Stupid is the Name of our Race


I believe that as a race our greatest fault lies with our role as progenitors. So much of the time, in a review of our history on this planet, we find that instead of teaching our children to elevate their minds to the point where they can make their own informed decisions, we have force-fed our future leaders, role-models and subsequent progenitors in their own right a steady diet of religiously inflamed rhetoric, the sole aim of which is to mold their minds according to our own values, thereby limiting our children's lives with our own preconceived and often mistaken notions. After a certain amount of time, a child will learn to believe the lies he or she has been told all of his or her life. It is usually an inevitable consequence of not teaching a child to hunger for answers, or instilling a desire to learn the truth above all else. If you feed your children lies continuously, in word and deed, then eventually the lies become their truth.

How sad is this? Is there anyone on this planet who can honestly say that they want their children to believe in gossip, lies and untruths? I would very much like to talk to you if you think this is so.

As creatures with intense emotional states, we all want to belong. We all want to feel as if we are a necessary and vital part of our society. Unfortunately, much more often than not, in order to belong in our western society, your mind has to be subservient; subservient to your teachers, subservient to your elders, subservient to your doctors--your priests, your beauticians, your political leaders. This subservience is almost an automatic response at some levels of human behavior and development. If you are raised to never question the omnipotent ideas and laws of your government, then more than likely you will spend a lifetime believing that everything said government does and stands for is just and right and true. Unless you happen to be directly involved at the time of a conflict between such unquestioned moors and values, it's very possible to spend a lifetime believing in them. And even then, even if you're involved in a situation where you may witness someone or something being used or discouraged or abused and forgotten, even witnessing such conflict may do little to stir your feelings. You may still choose to believe in whatever it was you were told was the truth, even if you have seen harm come to others because of what you were told, you may still choose to believe. It's the easiest thing in the world to do. And it raises a very difficult question: What ineffable quality does a human mind have to possess to break the chains of his or her childhood and question the authority imposed upon him or her? How strong does one have to be to question? How is it possible to question the unquestionable?

A simple answer to this would be to say that it is very difficult to do so, very difficult to question, very difficult indeed.

Is it possible to learn in this type of environment? How is it possible to let your own mind be inflamed itself with a vision of new possibilities, if you're subservient to the petty needs and whims of a society based largely upon this need to control, this need to feel powerful? Ours is a society where it's considered genuine wisdom that "if you love something, you set it free." That's not wisdom, that's plain old common sense. If you hold on to something desperately and say that you love it, then you're lying to yourself, to the world, and you're a disgrace to the good name that Love provides.

Love is all about caring, compassion, tolerance, dignity, joy and pain, it encompasses everything really, but at its core Love is all about togetherness, or brotherhood. None of the words I just used to describe Love could be interpreted to mean harbor, or keep, or resent, or don't let go. Not a one. How much wisdom does it take to figure that out?

What injustice is this? How terrible is it that we limit the growth of our society with our very own outdated and fanatical moors and values? Is it possible that by teaching our children to respect their elders first and foremost (and often at all costs), we have set ourselves up as Gods?

How can you question your elders? How can you question your God? You're not supposed to. It's considered wrong, but in fact, a parent who teaches his or her child not to question, not to seek the truth, has subsequently and inadvertently become their child's own worst enemy; perpetuating a cycle that has progressed for far too long already.

Parents are the Gods of their children's lives, thereby necessitating a fundamental need to teach tolerance instead of racism, brotherhood instead of religious fanaticism and/or separatism. Racism is ignorant. With all of our knowledge of the world and we still have members of the Homo Sapiens species who believe that because their outer skin is a different color than another Homo Sapiens', they are indelibly better? brighter? more efficient? harder working?

Can anyone on the face of our dear, sweet Earth, faced with the prospect of discussing racism with, say, an alien race of beings from Neptune (this is a hypothetical question mind you), honestly conclude they would not be embarrassed, and not a little sheepish, while explaining to this new alien race that our society is riddled with members who, on the basis of the color of their skin, have come to the conclusion that they are more worthy and therefore have a "soul?"

"Well, wait," this alien being from Neptune might inquire, in a yearning voice, "but isn't skin coloring, more often than not, dependant upon and linked to environmental factors? What part of the world a human being is from, the average temperature, the common diet prevalent to that region, whether or not they have enough know-how to invent sun-block, isn't skin color really dependant upon those things, and not a religion or a 'soul'?"

More than likely anyone asked this question, after very careful reflection, would be inclined to answer the alien's succinct query with a resounding "yes."

This imaginary alien figure would probably then go a little further, out of curiosity, and ask: "And you're all considered to be members of the same species, right? Black is black and white is white, but you're all Homo Sapiens, right?"

Yes. The answer to this last one is most certainly yes. Even if you're embarrassed to say it, because with a little forethought you may see where the conversation is heading, you would still have to say yes. No matter who you are, no matter how hard you try, it would be difficult to pervert this question into something else. We are all Homo Sapiens. There is no other species like us on this planet; there is only one species known as Homo Sapiens, and that would be us. All of us.

"Well then," this fictional (but very functional) alien being from Neptune would say--inclined by simple reason and a just need to understand something so silly and asinine as racism--and then he would ask one more very simple question, a question that if taken seriously by the masses could change the world:

"are you stupid or something?"

Are we? Are we really this stupid, this ignorant? Millions of dissenting voices (and billions, in some cases), voices filling the air with phrases like "white-power" and "if you don't believe in my religion, which is the only true and just and right one, then you will never know your creator in heaven but instead you will burn in hell" prove that perhaps the human race, known as Homo Sapiens to most, really is quite ignorant and stupid.

Would anyone like to attempt to prove me wrong? Can anyone, can you, you who are reading this right now, can you disprove that STUPID IS THE NAME OF OUR RACE?

Please, go ahead and try, I'd love to talk to you.

� J. Gavin Landon 1998

back
index