As a society, we are becoming more racially tolerant. There was a time however when we discriminated against folk on the basis of skin color. Could you imagine the humiliation and hurt of another perfectly normal human being who had to endure such injuries? It must have been bewildering to know that while you were normal and human, that other humans would treat you abnormally and sub-humanly. Having to live within a society where you were separate. It is bewildering now to think that this treatment was acceptable, normal even - that the people who perpetrated such injustices were considered normal.
Nowadays, we don't think this is normal. People who think this way are abnormal, we don't tolerate them in society.
Along the path to racial equality, it must also be remembered that a lot of white people died along with black people. While any loss of life over something so trivial as skin color is regrettable, those that sacrificed - black or white - are among our most noble, they shared a common thought.
Our path toward a more noble society must confront these issues of discrimination. While blacks were certainly not the first just cause, they are equally certainly not the last either. Now, that mantle is passing to homosexuals who do not have to deal with something as inconsequential as differential pigmentation, they have to deal with mankinds oldest and most favorite bugaboo, sex.
Being perfectly normal and gay, it must be bewildering to live in a
society that identifies itself as normal at the same time as it
persecutes those that it arbitrarily considers abnormal. Discrimination without process is vigilantism. We legitimately deal with people that are different than us and
rightly so. Thieves, child molesters, killers rapists. There is a
definition of normality and these people lie without. Pretty much, any
discrimination other than that legally defined is well .... it's
illegal.
This little polemic is harmless enough, full of sound and fury but way too late to make any difference. We have a black guy running the country and he's legalizing the shit out of homosexual unions.
I don't know what is next, but if the price of freedom is eternal vigilance then we need to be on the lookout. While we are consumed with stamping out the prejudice of today, there are those among us who are looking for the next target for discrimination.
Along that path may lie chirality or eye color, but we all know where it ends and the definition of that end is religion.
When we are all generic clones, part of the intrigue of consciousness is its origin. It is an emergent property of brain function it. It magically manifests while the rest of the brain is busy doing everything else it is built to do; find something to eat, find something to screw, find something to read, find my car keys.
This is a rough description and the reason that we know we don't have it right yet is that one thing we do know is that what you call blue might be red to me. There are general observations that we can make, but really, why do you think that some people like Brussels sprouts and liver? They interpret what they are processing differently. Thought spans that space between brain function and consciousness and it's fodder is a differentiated experience. Like I may thrive on liver and Brussels sprouts you may thrive on cookies and ice cream we necessarily think differently about them. Right down to the shelf space (or not) in our refrigerators.
There it is with our thoughts. Through the magic of modern science it is possible in my lifetime to clone a human being. Societally we could get to a plurality of Adam and Eves. Technologically (with what we know now) it could be an Eden. Sex would be reduced to pure pleasure (yummy), since our current requirement for genetic identity would rule out that random spark that drives evolution.
We would look alike but because of that random spark that drives consciousness we would not think alike.
The last bastion of discrimination.
This is why it's definition is religion. Discrimination based on thought.
The reason is it is religious is that when we all think exactly the same way, there's really only need for one of us.
That spot is already taken and we have spent the entire history of humanity discriminating against everyone who does not agree with who we (currently) think he is.
Since WE is a pretty broad term (about 7 billion broad right now), the salient point really then is whose lot you, individually, cast your lot with so it's worth considering this.
While you are busy arguing the case for your particular incarnation, imagine then his stance on discrimination and its basis.
What is said in the bible is the word of man. If in the words of Thomas Paine (another man and a Deist by profession of faith) that the word of god is all around us, then you should consider that it was him, and not some dusty old book, that gave us vaginas and penises and mouths and assholes.
Now what YOU think about that is up to you and how you act is in accordance with the divine dictates of free will and, absent gods say so, the law is a good enough guide as to whether this is discrimination. The law is a societal guide and as far as some are concerned a construct of man and thus below divine law.
If a definition of divinity is a shared body and thought it leaves room only for one of us. In a society of one, law is absolute. Since there is a multitude of us and we are made in his image a broader definition of divinity within mankind would be that we are all different but that we share a common thought on important things, like ice cream and tolerance.
As is the way with all human beings, I would want that thought to be mine - the one I have. This I know is verging on gods territory but he already told us his thoughts on this (well his kid did) and the thing that has me on edge was that I think Christ and me were of a mind on this - we looooove ice cream.
Those who thought differently killed him.
Slowly.
