Never Knock A Good Thing

So a friend of mine that follows my blog (what's up girl)requested that I diversify the topics on my blog. Apparently, my blog has been reduced primarily to topics concerning relationship,career, self-feelings, racial, and gender issues. Even though these tend to be big issues in many people's lives, she mentioned that I am a person who's opinions are so dynamic and forward looking that I should share more of my every day conversations that I have with people on my blog. So I decided to do just that.

I guess the theme that has been running through many of the conversations that I have had recently is "Never Knock A Good Thing". It seems that many people have so many strong convictions in the world that they attempt to protect those opinions by harshly closing themselves to the opinions of others. I am a person who believes that people should have the strength of their convictions but I also believe in being open-minded and innovative. I also believe in sound common sense and not making a big deal over spilled milk.

To elaborate and to offer further clarification as to where I am headed with this discussion, I'll give a couple examples of some conversations that I felt that people were a little ridiculous.

Case in Point 1: Them Mother Africa People

I was at a business function not to long ago that was held at a bar. I ran into these two black men, some OGs, who were acting ridiculous. By ridiculous I mean they were basically accusing every black women that they talked to in the bar as being a prostitute. I initially thought that they were joking around and fucking with people, but I soon discovered that they were dead serious. I just shook my head at them, walked by, and said "Yall need Jesus. Imma pray for yall.". One of the guys response was "Don't say you are going to pray for me. Jesus is somebody that the white man made up. You should not go around worshipping false prophets my sista. Educate yourself before you go around with loose lips".

My response: "Whether or not Jesus is real or imaginary is besides the point. At least he stops people from killing people. You up here accusing your quote-unquote ebony goddesses of being prostitutes. How educated does that make you? Why you tryna take away the people's peace and happiness? Just let them believe so they won't kill each other. Shut-up and stop knocking down good things."

I mean personally, I am pretty universal about religion. I think the use of prophets is mainly to speak to a certain group of people because of differences in culture. Overall, the majority of major religions hold the same basic rules. The only difference between most major religions are usually cultural. Statistically, the most religiously fanatical countries tend to be the most volatile which contradicts the purpose of religion in the first place. But these religiously fanatical countries are also those that tend to be fanatical about everything...culture, politics, etc. In essence, the majority of us are basically serving the same god and overall believe in a set of basic commandments. The primary differences in religion usually center around gender roles, traditions including marriage and holidays, clothing, and food. To me, all that stuff I put in the "spilled milk" category. They are things that take away religious purpose. Who cares about which prophet is most favored by the man upstairs? Who cares whether or not cows are sacred or whether eating dolphins is immoral? Just don't kill people. Seems simple enough to me. Of course my beliefs are a bit more elaborate than this brief explanation. I'll elaborate more about it in a later entry. Right now, I am just trying to warm-up a little bit in adding a different take on my blog.

Case in Point 2: Coalition Against the Pseudosciences

My roommates in and I were watching an episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta a couple weeks back. In the episode, Kim took all the housewives to a palm and tarot reader. With the exception of Kim, of course the other housewives were very skeptical regarding their excursion. The only other person besides Kim who decided to participate as opposed to watching was Kim's friend NeNe. The palm reader made a prediction that in a later episode happened to come true. After watching the later episode, me and my roommates began a discussion about how much of this was manufactured by TV producers since it is a supposed reality show, was all that pseudo crap actually accurate, and if it is accurate how the hell do you explain it?

Of course since I am always an extremist about being open-minded to new modes of thinking, I took the opinion that people should not really care about those questions. The most important question is whether or not if the intentions behind the belief are good or bad? Whatever people believe about the pseudosciences, one thing that I think most people can agree on is that it is a tool with the intent to help people. So once again I ask why knock a good thing? I know some police forces use psychics to help them find people.

I personally do not believe in palmistry and I do not fully trust the validity of tarot cards because as far as I know (and I could be wrong) it is all 100% based on spiritualism. There is no concrete science behind it. It is one of those things that I really have to see for myself in order to believe. However, I am very heavy into astrology. Astrology is a lot more scientific and technical than most people realize. It is a lot deeper than just the generalizations in the horoscopes found in the Cosmopolitan Magazine. I find that people have storng opinions on things that they know nothing about...and astrology happens to be one of them. I also do believe that some people in this world are psychics and it is not manufactured. I reconcile it by saying that they are people who have strong intuition.


Case in Point 3: Gay Haters

I decided to mention this given the recent unbanning and then rebanning of gay marriages in California. I must say that I am a strong advocate against girly men...regardless if they are gay or straight. So if you are a macho gay guy, then you are alright with me and if you are a girly straight man, I'm going to have an issue. I just like boys who are boys. What anybody does in the bed room is not my business. However, I must say that I do believe same sex relations is to me morally wrong. But so is a lot of other things that people do...including myself. There is not one perfect person in this world. To all those religious fanatics out there who want to protect the "traditional definition of marriage", I want you to ask yourself one question: Were you free from sin when you got married? The answer for everyone is NO. The ban on gay marriage is 100% discriminatory. It is discriminatory because the values behind the ban are inconsistant with the values toward laws for other people. For instance, there is no ban against serial killers getting married. There is no ban against fornicators from getting married. To have a indiscriminate ban against gay marriage means you must have bans on everyone in the world who is imperfect. It's not possible.

Futhermore, marriage is a celebration of love between two people. So again I ask: why knock a good thing?

Happy 1st Birthday Shaun!!!!