Defining Marriage On Our Terms

I. A Personal Evolution of Change

Over the last several months, I have tried to become more of an observer regarding hotbed political discussion, rather than my usual role of opinionated blabbermouth. What I have noticed is a consistent hypocrisy across the entire political spectrum that says "I require tolerance for my lifestyle and my lifestyle only".  Generally I like to think that this applies to the louder participants, but my experience is that it is fairly endemic to anyone that has any kind of strong opinion.  What is most interesting is that these people are quite adept at spotting the hypocrisy in others, but quite blind to their own (I am sure there are plenty of hypocrisy skeletons in my own closet).  The fact of the matter is, however, that the vast majority of people who talk about politics seem quite content to actively restrict the lifestyles of anyone who is not like them.

The hypocrisy of the right is pretty obvious within the circles I associate with, and there has been much spilled ink about theocracies, gay rights, women's rights, marijuana legalization, and the overall theme that non-fundamentalist Christians should not be forced to be held fundamentalist ideals through theocratic law making.  Not as much is written about the hypocrisy of the left,  but rest assured, it is there, and oftentimes it is present in the very same issues where the right is criticized. I first observed it among the atheist communities; whereas the hatred for religion is so strong that they would happily violate basic freedoms of the religious (probably surprising to hear given that I am atheist that hates religion).

It's not just religion, either.  The gun control debate is a prime example of hypocrisy on the left.  Just like hard liners on the right,  the argument basically boils down to "if I don't understand it or don't like it, it should be illegal", and just like the right, the left is happy to resort to emotional appeals to try and justify criminalizing behavior that is not inherently immoral.  Both sides feel somehow justified acting as arbiters for what is deemed acceptable culture, and both sides attempt to use legislative hammers to beat each other over the head into compliance.  

I understand it.  I was once one of them, first on the right, then somewhere not-quite-left. It's empowering to think that you have all of the answers, and if you could just force those other idiots to live and think the way you do, well, then wouldn't the world just be a better place?  But they don't.  And they never will.  And frankly, I like it that way.  

One thing I have learned on my journey is, that just because someone agrees with me, that does not mean that I will actually like them.  I would much rather talk to someone that can intelligently, respectfully, and effectively disagree with me much more than I tend to like those that share the same views, but do not understand the views they have.  What talking to people has taught me is, being an honest thinker is more important than what you actually think.

II.  The Importance of Being Wrong

There is an important opportunity that is lost when our population is primarily focused on swinging those legislative hammers upon the heathens to their cause; by not actually understanding what the believe or what they oppose, they fail to see the inherent complexities that arise when you mix 300 million people from cultures that come from all over the world.  By artificially assigning simplistic definitions and characteristics to these diverse groups, it becomes far easier to dismiss what you do not already believe in and dismiss them out of hand.  The lost opportunity is two-fold; the opportunity to learn from those who disagree with you, and the opportunity to let everyone live their own lives and make their own mistakes.  Which is why both the ideologies of the left and the right, (and really, any ideology that requires compliance from an opposing faction) are ideologies of tyranny, because they attempt to demonize and criminalize behaviors that they do not agree with.  

Even if a particular view or ideology could be shown to be universally better than others, I do not think it makes for good legislative policy.  Even if you could effectively protect people from ever making their own bad decisions, you rob them of the ability to learn from them, and potentially become better, wiser, smarter people.  Even worse, by criminalizing non-immoral behavior, you only ensure that people suffer perpetually for their bad decisions, rather than letting them profit from them.  Even outside of legislative action, just culturally stigmatizing behaviors has a chilling effect on allowing people to discuss them openly, and thus, keeps all of us from learning the lessons that can be obtained by them.  

