You can't fix stupid, but stupidity can be fixed

We've got a problem. By "we", I mean those of us who find ourselves in what we like to think of as the 1st World -- and I'm not the first to ask somewhat naively, where's the 2nd one? Yeah, you, almost all of your reading this, and your friends, and your friends' friends, if they have any, and the people around you, like family and neighbors, and all of us who have too much time on our hands, too much money in our pockets, and too little sense to know what to do with either.

Now, before you go off all insulted because you're struggling to make ends meet or you're starting to sweat all the debt you're carrying around or whether there is going to be anything left for your kids or grandkids ... if you're concerned about any of that, you are precisely whom I'm talking to. Your problem isn't insufficient funds, it's insufficient gratitude. The vast majority of human beings on this planet would swap places with you in a heartbeat: and you'd die having to deal with theirs, and they'd think they'd died and gone to heaven. It's a matter of perspective, true, but also relativity. According to popular, widespread, and most oft proclaimed ideology: you chose your problems; the vast majority of humanity had theirs dumped on them by people who care more about themselves than even you do. If you've got a conscience, you'll never make it into the top 10%, let alone 1%. You're not cut out for it. Or sell your conscience. At the moment, however, you're just in the way ... of progress to make a better world or your just another wannabe for those at the top who want, and will eventually, get what you have.

You might get the impression that I'm a bit miffed at the moment, a bit irked, a bit bothered, a bit off-center. And you're right. I am. But, I firmly believe that I have every reason to be. Oh sure, I've cobbled together a fixed-income existence; I don't own anything other than a car of good middle age; I've got family around me, a couple of friends (who at least people who tolerate having me around); I've got a roof over my head, enough to eat and access to the world's largest cesspool of information, the internet. I haven't got a single reason to complain about anything in my life. But I'm also not only not the only person on the planet and I'm not the only person in my immediate environment. I'm part of a larger whole that varies in size depending on time of day, phase of the moon, and societal configuration.

In other words, I lead a relatively normal Western life. And I'm thankful for that, believe me. I'm thankful that I have the wherewithal, the inclination, the talent, the time, the opportunity to share my thoughts with all of you. But, I must admit, I'm rather bothered by the echoes that are finding their way back to me. Like most of you, I've got a real life and an online life, and the online life has to do with social media to a large extent, and regardless of what you think about either in general, I can assure you that, in particular, the online part is causing me more and more concern with each passing day. That's why I'm bringing this up here, with you, with all of you who obviously have an online life as well. The number of people with online lives is growing daily. The "society" that these online denizens are forming, however, is not exactly what I had hoped it would be way back when 95% of the people on the internet lived within 10 miles of my home. Yeah, I've had a chance to watch all this develop, and I'm not all that excited about what I see.

I'm going to out myself right up front: I don't believe the least in "human nature", but I believe unboundedly in "human potential". I believe -- deep, in the very heart of my own being -- that human beings are the living expression of the possibility of all possible possibilities. (That's the optimist heart that beats in my breast.) And I also believe, unreservedly, that the low end of those possibilities is the world we have thought out for ourselves, the world in which we're all -- at the moment -- forced to live. Stated succinctly, we're the biggest of all of G-d's failures. (And thus beats my cynic's heart in that same breast.)

We are, and have shown, that we're capable of the most exhilarating flights of brilliance: fire, the wheel, more-than-sufficient food production, disease eradication, alternative energies and explorations to the stars. At the same time, we have demonstrated that we're capable of the most terrifying horrors imaginable: war, genocide, unimaginable physical and psychological violence, greed, selfishness, self-absorption, and lack of empathy that there are moments when I find myself almost yearning for that last affront to occur so that we all go down the tubes the blinding fire of nuclear annihilation. And therein lies the rub, as the bard so eloquently put it.

