Answering Anti-Gay Biblical Literalists- Part One- Understanding Their Side

They look (with a mixture of revulsion and pity) at the quiet, creative, effeminate teenager or the out of the closet news anchor or you and your life partner minding your own business. Although you did not ask for their opinion or even care to hear it, they feel it necessary to declare, “Homosexuality is a sin! The BIBLE SAYS SO!”

Of course, they are entitled to their opinion.

Free belief and free speech are fundamental rights. But so too is everyone’s right to a private family life, equality under the law and freedom to love, live, be productive and happy, at least in most civilized, western democracies.

The problem is that many anti-gay biblical literalists claim that you, as an LGBT person do not deserve to enjoy those aforementioned human rights, at least not while living as your sexuality dictates. Since they cannot make a valid case scientifically, sociologically, civilly and legally that the equally valid and happy existence of LGBT people will rob anyone else of their fundamental rights or ruin the planet, they are left with one last resort. You are not only making them uncomfortable, especially if they have to explain society’s acceptance of you to their children, you are making God very pissed off!

In fact, they claim that every time you feel attraction, get a crush, fall in love or make love, God gets madder and madder with you.  Some will even go as far as to say that living your life honestly is the gravest sin of sins. How do they intend to prove this is actually true? By using the bible, which they claim is God’s infallible word and the final authority on everything that exists, everything we could ever do or conceive of doing, even things the bronze-aged men who wrote it had no concept of in their time. And so, armed with this assertion and the 66 books, they go campaigning for punitive action against LGBT people at worst or at best quoting biblical verses out of good intentions with the hope it will cause you to feel just as they do.

How do you deal with such people? How do you answer them? Why bother answering them at all?

Well the bible-thumpers who are impassioned, virulent, unstable and clearly beyond reasoning I would indeed recommend ignoring them and if their actions go beyond free expression and descend into harassment, they should be met with zero tolerance.

But many who express their biblical objections to LGBT people are not foaming at the mouth or picketing the funerals of soilders. They condemn gays and lesbians with smiling civility and purport to be reasonable people with no hate in their heart. Lately such people are also met with zero tolerance and many gay activists and their supporters would argue, rightfully so especially when these “love the sinner hate the sin” types inconsiderately and some would say irresponsibly express their courteous condemnations at inappropriate times for example in public response to gay teen suicide and bullying.

After the spate of gay suicides and bullying of gay teens, certain spokespeople took the opportunity to inappropriately blame the victims for being homosexual. The complete lack of empathy on their part was even more gut-curdling than the foaming at the mouth Gods Hates Fags people because it was done often with a big smile.

Some dismiss anti-gay bible thumpers because they find their presumption and lack of perspective ludicrous. After all, isn’t the Old Testament just another set of myths, skewed history, illogical and chronologically flawed writings by bronze aged, tribesmen who did not even know that the earth revolved around the sun and microorganisms caused diseases? Was not the New Testament compiled by a corrupt, politically motivated Roman Catholic Church Empire in an attempt to forge a new imperial religion that could render Judaism defunct and compete with the Sun-worship and incarnating blood sacrificing deities of the pagans they wished to conquer? Obviously the people who believe the bible is the infallible, direct word of God must be just a little…well, nuts. Right?

Although this atheistic response is au current in most developed first world nations, here in the Caribbean, people still place a great deal of authority on holy texts, particularly the bible. They will not be dismissed so easily with a Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens quote. This approach is also unhelpful in elevating and enlightening the continued dialogue on the subject. Nothing ever gets resolved. Instead, both sides simply dig in deeper with greater resentment and over-defensiveness.

Shutting down debate by degrading the bible accomplishes nothing.

In a previous essay on Bullying, I mentioned that a fear of delving into contentious debate when someone says, “Well God’s word says…” and simply going the route of censorship will degrade our society into a bunch of sissies who cannot deal with differences of opinion nor critically weigh two opposing views without feeling threatened and persecuted.

I have taken on bible thumpers in person, on live radio, in letters to the editor of newspapers, in online chat rooms and discussion boards and I have never once had to resort to threats, ad hominem or other fallacious arguments. Perhaps the reason why I am able to do this is because I feel no resentment towards the bible or bible believers.  It may not seem that way to them though. Many Christians who chance upon my blog get bent out of shape. But I am not defaming the individual believer. If any religion claims to have an absolute monopoly on truth and God’s favor, you cannot blame one for questioning and criticizing the existence of atrocious, ignorant or powerless manifestations within that religion.