This is where the hypocrisy is equal across the entire right-left political structure; that whatever you are against should be legislated against.  Let's take marriage for example.  It's no secret that many conservatives support actions like DOMA that effectively codify into law only monogamous heterosexual unions as federally recognized marriages (even though most Democratic congresspersons voted in favor of it at the time, and was signed into law by a Democratic president), while the recent movement to allow for gay marriage is largely one driven from the democratic left.  Here the supporters of gay marriage get to proclaim about how tolerant they are, but in reality, while they are slightly more tolerant, the hypocrisy still exists in that both the left and right believe that a centralized state authority still should be able to define what marriage is and what marriage isn't, and then confer rights and benefits around that definition.  We, as citizens, are then corralled into fitting into that pre-defined template of marriage in order to retain those benefits.  

This is where the tyranny comes into play.  I, as an able bodied and sound minded person, should be the person who decides what kind of family arrangement is appropriate for me, and as such, I should be the one making the choice about who should receive what benefits based on my relationship with said person(s), however, the tyranny of the current system dictates those rights and benefits for me, based on how I fit into their definition of "married".  While widening the definition to be more inclusive is indeed an improvement (and the definition has widened considerably since the origin of marriage licenses were to primarily prevent race-mixing), it is still a feeble attempt to adjust to the growing public acceptance of homosexuality while completely brushing off the idea that government should have no authority to determine these things in the first place.

And thus, comes the point.  Live your own damn life, and let me live mine.  Let me decide if I want to be abstinent or promiscuous.  Let me decide if drugs will enhance my life or not.  Let me decide what the terms of my relationships will be, whether they be monogamous or non-monogamous, hetero- or homosexual, or somewhere in between.  Let me decide who my next of kin should be.  Let me decide if I want to be in a religion, whereas I can then follow that religion's teachings, or to not be in one, and not have to follow in any teachings at all.  Let me decide if I should possess firearms or not.  Let me make my own decisions, whether they are good or bad, because I will get the opportunity to learn from them.  And then let's talk about them.  I do not aim to be a social isolationist libertarian, where we all do what we want and forget about what anyone else thinks.  I would rather be a socially inclusive libertarian, where we do what we want, but let's encourage a rich, vibrant social discourse so that we can all learn from each other, and be satisfied that people are different, and are free to live the lives they want.  Just put down the legislative hammers and and forget trying to define marriage, sexuality, what drugs are acceptable and which are not, what guns are acceptable and which are not, and let the citizens figure that out for themselves.  

III. Let Me Live So That I Can Learn To Live

"Learning to live" seems to be a consistent theme of this blog, and today's entry is no different.  Today is special however, as Patty and I are officially casting off one of the last vestiges of our old life, and truly embracing the spirit of living the life we want to live: we are replacing our wedding rings with tattoos.  While this decision has little bearing on our every day life, and one that has no legal or religious effect on our marital status, it is something we decided needed to happen.  We have come to the realization that it is better to be together because we want to be, not because we need to be, and our marriage exists because we desire it to exist only as two consenting adults who care about each other.  Our marriage is what we want it to be today, and if we want it to be something different tomorrow, then we will change it.  There is no social, religious, or governmental affiliation or expectation that can any longer have any affect on us; this is truly our journey to do as we please.  

As for why we are ditching the rings, well, honestly, they have become distasteful to me.  When Patty and I were in pre-marital counseling, the priest told us that the rings were a symbol of slavery, and that wearing them meant we were slaves to each other.  I no longer feel that slavery is a good way to manage a relationship.  I don't desire to be Patty's slave, and I don't desire for her to be mine.  What I want is to be a strong, independent, caring person who happens to share my experiences with an equally strong, independent, caring person.  The tattoos represent our commitment to each other, that we are important parts of each others lives, but we are not slaves.  Even if our marriage ended tomorrow, we recognize that we have been so integral to each other's well-being.  Years ago, we cast off the chains of slavery to religion, now it is time to cast off the chains of slavery to each other.

We no longer need religion to define morality, and we no longer need government to define marriage. We define these things for ourselves, and we are happy to do it.

Better To Be Dead Than Dying

Death Is Easy.  Dying Is Hard. 

