|
SML126
I'd
like to read your opinions in an eMail. The most important element of your
message must be that you really believe the things you'll say there,
whatever my feelings might be about them. Express your
SELF. You will
know more about me by the time you browse the more than 170 pages here,
than you know about most of your neighbors. Let that awareness determine
the level of your trust I deserve.
One of my
earliest memories is of running outside, dripping wet with bathwater, my
naked brother hot on my heels, to run around the yard and play in the warm
summer sunshine. Mom came back from finding a towel, realized where we had
gone, and ran, screaming, after us: "You boys get back in here. Mrs.
Halley will see you and call the cops and they'll take you away." Mom
never stopped me from going naked whenever I could, but she injected the
fear of cops into my bloodstream, and all her kids ran off to hide
whenever we learned Mrs. Halley intended to visit. I have spent a lot of
time since then, at wondering why the human being is the only animal to
wear clothing even when it's uncomfortable. And, even, unhealthy. I think
I know why, but I don't want to talk about that here. If you're
interested, follow the trail I've laid out, and you'll discover it for
yourself. Read my book,
The Complete Universe of Memes, for the whole story, and
Reality 101 for more about my Mom.
Being a
person of immense curiosity, I constantly feel surprised by the range of
opinions human beings support. I get amazed at how people who support
different world-views avoid people who think differently, deny they can be
anything higher than snakebelly-low perverts, even while they all share
many of the same core values and devaluations.
Noted
speakers like Billy Graham and Denis Waitley get paid big money all over
the world while traveling around to talk about how America needs to return
to her core values. No attention is paid to a fact: That what these
lecturers call core values are, as often as not, core
devaluations of others. They devalue others' ideals in support
of their own. People sense that, talk about tolerance but, when
they go to practice it, crash against a wall of core devaluations
at the heart of their own systems of thought. So, a choice is made: For
some, the systems of thought get modified. For others, talk of tolerance
becomes a reason to grab a firmer hold on their own ethnicity, politics,
and dogma and seek enforcement of others' intolerance of themselves.
I spent a
lot of effort the summer of 2001, helping author Robert Rimmer get his own
website in order. Robert remained a stick-to-his-guns kind of person,
right up to the day of his unexpected death. I first learned of him when I
read The Harrad Experiment, which then led me to read That
Girl From Boston and The Rebellion of Yale Marratt. I had
begun writing as a hobby some time before that, and traded letters with
Robert for a while, before my own circumstances caused me to lose track of
him. I feel lucky to have renewed my acquaintanceship with him the spring
of 2001, and to discover what a great guy he was. Mary-Lou and I had
ventured into the nudist experience some time before that, searching for
our freedom and something real to believe in. We found tighter strictures
there than in the covered-up world so, when it came time to renew our ASA
membership, we passed.
I believe
what turned us off from nudism was the mentality of the people involved.
Rules were imposed, their need regarded as obvious and not open to
discussion. People just don't like talking about such things, not even
people the general population regards as 'deviant'. I am the kind of
person who likes verifiable reasons. I have observed that rules without
such reasons prove to be counterproductive more often than not, when they
go against the grain.
Of course,
I understood why the rules had to exist, especially in those strictured
times (Crotch morality affects even those who proclaim themselves free
from it: Mary-Lou and I weren't even allowed to walk holding hands, like
we do when we're walking down the main street of our town, because to do
so would be interpreted by others as "sexual"). I have been an adult for
more than half a century (during most of which I have been married with
her), and spent a good many years before that being a kid like most of
those rules were made to control, so I've had a long time to observe the
things my curiosity led me to inspect. I have lived in lots of places,
obeyed lots of rules that don't have reasons. The rules are not always the
same. Sometimes they require opposites.
I am a
natural born naked person. I feel most comfortable that way. In fact, I
worry that I'll sometime become senile and lose my reluctance to offend
others, and bring about the loss of what freedoms I do enjoy. Senility
doesn't seem to run in my family, but I have often been the first at lots
of things.
While
Robert seemed to enjoy joshing me about being "The Naked Man", I could
sense a sort of reluctance emanating from him concerning it, even in the
nature of his jokes. I have contacted a few of the polyamorists to whom he
enjoyed referring others, but my exchanges with them came to abrupt ends
when topics began straying into areas other than interests they'd defend.