I was made to read the bible over and over while growing up in a staunch evangelical household and I have found, despite all the flaws and atrocities great universal truths in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. So too have a lot of people, spiritual and not. You do not have to be a legalistic fundamentalist Christian in order to appreciate the bible. In fact, I have found that being a legalistic, fundamentalist Christian may actually hinder a deeper appreciation of the bible because you are made to treat it with kid gloves and operate on many false assumptions which the theologically trained clergy hesitate to dissuade you, even if they know you are not seeing things for what they really are.

I still meet Christians today who truly believe that the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the literal authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

As an A student of Literature all the way up to Cambridge A Levels, this treatment of the scriptures bugged me no end. You see, on the one hand, I was being taught at school that in order to truly understand and appreciate any written work, you had to take the gloves off and tear into it. 

Only with the bible are we asked to abandon all reason and treat it like a mystical object.

In order to understand Shakespeare and Chaucer, I first had to glean an appreciation of old English and the idiomatic meanings of words. I had to understand the Middle Ages, the society, the culture and commonly held beliefs subjective to the time. At no time did my teacher give a pre-arranged doctrine about Hamlet or A Knight’s Tale and then taught me how to apologetically defend it with selective quotes. Instead, I was made to discover the writing on its own merit. This was a far cry from how the bible was being taught during bible study. It was not “study” in the purest sense of the word, but indoctrination and regurgitation which made me, like most Christians, woefully biblically illiterate.

I am telling you this because if you choose to reason with a bible quoting condemner of homosexuality, instead of dismissing them or censoring them, you must first understand what it means to be biblically illiterate. In fact there are Four Biblical Illiteracy Factors.

Bible Illiteracy Factor 1

A person who is biblically illiterate pays no heed to the type of translation they use or the process by which it now sits in their hand. As far as they are concerned, it is the Living Word made paper…and leather and ink. With this book, they can speak for God himself in plain English. In fact, they act as if that was the original language of the writers. They can tell others right now of what God thinks RIGHT NOW about anything, anyone, any situation. For this book is the very mind of God. And it only costs around $30 (unless you get a free copy)and weighs less than a pound. They truly believe that the Almighty Being who created the entire Universe can be predicted, quoted and represented by just opening this book.

Even if the bible were infallible what makes people so presumptuously certain that their understanding of it is also infallible? Not even the most accomplished student of literature ever claims to know exactly the mind of the human author whose work they spend a lifetime examining, far less a tome written by a Higher Intelligence.

Certain Christians use the bible in order to present themselves as the spokespeople for God who have intimate knowledge of God's mind, opinions, future plans on everything and everyone.

Most Christians who approach the bible in this way have no idea that this fetish-like, magic 8 ball relationship with the scriptures is actually a very recent thing in Christian history. In fact, you can bet that if someone views the bible this way, they also are entirely ignorant about the history of the Christian faith.

Biblical Illiteracy Factor 2

A person who is biblically illiterate is not very concerned with what bible verses ACTUALLY MEAN. They are only concerned about what bible verses SAY when they need certain things SAID in order to confirm the particular doctrine or social tradition they were taught alongside the bible.

I will use the example of the social tradition of corporal punishment. In order to defend it, many will quote verses like: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” Proverbs 13:24 or “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” Proverbs 22:15.

At first glance certain verses in the bible do seem to SAY that beating your child with a rod is a good thing. But is that really what these verses MEAN?

Dig just a little deeper into the Hebrew language, culture, poetic metaphors common at the time and you will discover that the word for rod or staff is shebet. It is actually a crooked staff used by shepherds to manage their flock. Now, shepherds do not beat the sheep with the rod but use the crooked staff to hook a wayward sheep by the neck and guide it back where it belonged. As a result of this cultural practice, the word shebet was also commonly used as a metaphor for wisdom or authority.  When in Exodus, it says that Moses was told by God that “with this staff you will lead the people out of Egypt,” it does not mean the literal shebet but the figurative shebet- with this wisdom and authority you will lead the people out of Egypt.

 Proverbs is a book filled with metaphors and that is why its writer can say, “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.” Proverbs 23:13. If indeed the bible is true, this scripture can only makes sense if the rod is a symbolic one, after all every year, thousands of children die from being beaten with “rods of correction”.

Human life is lost when people do not take the time to understand a book they claim to be God’s word.

Unfortunately, for the biblically illiterate, understanding what the bible MEANS, is too tedious a process. You have to get hold of a Hebrew and Greek concordance, read up biblical scholars, Jewish scholars, anthropology and archeology that reveal the context of the writing, the culture of the people, cross-reference with similar writings for clarification. Too much work for the intellectually lazy! Others who are not lazy are simply not equipped to do the research or have been told they don’t have to go through all that trouble. Which brings us to the next factor of biblical illiteracy you must understand before you engage in debate.