Almost exactly a year after my grandfather, my grandmother has died.  And I am no closer to understanding how to deal with death today as I was then.  My grandfather was the first person who had died that I was remotely close to, and as such, was the first time I had to confront the nastiness of finite mortality.  And I hated it.  More than just dealing with the idea that, one day, my consciousness will evaporate into nothingness, I felt that the whole process of dealing with the death of a loved one to be nonsensical and detrimental to everyone involved.  

My grandfather spent the better part of a decade dying.  His care was intensive, as he was bed-ridden for a long period of time.  While physically incapacitated, he was at least mentally aware, until a few months before his death when he suffered a stroke, after which he faded into the abyss.  Seeing someone you once knew go from lucid to lost is not pleasant.  It is an uncomfortable realization when someone you knew and loved can no longer remember who you are.  It is at this point that one must face the fact that personality and characteristics are primarily tied to brain function, and when the brain no longer functions like it once did, the person you once knew is already gone.  I saw a glance of this when Patty had her seizure; some aspects of her personality have changed entirely, just because her brain now functions differently with the proper medication.

Now that I no longer live with the premise that a person has a spirit that contains the fundamental aspects of their character, I must be able to understand and deal with the consequences of that philosophy; that character comes strictly out of the physical brain, and that injuries and disorders to that brain will potentially impact what kind of person they are.  As hard as it is to accept at times, my experiences with Patty's epilepsy and Joey's brain injury, as well as the mental fading of the elderly people I have known in my life, show me that this is fundamentally true.  Seeing how the nature of a person can so drastically change after such drastic or degenerative changes to their brain function, it becomes difficult for me to even consider that a person can exist beyond death.

However, from a personal standpoint, this future non-existence is not a big deal.  When I die, I am nothing.  I won't persist in any meaningful way.  I won't remember, I won't dream, I won't feel pleasure or feel pain.  It's easy.  It's null existence.  It's the process of dying itself that becomes terrifying; years spent in agony, reduced awareness and reduced usefulness.

The near fanatical devotion to extending life makes no sense to me.  I don't want to die tomorrow, or even "at the top" of my life, but I don't want to persist to 90 for the sake of persisting.  There has got to be a point where the benefits of living no longer outweigh the benefits of ending life.  If my kids are gone, and my loose ends are tied up, the barrier for entry to the abyss all of a sudden becomes a lot easier, especially if a major illness crops up.

What makes even less sense is how we treat death.  Family gets together after the person has died to hold some kind of memorial service.  An opportunity to comfort a person at the end of their life is wasted.  Instead of sharing memories and happier times with the person about to depart, they must be shared without them.  It is a strange concept to me to see family voyage many miles to mourn that they will never see a loved one again, when they rarely made the voyage to see them while they were alive.  Maybe this is a matter of perspective from a person who sees the deceased as irrecoverably lost.  Maybe for those who believe in a spiritual facet, the last opportunity to spend life with a loved one while still living doesn't have such a high cost that I try to assign to it.  Even so, the process seems so backwards to me.  There is a terrible irony that a deathbed is lonely but a funeral is well attended.  

It is my hope that the end of my life is handled in a much more pleasant fashion.  When the time comes, where the realization that my life has reached the end of its usefulness, either mentally or physically, and that efforts to maintain life have severely diminished returns, that I will gather family and friends together for a last hurrah, to enjoy their company while I still live.  To tell stories, to hear stories, to enjoy companionship one last time, to toast a life well lived, is my hope.  When the party is over, I hope the very closest of friends and family would be merciful enough to help me end my life peacefully.  My goal for the end of my life is a happy death.  Ideally, Patty and I will live a long life together, and experience that happy death together.  There will be no extended hospital stays fighting terminal illnesses for me, at least not past a reasonable age.  

Lessons Learned

That being said, given that the life being celebrated has ended, there are ample opportunities for contemplation and reflection, opportunities to teach and learn.  And surprisingly, to feel the joy of being a parent, in seeing the humanity in my own children, to see them discover the nuances of their own mortality for the first time, and to be surprised with how they discover facets of death we had not seen ourselves.  It is a strange sensation to be completely surprised with my children's reactions to things, but at the same time, not be surprised at all.  Both of our kids have very distinct personalities, and it is interesting to see the spectrum of responses when exposed to new circumstances.  

