Thursday, February 26, 2015

United under Art

Often, what happens when the newest video from ISIS pops up, is a simple thing. We see acts of brutality committed by half-wits and full-of-shits and we are able to judge them for their actions. This includes feeling sympathy for the victims, vindication that our own beliefs don't lead us to barbarous acts, and anger that these events continue to occur and ISIS has found a vein on the internet which allows them to enjoy a Kardashian-like popularity (though they send fewer obvious ripples through the fashion industry.) But these emotions are normally brief before we return to the lives that we have chosen to live.

But one of the more recent ISIS videos caused me more pause than a routine beheading. And instead of pass judgment on cretins for being cretins, I was forced to judge myself for not reacting how I thought a proper humanist should react. Why had this video caused revile in a way that someone losing their life had ceased to do?

The video showed men acting, with the sort of aggression that can only come as a result of sexual non-to-do, by taking sledgehammers to ancient statues. I was offended at a depth that one of their videos (videos of senseless murder) had not offended me since, well, I can't remember when. These goons were destroying art.

Even the fucking Nazis collected art.

But, perhaps, therein lies the rub. For as truly disgusting as the Nazis actions were, their motivations were forward. They had goals. Ridiculous goals, sure, but even they were working towards something.

I guess so long as the thugs with ISIS were forcing people to praise allah before executing them, I allowed myself the convenience of imagining that their motivation was world domination in the name of a child rapist.

Like a bad episode of G.I. Joe.

But it seems they truly have no endgame. Even a child crying in the night has a purpose, even if that purpose is simply to gain attention. But these acts are sub-toddler in their nature. One is tempted to say sub-human, but their justification of "god" is far too human. It seems ISIS is simply acting with no drive, goals or motivation except for the destruction of everything humankind has heretofore constructed.

Do not confuse this for Nihilism, which often gets its point muted when shouted in accusatory tones by someone with a pop-culture education (see: "its just a theory.) Said Russian Nihilist Dmitri Pisarev of the philosophy, "Here is the ultimatum of our camp- What can be smashed must be smashed, whatever will withstand the blow is sound. What flies into smithereens is rubbish. At any rate, hit out right and hit out left, no harm will or can come of it."

Sure, this sounds right after watching the video of these buffoons, no? But Nihilism is a philosophy, and the "blow" to be sustained is philosophizing. Not sledgehammering. In this way, ISIS acts less under the banner of Nihilism and more under the banner of Annihilationism. Which may be where the initial rebuke comes from when watching that video. It is sad when someone loses their life. But art is symbolic of civilization itself, for and under which every Homo sapien sapien has the duty to protect and the right to live. So when these things are destroyed in such mindless acts, it is an attack on everyone who has ever lived.

Also, the ISIS stooges have put their precious, third-hand, mostly plagiarized, babble-book in a hermetic box before the job of delivering the blow was executed. Hence, there are no blow jobs in Islam. And any ideology which is not subject to or accepting of the proposition of blow jobs, is an ideology which I clearly wish to be free from.

Those ideologies tend to leave their followers with more daily frustrations than I'm willing to deal with.



ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

The Walking Un-theist

One thing that strikes me, and did even when I was a Christian, is just how little god happens. How seldom does the supernatural sit upon our shoulder? He is a distracted god if you sit and listen to the vast majority  of conversations which happen in the course of daily happenstance. Part of this is the banality of the any-moments which we have a habit of stringing together. Is the divine, the creator of all things, the beginning and the end of totality, really there when I'm brushing my teeth? And did that cavity happen despite Jesus, or because of him? You know, it's no wonder my wisdom-teeth were such trouble, they weren't faith-teeth. (I'll leave the "faith has no teeth" arguments for you to make or dispute.)

But you don't have to be a voyeur or a dentist to take notes on the secular tilt to actual popular society. Just turn on the radio. Take thirty minutes to tally the number of sins or sinful things you hear wailed across your favorite FM station. How many Honda Civics full of seventeen year old girls are barreling down the highway at this very moment "singing" right along? And how many guardian angels are there too?

In short, we operate as if there were presently no lord-savior-ghost in an overwhelming number of instances. During these times, the Christian, the Muslim, the Jew, the Jain, the Buddhist, the Hindu, and the Sikh alike are not atheist, but neither are they theist. During these moments of mundane, we are all un-theist. And for the religious, whose god is ever present, this must be accounted for. But it is not.

And that is what makes it so maddening when and why god does get the credit.

They are the extreme cases, not the regular cases, for which god gets the worm. The times people are emotional and that they will remember later. No one worth talking to thanks god that they got to the bottom of the cup while the coffee was still warm.

There's an old lesson you probably remember from your high school psychology class about dog torture. You put a dog in a cage, or maybe someone else does it, that bit doesn't matter much. Then, every so often, you play a little bit of terrible music. Also, you course some electricity through the floor of the cage. The dog, yeah? She'll yelp and hop around, she'll dance until the combination of pain and exhaustion is simply too much and she collapses. Eventually when she hears the music, she'll just lay down and take it. There is, after all, nothing she can do. Then you divide the cage in two. One half electrified, the other half shock-free. And when you play the music, Spot will lay prone until the terrible music dies. There is, after all, nothing she thinks she can do. This is called learned helplessness. She has apparently become numb even to the electricity which was the initial cause of her distress.

