According to a middle aged woman at the Walgreens in Paris, TN, I am what is wrong with America, because I am a "tattooed, unnatural haired, 'devil hate music listening' freak!" (All I had done was occupy a certain amount of time/space in her presence- in those brief seconds, she decided she needed to judge me after staring at me disgustedly, watching me wash my hands, and TELL me how she chose to view me, with NO prior insight into my life.) And it made me realize, that even today - in 2013!, people are constantly unfairly criticizing and condemning others and reaching these judgmental conclusions based upon faulty heuristic patterns of cognition everyday.
1. Yes, I do have tattoos. No, they do NOT make me a 'bad' person or affect my abilities or intellectual capacities in any manner. Both of my tattoos hold deep personal meaning for ME, do not affect/harm anybody else, and are synonymous with my beliefs and my life story: Everyone is important and deserving of love. Hope is something inherently human and it's biological- we're inherently optimistic as a species, resilient through our struggles and experiences of adversity, and long to live our lives for as long as possible, even in the face of those (sometimes impossible) struggles.
3. I don't believe in devils. The music I listen to doesn't idolize or promote worshipping "demons," either. While I do not believe in any gods and find religion to be more harmful than what good it does, I find it irrelevant to someone who doesn't know me and I wasn't bothering. Most wars, -cides/-isms (genocide, infanticide, suicide bombing, racism, sexism, opposition to gay marriage, civil rights restrictions) are waged in the name of religious doctrines- whether following the word of the Abrahamic God, Allah, or Mohammed. I am opposed to proselytizing and indoctrination because from birth, religions tell their followers they are "bad" and can only be saved from the abhorrent 'sin' of being human and eternal damnation/hellfire if they go along with what they're told is absolute truth without evidence, and swear their life over to that certain religion's god they must dutifully worship, yet live in constant fear of punishment. People are NOT inherently bad and do not need salvation from being HUMAN. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in gods, demons, or any other paranormal beings. You do not need a god to have morals or to be a good person.
4. Yes, I do listen to a lot of heavier rock music. However, I do not find any of the music I listen to to be hate-filled or "evil." It is certainly not 'devil hate music.' Music is another form of human expression and SO much is expressed through song than is possible with the clumsy medium of words alone. Sometimes, the music has to scream out what you feel when you don't always have the words to convey your emotions and your life story to the world. "Where words fail- music speaks" is something that I find to be very true.
Think again before you begin to judge a person you don't even know the first thing about.
-Stef (That Stephans Chick)
