In high school I used to get into trouble for not stopping in the hallway to say the Pledge of Allegiance. For years before this, I only pretended to say it, either just moving my mouth or mumbling through the jumble of meaningless words that I had been told to repeat every day of schooling since I was in Kindergarten. I wish I could tell you what I didn’t like about it when I was younger, but I can only say that I had an aversion to it. As I got older, it was the “under God” part that really stuck out. How could I be forced to say this if it didn’t mean anything to me? At the time I was baffled by this because I thought religion was supposed to be kept out of school. Of course as I got older and i moved on from not only religion, but the state, I saw the real problems with this trite piece of nationalism written by a socialist to help sell flags back in the late 1800’s.
A free people should not have to pledge allegiance to any symbol or centralized authority. We aren’t even regarded in most schooling situations as a republic anymore, but a democracy. If you don’t acknowledge a god you certainly can’t be under one. This country was founded on division and should have stayed that way. Finally, there’s nothing to really say about liberty or justice as they are just words, often spoken, but without any scratch of meaning in this country. Not long ago I was at the Republican State Convention in Nevada (I’ll get to that scary piece of info in Part 4) and everyone in the room rose to say the Pledge. It’s disturbing enough to see children reciting this because it’s not their fault. They don’t know what they are saying and they are just following the rules for which they will be punished if they don’t comply. But to see a room full of adults repeating this at an age when critical thinking should be strongest was disturbing to no end. But this is how it is in a world where reality is a burden, and the comfort of words and symbols are all we need to reassure ourselves that we are right.
NO PHILOSOPHY, PART 2
Institutionalized and Crucified: Logic in Wonderland
I wish I could tell you that my first rejection of authority was during my years of compulsory public schooling, but it really wasn’t. While it’s true that my friends and I avoided being a part of that system as much as possible, at the time we probably couldn’t tell you why, and we were there attending every day right through graduation. When I look back, I realize just how unbalanced my life was in a supposedly balanced system. I was mentally detached from the experience. I knew I didn’t want to be there. I did not enjoy the forced association with people I did not enjoy being around. I did not enjoy taking classes with teachers that I knew were not good people(which of course led to just dropping out of sight in those classes). Lastly, I didn’t enjoy taking classes that I simply did not enjoy. All of this leads to a very unhappy person, mostly because you aren’t allowed to articulate these feelings within society as it exists right now. No matter what one could say, if you expressed the sort of feelings I had about existence back then, I’d be wrong because it wasn’t what everyone else was doing. There were no resources available for me to even understand what I was feeling. The only option open was basic teenage rebellion. Grow your hair long. Dress different. Skip class. Smoke cigarettes. Record music. Hang out with your friends as much as possible and ignore the whole damn thing. Be angry. If there were grades for being a dropout without actually having to dropout, I would have had an A.
Writing about my schooling experience it’s easy to see why I was so misdirected throughout my younger years. It’s easy to see why so many young people end up so miserable. It’s easy to see why so many overdo it with drugs and alcohol. A twelve year prison sentence is no way to begin your life, especially an incarceration that is not so obvious.
Imagine having your world completely open at the age of ten, having the ability to make decisions of where you want your life to go, what you want to learn, whether you want to make money or not. But there is a monopoly on youth. It’s schooling or it is wrong. The freedom you feel from leaving this system at that late age of eighteen is indescribable, mostly because it is confusing. Most of us go through our entire lives not knowing that we’ve been locked up. Though not enough of us come out of the haze of compulsory schooling, when you do, it hurts. You realize that in a world without the authoritarian state that forces you to attend their schools, you could have been achieving so much more, way earlier on.
It’s sad that in a country that heralds democracy, which is authoritarian no matter how you frame it, children are given absolutely no real choice. They have absolutely no voice. Decisions are made for them, even at ages when they should be making them on their own. Children are pushed to be dependent, putting their individualism at stake. They are placed in an unrealistic world where everyone is the same age and there is a group of authority figures, completely unearned, that have control over their actions. School is totalitarianism. It is indoctrination. It doesn’t need to just be reformed, it needs to go away completely so that education can take over.