This has
often been true in other respects. Madelyn o'Hair wrote me a nasty note
about my lack of a male feature when I contacted her atheists'
organization with a query concerning my ideas. I still have that note, but
have lost those from the women's libbers who broadcast at KPFK in Los
Angeles, who responded with an abrupt "What do you want from us?". COYOTE
responded not at all. Salt and pepper people living in my neighborhood,
who have to work up courage to be seen together in some places, would have
me arrested if I appeared naked in my own back yard.
Everybody
seems to be after one certain kind of a little freedom they feel like they
deserve. They wish people would support them, but feel reluctant to
support others with different ideals to defend when they can't quite see
the relationships. Generally, if they seek a right someone else enjoys,
their efforts will lead to loss for the one who had it, not a gain for the
one who wants it.
I had
begun to form a message in my mind and found no one to tell it to.
Everybody seemed interested in only a little portion of it. I wished I
could know for certain, "Why?"
Here's Why: Divide and Conquer among the dividers:
I discovered this condition exists even amongst zealous supporters of
various religious beliefs, who worry about losing privileges or practices
supported by their creeds, but who would hurry out to vote against a
different doctrine's rights. My dad, a Seventh Day Adventist, had to fight
his entire lifetime for his prerogative to completely, freely practice his
church's teachings, even against my mother for the first years of their
marriage (I wrote about this in
*Reality
101). I do not
support either of their religions but, to those who'd say I should argue
against anyone's right to practice their beliefs, could you let me tell
you, "Why?"
What I had
been observing was the uncannily successful Divide-and-Conquer tactics our
culture inherited from those that spawned it. Even those who escaped to
America to avoid zealous religiosity in their homelands operated under its
influence, suffered accordingly, and inflicted suffering onto others
because of it. Look at all the multitudes of cultures that settled in
America, including all of it and not just the United States, and not just
North America. All of their varying world-views shared only one pervasive,
forceful feature in common. Can you think of what it was? Once you realize
that, do you dare to consider how it still affects your ability to openly
practice beliefs you consider legitimate today? Study disclaimers usually
posted on websites set up in support of particular lifestyles: All of them
in some way descend from the same unwarranted origin.
Can you
see the 'Divide and Conquer' elements of our cultures that work against
us, to prevent us to work with and share ideas aimed to help educate
others about legitimate freedoms whose absence exerts a heavy,
unacknowledged toll onto their lives, or the unacknowledged cause if the
toll seems obvious? The true cause of such suffering is not from other
people. I feel like you should be able to discover that without losing
your focus on what your own agenda is about, if you have one. Perhaps you
may discover many ways you have been victimized by 'Divide and Conquer' of
which, because it has always been prevalent in your life, you have
remained unaware.
What can I
do for you, more than just to provide an answer to a question that I am
the one who posed? I am not a big wheel in any industry, I have never been
wealthy, nor am I someone famous who feels a need to sharpen his ax. I
don't have an ax. I am old enough to doubt I'll ever benefit from whatever
effort I might get to make. If you are young, and can generate a daring
vision in your own behalf, you will discover in my website what you can do
to help yourself. Of course I'd like to sell you a book (I recommend my
own
Reality
101 and
The Complete
Universe of Memes as a place to start), but I have provided enough
information in this site's pages to allow a truly curious and open-minded
person to see things that may never have been provided by others. Use the
Site Map to find those most pertinent to
your interests.
This site
is for all kinds of progressive secular thinkers and activists, as well as
artists of all pursuits; for personal motivation; to promote my writing
about Memetics, naturism, naturalism, and unorthodox human relationships;
to highlight the Divide-and-Conquer rule under which we live; and offer a
philosophy for ethical living. Don't just pass over my ideas, thinking
they don't apply to your little niche: Yours is a niche because of the
effects Divide and Conquer have applied to your WorldView. You will not be
free until we all have achieved the
secular promise
America was built to provide, and America will not blossom to her true
potential without enabling true creative freedom for all her citizens.
"Why?" is
a product of our apathy, our lack of true confidence in our own ideals,
and our fear of exposure in what we sense to be a political atmosphere
fraught with danger. We can answer the question by daring ourselves to
live up to our secular ideals as though we really believed in them.
Without a will to live it ourselves, we can never convince the Dividers
bent to keep us Conquered that what we believe in is anything like the
truth. We can, each of us, point at our own selves, and say aloud, "You
are the reason why." You will find enough information in this site, and
those to which it will point you, to firm up your secularity and make it
real and defensible in your own mind. That is this site's stated purpose:
Your own freedom will die from apathy, and will live only when you
discover its worth.
Lloyd
From other authors: Click images to read about them.
 |
