#27 30 Day Writing Challenge- A Quote I try to Live By

I am obsessed with quotes.

Even though quotes are just excerpts of a bigger idea, list, speech, book, etc., reading a bunch of smaller quotes somewhat helps to understand the bigger picture of things.

My blog even has a Quotes Page! It has 3 sections, 1 is things I have written, another is general quotes and the last are quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

One of my favourite authors/writers is Ralph Waldo Emerson. He is absolutely amazing. If I believed in reincarnation, I would say I was probably him in a past life. A lot of our ideas and philosophies are really close. Not the same, but close.

Anyways, my favourite quote that I "try to live by" is:

 "Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today"

 This is from Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" which is the best essay, ever written.

I plan to get it tattooed on my right forearm, once I am of legal age to get tattoos.

This quote means a lot to me. When I first read it, I feel absolutely in love with it.

I think it is important to feel confident in what you say, and you should also be fine with changing your mind. That's basically what this quote means to me, is that you should say whatever you want, and if you change your mind completely the next day, voice your opinion. It's okay to change your mind. It's okay to say what you want.

I have changed my mind about philosophies, a lot. Recently I have had less interest in anarchy. There was a time when I described myself as an anarchist. Now, not so much. I still think anarchy is really fascinating, but I've sort of stopped.

I feel like you could pull up so many different things I have said from the past, even from blog posts not too long ago, and I have changed my mind about something I have said.

A second quote that I also value a lot, I had the same reaction to. I just felt so good and when I read it, I fell absolutely in love with it, as well. It is by Mark Twain, who I also love.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform"

This quote can also be known as "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" which is a misquote, that was probably created to help define the word "reform". Essentially this quote means that if your idea is the same as everyone else, you should stop and think about why, and make sure you are not conforming to the majority, just because it is the majority.

I think it is fine to go along with the majority, as long as you know why and that is what you believe.

I considered getting this as a tattoo, but I am not 100% sure on it yet. I still love this quote, too. I represents my skeptical and non-conformist self. 

Anyways. I hope you found these quotes as inspiring as I do! 

Do you have any quotes you try to live by?

The difference between theism and religion

Theism is the belief in a god/gods.

Religion is a collection of beliefs, understandings, and thoughts about the universe, and usually has a belief in god or gods.

You cannot prove theism, yet. There is no solid proof that a god or gods exist.

But religion, can be proved. Religion has existed. There have been thousands of religions, meaning groups that practice their collective beliefs.

Just because religion is true, doesn't make theism true. But, that is not what I am talking about in this blog post.

I do not generally like religion. I dislike the modern church. I believe scriptures, bibles, etc., to be fictional stories created a long time ago. Religion has been deeply flawed, historically.  When catholics from Europe came over to Canada during the great migration, and even before then when the UK (Britain) was trying to populate Canada with Catholics, to convince the people the be Catholic. Tjhey were hesitant to leave their native beliefs, but they eventually switched. Why? I believe the main reason to be that the natives and the europeans wanted to trade, and the europeans wouldn't trade with them unless they joined their religion. They send missionaries, built churches, and people slowly converted, so they could trade their furs with the european's silver goods, like needles and knives.

My point here is that the religion just came over and took over. This was one of the more peaceful missions.

Many missions ended in violence, because other areas of the world weren't as tolerant to new religions coming and telling them what to believe, and the new religions coming were insistent on them converting.

All of the blood shed, and immoral behaviour provided throughout history, by assorted religions, leads me to dislike religion.

I'm not hating on a specific religion. All religions are historically flawed.

I would say now, these churches aren't violent, like they used to be. There still are some violent churches, practices and religions. But arguably, less.

I still refuse to commit to a religion.

Now, theism. You do not have to be religious to believe in a god or gods. Religions tend to give out a guideline about what their god is like, omnipresent, omniscient, etc., which makes it easy for the theist to believe, if something seems more realistic.

Believing is weird to me. Like you believe a certain religion's interpretation of who god is, what he is like, what he looks like, etc.

I was just trying to imagine if I believed in god, what he would be like.

This is how religions have split throughout time, I guess. Thinking about what god is actually like, or more specifically, Jesus.

But theism itself, is not really a religion. It is a belief. One can be a theist, and not be religious.