While I was unwittingly detaching my self from public schooling, there was another fabrication of authority that I was attending sort of voluntarily, the Catholic church. I suppose this is more difficult to talk about because it is so personal to so many that I love, but then I have a hard time being less than honest. While religion is partly voluntary, nobody really chooses to be involved, we are all taken along for the ride starting at a very young age, and as you get older and older, you really know nothing else. Religion, like schooling, is indoctrination, and gods, much like presidents and senators, are the made-up authorities in unearned positions that you must listen to and never question. Through all the hours of religious school, Sunday school, and mass, there is never a point where questioning this indoctrination is open to you, and often if you do, you are scorned. There is nothing free about a system built on fear and with such a closed dialogue.
It’s a lonely thing to be a young person with your own ideas about the world and how it works, but to only be presented with one reality. It’s the feeling of being trapped behind bars with the key only so far beyond the cage. Nobody is there to give it to you. You’ve got to figure out how to get it yourself. There is most likely nobody to guide you. And for me, without a tool like the internet, in most respects it took way too long.
I’m not quite sure if I can pinpoint my decision to stop going to church, but I know that it was some time around my confirmation, a ceremony I performed for my parents, but which I knew was the last major religious ceremony of youth and much like graduating high school, I could be free after it was over. An anecdote that sticks out in my mind, and I usually consider stories that stick from youth to be transformative moments, is from a complaint my parents received about me by one of my CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) teachers. Apparently one day in class I was acting out, being a nuisance, or what I would think of as cutting through the bullshit (urges I still get to this day, but can obviously control a lot better, maybe). This particular teacher told my parents that I “crucified” him. To this day that is one of the most exploitive things I have ever heard, and I believe my parents thought so as well. How deep could this individual’s convictions be if he would compare the jokes of a child to the entity he worshipped being nailed to a cross. He was using the story that informs his entire belief system to receive sympathy for his paltry situation. Now you may consider this a small event, but it was huge and eye-opening moment for me to how religion is actually used, as a system of justification and a crutch for ones amorality.
In the previously mentioned crucifixion, religion was used as a sympathy card for an adult who had no idea how to talk to children, but yet was placed in a position of authority over them. But this is minor when compared to how it is used within the world. So lets get a scenario going and explore this through actions of the state.
George Bush, the much loved ruler for eight violent years over the American empire, is well-known for being a Christian, but he’s also well-known for holding responsibility over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, not to mention American soldiers and all sorts of foreign contractors. Now we know that Jesus loves everyone, so I have to suppose this includes Iraqi Muslims even though they worship a different god. So who goes to hell in this situation? Bush, who has probably been forgiven for his sins by a priest, most likely gets a special ticket to heaven even with all the blood that is on his hands. Now I’m only guessing, but because Muslims don’t worship the Christian God they would get sent to hell upon their innocent lives being taken from them by a ticket-to-heaven-having-monster like Bush.
Lets go over that one more time to be clear, George Bush goes to heaven after starting a war and murdering hundreds of thousands and asking for forgiveness, while the hundreds of thousands go to hell for being murdered by a Christian, but not being one. No thanks. If that is Christian morals and ethics, if that is religious logic, I’ll take my own road and free myself from this contradictory conditioning. Forget separation of church and state, I’ve got to separate from the church and the state.
Sure, religion is voluntary, but most of us are indoctrinated before we can make the choice to live life within reality or underneath the weight of yet another authoritarian system. It is always interesting to me to see so many people ready to opt out of the state, but not religion, and so many others ready to opt out of religion, but not the state. They are one and the same, but we only seem to be able to exit one door. You may free yourself and feel the sunshine for a day, but it won’t be long before the sun sets below the horizon and your world is covered in darkness. There is always another door to exit, and then shut behind you forever.
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