duh

By now you’ve heard about this story of the young woman stoned to death in a public square in Iraq. It is commented on quite well and accompanied by a horrific video of the event in this blog post :

This is why I have contempt for tribalism, fundamentalism and authoritarianism. When it gets right down to it, it’s always, in the end, about mob rule. A gang of violent bullies, often at the behest of some authority figure, “sends a message” by publicly humiliating, maiming or killing one of their own who had the temerity to fail to properly conform. Whether for God or country or tribe, it’s always some poor victim, lying on the ground, covering his or her head, surrounded by people who have turned into animals.

And he is totally correct. Forget for a moment that we support the Iraqi government and others in the Middle East that probably do things like this all time. What is a problem is that if we aren’t careful, things like this can start happening here in America as well. We have fundamentalists here as well, christians and jews and others. Religion the world over has caused many evil things to happen in its name and that is plain wrong. We have to see that and we have to stand up against it whereever it happens or whereever it threatens to happen. Keep yourselves aware.. think!

So. Is it possible to be happy about the world we live in today? I’m not sure.. Everything seems so fucked up. I write about here all the time.. I wonder if maybe I think this way because I’m critical of the world and if I just put on my happy person blinders and gave in to society I would feel a lot better. If I wanted to I could come up with 10 fucked up stories a day and post them here. Here’s one. Here’s another. I mean, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. When I was younger, the world was full of promise. The future was a place we wanted to get to.. Now, the future scares me. Well, actually it used to scare me. I’ve become resolved to our demise. Now I look forward to the decay of our civilization. I look forward to the day when people look back and say “what the hell have we done?”.. or maybe that day will never come. Maybe we will simply forget our potential and become complacent in our mediocrity.

Will we ever start treating each other as equals? Will we ever give up the endless pursuit of pointless things? Will we ever decide as a species to improve ourselves? Will we ever stop and realize that we could be doing so much more? Will we ever stop killing? Will we ever stop exploiting? Will we ever care for our planet? Will we ever think beyond the next earnings cycle? Or the next election?

I sure don’t think so.

So I was watching this documentary on HBO the other day (Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi .. was ok.. nothing great) and one of the things I noticed was that there were a ton of billboards out there in America that support christian values.. and this is in addition to the ones that you are used to seeing once and a while (the god ones.. “don’t make me come down there - god”, etc.).

I came up with an idea to have some fun and totally mess with the crazy religious and PC nuts out there and if someone runs with it, they have a guaranteed $100 dollars to their cause. My plan is to make a billboard that is written by the devil. We’d make it Red with gold letters and have it say something like “Have fun before you die! - Lucifer”.. how funny would that be? It could turn into a national thing (if Prince and his guitar can.. why not this)..

Other than being funny, perhaps it would stimulate a discussion of religion in America.. who knows.. what do you think?