Biblical Illiteracy Factor 3

The biblical illiterate believe that they will be mystically bestowed accurate understanding. Even with just a second grade education they CAN BE A BIBLE EXPERT.

If it requires special spiritual powers to understand the bible and two equally sincere people claiming to have received those powers from God after sincerely praying yet have come away with two entirely different understandings of the same verse, which one do you believe? 

What is amazing is that so many never wonder how come the holy spirit always seems to guide them exactly where their pastor wants them to be. When someone tells you, “I was guided by holy spirit to understand this scripture, so you must believe me!” or “If you were guided by holy spirit, you will understand things exactly the same way I am trying to show you,” what they are actually saying is that you must put your faith in them without asking them the obvious question: “How do you know it was actually the holy spirit guiding you or the pastor/priest/reverend that taught you? How do you prove it could not possibly be any other emotion, mental state or trigger? What faculties do you use to distinguish the difference?”

The irony is, many bible believers will tell you how unreliable things like logic and science are but what they offer as a superior methodology to enlightenment is actually entirely subjective. Call me an arrogant, elitist intellectual all you like for wanting things to be a little more definitive and objective when it will be used to dictate how others live their lives and what human rights they enjoy.

 

We trust evidence over speculation in almost every aspect of our daily life including a court of law. We need to have things proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in order to justify any action we take that will rob someone of their freedom or life or else it does not sit well on our conscience

 

You and I were given the ability to reason, discover solid laws and depend on them enough to explore space and perform open heart surgery. Why would an Almighty Being feel threatened by our exercise of the faculties it gave us? Yes, knowledge is power but no amount of empowerment we achieve could ever intimidate a truly Almighty Being that is also supposed to be benevolent. The human custodians of religion on the other hand, well, that is another story. The empowerment of their fellowmen is often the last thing on their agendas and they inculcate their followers in being forever dependent and disempowered.

 

Does a human grandfather feel threatened when his grandchild makes her first steps or does he instead feel proud and happy?

I hope you fully understand the factors at play in many of those who come at you with their biblical justifications for why LGBT people should be treated as second class citizens. Once you do, you are ready to learn how to reply to them. Knowing one’s opponent in any battle and that includes philosophical debate is very important and that is why the best rebuttals to this argument come from those who actually KNOW THEIR BIBLE and sadly most do not, on both sides of the issue.

Even among those who do know and can stand up to anti-gay biblical literalists with solid bible-based rebuttals, a kind of weariness sets in after a while when you have to make the same argument over and over again. But do not stop! Your counteraction is very important. Why?

Well, it is important for two reasons. I mentioned one earlier. Nobody’s holy text should be used as justification for robbing another human being of their fundamental human right to a private family life, equality under the law and freedom to love, live, be productive and happy if that person in no way threatens the fundamental human rights of anyone else.

The second reason is even more important and I warn you, I am about to use some fighting words. Here it goes:

Anti-gay biblical literalists are hypocrites.

 

They may not be consciously aware that they are acting like Pharisees but they are. You may have noticed that I said earlier that there are Four Biblical Illiteracy Factors but so far I only mentioned three. I saved the fourth for last.

Biblical Illiteracy Factor 4

All biblical illiterate people inadvertently find themselves cherry-picking, back-tracking , falling into inconsistencies and failing to carry the same burdens they try to load upon the shoulders of others.

For example, they have no problem cherry-picking Leviticus 18:20 out of the 613 Mosaic Laws in order to condemn sexually active (and even celibate, virginal) homosexual men and teens. They will even use it to get the Government to take punitive action against adult, consensual, relationships, even committed ones lasting many years. But ask these same people why they do not also follow the other 612 laws. How come they do not ask the Government to enact the death penalty against people who work on the Sabbath or quarantine menstruating women or declare themselves unclean after a wet dream or stone children who throw an expletive filled temper tantrum? Why do they eat shrimp and tuck into the Christmas ham with gusto every year?

This is the main reason why we must engage and answer anti-gay literalists. They are being dishonest not only with themselves but all of society. The same honesty that made you live your life truthfully despite persecution and rejection is what should drive you to set the hypocrite…straight.

The same unflappable need to be honest that made you come out of the closet even if it meant waiting generations before the rest of society learned to be tolerant, should make you fight hypocristy when you find it.

 

Next installment, we will show how the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures, namely: Genesis 19 (The Story Of Sodom), The Mosaic Law and Kings are wrongly utilized in order to condemn LGBT people today. In the installment after that, we will explore the New Testament.