You should be aware that all of G-d's children don't have the same intellectual capabilities and capacities. And that's OK as far as I'm concerned. Some of the nicest people I ever had the honor of dealing with weren't the sharpest pencils in the box, as they say, but they were Menschen, in both the true and Yiddish senses of the word. They cared about others, were kind, generous, helpful, supportive, and chock full of empathy and sympathy for the plight of others. I don't consider these people stupid, however. No, to me, stupid is when you think you know something, when you think you are smarter than you really are, or when you let external, non-personal "attributes" drive your actions.

Three of these are particularly dangerous: money, guns, and power. You can be bright, but once money (or in its most fundamental and nefarious form, the love of money) takes over it's good-bye smarts. Money is a prime cause of stupidity. You think your money makes you better, and smarter than everyone else, but it doesn't. It makes you think you're an authority on things you have no idea about (e.g., Bill Gates and world health or education). Guns are also a classic, and they (or the violence they represent) is a key feature of the gangster/Mafioso boss Hollywood has infected us with for decades. The propensity toward violence or violent behavior, the willingness to use it so "resolve arguments" is prototypical of stupidity in general. And finally, power ... often some vague combination of the previous two attributes, or "actual" power, like a political office (here, Bush the Lesser jumps out as poster child for what can happen when the intellectually challenged get it in their heads that they're better than and worth more than others) ... is the worst of all. And it's the one that has the most disastrous effects on the most people.

Even the most superficial gloss over the history of humankind reveals that it has been those awash in stupidity who have been in charge. We don't know who it was who figured out "fire", but we know practically everybody's name who used fire -- in one form or another -- to ensure that hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people had to suffer to satisfy their own egos. And we praise them, look up to them, remember them, and as school-children are forced to memorize their names, but in the end, they were stupid, self-absorbed, self-serving egoists who forced their personal mentation on others. Alexander the Great, the Roman Caesars, the British and other European royal houses, from Stockholm to Madrid, and, most recently, a whole bevy of American presidents (not starting with but particularly egregious since Reagan), have tortured the life out of countless human beings for the greater glory of , and we laugh and gloat and cheer and pat ourselves on the back for being so "great". But why? What's so smart about being able to kill untold human beings at will? Why do we think -- at this point in history, here, at the beginning of the 21st century (since we've agreed on counting years) -- that this is a good thing? Sure, it enables you to sit there in your room; fat, dumb and happy that you can look down upon the vast majority of humankind; but you need to explain to me what about this is good.

Recent history has shown us what's going on. Whether is was Thatcher in Britain or Reagan in the US, or Clinton (who could cover it over better than most), or Blair or Bush the Lesser (if that wasn't the tip-off, I don't know who was) or Merkel, or Cameron or Juncker or Schäuble or Gabriel or Obama or that it's not the bright ones who are leading the way and seeing to it that the proper shots are called. No, among this limited selection of individuals there are those who -- on their own, in a normal conversation -- would come across as half-way intelligent and reasonable, there seems to be the overwhelming propensity, if not compulsion, to blow any and all alleged inherent intelligence to the wind and strut forth as a contender for the crown of Village Idiot.

This -- not the results of neoliberal economic policies -- is what trickles down. We then find the same behavior patterns in the general population, be it in alternative political parties (like the AfD in Germany) or alternative political candidates (like Trump in the US (though Hilary isn't much better) and his followers) or just plain misinformed-and-proud-of-it welfare-bashers, gun-nuts, evangelicals, flag-wavers, sports-fanatics, and small-minded bleaters would rather complain about others than actually do something for or with others to make a difference. And I'm amazed each day at the number of people for whom this description applies.

No, I don't have a very high opinion of the general quality of information available on the internet, but there is a lot of good, sound, reliable information to be found there. But you have to go looking for it, and you have to wade through cybermiles of sludge and jungle to find it. There are good, sound, and inspiring insights to be found there, but you have to be able to weigh and evaluate, compare and contrast, and, well, think, to figure out which they are.