This is why, during tumult or joy, we evoke religion. We feel either that there is nothing we can do, or that there is nothing we have done, to deserve the high or low which is happening. We simply lay down and take it, knowing that the status quo will return.

But is that any way to navigate your sole existence? Is it really the banal which we wish to debit to reality while we credit the meat of the worldly experience to something otherworldly?

Get up, walk around, enjoy life. The terrible music is dead.


ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

An Atheist on Chapel Hill

That three people lost their lives is a sad thing, that those people met their end in such heinous and barbaric fashion is tragic, that this tragedy destroyed young people makes it somehow intuitively deserving of a multiplier. That events such as this are so common place that stories written about them, and the pictures associated, become also-ran on a news feed, become banal in the copy-paste nature of their presentation, is debilitating.

Senselessness does not translate very easily into words because the very mechanism which necessitates communication is the need to make sense of the world around us. And so, the only comment i feel qualified to make on the actual crime is that it leaves me without words.

I should hope to call this a reflection from the events and not a reaction to them.

In such, the only statement I feel qualified to make in light of the Chapel Hill events reflects something personal that I have been forced to reflect on: the coward who was an atheist and the comments I have made on Islam.

Islam, not Muslims.

I have not known many Muslims in my life. The people that I have known and known to be Muslim were, without exception, devout of faith, and wonderful people. And, luckily for me, open and gracious with questions about their religion, religious practices, and textual readings. By no means does this make me an expert on Islam. But I have made honest enough an attempt, explicit enough an effort, and thorough enough an intellectual pursuit of it to know that if my understanding of a few things is wrong, the interpretation is not unique to me.

The doctrines of Islam can be used to justify monstrous acts of sub-humanism.

Acts such as those performed by an atheist against three Muslim people on February 11, 2015.

Here is why my stance on Islam, and my stance as an atheist, will remain unchanged: Atheism abides by no such doctrines. I can't even get my atheist friends to agree that Ernest Hemingway was an essential American novelist.

The point is that atheism is not a credo, it is the lack of one. Someone cannot be motivated into any act by atheism. It is the next step which may prove people symptomatic of faulty judgment.

In the absence of god, what set of beliefs does the individual adopt?

Personally, I identify myself as a skeptic and a humanist. Which, when cored and planted, sprouts the default fruits of believing in people though I may not believe what they say.

I believe that the pustule of a person who committed these crimes in North Carolina was, at one time, a decent human being. I also believe that because of his personhood, he is capable of the highest order of suffering that the animal kingdom knows.

And I hope he experiences it.

Despite the often hob-knobby culture of the internet atheist, atheism is not a club. We do not have to accept. We do not have to forgive. We do not practice "except." In fact we do not exist. Atheism is a point of separation, a pier of individuality, and not a beacon of common consignment.

As Christopher Hitchens points out in his essay "Abraham Lincoln: Misery's Child," "[b]efore Gettysburg, people would say 'the United States are...' After Gettysburg, they began saying 'the United States is...'" The community of atheists, the "internet atheists," even, is an "are" proposition. Atheists are able to disagree, disavow, and discourage without their atheism being shaken or taken form them by someone higher in the atheist church.

Because of this it is easy to imagine there being no appreciable link between one atheist guilty of some of the most atrocious acts imaginable, and any other atheist anywhere.

But that doesn't bring back three young people who deserve to be here.


ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Spider-Man, the Sexist Pig

Some time late last night Marvel Studios regained cinematic access to one of the three most popular comic-book characters of all time. They moved swiftly to employ him into their plans, plans which already included movies that fit Spider-Man both thematically and as timelines/story lines which are true to the comics. There was also nary a fan who didn't clamor for the Webslinger to be included in the fold at Marvel. Because Marvel is moving immediately with Spider-Man, the Thor, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Inhumans movies were bumped a bit later in the timeline. In short, almost everyone was elated.

I barely need to tell you what happened next.

If you've ever been on twitter, or tumblr, or reddit, or any of a number of other time wasting sites, you know that this clearly means-

SPIDER-MAN IS A SEXIST AND A RACIST, BUT MAINLY A SEXIST!!!!!

This is the latest "feminist" rallying cry from people who don't understand what feminism really is. Captain Marvel, for those who don't know, is a woman. And Black Panther is a Black man.

I pointed out to several of these "intellectuals" that Spider-Man's popularity is unparalleled in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was promptly told that my gender afforded me little or no opinion on the matter.

Upset that my gender was addressed and not my argument, I point out that this is actually a sexist take.

Pop Quiz, what happens when you point out obvious sexist tropes in a "feminist" argument?