Stay tuned!  

A Second Sexual Revolution

A second sexual revolution?! Geez wasn’t one enough? Well, no. Certainly, thanks to Kinsey and other pioneering scientists we learned women can orgasm, several times in fact in one setting. We learned there is a spectrum of sexual orientation and gender identity. We learned how ridiculous it was to expect seven billion people to fit into one sexual mould with rigid gender roles. That would be just as unnatural and creepy as the entire world population all having the exact same creative talents or personalities. Most importantly, we began to refine and redefine what was morally acceptable or dysfunctional based on more informed, universal and humane benchmarks instead of asking a religious authority if it made God mad enough to bun we ass in hell.

We lost faith in that old method because it became apparent to many of us that it was a ruse. When it comes to dictating religious standards about sexuality, there is always leniency for the rich and powerful and Draconian measures for the poor and unrepresented. I can understand if you do not see the rat, but even the most avid believer in any organized religion must smell it by now.

So we began asking more important questions: Was the aspect of human sexuality in question harmful to the individual? Was it harmful to society, in particular children? Did it threaten the fundamental human rights (life, liberty, security, property) of anyone else? Suddenly a greater amount of sexual freedom became permissible. Some would argue it was a premature opening of Pandora’s Box. Others would argue it was a jolt back to reality, honesty and natural authenticity. For in their view the world that existed before the Sexual Revolution was unnatural, overly-controlled and detrimental to authentic happiness for many people who could not fit into the narrow gender and sexuality molds.

Fashion sensation Andrej Prejic is in his early twenties…yes I said HIS. He has not had any surgery. This is all him and he is considered one of the most beautiful examples of natural androgyny. He models both male and female clothes. We have thanks to more enlightened perimeters embraced the existence of gender diversity in our natural world. It hurts nobody, poses no threat to society, robs no one of their fundamental human rights.

Many of those who still feel inadequate, wronged, disempowered, scared, uncertain, confounded by human sexuality often hold it and the Revolution in contempt. Some accuse it of untethering us from the beliefs that confined and controlled our inherently fallen, evil-prone sexuality. For them, the training wheels or life-jacket is more important than learning how to master our balance, momentum and steering of our sexual lives. And gain the ability to swim, despite the weight of our animal inclinations and the turbulent sexual waters. They point to the fact that when the Sexual Revolution took off the training wheels and threw us in the deep end, there were casualties. They are right. Marriages ended. More children grew up without any comforting wool pulled over their eyes. Men saw an increase in sexual rejection by women, even by many who were supposed to be grateful for any attention at all. Insecurities and uncertainties increased as did expectations of porn-star-esque bedroom gymnastics. Herpes, HIV, new strains of the clap and chlamydia came out to play!

But it would be also be dishonest to pretend that the Sexual Revolution did not also free and save lives by forcing society to deal with issues like incest, sexual abuse, sexism, violence against women and homophobia.

Gary Ross, Director and Producer of the critically acclaimed movie Pleasantville had this to say about the film, "This movie is about the fact that personal repression gives rise to larger political oppression...That when we're afraid of certain things in ourselves or we're afraid of change, we project those fears on to other things, and a lot of very ugly social situations can develop". In the movie, those who became free of personal repression in the 1950s utopian, black and white television world started to manifest color and certainty gave way to uncertainty but also freedom. What we had before the Sexual Revolution was not the utopia that many social conservatives make it out to be, even if it was less complicated and had more reassurances built into it…like riding with training wheels.

The Sexual Revolution was not perfect and worst of all, when it was not even half-way finished it was co-opted by mercenaries in the corporate world. To put it crudely: We were taught how to fuck better, feel better about fucking, associate more products with fucking, watch people fucking and sing catchy songs about fucking while doing dances that made us want to fuck some more. But we were not sufficiently taught how not to fuck up ourselves, not to fuck up those we love and not to fuck up the planet. It was style without substance. A hard cock without a soul or mind behind it. It was knowledge without power and freedom without responsibility and our priorities became well….fucked.

The darlings of corporate oligarchy, the pharmaceutical companies, tackled erectile dysfunction instead of breast and cervical cancers. Hollywood and the fashion and cosmetics industry promoted unnatural standards of beauty and exploitation of girls and boys as sex-objects as soon as their endochrine system whispered, “puberty” and sometimes even earlier *ick*.

After the Jean Bennet-Ramsey tragedy, what’s to say Toddlers & Tiaras is not the equivalent of Cinemax after eleven…for pedophiles.