In the case of my grandmother's death, this was Joey and Christi's first experience seeing a dead body.  We tried to prepare them for the experience beforehand, explaining them the traditions of a wake, and how to be respectful.  At the same time, we wanted to honor their emotions regarding the event, and encourage them to express their feelings toward it.  Joey has always been what we called an "emotional weather vane"; whatever the prevailing feeling is around him, he feels.  If people around him are sad, he is sad.  If people around him are happy, he is happy.  I don't think he even really understands his emotions, but just like everything with him, he just is.  He is a leaf in a river, always going with the flow.  Seeing grandma's dead body didn't really disturb him so much as it enforced the sadness he already felt.  What really hit it home for him was when he finally realized that it was his grandpa's mother that died.  He is pretty close to his grandpa, so seeing how sad it was for my dad really made it sad for Joey.  The empathy that my son possesses reveals a humanity within him that is so beautiful and comforting. 

Christi on the other hand, is much more cerebral, almost to the point of emotional obliviousness.  She remembered her job from last year, to be a hug dispenser for anyone who was sad.  To accomplish this job, she demanded that I refill her with hugs beforehand so that she could give them out at the wake.  I couldn't really say that she was filled with sorrow, but she did her job admirably, though she was definitely apprehensive about seeing the body.  After a while, she worked up the courage, held Patty's hand, and asked to go up.  Once she saw the body, she remarked how beautiful great-grandma looked, even saying that she was more beautiful coffin than she was when she was alive.  She then said, "huh, even death can be beautiful".  How moving, to hear those words from a nine year old girl?  How brave, for her to tackle her fear head-on, look death in the face, and confront it in such a matter-of-fact way?  I hope that the courage and rationality persists with her, so that she can one day help her parents transition to a beautiful death.  

As for me, even though I felt sorrow for my own mortality, anger for having to step into a church again so soon, and a general confusion regarding how to best deal with the anger while still being supportive of family (seems the only coping mechanism I have is passive aggressive sarcasm and lots of tongue biting), I felt close to my little family.  Driving home from the wake, and chatting while sipping on hot cocoas and coffee at the Flying M afterwards, I realize how special this little foursome is to me.  My cerebral daughter, my empathetic son, my encouraging wife, we make a great team.  I may not persist until I am 90, but I am going to have a great life with them, and hopefully a beautiful happy death as well. 

Replacing Church and Living Unsatisfied

So, You Don't Believe in God.  Now What?

My wife and I abandoned our faith somewhere around 2005, and ever since, our way of dealing with the universe has evolved on a near daily basis.  Even years later, in 2013, we are still trying to figure out this living thing.  Why is this so difficult?  One might think that this is a pretty obvious question, that because adherence to religion is so central to the lives of so many people, that removing that aspect will of course have a huge effect on those that choose to leave.  

The reality isn't that easy, however.  If one believes in God, then decides that they no longer do, there is much more to deal with than just the loss of a deity.  Don't get me wrong, learning to live without God is not trivial.  For many, it's a long grieving process that takes years to deal with, just on its own.  However, coming to grips with that single aspect is not the end.  The reality is, religion is kind of a one-stop shop for a variety of human needs and comforts, and leaving religion means either leaving those needs unsatisfied, or finding other ways to satisfy them.  The more involved you are in your religion, and the more intrusive religion is in your life, the harder it is replace it.  

After coming to grips with disbelief, it came natural to us to start examining aspects of our lives that religion had previously determined for us.  Morality, relationships, charity, sexuality, all became topics of re-discovery (and still are).  Some might assume that without religion, these things become a free-for-all, however, generally that is a fear of some religious people that really isn't a tenable reality for most of the godless.  What is more likely is the realization that the journey into disbelief is a more complicated path than that of remaining faithful; no longer do the big questions of life come with pre-packaged answers, instead, we must wade out into the confusing, complex, terrifying universe to try and wrest some meaning from the abyss. 

