[MD] Platt's Pure Critique of Pantheism

[plattholden at gmail.com]

Hi Mary,

Nice examples of bigotry and discrimination, applicable to all who think 
they know what's best for you.

Platt 



On 18 Jan 2010 at 21:24, Mary wrote:

> In response to Ed Abbey--Desert Solitaire, The First Morning.
> 
>  
> 
> A parable.
> 
>  
> 
> Hello John and Lu,
> 
>  
> 
> I smoke.  I always have.  At least, I can't remember the time when I didn't.
> It is a part of me, like breathing (just like it in fact), and a big part of
> my "cultural heritage" if you could use such a fancy term for my
> depression-era share-cropper, southern red-neck combined with Choctaw,
> Cherokee, and Comanche, Southern Baptist, bible-thumping, black Irish
> ancestry.  I am descended, in other words, from a line of Okies, or
> poor-white trash, or reservation Indians, or whatever other term you'd like
> to use, all of which are derogatory, but that's ok with me.  I have an 81
> year old aunt, Daddy's little sister, who can still smoke me under the
> table, and that takes some doing because I smoke a lot.  It is no longer, of
> course, socially acceptable.  
> 
>  
> 
> The social unacceptability of smoking started in California some years ago
> and has spread all the way to Texas.  I think sometime around 1986 was the
> last time I was able to smoke in peace at my desk.  I've had lots of jobs
> since then, and even put myself through college, but all this occurred while
> huddling with a few other hardy smokers in the rain, or under an awning if
> we were lucky, in freezing cold and suffocating heat year end and year out.
> The weather is not so nice as California's anywhere else.
> 
>  
> 
> When you do this you meet lots of people you probably wouldn't even talk to
> otherwise.  They're not your type, you know.  You hear about people's
> political beliefs, their religion, their job certainly since that's why
> we're all out there in the freezing wind, their kids, their ex-husbands and
> wives, and their personal tragedies.  It's a real education.  Smoking
> outside with people that would otherwise be total strangers day after day,
> at 10, noon, and 2, for as many years as you end up working at a place is a
> real education as opposed to the kind you're supposed to get.
> 
>  
> 
> What  I've learned from about 30 years of doing this is that everybody has
> personal pain.  It doesn't matter if you are the CIO or the payroll clerk.
> Smoking is a great leveler.  You meet them all, every day, three times a
> day.  Over the years I've developed some listening skills.  I can hear the
> pain in somebody's voice or see it in their posture.  They may be talking
> about who won the Cowboy's game last night, but I hear something else.
> There are a lot of different types of people, and of course, everybody's
> unique, but in a lot of ways the same.  They fall into categories.  There
> are a finite number of ways people can choose from for dealing with their
> pain.   Down here in the south, the safest choice is to join a church.
> People who do this tend to be bright and a little overly cheerful but don't
> cross them.  Everybody with any sense knows that the fastest way to make an
> enemy out of a church-goer is to admit that you are not.  
> 
>  
> 
> One of the guys I smoke with regularly is an Indian, from India, that is.  I
> work with a lot of them along with people from various places in Europe, the
> Far East and everywhere else where you can get a 401b visa.  They're nice
> people for the most part.  Nicer than us.  There's a fundamental difference
> between Americans and everybody else.  I confided in my Indian friend one
> time that I was an atheist.  What a mistake!  A few days later several of us
> were smoking and he brought it up.  He said it out loud!  For him, it was a
> natural, casual remark.  He was totally oblivious to the damage this kind of
> information in the wrong hands could do.  Down here, people have lost their
> jobs for less.  The alarm bells started going off in my head and I was
> actually scared.   I wanted so much to tell him to just shut up!
> Fortunately, there weren't any southern religious types in the group that
> day, but it could have been worse, and I could see the warning glances in
> the eyes of all the other Southerners.  This is dangerous territory.  Down
> here you never say something like that.  Them are fightin' words.  It was
> all my fault, of course.  I should never have told him that, but he seemed
> very open and accepting of such things.  Problem is, it never occurred to me
> that he was clueless about just how dangerous this could be as a public
> statement in Texas, or Arkansas (where I grew up) or anywhere else south of
> the Mason-Dixon Line - and probably a good number of places north of it too.
> 
>  
> 
> When you live down here you quickly learn to cater to religious people.  You
> sort of pander like a sycophant.  It's the safest way.  I've been prayed
> over, invited to "pack the pew" night, looked at askance, and maligned at
> various times over the years enough to know it's best just to not bring it
> up at all, and if you get backed into a corner, just smile sweetly and lie,
> lie, lie your way out of it.  Why is this so?
> 
>  
> 
> Mary