Of course, you have to be willing to explore thoughts, ideas, opinions, and views with which you don't necessarily or immediately agree and you have to be willing to assess their validity, their impacts and maybe even their worth. But that takes both time and effort and, well, with all the important stuff so many of us have in our lives that needs to get done, who is going to ensure they do this as well? But, most importantly, you have to be willing to communicate what you find and discuss it with others, not just with people whom you agree with. You need actively engage other ideas and notions if you are ever to come up with thoughts and ideas of your own. And who, pray tell, is going to be willing to do that? There are some thank goodness, though they are few and far between. There are some who haven't yet given up, even though they are reviled and ridiculed by those who have chosen stupidity and their particular way of life.

The point is that we don't have to be in the messes we're in. We don't have to deal with all the ignorant nonsense which pervades most of our lives. We don't have to allow stupidity to rule our lives ... but we are, we do and we will, because to change any of it, we might just have to change ourselves. So, don't complain about stupid (and all that is wrong with everybody else) if you choose stupidity yourself. And that is the choice too many people are making.

Moms have been getting a raw deal for far too long

This weekend is Mother's Day, in a lot of the world that is. (Not unexpectedly the Brits celebrate theirs on 4th Sunday in Lent. Go figure; always no reason to be different.) Anna Jarvis, an early 20th-century woman's activist pushed to get it recognized, only partly successfully of course, but recognized nevertheless. Some countries picked it up; others refunctioned their own similar holidays honoring women, so there is no universally accepted day of celebration. And yes, it's one of those pseudo-holidays that Hallmark or one of those greeting card manufacturers breathed life into in order to increase sales. But, the fact remains that we still have a day to honor mothers, in spite of everything modern culture tries to do to ignore, if not outrightly suppress, them.

You don't have to be a zealot of political correctness to know that we live in a man's world, that our societies for the greatest part are patriarchal. This is one of those little understood aspects of life that has always fascinated me, for it never ceases to surprise me to what ends some folks will go -- mostly men, of course -- to justify this as some natural order of things. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Male dominance or patriarchy, and I'm referring to human beings now, is a cultural, not a biological or natural state of affairs.

Throughout most of nature, males are larger and stronger than females, but this is also not a given. It seems that among birds of prey, females tend to be larger than males; the female great white shark is larger and stronger than the male, and there is certainly a difference when considering propagating vs. social relations: praying mantises and black widow spiders have the final word on who's in charge; elephants, for the most part, live in female-dominated herds, while males are more of loners and only show up for mating; lion prides are organized by the females; but hyenas, lemurs and the bonobo all live within a strict matriarchal order. Given this wide range of set-ups, only a bean-counting statistician would insist "natural" male dominance, and I'm pretty sure that they do.

Biologically, however, at least as far as human beings are concerned, no case can be made for male superiority at all. Mothers conceive and gestate the young; mothers give birth (well, except for among seahorses, I understand, and you've got to love the irony of at least one species providing an exception). The only thing that men contribute to thee young of the species is 50% of the DNA and the determination of gender, otherwise, males are pretty much observers in the whole affair. Even a cursory reflection upon biology class and the X and Y chromosome lesson shows us that Y-chromosomes are complete, the X-chromosome is noting more than a crippled X (that is, one of its legs is missing) so in essence, boys are merely crippled girls. The fact that more boys then girls are born in the natural population is due to the fact that infant mortality is higher and later reckless behavior lead to more early male deaths. Male-female populations don't balance out till around 20 years-old or so. And, with males being more observers than participants in the whole new-life thing, it was the Anglo-Saxons of yore and the Jews to this day who correctly observed that the bloodline actually runs through the mother, not the father. Nature takes care of itself, it always has, and it could probably well use less of our help in getting along. (Of course, in regard to this gender thing in general, the Americans (unsuprisingly) have lost the plot and now find it one of their highest legislative and juridical priorities to sort out biology apparently gone wrong. Truth be told, nothing's changed in nature, just the way certain obviously ignorant and sexually-inhibited individuals choose to see nature, but there's nothing new about that either.)

