Christina here…
Hey! Remember me?
I feel like such an asshole.
I miss you guys.
I can’t believe how long it’s been since I graced the pages of this blog, or even logged into WordPress. I haven’t written about atheism in such a long time.
The truth is, I’ve been kind of busy. First, I had my leg amputated. Then, I survived and healed. Then I started thriving, and decided to make a Youtube channel to document my recovery and beyond, which has sort of become the go-to channel for amputee related advice. Then I got kind of famous for building a prosthetic leg out of Lego bricks. Seriously, I was all over the news. For awhile, I was inundated with interview requests. I got stalked and harassed. Things have mostly settled down now. I think.
I thought about writing about atheism a lot in the last 6 months. But every time I thought about writing, I got distracted by thinking about all of the fighting. The rifts. I watched some of my best friends in this movement sever ties. I watched the people I respected do and say things that caused me to lose a lot of respect for them. Then came the issues of sexual harassment. And feminism. And misogyny. And lawsuits. I saw people, my people, attack each other instead of attack ideas. I vowed never again to blog about something someone else had said or done, and instead wanted to only write primary material. But I couldn’t, because every time I considered writing some primary material, I got disgusted by the very group of people who held me up when I was down. It got to the point where when I thought about writing about some given topic, I would simultaneously think, “But you know what? I don’t actually want to hear what other people think about this topic. The people who agree with me can shove it, and the people who don’t agree with me can shove it too.” So, my brain ran away.
I feel like I’ve abandoned the atheist movement, and that makes me feel kind of dirty.
I used to think atheists were so much more enlightened, intelligent, rational, and caring than our religious counterparts. After all, a lot of the issues we have with religion are moral ones. We easily see how the character god in the bible is such a horrifying dick. We rightfully point out that some religious adherents are: shielders of child molesters, hypocritical, abusive. Since we readily see such dickishness in others, surely we can see it in ourselves.
Well no, not really. We can’t always see, no matter how careful we analyze our own actions. So, there will be people acting like jerks in every group of people, simply because we can’t always prevent ourselves from acting like jerks.
So maybe the problem is me. I’m seeing people I used to admire acting horribly and getting disgusted because I expected more from people. I’m too caught up in the destruction of my own perceptions.
Maybe? I don’t know. Even if that were the case, I don’t know what to do about solving my writer’s block, except pretend I am only writing to either the people I already like, the people I stand a chance of influencing, the people I have a chance of educating, or to myself.
Learn more about Christina and follow her @ziztur.