Religion continued to exploit our fear, guilt and shame with ex-gay programmes, advocacy against women’s choice; opposition of equal rights for sexual minorities and promotion of Sharia Law. As usual, while there was more severe punitive action against the poor while loopholes were made available for the rich and powerful. It has become so glaring now, we have people like Newt Ginrich speaking about the "sanctity of marriage" while on his third. Meanwhile the plebs beat up their gay teenagers, continue to support a church that allows priests to rape our children, give money to pastors on the down-low and excuse imams advocating for terrorism, domestic abuse of and subjugation of women.

Isn’t the goal of any revolution to bring a greater sense of power to the powerless? Well the Sexual Revolution left us with all kinds of powerlessness the most glaring being: The billions of men who are floundering, grasping, struggling to hold on to self-esteem, sense of purpose and power that for far too long could only be enjoyed at the expense of other people and the planet.

The Revolution is also not complete because we still have billions of women still carrying the yoke for their societies, while being denied the fullest benefits of those societies. The billions of women who can enjoy the fullest benefits of society, but still carry the scars of guilt, ignorance, shame, disempowerment and so sabotage themselves in ways that can still be used to hinder their progress.

 

The Revolution is yet to reconcile those who wrongly thought sexual freedom and spirituality were incompatible and sacrificed their spirituality for hedonism and are now in their later years hollow and handicapped to address issues pertaining to forgiveness, inner-peace, self-love, purpose, trust, unconditional love and social justice.

The LGBT community who are still suffering under prevailing archaic laws in my Caribbean territory with no end in sight thanks to the cowardice of our elected leaders, apathy of influential gays and lesbians, ignorance of the populace and hypocrisy of the religious community. Our planet which is struggling to keep up with our ridiculous rate of procreation.

Snap your fingers. Seriously, do it. Ten thousand babies were just born. Snap your fingers again, another ten thousand. Two thirds of those babies will be born into poverty, unjust societies and polluted environments. One out three of the girls born will be sexually abused. One out ten sold into slavery. Less than half were born to parents who want them, will do what it takes to love, care and provide for them, let alone raise them with selflessness and all the best knowledge we have on childrearing. Yet, snap your fingers and ten thousand more have been born. They have been born into a world with dwindling resources and harder choices than their parents will ever have to make. No higher mammal on the planet reproduces completely out of sync with its societal needs and natural environment like we do. We are clearly out of balance, misdirected and not fully evolved in this area of our life.

So yes, music videos are raunchier. Women can now be cougars instead of just middle-aged. A Surgeon General actually said that masturbation is good. Pre-marital sex is a prerequisite of finding a committed partner, saving a lot more couples sexual incompatibility catastrophes after a binding contract has been signed in front of family and friends. You do not feel “tarnished” if you have had more than one sexual partner or a child out of wedlock. You can buy birth control without shame in more countries. Women can divorce cheating husbands and get alimony. Underage arranged marriages and female genital mutilation is frowned upon. Women can equally require men to man-scape and manicure, primp and preen to appeal to their discriminating tastes. Gays and lesbians can get married in almost all first world nations. Bravo! I mean it, Bravo!

But in my humble opinion, the ultimate goal of the Sexual Revolution should be (1) Awareness of how to use this sexual knowledge and sexual freedom to achieve a higher state of existence in harmony with our environment and fellowman. (2) Supporting, researching and innovating ways of making the aforementioned a reality.

After all, if we are still so powerless and miserable after our sexual revolution in the West, how do we convince nations across the Atltantic that are in dire need of similar revolution that it is a good thing? That they should allow their women equality and not chop off their clitorises and marry them off to an old man for twelve sheep and a donkey when they are still too young to be fully empowered in their own mind. How can we defend the revolution when religious leaders can still point to unhealed scrapes and sprains, among those who discarded their training wheels and life vests and tried to peddle and swim using their own abilities? We have a long way to go yet. There is still fight in me. What about you?

Fight Season

It would be easy to blame my work for this long absence from the Bloggershere but that would not be entirely honest. It's not that I wasn't a bit brain-fried and running on caffeine and adreneline. I was. The reason I was however, is what was most important. Constantly going meant not having time to stop and check myself in all the areas that need checking.

But as of now, I am off the coffee/insomnia/sleeping pill spin cycle! Weaning myself off caffeine was a roller coaster of fun for all! Headaches, low energy, irritability, constipation ah yes, good times. I do not recommend it for anyone who does not have an understanding significant other and boss. As the dizziness of the spin cycle subsided, a new state of clarity emboldened me to enter into a Fight Championship.

