Very strong opinion makes me uncomfortable. I’m an atheist, but I don’t like when people rail against religion and dismiss people with any sort of religious belief as stupid and ignorant. I don’t like Bush, but I hate when people dehumanize him and refuse to believe he could ever do anything good. I’m a vegetarian, but I don’t like militant vegetarians or vegans who try to make people feel bad for eating meat.

I think it’s because I don’t like absolute, unshakeable belief. I think that absolute faith in the truth of every word of the Bible and belief that everyone who doesn’t feel the same is going to Hell is on par with the belief that religion can never do any good, no matter what. The people I really respect are the rational ones who don’t get carried away by their ideas either way- people who are willing to accept that the other side can be okay, sometimes.

Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. The guy knew what he was talking about. I think that to be a wise, thoughtful, intelligent person, you have to be constantly examining who you are and what you think. You can’t just take a single conviction all the way and never consider that it may be flawed. It often leads to dehumanizing your “opponent,” and that’s one of the worst things you can do.

It sounds like something they tell you in kindergarten. “Everyone has feelings!” But it’s true. People don’t seem to really think about it very often. I forget it all the time. I think that if there is a root to everything bad going on in the world (I won’t say “evil,” because I don’t believe in it), this is it. Oh, it’s fine to torture them, they’re not really people- they’re fags, or Jews, or criminals, or terrorists. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, no matter what they’ve done. I was visiting a court as part of a program last summer, and I ended up sitting next to a man who turned out to be a sex offender of some sort. Afterwards, everyone talked about how freaky and disgusting it was that I had actually been sitting next to him. They had forgotten that he was just a guy. A guy who had done some messed up things, yes, but still a person. His body was just the same as anyone else’s body, why should it be strange to sit next to it?

It’s definitley something I need to work on. I tend to take on an Us vs. Them attitude pretty easily, and I’m most comfortable having a few close friends and ignoring everyone else. I need to work on talking to more people. It’s not a good way to be.