The next biggest justification, and certainly one of the pieces of evidence I would take to support my own case for cultural choice as opposed to biological selection, is religion. The religionists all seem to have got together defend male dominance. We have to remember, however, that there is a huge difference between what religions' sacred texts say, what they mean, how they are interpreted and, finally but most importantly, collected into whatever articles of faith that are used to organize their affairs. Christians love to go on and on about how Eve caused the Fall from grace and were made subordinate to their husbands; even more love to use the writings of St. Paul to justify male domination (having converted out of Judaism and as desirous as he was to bring Gentiles into the fold, it is not surprising that he would take over any number of their "beliefs" in order to further his cause). You can open practically any newspaper or read any online new site and find all kinds of evidence of male domination in most Muslim societies and communities. The fact that the Indians and Chinese would resort to infanticide should a female child be born first provides evidence for their own fanaticism of male domination. Of course, what most people don't realize about religion generally is that there is an exoteric side to it, the one that you actually see and most often get to experience, but there's also an esoteric, or hidden side, where the real tenets of the faith can be found. (For example, since the notion of bloodline referred to above, or consider that the majority of Jesus' followers were women, that they were treated as equals if not more (for example, the controversial role played by Mary Magdalene, especially in the Gospel bearing her name) and that it's been well documented that later redactors of the Pauline texts even changed women's names to men to serve their theological needs.) It would seem the things that we need to take at face value, like biology, we don't, but the things where a bit more discernment is needed, say, with the texts, well, why go to all that trouble once you've got them saying what you want them to say anyhow? But what we should be aware of, in every instance, is the fact that when we start to speak of "civilization", we find men wanting to or actually calling the shots.

Well, I'm beginning to think civilization is the problem. What this implies is that the opposite of civilization isn't barbarism, as we've been told to believe. Let's think about this for a minute: civilization meant the rise of the city-states, the old Babylonian and Mesopotamian empires ... society was organized well enough that surpluses were possible, resources were accumulated, food became plentiful and could be distributed among a larger number of people. All of these are good things are they not? And, of course, they are, but the fact that some folks are managing their resources and processes well implies that that there are other who are not. It also implies that there are others who perhaps want more than they'd otherwise be entitled to. In other words, the whole idea of not having enough which at some point turns into having more than anyone else enters the picture, and once these feelings take over, well, the next thing you know -- religious texts or no -- stealing, raiding, robbing, pillaging, plundering and other forms of aggression and violence against others suddenly becomes the norm. And here we are -- voila -- a mere 10 millennia later and there still isn't enough to go around for all the rich folk. What we need to remember, however, it was at the time that this civilization got off the ground that the women were kicked out of power (yes, there is strong evidence that pre-civilizational societies were matriarchal) and the men took over. In a perpetual act of what appears to be gross psychological compensation, we are privileged to live in a world so advanced, so powerful, so dominated by male aggression that we literally stand on the brink of annihilation, and most people I know -- men and women -- are standing by cheering these louts on. If you can inject enough testosterone into anything or anybody, if it has a mind, it will lose it. And that's where we are.

Now, I dare any of you who are now thinking I'm exaggerating to prove me wrong. Look at the state of something as irrelevant as sports these days: a male-dominated, rape-condoning, destructive, greed-machine that serves primarily to distract us from real issues that need resolving. What about international diplomacy: Their machos fighting our machos in a loser-loses-everything-winner-takes-nothing chest-beating with deadly consequences. Politically: the rapid rise of violent-imbued, rightist ideology from the entire American political caste to the Front National in France or the Polish and Hungarian proto-fascists, to our coddling of the new Turkish sultan who in turn has become the poster boy for male-dominance and misogyny. I could go on and on, and where is the voice of reason among them? Nowhere because at some point women wanted to become men and partially succeeded (e.g., Thatcher, Merkel, Fiona, etc.) but failed in the end because, well, they might act like men, but in the end, they just aren't.)