It’s an annual event at a Fight Club reserved for those of us who dare to confront our shit and once again, more roller-coaster fun for the whole family. First Match: You vs. the world. You win that one essentially by shutting out the world and taking some to focus on yourself while trusting that "the world" will take care of itself and fall into place when you get your shit in order. Do that and you advance to the... Second Match: You vs. the people you love/ed most in the world. That one always ends in a comforting stalemate of unconditional love, if you lucky and have the right people in your life. They are the kind who only provoke you because they unintentionally smoothng away your rough edges and the friction does burn sometimes. Get through that and then it's the grand finale! Championship Fight: You vs. Yourself. What you get out of this bout. Well, if you win, a whole lot of forgiving, asking for forgiveness, remembering to love yourself and love others and let others love you. I real bloodied and bruise up yet somehow it was worth it. I can write without feeling like I bullshitting.

2012 Survival Kit- Face Your Fears This Year

I won’t mince words.

You will not survive the times ahead if you are still enslaved to fear. Fear is the prison warden of the old, skewed-patriarchal, consumerist system. Fear keeps your mouth shut in the face of blatant injustice and corruption. Fear keeps you showing up to a job that makes you sick on every level. Fear cracks a whip of insecurity over your back so you continue keeping up with the Jonses. Fear keeps you in your ethnic ghetto. Fear traps you in the closet, invisible and insignificant making it easier for others to defame and dehumanize who and what you are.

Ready to be free? Good. Let’s get right into it with some common fears.

Fear Of The Unknown

This is the most primal fear. In fact, Fear Of Death is actually a heart-stopping hybrid of Fear Of The Unknown and Fear of Loss/Change. Can you imagine the first time our ancestors saw the vast ocean? Can you imagine how long it took them to wade into it let alone try to cross it? It is actually not a “fear” at all but a feeling of uncertainty. It is pure trepidation.

When you have no way of knowing what might be coming around the corner, the primal passive reaction is the Fight or Flight Response.

The goal of the lifelong truth-seeker, self-mastery pursuer is to ensure that whether their reaction is Passive or Active it is not Unconscious but Conscious.

Keep this in mind as we explore the other fears. Your goal is responding out of Enlightened Conscious Choice instead of Primal Unconscious Instinct, even when staring down an eviction notice, a parent’s finger pointing out the door, the barrel of a gun, a worthy romantic rival, a wave of riot police, a hostile audience or the crushing metal of a tank.

Choice obliterates Fear because it guides your reaction (Passive or Active) in such a way that you can achieve a brief moment of contemplation (Zen/Surrender/Focus) in order to acquire the knowledge to turn that adrenaline rush of fear into positive fuel to act in your best interests and/or that of others.

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 1
A woman who holds decision making position wakes up to the fact that she is working for a corporation that uses unfair trade, child labor and is doing wrong to the planet, cheating its customers and also making her miserable. It is horrible! But she is afraid that if she quits, she faces an uncertain future.

She can respond either this way...

or this way

As you can see, the latter is preferable. It offers many choices and options to fully exploit the abundance of the Universe. Also there is no longer any separate Passive and Active but a hybrid of the two. When you face Fear like a spiritual warrior you learn: how, when, where to strategically give way or push through, block or punch.


Related To Fear Of The Unknown: Fear of Death, Fear of Change, Fear Of Moving, Fear of Growing Up, Fear of Losing Identity/Status, Fear of Taking On Leadership.


Fear Of Abandonment

This is another primal fear. Our ancestors saw what happened to the wailing baby buffalo abandoned by its mother. We knew if we were suddenly alone, in the wild, we were on the menu ourselves. We are social animals. Community is very important to us and exclusion from the community was preparation for death. It was what we did to former alpha males who were past their prime. They were relegated to the fringes to be picked off by nature.

Wanting to belong and be at the very centre of the community is still a desperate, primal need even though we are no longer at the mercy of the wild and healthy solitary survival is quite possible, even preferable in some cases. Rejection by family, peers, community is so strong a motivating force, it kept people silent during history's most atrocious events. Even today, it makes the teenager within her clique who sees bullying happen, stay silent, secretly hating her lack of courage.

The fear of being rejected by family, peers, community is so strong, it can make people do things on a social level what they know is wrong on an individual level.

I make it a habit of treating with intense suspicion ANY organization that has a problem with individualism and tries to force community contact and their members constantly try to insert themselves into your life, particularly when they try to make you afraid of everyone and everything outside their group. I see it as an attempt to groom people away from self-sufficiency, self-awareness, self-examination and ultimately self-actualization. Any system or organization can become an opiate when this happens.

