whatever an erver is… it's mine!

There is a fish, in a fish bowl. One of those ones with the fake sand and the fake log and the fake plastic plants. And there is a fish. All day, every day, it swims around this bowl. It knows this bowl inside out. It’s not a very big place, and it doesn’t have much going on. The bowl sits on this tall, small table. Just big enough for the bowl to sit on top. So that people can see it.

And all around this bowl are people, looking at the fish. The fish is just doing what it does, swimming around, looking out on the huge, distorted faces it sees all around it. Some of these faces are smiling, some are confused, some are angry. The fish doesn’t know or understand. The fish doesn’t have emotions, it can’t smile, or cry, or be angry. It doesn’t understand what goes on outside the bowl. It’s entire existence is spent inside it’s water environment. It only knows what goes on inside it. The fish can see these people looking, staring, pointing and talking, but it doesn’t understand: it’s a fish. Why should it concern itself with matters outside it’s environment?

The fish is lonely. Or at least it would be, if it knew what it was to not be alone. It doesn’t know what a companion is. It doesn’t even know what kind of fish it is. There’s no mirrors in a fish bowl. No reflections or anything else to describe what it looks like, how it acts or behaves. The fish then is not so much a fish, but a consciousness, being carried around in a body. The body is irrelevant, the fish is now self-aware. It is able to analyse and research it’s own thoughts and mind. It now has perspective. It turns it’s attention to that which exists outside it’s own familiar world.

What purpose does the fish serve? It could swim around the bowl forever and never know anything but what it experiences. What about to the people outside? Is the fish simply a distraction? Entertainment? Is it’s existence simply a matter of convenience? If only it could communicate, and tell the people all that it sees. Tell them of it’s perception, it’s view on those people, and their world. If only they could understand that what to them seems normal, expected, familiar, to the fish is new, inexperienced, foreign. The fish then is gifted. It’s gift is the ability to show these people, blind to their own existence, what they really are. It offers a view not many people will have the opportunity to see for themselves. What they look like from the outside.

But of course it could never do that. Fish can’t speak.

So, as some of you might remember, a little while ago I wrote a somewhat erratic note about my perception of religion (for those who have never read it, go to http://www.clonnyserver.com/2010/01/05/thank-god-im-not-religious/). Anyway, I am sat in bed trying to sleep, and again I get to thinking about what my deal is with those who worship.

But before I begin, let me make it abundantly clear I am not hating on religious people. Some of my best friends, people I admire and adore are religious. In most cases this is a choice they made on their own and I am cool with that. I am not someone who discriminates, in fact I am someone who embraces people who live their life their own way. Being individual and true to your beliefs is the most anybody can do, and honesty to one’s self and others is an attribute I value highly.

I suppose the point I am trying to get to is that I still don’t understand the true meaning of religion. My very basic fleshing out of the concept is that it is basically beliefs and truisms that someone lives by. But in a lot of cases it seems that these ways of life don’t relate well to today. A lot of the rules, the ideas and concepts that these religions are based on do not fit in with the modern world, and I think this is a pretty important example of why people seem less and less concerned with faiths. And this goes back to what I wrote in my previous note about religions being formed in a time before science, before the readily available wealth of knowledge and information we have today.

The idea that anybody in the modern age could still live their life by archaic rules and values puzzles me and in some cases annoys the right fuck out of me. The less extreme god-fearing faiths I can tolerate, because at least they make provisions for the fact that we are human, and prone to mistakes and failures. But how some of the more ancient, extreme faiths can still be accepted as readily as they are, and the fact that governments around the world make concessions for these people boggles the mind. Why should socially and culturally advanced civilisations and countries be made to provide exceptions and different rules because of some outdated belief that it is right to kill someone for hurting a cow (yes this is a complete generalisation, I don’t care).

And the same applies the other way around. No person, religious or not, should have any kind of right that allows them to impart their own views and beliefs, in some cases forcibly and violently, upon another person. Yet the powers-that-be conveniently overlook these indiscretions for whatever reasons. Why should anybody, religious or not, have to change the way they live their lives, just because the man in charge favours one god over another?

I still think, and will always think, religion is stupid. As long as parents and elders continue spreading their belief, there is always going to be conflict and war, and we will never really truly advance as a species beyond the self-destructive animals we are now.

So I’m wide awake after having a somewhat interesting <3-to-<3 with a friend of mine interstate (damn that off-your-chest feeling is great…). Meanwhile, I began having a chat about society, relationships and their meanings with a good friend of mine. All of these topics I will attempt to cover later on. After feeling somewhat like the aggressor in the discussion (even though I was trying so hard not to push my views I still felt like I was beating someone down with the ClonnyBabel™), the topic changed to religion… is that alarm bells I hear? Why is everyone heading for the basement? Come back! I promise I’ll play nice!

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