Too many people these days think that if you don't believe this then you must believe that, if things aren't one way then they have to be other. Nothing could be further from the truth, but nothing is more telling of how we moderns think. Whether the days of the matriarchy were good or bad is something we'll never know. We do know it was good enough to get us to written history and the documentation of millennia of blood-letting and conquest. We do know that for whatever benefits civilization and male-dominance may have brought us, it's at the end of its rope. We can't take much, if any, more of male aggression, violence and death, of hyper-masculinity. Matriarchy had its chance. Patriarchy had its chance as well. It's time to move to something more inclusive, an Integrum, if you will, in which men and women, male and female, integrate.

The Ancients ... even back in the days of the Matriarchy, when myth was first taking shape and being used to describe who and how we are as human beings ... knew the principles of essential balance, the complementarity of male and female; the need for allowing each his or her due and to make his or her contribution. We've forgotten that, too, of course. Or maybe we consciously, willfully, viciously drove it out of our minds. I wish it were the former, but it feels more like the latter. We've got our problems with gender equality over here in Europe, to be sure, but we've still at least got it written into our constitutions and there's still some hope we're going to "get it" before the next wave of mind-numbing PC washes over us from across the pond. Maybe.

So, I for one, will be celebrating Mother's Day, as I always have and hopefully always will. I still open and hold open doors for women, because that's how I was raised, but then again, I don't let doors I go through slam in anybody's face. And I will continue to recognize women for what they are: equal partners, our (we men's) better half, and more than ever our hope for any kind of tomorrow. If we don't manage to turn the hypermasculine, violent patriarchs around -- or at least put them in their proper place -- they'll manage to finish off the planet before we can do anything about it. And yes, I still say Mother Earth. Go figure.

As a cynical optimist, I question my own sanity

For the most part, people believe what they want to believe and for the even larger part, most people are impervious to facts. Oh, part of the problem comes from the rampant relativism that's taken over modern mentation (and notice, I dared not call it "thinking"), but part of it -- I'm afraid a large part of it -- is out of downright ignorance.

Let's face it, experts gave people who know stuff a bad name. There are people who simply know things, some even in more than one field. We have a long history of being moved -- socially, economically, politically, etc. -- by so-called polymaths (that is, people who are highly competent in more than one field). You know, people like Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Newton, Leipniz, Jefferson, Franklin, Hume ... individuals who were not only good at STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects, but also in the languages and the arts. Newton, for example, wrote over 1,000,000 words on the subject of physics and natural sciences, as well as over 1,000,000 Biblical exegesis (interpretation of Biblical texts, most often in their original language; Newton's focus was what we call the Old Testament, available mostly in Hebrew), as well as over 1,000,000 words on alchemy in his search for the Philosopher's Stone. Of course, he also died "mad as a hatter" from inhaling all that mercury, but his legacy is brilliant regardless of how he ended up vacating his on-earth slot. Just where are all our polymaths today? Not in the spotlight, that's for sure, because somewhere along the line we decided that only experts have anything worthwhile to say and in the meantime we have found out that experts are paid by interests to say what the interests want them to say. So much for the freedom of inquiry and knowledge.

No, this whole I've-got-an-expert vs you've-got-an-expert thing has ruined it for those of us who don't have the time, energy and inclination to know everything about everything in the world. It is becoming harder and harder to find those individuals who really do know what they are talking about, and when you do find them, chances are that monied interests are either trying to buy them out, drown them out or shut them up. "Cui bono? Cui bono?" my friend Julius used to tell me. If he were still alive, he'd still be telling me.