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 2
A young man realizes he is gay. Despite how he was raised to carry on in his father’s footsteps, be stereotypically macho and get married to a nice woman; despite the culture which focuses on heterosexual love and focuses on homosexuals in a negative or contentious light; despite the religious indoctrination against being gay, he cannot help but be attracted to other men instead of women. He is deathly afraid of losing everyone he ever loved and being a pariah in his community.

He can respond to his fear in either this way...

or this way...

It is incredible how people unthinkingly allow themselves to be herded into all the belief systems and arrangements that have massively failed the vast majority of humankind simply because it is what is “expected” of them. We allow systems to continue at levels beyond what it takes to have products recalled and marketing plans tossed out. We will never sync human development with planetary preservation if we continue to operate this way.

There are people who want us to stay in certain herds and camps because it benefits them, not us.

Developing nations cannot simply unquestioningly adopt the economic and diplomatic systems imposed on them. The Caribbean region in general and Trinidad and Tobago in particular will not survive climate change, food shortages and natural resource depletion if we continue to crave belonging to the North American, consumerist herd.

Fortunately for us, in Trinidad and Tobago, we have more than a few with revolutionary ideas. We just need to bring economic and political clout into the new spaces they create so that real change can happen. We have a significant advantage in this respect over other Caribbean islands where the people have been herded so well into their respective camps based on color, family name and social status and for the most part, remain in their camps out of fear of ridicule and diligently police their fellowmen who step out of the pigeon hole. It is sad because in today’s world a sense of community is just a click away. All the more reason why there is no excuse to remain among people who are not nurturing your soul and/or require you to hide your unique splendor under a basket.

My native island of Trinidad and Tobago has one of the highest numbers of awesome, freaks, free-thinkers, creative mavericks and revolutionaries per capita. If I were to list them all, it would take pages upon pages. But here are just a handful. Clockwise from left: Winston Bailey “The Mighty Shadow", a genius in the art-form of calypso, V.S. Naipaul, a Nobel Laureate, Dwight Yorke, the Fred Astaire of English football, Kevin Baldeosingh, our most outspoken atheist newspaper columnist, Anya Ayoung Chee, Project Runway Winner 2011, Godfrey Sealy our first ever openly gay AIDS activist and theatre actor/director/producer, Yao Ramesar, the most prolific Caribbean filmmaker, Rachel Price, fearless, straight-talking comedienne, Rikki Jai, chutney-soca pioneer and innovator, Keith Smith, beloved, poignant, social and cultural commentator, Meiling, genius fashion designer, 3Canal, Rapso prophets and revolutionaries, Gillian Lucky, fearless, un-closeted legal eagle and former Parliamentarian, Darren Cheewah, tattoo shaman and mas re-inventor, Denise Plummer, the boss-lady of calypso, Peter Minshall, the high priest of high mas (Carnival Masquerade).

I applaud all the people who have taken a good look at their inner-being, compared it to what is being offered within their current camp and made a conscious choice to step outside their camp in search of the important missing aspects, essential to their soul development, even if it means being an outcast temporarily or permanently.

The truth is, right now we need outcasts, free-thinkers, fearless creators, explorers, experimenters. We need freaks! How else are we going to come up with alternatives for unbridled, subsidized capitalism based on unfair-trade, irresponsible consumerism, exploitative labor and planetary destruction? How else are we going to come up with alternatives to oppressive fundamentalist religions? How else are we going to come up with alternatives for the monogamous nuclear family as the only respectable means to enjoy shared property, legal protection, sexual fulfillment and family-life? How else are we going to address in inadequacies of our educational system, judicial system and class inequality?

Related To Fear Of Abandonment: Fear of Being Embarrassed, Fear of Being Unpopular, Fear Of Being Invisible, Fear Of Being Wrong.

Fear Of Pain

This is a recent and unnatural fear.
Pain is something I have written extensively on before. If you do not feel like reading through it just yet, I will sum up the marrow of that previous essay:

Pain is not evil.

Pain is a natural, beneficial signal our bodies and minds were designed to feel to ensure our own self-preservation. It is how we know to STOP! SLOW DOWN! SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY ALTERED! It is the equally valid opposite signal to pleasure which tells us to: PROCEED! ENJOY! SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY REINFORCED!

When you relax, listen to the signal of Pain and surrender to it with conscious understanding that you should PROCEED, ENJOY because although SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY ALTERED, it is for the best, pain can re-signal itself as Pleasure.

You can learn how to develop a high pain threshold or better yet, a highly enlightened pain threshold.It is an experience I have had while taking “cut-ass” from my father, being pierced, tattooed and getting a little freaky in the bedroom. It is an experience avid exercise buffs feel. It is even an experience women giving birth have had. The body releases endorphins to turn pain into pleasure when you accept the pain as something beneficial.

