Reply #352: Why thank you for the lecture on living with others.

[politicat]

I'll file that one with my other things to do when Bush smokes pot with John Stewart on NBC. Here's my proverb in return: I am not the center of the world and neither is anyone else. We all have to take the little space we live in and live in it with every one of the other six billion people on this rock, and when I do things that infringe on other people's little spaces, I'm asking to have mine infringed upon, too. So this is my space, and that one's yours, and I leave yours alone. Do me the courtesy of doing the same back to me. (Not you specifically, but in general. I really do live by do as to others as I would have done to me, and one of the things I would never do to another person is mess with their private property. I value my space too highly to mess with the space of others.)

As for the ecosystem: Not everywhere is Illinois or Ohio or Downstate New York. In my part of the world, water is critical and in short supply. We use light colored rocks as a mulch around certain plants, dark ones around others, bark with ones that can't be hurt by bark beetles. We also have very thin topsoil (we're 3 feet above bedrock), it's mostly clay, and every bit of garden space I've got has been carefully nurtured, composted and cared for. It's not for nothing that this area is famous for bricks and pottery. So yes, in fact, moving rocks around in my garden can in fact disrupt the micro-ecosystem we have. I have an 80+ year old Gallica rose bush; she's well established, but roses can be persnickety. Changing too much of her micro-ecosystem (by, for example, disrupting her roots with coated wood or putting something that absorbs or reflects too much heat near her base) would make her sick and could kill. That genetic legacy is as important to me as someone's feelings. That rose bush cannot be replaced, either. Her genes are in the botanical library at CU, but she can't be replicated.

Then there's the fact that putting a religious shrine on my property is in fact putting something offensive to me on my property and forcing me to take at least some care of it. If nothing else, I'd have to weed around it at least 6 times in 60 days to combat the area's invasive, noxious weeds that would invade my garden. I am non-theist, and find the torture device that people use as a symbol of a religion that's supposed to be about love but is more often about hate to be deeply offensive. Angels and teddy bears do not offend me, and so I'd be okay with that kind of memorial. But for me, forcing me to look at a shrine every day that has no meaning to me, uses a symbol that offends me and is emblematic of a traumatic experience would be an excessive burden. It might be different if I had 45 acres and some gates and fences between me and the road, but I don't. I have a small, narrow lot (45 x 90) and my house with porch is 30 feet wide. There is no place on my property where I could ignore it; any accidents that would happen involving my property would put that shrine right in my front yard, within 10 feet of my front door. Regarding the original article, lots of lots in Massachusetts are even smaller than mine, putting the property owner in even closer contact with something that's offensive.

For those of us who have been in situations where our non-Christianity has caused discrimination, a cross can be a highly traumatic reminder of that discrimination. I can pretty much bet that every non-christian on this board has, at one time or another, been told we are not welcome in this country, or told that we are going to hell, or given what can only be described as an extremely high pressure sales pitch for the Church of What's Happening Now. Many of us made the mistake of going to a social event with a "friend" that turned out to be a pick on the unsaved heretical Christ-killer/Idolator/Witch/Demon-worshipper/Satanist. If you've never been in a locked room without a ride home, 5 miles from the nearest refuge, with 10 ranting people praying and crying and doing everything in their power to "save" you... well, lucky you. It's like putting a feminist in a room full of Promise Keepers or an Asian man at a Klan rally. If nothing else, the event is emotionally scarring. Sometimes, it's physically so.

So what's decent? I feel sorry for the survivor, I really do. He's being a jerk and needs some therapy (the survivor's guilt has got to be messing with his head) and he obviously has a need to turn some of his inner pain on others, and he's far too young to have the emotional security to deal with being a father, much less being the effective widower and father of a dead child. He's obviously not coping well. But his inability to cope and get through today without hurting other people (and that's really what he's doing; he's lashing out at whatever target is handy) is not a reason to hurt other people. He wants vengeance and to appease god - that's what shrines are, after all. They're a physical representation of the stage of grief called bargaining. They are a manifestation of the idea that performing a ritualized action will get the attention of a deity in such a way as to cause a miracle or ensure an outcome. It's not a good place to be stuck, emotionally. But taking vengeance on the property owner is misplacing the anger and grief. The property owner had nothing to do with his girlfriend's death except own the wrong deed. If the crosses hadn't been taken down, the survivor would have found some other reason to be angry with the property owner, or his parents, or her parents, or the person who sold the drunk the booze, or the therapist that hasn't managed to get the drunk driver to kick, or someone.

Grief's funny that way. It's about as rational as a saddle on a duck. And that's my root issue, I think. Letting this kid sit in the country of O-pity-me and blame others for not making the world revolve around him and his grief is not doing the kid, the survivor, any favors. Yeah, it sucks losing someone that close to you. It's the second worst feeling in the world. (The first is having to make the decision to turn off the machines that are keeping that person sort of alive.) Losing a partner AND a potential child in one fell swoop has to be even tougher. And walking away from the accident that takes your partner and potential child has to be close to hell on earth. But what's worse is choosing to live in that hell and not moving on.

The dead don't care what we do about, around, for or in memory of them. If they're in heaven, they are content and can't feel bad about what we do. If they're in hell, they have bigger things to worry about. Purgatory, same thing. Nirvana, content. Reincarnated, they're busy. Dead-dead? Not worried. Shrines are all about the living, not the dead. My personal feeling is that continuing to revisit a site or event connected with a death is more of a mental picking of the wound rather than a healing. But the bigger issue is who gets to decide? Is it decent and humane to inflict pain on another person in the name of memoria? And is it decent and humane to be callous to another's grief? No on both counts. That's where I get the feeling that both people involved are being jerks.