The result of this is, of course, that everyone, including Joe Shit, the ragman, thinks they know something and have something to say. It's not bad enough that they have nothing to say. No, they insist on their right to say it, and that you should have to listen to it, even though it's nonsense. And there are some areas of life where everyone's an expert, even though they have no clue as to what's going on. You think I'm exaggerating? Think about it: everybody went to school, so everyone's an expert on education. Everyone speaks their mother tongue, so everyone's an expert on language. Everyone has a job and hs bills to pay, so everyone's an economics expert. Those who served in the military (for whatever reason) are military strategy experts; those who helped their friends move are logistics experts; and we all have to pay taxes is a tax expert. Don't believe me? Bring up any of these subjects at your next happy hour and you'll end up with more indigestion that the hors d'oevres allow.

Now, if this were all playing out down here in Littleguy's Land, I don't suppose it would be much of a problem, but if you take a step back and look at what is happening above our own petty oxygen level, you'll quickly realize that our fates are in the hands of not-so-stable individuals. They, however, are playing out their own roles as if they were at happy hour with us: taking their own level of not-knowing and misinformation to levels we can't begin to imagine.

They actually hire people with credentials to do their dirty work for them. Well, OK, industry usually -- and generously -- picks up the tab, but they've got all the expertise they need to make it appear as if they are doing what needs to be done. That's why the earth's environment is getting worse, new climate agreements are regularly necessary, and all us tree-huggers are simply annoyances. That's why the rich are getting richer even faster than the poor are getting poorer, but there's always justification for a bit more exploitation and humiliation nevertheless. That's why the petty national interests of my country trump the petty national interests of yours, especially since I have bigger bombs and more bullets and am more than ready to use them. That's why we're the smartest, slickest, best-looking, most fabulous, kick-ass, cool people who have ever existed and we can't solve the simplest of our problems. And that's why the most psychopathic, sociopathic, self-absorbed, narrow-minded, ruthless, unempathetic people we can possibly imagine are the candidates for our highest political offices (and I'm not just picking on the USA here ... this applies elsewhere as well, though your mileage may vary).

The result, of course, is what I like to call rule by opinion. We're supposed to accept the fact that one opinion is as good as any other -- which is not the case -- but the higher in the political pecking order a given opinion is expressed, the more valid it is. That's how the world is functioning at the moment. The scary part is that people who, by any real standards in any arena other than politics, would be considered mentally unstable, if not downright sick, are permitted to do their thing at the expense of the rest of us. But what's even worse, most of us little folk cheer them on. Just where is all that progress that my history teachers loved to tell me about?

How can it be that a trade agreement is being pushed as "beneficial for us all" that is so secret that no one is even allowed to talk about it once they find out what's in it (TTIP)? How can it be that a two-bit regional wannabe leader is a threat to the security of the entire world (Putin)? How can it be that the mightiest military on the face of the earth can't win a war? How can it be that candidates for public office can express views in public (and find support!) that one should be ashamed to say in private (Trump in the USA, AfD/Pegida in Germany)? How can it be that even after we finally realized that spanking does nothing to make a child behave better that we still think in international politics that might makes right and that we can sanction (merely political spanking) whomever doesn't dance to our tune? How can it be that even though 1,000,000 years of human evolution have shown that cooperation trumps competition in the struggle for survival we still think that every individual's fate is in his or her own hands? That, my dear, readers is simply insane.

But, it's this insanity that we're all confronted with every day. We're confronted with -- if we don't have our noses rubbed in it -- every day with absolute insanity: the politician who rabidly opposes transgenders supports a child molester; the Noble-peace-prize-winner is proud of his reputation as drone-executioner; one of the greatest abusers of human rights is made chair of the commission on human rights; the most overtly devoted religionist is the perpetrator of the greatest violence against others; the list goes on and on. And what bothers me most is that most of us just accept it. "Well, that's just the way it is." "What the hell are you gonna do?" "What's a little person like me supposed to do about all of that?" Oh, I can understand how you can feel that way. I can understand as well that it's in a lot of people's interests that you feel that way, too. If my own study of human history and development has taught me anything it is that there are always a few who try real hard, and very often succeed, in making most of the people feel like they've nothing to say at all.