Bliss is actually Pain AND Pleasure firing at the same time. Orgasm involves both pain and pleasure nerve endings.

There was a time when we understood that pain was not in of itself evil but very useful to our survival. We worshipped not just the positive but also the negative aspects of nature because we saw it as part of one essential cycle. We incorporated pain into our various initiation rites. We knew hard toil brought sweet harvest. Calloused fingers produced lovely music. Wanting to live a life of eternal pleasure only was unfathomable to us, perhaps even scary or unnatural. Where was the contrast going to come from? Wouldn’t it be boring?

It was only when we began the class system of relegating the majority of the population to endure an unnatural, imbalanced, unnecessary amount of pain without any purpose, context or contrast while a few enjoyed as much pleasure as possible, that we lost this perspective and became either desensitized or oversensitive. When we selected who will enjoy more pain based on factors other than their own actions, factors like race, gender, culture, origin, then the utopia of eternal pleasure became desirable, particularly to the masses experiencing nothing but pain for no good reason. We turned something that was supposed to be harmonious into ridiculous extremes and both extremes of pleasure and pain are forms of suffering.

This, for eternity, with no contrast, is only appealing to those who live a life of meaningless suffering. To others it would be extremely BORING!

It may not seem like the person enjoying an unnatural amount of pleasure is suffering…not yet. But trust me, something vital is atrophying because of serotonin and dopamine overload and sooner or later a strong pain signal will be needed to establish balance. Negative feedback…you cannot fight it and when an entire society has pleasure overload, Mother Nature Herself will provide the negative feedback.

Fear of Pain is actually a hybrid fear made all the more intense by our current economic system and development as a species. We no longer have to do things the hard way. Water comes to us. Meat is nicely cut, cleaned and packaged for us in a refrigerated store. We can take a pill and lose weight instead of exercising and having to deal with muscular pain and stinky sweat.

Learning to face pain still is an essential rite of passage for many indigenous tribes still in existence around the world.

But all of it comes at a cost. Remember BALANCE.

There was wisdom in our ancestors’ take on pain and all bitter, smelly, gross, unpleasant aspects of human existence. You might as well deal with it and learn how to work with it. You cannot run from it. You cannot sanitize it, not completely. You need a little hardship, a little toil, a little inconvenience for contrast and most of all BALANCE. If you had to kill and gut your own chickens, do you really think you would eat so much KFC and develop clogged arteries and man boobs? If you had to collect and transport your own water, do you really think you would allow WASA to waste so much of it?

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 3
A young woman wants to be healthy, fit and beautiful but hates the discomfort, inconvenience, sacrifice involved in doing it the holistic way.

She can either take this approach...

Or this one...

The threat of pain, discomfort, delay and inconvenience drives the consumerist economy. How many products to make life easier do we need? Was the pain, discomfort, delay and inconvenience really such a bad thing if it was making us slow down, do things with more thought, care, love? Worst of all, it stops us dead in our tracks when we want to do the right thing.

Related Fears: Fear of Discomfort, Fear of Work, Fear of Delay, Fear of Inconvenience, Fear of Loss, Fear of Punishment/Consequences.

Practical Tools To Fight Fear

This is a Survival Kit after-all, so this discourse would be incomplete if I left you without some weapons to put into use right away. Feel free to copy, enlarge, print and share.

Have you noticed that in tackling Fear, the one major, recurring Spiritual/Intellectual Gap is Knowledge/Context and Mastery. Our greatest ally in surviving the rapidly changing world ahead is Knowledge/Context and Mastery. From this, everything else will naturally flow and fall into place. It is no wonder that the war on Knowledge, Context and Mastery has escalated in the last decade or so. Blatant falsehoods are being touted as facts even in the information age. History is being re-written, forgotten, sanitized to allow past atrocities to return. More and more products and services are being introduced to make us lazier, complacent and even more pleasure-addicted.

Beware those who wish to restrict your access to as much knowledge as you desire. Beware those who wish to erase, twist or sanitize history so we do not learn from its context. Beware those who insist you are weak, helpless, lost, fallen without their particular system, group, product, service and want to discourage you from independently questioning, seeking inner strength and capability.

That is about the only warning or “doom and gloom” you will hear from me about 2012. Apart from that, I truly believe it will be an eventful time in the best possible way for many of us who are learning how to become comfortable with growing pains and be productive, happy, peaceable in spite of them.

May 2012 and all the years to come sing for you!