Stupid is everywhere...
Ed Brayton has recently posted an article about something that is very close to my heart -- very inline with an idea that is central to everything I do (especially Disassemblance). I'd like to share a few quick selections:


I write a lot about some of the utter stupidity I see ... from the more political forms of Christianity ... As a result, I tend to attract a lot of people who, in my view, take things entirely too far in this regard.


I as well often may come off as being anti-Christian. If people don't get what the faceless "Stupid Christians Clones" from the comic are all about, they could (and have) mistaken me for being hateful of all Christians -- missing the point entirely. They also don't pick up on the fact that I have Christian characters that are completely normal (or as normal at my characters get), and because they are so normal, you can't necessarily tell they are Christian by looking at them.


Some of them are on a crusade ... show that any religious person must be stupid or uneducated. I say that because, at a much younger age, I was one of those people.


As much as I hate to admit it, I was too. This was before I had one of the more significant epiphanies oin my life: "Stupid is everywhere." (which I will explain in a minute).


The problem was that I just kept running into religious people who were not idiots at all, and in fact were well educated, well-spoken, very bright people.


The exact same occurance as in my life. I ran into religious people that I couldn't write off as being idiots (the to most prominant being my wife klemrev and good friend thesaj). As well, people who were ideologically on my side could be completely lemming idiots. It's when I realized that stupidity was the real problem -- and hateful ignorance knows no religious, cultural, racial boundries: "Stupid is everywhere." This becoming the mantra at the core of Disassemblance (and just about everything else I do and create).


think we spend entirely too much time and energy drawing the lines in the wrong place. Too many people are focused on dividing us up into all the wrong groups. ... The lines shouldn't be drawn between Christians and atheists, Jews and Muslims, and so forth; they should be drawn between the decent and intelligent and life-embracing people in every group and the bigoted, ignorant and reactionary people in every group.


EXACTLY ED!! This is what I have come to realize about the world. And it is my challenge to every human being to defocus on the details -- stop warring between difference of race, religion, nationality, sexuality, political affiliation, and focus on the real enemies:

STUPIDITY, IGNORANCE and HATE!!

If fact, the desire to combat such enemies is what birthed my personal ethical tenets/goals:

Minimize suffering.
Increase education.
Encourage compassion.