Even after dealing with the grief of losing the ideal of a caring deity, and dealing with answering life's great questions on your own, there are still more holes left to fill for the freshly deconverted.  Many lose families and friends, sometimes through deliberate ostracisation, but also for less malicious reasons; many social connections are just lost through the lack of common purpose.  Many lose the sense of belonging.  Others miss the feelings that are brought on by the spiritual connections that no longer exist.  Some miss the culture that their religion curated.

It cannot be understated how important these secondary social roles have played into the success of religion.  It was a mistake that we made when we left it; it was surprisingly difficult to be on our own because of it.  We had our issues, but I can't imagine how some people who are in real deep muster the courage to leave (some of the Phelps children who have left Westboro Baptist come to mind). 

A New Church

It is important to not underestimate the importance of the secondary roles that church may have had in our lives.  Initially, the other effects of leaving religion has a greater effect on the newly liberated, however, after time, these comforts that religion once provided become an issue to deal with in their own right.  So how do we cope?  Just like we now have the choice to decide for ourselves the role of morality and ethics in our lives, we also have the freedom to explore these needs and how we want to satiate them.  Some have even gone so far as to advocate for an "Atheist Church", sometimes referred to as Atheism 2.0, to fulfill those needs by providing a church-like environment but without the condemnation.  The existence of Atheism 2.0 highlights what many ex-theists are loathe to admit, that church does actually provide some value to believers, outside of just deity worship.  However, while it tries to fill that void, I prefer to take a different direction.  

Instead of replacing one kind of one-size-fits-all church with another, I have found a new kind of church.  This church shares a lot of things with the church I used to attend; it has celebrants, sacraments, tithes and rituals.  It has community, and fosters a deep emotional connection with my surroundings.  Services for this church are held semi-regularly; those who attend often wear special clothing that shows their involvement within this special community.  Tithe is offered upon entry to enable the celebrants to focus on their craft.  Sacramental wine flows freely throughout the service, and incense is thick, fostering feelings of connectivity and togetherness.  This is the church of Doom Metal, and my fellow concert-goers are my congregation.  It sounds silly at first, but it should not be immediately dismissed.  Every month brings a different celebrant in a different venue, but the result is the same; a spiritual refueling that leaves me satisfied until the next service.  I can go to any show in any city and feel as if among friends.  Every show is a spiritual experience.  Once the slow, heavy, reverbrations fill the room, they resonate with an internal emotional timepiece of every person in attendance; no longer a group of individuals, we move as a single collective consciousness, and a mosh pit becomes no different than a school of fish or a flock of birds, moving and acting as a single organism.  This is an experience my old church could never provide for me, and it is special to me.  

There is a fundamental and important difference between my old church and the new one.  While I get a deep and meaningful satisfaction for the communal experience that a good show offers, it has a strictly limited mandate.  While Al Cisneros of Om commands the attention of hundreds every night, his influence is limited.  Al Cisneros cannot tell me how to love, who to love, or how to live.  The only thing he can do is be a musical conduit and satisfy that single social desire.  The moment the celebrant of this service exceeds that limited mandate, is the moment they fail to satisfy the one desire I need them to fulfill.  At the end of the service, the big questions in life are still left unanswered, because it is not the role of this place to answer them.  This is a church without religion, and I am still on my own to find answers.  As it was said in Fight Club, "Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered".   

Al Cisneros, Feb 10, 2013

The beauty of this arrangement is that while Doom Metal is fulfilling and satisfying experience to me, there is no central teaching, no gospel, no homily that dictates that we must all belong to this church to be happy.  There is no need to evangelize, no need to recruit new members, no need to condemn others, no pressure to even bring my wife or children.  There is no need for this church to enter into politics, philosophy, or morality.  No one cares who we are or what we think at this church. We go because we want to go, and when we no longer have the need, we stop.  Because Doom Metal is satisfying for me, it does not imply that it is satisfying for anyone else, or that some other avenue of satisfaction can't be equally satisfying for others.  For some that I know, nature is their church.  For others, art, literature, or athletics has become theirs.  The only important fact here is that we recognize all of our needs, and find the healthiest way to understand them.  This is a terrifying beauty of leaving religion, I can now decide on my own how to be satisfied, with both great risks and great rewards.    

