Look Harder

"Let me tell ya something. You're suspect! Yeah you. I don't know what your reputation is in this town, but after the shit you tried to pull today you can bet I'll be looking into you."

The luxury of living in Perth is the pace of life is slower here topped with sunny dry weather, so it affords a lot of time to read under the sun. Recently, the topic of choice has been religion (Christopher Hitchen's "god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything") with its associated deception, irrationality, foundings etc. After you take a hard look at the evidence (something monotheistic religions lack a lot of), it gets harder to ever justify faith based arguments for religions which point its followers in multiple directions and contradict its own dogmas.

Examples such as Marjoe Gortner, who made an Academy Award winning documentary of how he fooled millions of Americans for money posing as a revivalist, which were tactics his parents raised him to learn, ultimately taking $3 million from hard working people. He's no different from Joel Osteen or other members of the clergy. Why do churches get tax breaks for teaching people how to judge others and implant a conscience which fights innate human instincts like sex?

Monotheistic religions were ultimately founded by us mammals as a means to cope with our fear of the unknown. Even remote islands such as Tanna, with little influence from other cultures, still praise an American WWII GI named John Frum and hold annual celebrations awaiting his return. People will say it's different from other religions, but it's really just a modern day account of what humans naturally default to in the face of unanswered questions. Eventually with a new era of techtonic plate collisions, John Frum could very well become geographically placed as a cometitor to Jesus. When a religious belief is something you grow up learning and it's ingrained in your culture, everything else looks suspect, which is why Judaism, Islam and Catholicism (to name a few), alienate one another. The fear of potentially beliving what so much of your money, effort, youth and trust has gone into as FUBAR is what keeps the engine running.

So I challenge you just to take a step back and face that fear head-on and see what you conclude on your own - not according to what the church, society and childhood roots expect you to take verbatim. If god is just and your faith real, you won't forego any forgiveness from him after some real soul searching.

Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer

Fantastic read. Easy, short reading. I already gave my copy away for a friend to read. If you want the cliff notes, watch the movie. It's fairly accurate and powerful.

Chris is a young man who grew up in suburbia with a father who expected a lot out of him and never cut him slack in spite of his accomplishments. Chris is a smart, independent guy who successfully graduates from Emory University with top standing and entertains the idea of following his education with law school as his parents have envisaged for him.

He however decides to donate his life savings to a charity and trek his way toward Alaska instead. He takes on a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and essentially sheds his past behind him with nothing but his backpack. His charm, passion and tough work ethic allows him to befriend strangers easily through parts of the US and up toward Canada, where he ultimately dies after reaching Alaska. It's a tragic tale but a very romantic one in that Chris is able to go against his grain and deeply imbibe himself to his passion of exploring nature away from all consumerism. He idealizes writers such as Jack London and Henry David Thoreau. The author does well to paint contrasting views of Chris's actions as a passionate man following his heart to an irresponsible, thankless romantic whose naivety eventually led to his own death and family abandonment.

Chris's deeply rooted convictions are tied back to the revelation that his father abandoned his previous wife to wed his mother. That ill feeling never washed away from Chris and caused the rift with his father. This led him to embrace deep values of integrity, hard work, and simplicity.

I really liked identifying myself with Chris because his insistence on a naive approach to viewing people coupled with an unforgiving attitude to some iniquities.

One bit about the book I didn't appreciate too much was how the author wrote his own survival stories and contrasted them to Chris. Chris is almost a martyr for simple, bold, reckless living whereas Jon simply writes about himself to try to help us identify with Chris's plight. Chris's tale was enough for me. His character is a force to be reckoned with.