The Chosen and The Damned

I'd be lying if I said I never wondered on what basis God judges a person as good or bad. I've had these thoughts since I was a kid when I was told that being certain things was good, while doing things or associating with certain people was bad. I tried to maintain those guidelines while growing up, looking at things purely from black and white vision goggles. It was easy, relatively. I just had to hold to some criteria that I thought were objective and fair, but that was as far as my child brain could take me.

But growing up, to me, was discovering that life has a wide array of grey-scale shades. And these shades often get tinted by a certain color representing where you stand on the spectrum. I learned that my idea of right and wrong is different from my sister's, and we grew up in the same house raised by the same parents! I'd be lying to say that it was easy, because I remember at a point in my life I was being constantly shocked by what other people viewed as true, right, good and fair. Let's just say it was a bumpy road...

Part of the teachings children receive, especially in religious backgrounds, is knowing which people belong where when it comes to the afterlife. We're taught that certain people who do a,b and c belong to heaven, while some others who don't, and maybe have 1,2 and 3 as their set values, they belong to hell. The first pile, The Chosen, often include people like ourselves and our parents. They're the familiar, the similar, the congruent to our codes of morality. While the "other," they're The Damned. Those classifications are often termed "moral tribes."

Setting apart moral tribes starts to take place by associating with only the people who fit our definitions of good. But like any other tribal behaviors, it ends by eliminating and alienating those who don't. A bit further down the road, the tribe starts having a more specific list of "admission prerequisites,"  which means that its circle shrinks and starts to exclude more people. And to ensure the survival and propagation of its values and morals, it starts to fight other tribes.

This means that fighting only happens when a tribe feels threatened by the presence of another option, or by the lack of enough followers. It happens when the "other" is viewed as the enemy who could possibly destroy our own tribal values, or at least when vanquishing the "other" is seen as a sign of strength that could attract a bigger number to join the victor tribe.

It's obviously primal thinking, using primal strategies. To fail at belonging to a community, having certain values and beliefs, while simultaneously being able to view the "other" as a human being with as much value on their life, as many rights as you possess, and as big of a possibility to be a good human being. This is all childish clinging to the black and white vision goggles.

But you know, sometimes those goggles don't work.

Accessible

The feeling of loneliness, we've all experienced it at some point, and I can say dreaded it for the most part. It's the feeling that creeps up on you after you've been around so many people, laughing and being merry, but after a while the company starts to fade out of sight and you're just left with it. It's that feeling of helplessness associated with need; the need for attention and acceptance, and maybe some consolation in the form of a warm hug or a pat on the back. We all crave it and we all can't do without it.

So how to fulfill the need without sounding demanding or "needy"? You become accessible.
We as humans have this hypothesis engraved in our minds that when we offer something, we're more likely to have it reciprocated. It's true for the majority to see life as a series of trading transactions, we do something for something else in return. Be that thing a material payment, an appreciative gesture, or for the more self-righteous of us, the mere sense of satisfaction for having done good. It explains why we go through a lot of crap without a short-term profit; I mean, how many times were you convinced as a child to do something because it'll get you into heaven?
But that's not our point. The point here is we offer so much because we expect so much in return. So, for example, one offers 3-4 hours daily for socializing/checking up on friends because they somehow hope to find a friend checking up on them when they feel lonely...simple as that.

Of course with social media this has become a million times easier and more convenient. You now can interact with ten times the number of people you could interact with say 20 years ago, and reach an audience of numbers you could have only wished to reach as a dreamy, wide-eyed little kid. It's become so simple to show little bits and pieces of your personality to your acquaintances and friends so as to make yourself look as charming and inviting as possible. It all works out perfectly to ward off that lousy loneliness, right?

Wrong. Sometimes the idea of acceptance sounds amazing when uttered as a general notion, like how we all should embrace each other's differences and celebrate each other's presence. However, it can cause one to think of themselves in terms of their ambiguous traits, the silhouette of their personality rather than its core, or even worse for more self-conscious people, to feel like they're deceiving their grand audience into thinking they're something better and more appealing than their true selves, which is a very guilt-inducing, self-destructive thought. It could lead these people to making all kinds of stupid decisions to disrupt the image taken of them and disprove any theories of their wholeness.

Real loneliness needs real connection to chase it away. It needs open lines of communication and a willingness to share the innermost fears and desires with someone who understands and appreciates. It needs care that extends beyond lines of texts or minutes of phone calls with contrived emotions and cold, yellow images of pseudo-facial expressions. It needs intimacy, emotional and physical.

Rantings with tears in my eyes

Why do we do this? why do we pick out differences and search for things that cause us to fight and argue and have battles and kill each other?
Why does the whole human race indulge in violence, oppression, murder, destruction of everything pure and beautiful?
Did God intend for things to be this way?
Did he command people to kill whoever doesn't agree with them?
Did he want to see all the bloodshed and the struggle to spread dominion over worthless pieces of land, or assertion of nationalities or religions?
Did he want everyone to be the same?
So why don't genocides work?
Why don't we all look the same, think the same, act the same?
Is there something wrong with being different from your friends, your coworkers, the person you love?
Is there some kind of curse of eternal damnation that befalls whoever thinks of ignoring differences and focusing on the commonalities?
Does God want that?
Then what does He want?