get any worse, when I am squeezed next to a large person and my bag, no matter how I try to maneuver it, just doesn't fit thanks to the girth of my commuting neighbor, I look up to see an ad asking me to not believe in anything, just don't be an asshole for the sake of not being an asshole. A quaint holiday message brought to me courtesy of Karl Marx?
This "advertisement" or whatever the hell it is, is aptly placed. I can't think of a better place to tell people that God hasn't forsaken them, he (she) indeed does not exist and therefore cannot forsake you. The only proof you need of it is to look at the sad person sitting next to you. But be nice to them, because it is the Proper Thing To Do. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/12/godless.holiday.ap/
Part of me understands that this Campaign for the Belief in Nothing is only a natural, inevitable reaction to the craziness that has given us "intelligent design" as a subject of a science class and what appears to be constant retelling of the Scopes' Monkey Trial, 80+ years after the fact. I dig that the American Humanist Association has the right (and $40,000) to say what they want (oh, that Bill of Rights of ours…).
But.
Call me a cynic, but appealing to people to be good for its own sake with no incentive is bollocks. No giveaway? No "man is made in god's likeness and we are all his children" to justify not being a scourge upon humanity? No discount at Whole Foods? No promise of a federal stand-by line of credit worth billions? Come on. Maybe the humanists are unaware that most bus riders can't, won't, or just don't see the point of reading the final destination of the very bus they are boarding. And that's not even an ad. It's a word and a number. In lights.
Ninety-one percent of Americans believe in God. So, by my public-ivy trained brain, I would wager that 91% of Americans would find this ad somewhat offensive. Faith is not religion. Religion is politics with a robe. It tells us what to think, how to pray, what Bible verses to read and memorize. Like politics, it gives us conflict, from the Crusades to modern times. Faith gives us strength. It can give compassion. It can give a sense of purpose. This ad, to me, attacks faith, not religion. And frankly, what's so bad about faith? Faith is something sacred and private. It is beyond the realm of advertising. Anything to try and breach that is just in bad taste.
I don't have $40,000, just a SmartTrip card and a hope, buried v. v. deeply inside the cynic, that there is more to this world than 258 hours of lurching, urine, and ads blasting faith as illogical, uneducated , or unnecessary. So, in short, I'll be an asshole if I want to be, when I deem it necessary and fitting to the situation. And I'll keep my faith if I want to, if that's OK with you.
Comments
As you note, religion is extraordinarily political, atheism included. I always suspected that socialists, and even lots of so-called liberals, have always railed against organized religion not because they object to someone telling them how to think and act, but because they resent the competition for their godless dogmas. At some point in the last hundred years, government replaced God in western society, and I fail to see how we're any better off for it.
The really revolutionary idea - despised by both medieval clerics and modern-day leftists - is to let people think and choose for themselves, free from coercion.
Also, I love how you abbreviate very with v. V. nice.