This mindset may explain why I have yet to title my book. I don't think "Science and Zombies and Shit" would go over well, personally.
So I am still trawling through Homestuck, and I'm getting closer to the end. It's kind of glorious. Besides that, I've been totally unproductive this week, really. So since I have nothing interesting to blog, I present:
A JOURNAL ENTRY FROM MY ONE CLASS WHERE I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT MY FEELINGS.
I don't do well with talking about my feelings, so obviously this is going to be hilarious. Anyway, for my one class we have to examine our feelings a lot and crap like that, and then talk about them. For the journal assignments, we have to write down our feelings about particular lectures. So since I have nothing else to post at the moment, I will re-post these natural disasters for the entertainment of one and all.
The first entry was on cultural competence (I have none) and spirituality (I think it's mind-boggling interesting). BEHOLD, RAMBLING.
"This week’s lecture – on culture, cultural competence, spirituality – was extremely interesting for me. I’ve always been interested in people, why they do the things they do, where culture actually comes from, etc., and how all those things combined make them tick along as a paradoxically unique person. After all, there are certainly members of the same culture who share the same spiritual beliefs, same general upbringing, and yet they are never really that similar. And at the same time, there are ‘brain twins’ – people from two different backgrounds, who have histories so dichotomously opposed, but they get along famously, as if they’d been raised side-by-side and developed the same tastes, interests and beliefs. Culture has to be at the root of this somewhere, maybe, and spirituality too, but as wonderful as those two things are, how far can they really go toward explaining the mad, chaotic, beautifully wonderful horror of humanity?
Spirituality, I think has a lot more to do with it than culture, but of course it’s foolish to try to compartmentalize the two. Without spirituality culture can’t exist – there’s no shared fantasy among the group, nothing to believe in – and without culture spirituality shambles into disintegration, ripped to shreds by separation of interests. For the sake of this entry, though, I chose to solely consider spirituality, without the basic cultural aspect, because really, that’s where the interesting stuff is.
When we’re kids, most of us are taught to believe in Lies, with a capital ‘L’. You start with little lies – Santa, the Easter Bunny, ghosts and ghouls and monsters and fairies and elves and magic – but those are warm-ups for the big Lies the grown-ups teach you later. Morality. Justice. The Greatest Good. We practice on the poor Easter Bunny until we’ve got it right – we know it can’t be real but we have no other way to explain the eggs around the house in the spring – and then we’re fully ready to buy that the good guys will win in the end, that humans will always pick the option that’s best for everyone. And we run with those Lies our whole lives, and act shocked and hurt when someone goes against them and acts in their best interest, or get away with a wrong. We believe in those Lies, and we commit ourselves to them wholly and blindly.
That’s spirituality, as far as I’m concerned. You can’t prove something, there’s probably bucketloads of evidence to the contrary, and yet you still have faith that you’re right. It’s a trait unique to humans – dogs don’t believe in the goodness of humans, and if you hit one too many times it’ll shy away from people for the rest of its life, until experience teaches it otherwise. But humans are different, they really believe in society, in goodness, in justice and truth. And every day the world and other people prove them wrong in a thousand little ways, and humans just shrug it off and move on and believe.
I’m not going to even bring a concept of God into this because the same applies there. Evidence piles up, the universe is gradually stripped naked of its secrets, and people look around and say “Golly, someone must really love us for this to happen.” Statistics scream that it’s possible, and in the grand scheme not even that far-fetched, and people sing praises to God.
It’s all a little crazy.
And it’s just so damn endearing.
I realize that from the above I probably seem fairly nihilistic, possibly disgusted with the state of humanity. I’m not. I’m disgusted by society, sometimes, and I’m disgusted by people and just how terrible they can be, but for every crooked banker, for every murderer, for every psychotic gunman, there’s a person who soars so high above that, who is so much more for being human, for having the will and the faith and the belief to make that choice for the Greater Good.
And the minute you lose sight of that, the minute you forget that unsung saint, is the minute you lose your spirituality. It’s the minute the Lies are laid bare and the wriggling underbelly of humanity takes center stage.
As a nurse, you can’t afford that. You have to hang on to the Lies, even if it’s hard, even if you can’t imagine there’s a scrap of Truth left in the whole world, because when you let go you don’t listen anymore. Patients can be awful – it’s naïve to think they’re all pious and kind people who love their dog – but in the next room, or the next bed even, there can be someone so interesting, someone so refreshing, someone so delightfully peaceful because they choose to that it’ll take your breath away. The temptation is to disregard the monster, the one thing from our childhood that was never a lie, even if the tail and the horns and the green slime dripping from its back were, and focus on the other. But that’s wrong too.
They both have a story.
They both believe something. And whatever they believe, it gives them peace.
We’re not miracle workers, we can’t change them more than they want to change. But when they’re sick, or dying, and they’re scared, we can listen. We can let them believe any and all Lies, no holds barred. We can let them, for a little while, think like kids – believe in all the lies and the Lies, and take solace in whatever sandcastle their mind has built against the encroaching tide of mortality. We can listen to their stories, and they can tell us their own lies, and we can give them the peace that even if no one else listened to them, someone did. It’s a delicate position, putting aside your own personal construct to let someone else’s in, but it’s something others need sometimes, and something we have to acknowledge. It lets them relax, it lets them be peaceful, it lets them be humans.
And whatever else happens, humans will always be wonderful."I'm pleased I worked the Greater Good in there. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to don my black robes and hood and murder some loiterers outside. The Greater Good.
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