I suppose one could be atheist and have a religion too. For example, lets say an atheist begins attending an anglican church. Sure, the anglican churches' belief is in god, but perhaps this person just enjoys going to church, reading the scriptures, educating them self about the moral aspects of the religion, and not the theistic. This person would then be religious, but atheistic.

But I am not a theist. I am an agnostic atheist. Essentially I am really just an atheistic skeptic. I am almost resolutely atheist. But there is always that little bit of doubt in there, because as I said previously, there is technically no proof there is, or isn't a god. So that's why it's "agnostic atheist".

My point here is just that religion and theism are two different things. Quite often they go hand-in-hand. But not always. I just felt this needed to be distinguished. I've never read anything before about a distinguishment, and I just kind of realized it a few weeks ago, that the two are completely different things.

Just as a final point, I really don't know much about religions, individually. I find them interesting. But generally, when I research and look at religion, I look at it with sociological, historical philosophical and psychological eyes, not really religious eyes, therefore I don't really know much about the actual rituals by religions, I just know more about their philosophies, past histories, effects on society and the individual. Even that I know very slim on.

Homophobia or Opinion

First of all, allow me to clarify myself. I am not homophobic. I am not a gay rights activist. I believe that gay marriage should be legal, and members of the LGBTQ society should have as many full and equal rights as others who are not.

Homophobia, to my understanding and by my definition is the hatred of and/or fear of homosexual individuals.

Opinions, to my understanding and by my definition is the belief by an individual or group that can be based off of fact or can be based off of no fact.

Why am I defining all of these things? Because I think there are two types of people who don't believe in the legality of gay marriage.
1. Those who are homophobic.
2. Those who do not believe in "homosexuals".

Just because someone has the belief that all people should naturally be paired guy-to-girl, and that two members of the same sex cannot have a natural/normal relationship, does not make them homophobic. That is their belief, that is their opinion. Some religions do not believe in homosexuality, some people do not believe in homosexuality.

They have a right to their opinion and belief, just as I have a right to my belief that homosexuality is a natural/normal relationship.

But people can be homophobic and have their opinion/belief. For example, let's say Bobby-Jane believes homosexuality is a sin, okay, that's fine, that is their opinion, but if that person goes out of their way to spread hate, for example, spitting on homosexuals, or giving them dirty looks, that is homophobia.

Although a person can also be homophobic and not really have the belief/opinion. These are the people I am most worried about, because they are the people that will do the things like spit at homosexuals, or give them dirty looks, but they don't have a motive behind it, they just do it, just because. Kind of like how some people are just mean to other people, but don't have a reason behind it.

My point here, and the reason of my blog post, is because I was reading some comments/blogs by some members of the LGBTQ society and they were calling everybody who doesn't believe in homosexuality, homophobic. This is not true. Many are, not all are.

Some people simply believe it is wrong, and I don't blame them, since scientifically the purpose of life is to reproduce, yet some humans (and even some non-humans) have relations between the same sex, people just see the relationship as perhaps unnecessary or just "wrong" because that is their belief.

I personally believe society has over-romantisized everything and society itself is the purpose of life.

In my belief system, life has no meaning, I believe naturally, humans have no purpose of being on earth, but I think throughout our development and time on earth, we have created societies, and within these societies, is filled with a whole lot of... allow me to call it "bullshit" like love, affection, emotions, etc. I'm not saying emotions aren't natural, I just think that they have progressed so much with the creation of languages, and pop culture. Everything is about emotion. On twitter people are "sad", people state their emotion like a thing "I am happy" "I am excited" "I am feeling creative". In the past you didn't really do that. Now it's a thing.

What does this have to do with my blog post? I think that homosexuality has been romanticized. Sure, I believe that individuals can have physical/sexual and/or emotional connections to people of the same sex, I believe this can come naturally, yet as I stated earlier, it is also natural to reproduce. I think this is where the belief that homosexuality is a psychological disorder stemmed from. Which honestly, I think is a completely valid opinion/belief/argument. Where I believe this belief reaches homophobia, is when in the 1950's those ads about "stay away from homosexuals" came from.

Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmqNiFJyI28

Overall, I'm just saying that even though a person doesn't necessarily believe in gay rights, doesn't make them homophobic. If that was true, then the fact that I am not jewish and don't believe in judaism would make me a nazi.