You get accused of "playing the reverse-sexist card." This is a statement which means less than nothing. First, "reverse-sexism" insinuates that the mechanism which necessitates the sexist act is inherently masculine. This is an obvious self-defeating argument, if it is an argument at all. Second, and perhaps more contemptible, is the fact that "playing the X card" is a cliche. And a bad one. But matters of taste aside, dismissing/denying someone's opinion/argument based on gender is sexist. Guess what happens if you point that out?

Well, I was talked down to, called uneducated, and told that I should "get a liberal arts education." I don't think I need to relay the shame that my Associates in Arts, my Bachelor's in English Literature, and my Master's in Creative Writing  felt that I had let them down so forthrightly.

Now, apparently, I've been added to some type of internet list which was clearly so important that it warranted capital letters. Which I must say is truly terrifying as I have never been to the website. The worst part of these types of exchanges is that the troglodytes remain completely oblivious that they are instituting the same type of ignorant and boorish behavior that they claim to be combating.

Besides, the Thor movie was pushed back as well. Did these social justice warriors bash Marvel for being Norse-ist? The Inhumans movie was delayed as well, clearly this means that Marvel is Inhumanist. But the inclusiveness of those arguments does not match the internet "feminists" M.O.

Also, Batman will be rebooted in the D.C. Cinematic Universe and appear either concurrently or slightly before (he does already share a title card...) Wonder Woman, and a probably Black character in Green Lantern. Does this draw cyber-"feminist" ire? No, the information is too nuanced.

Though I do have testicles, I dare say that true feminists would be disgusted with such disorganized, malformed garble, and especially that it was shot-gunned into the public sphere under the banner which they labored to erect. In fact, perhaps the true argument here is that these characters should get their films when the characters and their directions fit thematically, and not in order to meet some imaginary quota. As that type of shoehorning is both degrading and self-congratulatory in a white-man's-burden sort of way, no?

But perhaps my testosterone is effecting my thinking as I have been doing extra pushups and drinking more beers and catcalling at an inordinate rate recently.

It is that type of situation that makes me claim humanism rather than feminism. What was once known as feminism has been hijacked by individuals who are careless with their words, unfocused with their anger, and simply unskilled in the art of criticism.

The self-congratulatory nature of these "feminists" is a far cry from the mettle of intellectual warriors that sparked a revolution.

When individuals enter the arena of public discourse with an "education" that outweighs their critical thinking skills and observational faculties the argument can only suffer.


ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

ISIS, The Day Jake Hollow Walked By

I used to know a kid named Bobby, Bobby Movar. Bobby Movar was a little asshole. But he was second only to Jake Hollow in terms of bullying.

That's not fair. Jake was a decent kid, so long as you didn't look at him. Or speak to him. Or step on his shoe. Look, as long as there was nothing left open for interpretation, Jake couldn't take it wrong, right? That was the word in the hall, anyway.

Bobby was a spoiled rich kid with a loud mother and an absent father. He'd sit in the back of the class and throw pencils at people. He'd flick rubber bands. He'd tie people's shoe laces to their desks. All the regular assholish behaviors that you spent the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade hoping you'd manage to dodge.

Bobby used to brag about his mom, and how when teachers would call home, she would yell at them. They were discriminating, she'd say. Bobby had ADD, she'd tell them. She'd sue, you the teacher right out of her job, nay, right out of her whole damned house. For discrimination, you know?

Bobby was in my math class one year. American children aren't good at math anyway, right? And when you spend an entire period nervous about the acid content of Bobby's spitwads (known to burn a hole straight through the lacquer on the desks) well, you pay a little less attention to the great gift of algebra.

When Bobby failed, there was no real hubbub. When maybe Bobby and a couple other kids starting failing, well, it was math after all. When the class as a whole became devoid of passing grades, something had to be done. The teacher called home.

No result.

Bobby, newly empowered by his status as completely impervious to repercussion strutted in the hall during our introduction to roots and radicals, and started throwing the contents of his locker all willy-nilly over his shoulder. History had told him that there was basically nothing to fear.

Bobby nailed Jake Hollow in the temple with his Ethics book.

There probably wasn't a teacher in that building that could have pulled big Jake off of Bobby. Still, none of them even tried. Eventually, by the time the halls were lined with students and teachers and other faculty, Jake got tired and walked straight into the In-School-Suspension room and took the same chair he normally sat in. Maybe it was because of the dislocated shoulder, but I never saw Bobby throw another pencil. Or Ethics book.

What I'm saying is that ISIS is Bobby Movar. And Jordan's King Abdullah II might just be Jake Hollow. Abdullah, a 35 year military vet, was beyond shocked when ISIS released a video of themselves caging a Jordanian airman and then setting him on fire.

Abdullah has sworn vengeful retribution against ISIS until his forces run "out of fuel and bullets."

I'm not normally the type to cheer on an asswhooping in the hallway, but the way my neck still burned from Bobby's venom-spitwad, I might have silently hoped Jake got a couple good ones in for me too.

(More Religious Satire from this blog Here)


ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.