All Hail Generation Gaps

Often I meet people who sit on the fence regarding the insanity of the evangelical religious right. Fortunately all I have to do to make my point is to simply point my fence-sitter to the Louisville Courier-Journal Reader's Forum. Once they read many of the postings there my point that sincerely well meaning people can be completely, hysterically and irrationally misled is powerfully made.

Do not be disturbed by the silly sincere well meaning followers who predominantly post there. Better that they are out and open rather than hiding in the woods in hoods. The forum provides fantastic fuel for those who need proof that people in this day and age succumb to superstition, ancient fears and charismatic narcissists just as stongly today as ever they did.

People are mostly sheep that flock en masse to those who feed them comforting fictitious stories and myths which allow them to simplify a scary complex world out there. Being so fortunate to live in the industrialized prosperous west as we are, it can be difficult for some not to mistake comfort for absolute truth. The charismatics like Falwell, Robertson and Dobson prey on this comfort and turn it into biblical signs of the 'Chosen Ones' mentality.

Many will get angry or annoyed at my audacious truthfulness about matters of which they'd rather not think too deeply. Living under a cloud of comfortable delusion is no crime as long as you don't seek to legislate that delusion as many evangelicals and right-wing conservative seek. And as we are in the midst of the deluded seeking to legislate their delusions here in this country (i.e. FMA), I and others (vilified as elite, intellectual, or even GASP educated) must speak out and help them to wake up and 'smell the coffee' so to speak.

I'm attempting something very similar to an intervention. Think of the forum as the inner hallways of a cult where circular arguments abound. We must be willing to confront the deluded and shake them awake. What makes an intervention so difficult on this particular forum is that there are so many deluded amplifying each other's righteousness. It is sad to say, but we may just have to wait until this generation is replaced by the next.

Generation gaps are actually healthy signs that a society is evolving and changing as new information dispels old delusions. I'm very hopeful this dynamic is still at play.