Double Flee A

I think I've told you this before (as I have done with so very many things), but I once got lucky and happened to ask the right person one of those questions about the world that crop up every so often. He was a pediatric neurologist, and I wanted to know when it is that children go from crying about everything, to crying sepcifically about sadness, and the answer, which I have absolutely no doubt is correct, is "at the time they understand what sadness is", which in terms of actual age is immaterial, but I think was four or five.

Sadness can't be experienced by someone who doesn't know what it is. The capacity for it is there, but it's only a mess instinctive panic and pain. The baby calls, and mother responds with attention. This tends to work out for all creatures.

Now imagine this situation applying to other constructs. An abstract construct like a worldview or belief system can't be fathomed by someone who hasn't given any thought to the idea that there might be more than one. I'm working this out as I go and I only have about five monutes, so bear with me.

Here's how thoughts work. In the brain electricity tends to go down the same little pathways, and the stronger the impression it is that gets made, the more likely a person is, willingly or not, to identify things in relationship to that impression. Indoctrinating a child into the primitive blood cult of Christianity, for example, digs a gorge in their brain, a way of looking at things and at yourself...

There's good and evil and the church is in charge of it all. And if you don't like it you 're going to somehow go to hell, where you will cry and fry in turmoil for all eternity, getting buttfucked by the devil, unless you think getting buttfucked by the devil is good, in which case something different will happen. I don't know what, but trust me, it'll be real bad and hurt.

Yeah.

I don't know how many children are able to recover their higher functions after this load of shit is crammed into their willing little eyes and ears over the course of their lives and how many aren't, but it's a safe bet my kids, should they be born before I'm killed by a falling meteor, aren't going to church.


It's time to move on from this.

posted by dale @ 1:32 PM