That's why my optimism is waning. It's too easy to get most people to shuffle and jive, to sing and dance, to do what has to be done to let those interests in power have their way. None of us are allowed to think any more, to develop our own opinions on issue or propose real solutions. That's all taken care of by "their" experts. Too few of us are willing to think on our own and talk to others about what we're thinking. Too few of us are willing to recognize that together were strong and divided we're nothing. Too few of us are willing to inform ourselves, to discuss with others of differing views, and engage in a real debate about things that actually matter. And the longer this goes on the greater the chances that the untenable situation in which we find ourselves will simply have to give, but when it does, it will be more like and explosion than a mere crack.

When things go south, folks, -- and it won't take a lot: another financial crisis, a failed industry in a major economy, a lost harvest across the third world, overzealous military intervention that goes nuclear -- a lot of people are going to get hurt and a lot of those who get hurt are going to be people we know. The planet has become way too small for any of us to really escape. The more you ignore, the more you put it off, the more you bide your time, the greater the chance that someone you know and love is going to get hurt badly when things simply break down. We're already living on the edge of insanity and most people I can see are feeding it. My cynicism tells me that the feeders are going to win, which means the rest of us lose. My optimism tells me we can still turn things around, but it ain't going to be easy.

What you believe isn't the problem, but how you believe it is

Recently, I had a bit of a discussion with a couple of folks on Facebook. They were slamming religion in general and, as they thought (erroneously, it turned out) Christianity in particular. I was trying to point out that they were simply ranting about things they knew nothing about, which didn't stop them, but it did get me thinking.

These guys were claiming, in their own way, that "religion" is responsible for the world's ills. This is obviously ludicrous on any number of levels, but ludicrousness never stopped anybody from making fools of themselves. That we have large, multinational corporations and businesses raping the environment, heating up the planet, exploiting and oppressing those too weak and poor to defend themselves seems to have escaped them, as has the blind belief in rapacious capitalism that "justifies" those corporations' actions. The fact that we have national governments (some of which claim to be democratic) which are autocratic, dictatorial and oppressive, which will use any means at their disposal to suppress dissent, curtail freedom and, for all intents and purposes, brainwash and enslave their populations seems to have escaped their attention, too. But, to them, religion's the problem. And I got to thinking that for all the delusion in their arguments, maybe they have something of a point.

The first question we have to ask, of course, is "What is (a) religion?" and our first task here is to come to some kind of consensus as to what we mean when we use the term. In simplest terms, a religion is some kind of cultural system, or set of beliefs, that includes behaviors and practices (many formalized as liturgy and ritual), which are based on mythologies (or highly revered stories) that may or may not be contained in what they consider to be sacred texts, which provide some kind of societal, organizational guidance. I know that's a mouthful, but if you go through there carefully, it becomes a bit clearer why, say, Christianity is generally accepted to be a religion, but why the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or a periodic Star Wars or Star Trek conference aren't. Some religions try to make clear to us how we got here, almost all try to explain how we should be, and all of them are based on faith; that is, a blind, if not unquestioned belief in certain tenets of the given religion. It is estimated that around 85% of the world's population ascribe to one of the five major, and perhaps 10,000 folk religions; the rest are free agents, if you will, though I would maintain that many of them, particularly those in the West, belong to what I would call quasi-religions, a topic I'll come back to in a moment.

Religions (and I include the quasi-religions here as well) serve two basic functions: they give people hope and in their own ways, they provide their adherents with a sense of belonging. Let's face it, life's tough, and when everybody around you sort of sees the world the way you do, you get the feeling you're not necessarily alone and that somehow, given enough communal effort, things just might get better. What is more, religions, some more clearly than others, provide us some kind of meaning in our lives, whether it is stories about how others overcame adversity, or that there is simply some reason why we're all here in the first place. Also important is the fact that all the major and most of the better-known minor religions have what I like to call a "", some variation of the Golden Rule that admonishes you to, well, just not be an asshole. This particular tenet, of course, is the one that is forgotten and ignored most often. If most people are lucky, they'll apply it to those who belong to their immediate sub-group, but beyond that, well, it starts getting lost.

