CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

Change is good. I think someone said that once.I know that Heraclitus said you can't step into the same river twice.

I see change as the only real permanence that is available to us. It is actually a form of stability, even security. The Bible gives the nod to change with its familiar It came to pass, in much the same way that the fairy tale begins with Once upon a time. One of my favorite movie lines is from Housesitter, when Goldie Hawn says, "I change myself all the time." I can identify.

But changing religion is something else again. It is indeed a hard thing to shake. I know from personal experience. I was not able to rid myself of it overnight. It took years, and I did it with much fear and trembling. The stuff is literally branded onto your brain at a tender, and impressionable, age. And even after you get rid of it, the ugly scar tissue remains. So, in a sense, you never get completely rid of it.

And like the ex-smokers, I'm passionate about not being religious. I actually think it's evil. Anything is evil that holds a person's mind the way religion does. You might say I'm religious about not being religious.

Anyway, getting back to change, I think I've commented before about how it's nigh impossible to actually change anyone. People are what they are. I used to have a boss who went around muttering something about a leopard changing its spots. Basically, it's not going to happen.

People seem to have a built-in, hard wired, religious bent. Religion will probably be around a thousand years from now. In fact, it could get worse. To say why is going to sound downright snooty, but so be it.

You see, I also happen to believe that some people are superior and some inferior. In the absence of social restrictions preventing the mixture of such people, they are of course going to mix. That mixture will not result in an improvement of the overall human condition so much as what we might call a neutering, a state that we might fitely describe as one of mediocrity. And mediocre people are highly susceptible to religious propaganda. Only superior people can see through it. But in time, with unrestricted mixing, there will no longer be superior people. Everybody will be mediocre, everybody. If anyone is still left who is superior, they will be running things. And do you know how they'll manage the masses of the mediocre? They'll use religion. It is truly the opiate of the masses.