Terrifying Beauty

There is no better description about this mindset than terrifying beauty.  The whole world is new again, free to be experienced with new eyes.  It is filled with wonder and danger, knowing that many new experiences await, but also knowing that some risks have permanent consequences.  Many people have interesting stories to tell, and I have a new vigor to go find them and hear them, to be a missionary that listens instead of talks, to be an evangelist that seeks to be converted instead of to convert, to be a pilgrim to everywhere.  Simultaneously the greatest risk and the greatest reward is to be fundamentally changed by each experience.  My old church provided easy access to satisfaction; but it denied me the benefits of being unsatisfied.  My new church isn't really Doom Metal, it is really the world, of which music plays a part.  It is a mistake to lean heavily on only one facet of life, it is better instead to recognize the role each facet plays.  While music no doubt satisfies important needs that were previously handled by my old church, it is just as important that it does not satisfy all of them; this lack of complete satisfaction leaves me the desire to go out, experience other new things, and enjoy all of the terrifyingly beautiful aspects of this world.  

Choose Your Own Adventure

There is something about flying on an airplane that makes me feel like a little kid, which doesn't make a lot of sense, since I never flew when I was one.  In fact, the first plane ride I remember didn't happen until I was 15, when I got to pilot a Cessna as part of the Ace Academy program, a summer camp for aspiring pilots. A bit strange that I aspired to be a pilot, yet never rode on a plane, and my first ride involved me being in the pilot's seat.

The dream of being a pilot, like so many of our childhood dreams, never materialized, and the amount of plane trips I have taken is far too few for my taste, being only around half a dozen in my entire life.

So maybe this explains why air travel is so exciting for me, that the process of sitting in a metal tube hurtling through the air at hundreds of miles per hour has not become mundane yet. I prefer to think that is not the case, but rather that I prefer to see the excitement and adventure in mundane things. That not only can I look at a propeller of an aircraft and revel at the engineering required to make that function so well that air travel can even be considered boring, but also sit in an Olive Garden with my family and revel at the miracle of baked bread, slowly tearing apart a breadstick, watching the tiny air pockets separate into torn pieces, amazed that we as humans can invent leavened bread, much less airplanes.

It is amazing to me how quickly we as humans become acclimated to new things.  As I fumbled around the airport check-in, trying to cram my backpack into an impossibly tiny space, I feel the eyes of others upon me, and imagine them annoyed as I really have no clue what I am doing, while the process looks completely routine to everyone else.  Everyone looks bored and hassled, except for the flight attendants, whose job is to not look bored. I wonder how it it's possible to even be bored on an airplane, whether you have flown six times or six hundred times, toward vacation, toward work, or toward home.  I will try to not pass too harsh of judgement, it is only 6AM, after all. 

It's easy to be embarrassed by my lack of common sense in these routine matters, but it is also easy to be embarrassed about being so excited about something everyone else considers to be a nuisance.  But then, I remember that my life is as much of an adventure as I want it to be.  It's better than any Chose Your Own Adventure book, because this adventure is real. And so I sit in an airplane, in wonder of the complexity of the airplane, in enjoyment if the g-forces pushing me into my seat, in amazement at how quickly the city becomes a smattering of tiny lights, and in hope for new choices to choose from in the adventure book that is my life. I will happily fumble around trying to figure out how to ride a bus, how to stay at a hostel, how to make friends of strangers, and I will enjoy it because, god dammit, I choose to make this life an adventure.

So flying makes me feel like a little kid, not because I enjoyed flying as a little kid, but because I am still a little kid. A little kid that wants to know how things work, even if they are mundane and boring. A little kid who wants to learn and understand everything.  A little kid who wants to go on an adventure.  Who wants to come along?