If we just recognized and understood that much, we'd be a long ways toward reducing the amount of ill in the world, but there are two tendencies that religions have that thwart this: the first is the notion of "exclusivity" and the second is "fundamentalism". Exclusivity -- the idea that my way is the only way -- ruins everything. I don't know how people come up with this, but it's particularly, but not exclusively, prevalent among the so-called Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). In a way it's related to the second tendency, fundamentalism. By this I mean that there is some tenet, law, rule, belief, article of faith, or whatever that an adherent believes is literally and universally true. It could be that any given fundamentalist has more than one, but there's at least one. It might be the literalism of the Bible (though very few people can read it in its original language), it might be the belief in the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus, it might be the inviolability of the person of the religion's founder, it might be anything really, but it is this one thing, this one belief, this one statement that the "true believer" hangs all his or her faith on. If this one little part turns out to be not "true", everything literally falls apart. Believers will die for this and are too often more than willing to kill others (thereby violating the don't-be-an-asshole clause) if it is challenged seriously in any way. And though I've not done a valid study to find out, I would strongly suspect that the more fundamentalist a believer or group of believers is, the more rabid their defense of their belief's exclusivity. What's so unnerving about these tendencies, however, is that they are accepted on pure, blind faith; they cannot be proven, there is no real evidence to support them ... they are basically assumptions upon which everything else is based.

What I've just said about religions applies, mutatis mutandis, for quasi-religions as well. A quasi-religion is a system of cultural beliefs, just like a religion, but one that is not generally recognized as one. Examples include capitalism and scientific materialism. Both of these belief systems include all the elements we identified in our general definition of "religion" above. They include beliefs, behaviors and practices that provide insight into why we exist and how we should live our lives. And the tendencies just described apply as well. Thatcher, one of the "patron saints" of a particularly aggressive form of fundamentalist capitalism, most often known as neoliberalism, stated flatly that "there is no alternative" (to this economic system of belief). Its fundamentalist tenets include low taxes for the rich and austerity for the poor, both of which are the golden path to economic salvation ... even if there is not a shred of evidence for them; and if you don't want to believe me, as the Chileans, the Argentinians, or the Greeks. Or take the particularly rabid form of scientistic belief that this making itself known: Richard Dawkins, a "holy figure" in this last camp will tell you in no uncertain terms that spirit and consciousness don't even exist, though it is life, an unidentifiable and unquantifiable force, that animates him and his own consciousness that allows him to make his silly claims, even though he'll be one of the first to tell you that this consciousness doesn't exist, it is a mere illusion. These quasi-religions, just like the "real" ones we considered above, are based as well on some fundamental , literal "fact" that turns out upon closer examination to be just an assumption, and their exclusivity is tied very closely to that assumption. The reason they only qualify as quasi-religions is that neither of these two examples includes a don't-be-an-asshole clause. All the worse for us all.

We are all on their earth and are in the same boat. It lies in our nature as human beings to want to know where we come from, why we are here, and where we are going. Most of the world's religions, large or small, try to provide answers to these questions. Their answers cannot be proven nor disproven, but the additional interpretations and claims made by specific adherents and groups of adherents may complicate the matter as they go above and beyond those generally acknowledged as being part of the religion in general. (For example, there are an estimated 2.2 billion Christians in the world; almost 60% of those are Roman Catholics and around 40,000 different "Christian churches" share the remainder among themselves.) What I am advocating is that perhaps we need to be a bit more open for and tolerant of religions. Good and bad has been done in religion's name, but if you are going to condemn something you should at least know what you're talking about and tailor your criticism appropriately. Prejudice is prejudice regardless of whether it is regard to race, religion, creed or whatever. Religion per sé is not the problem, fundamentalism and false notions of exclusivity are. It's not what you believe that matters as much as how you believe and what you do with that belief.