I’m watching The Man in the High Castle currently which is an adaptation of a Philip K Dick story where the Nazis and the Japanese empire won the war and now have control over a divvied up United States.
It’s okay... I can’t say it’s great or anything but I’ve already invested the time in watching the First Season so I’m determined to make my way through it. I wound up getting one of those 30 day free trials to Amazon Prime and I’m holding on until the new season of The Expanse comes along:
In the meantime I’m watching Nazis hunt down Jews.I don’t understand antisemitism.Now, I don’t mean to say I’m not aware of it, I just don’t understand it is all.Maybe it’s because there have been important people in my life who are Jewish and I’ve been to Temple and observed Jewish holidays with them. I don’t find them altogether different or alien in any way.Further, isn’t Judaism the core religion? Out of the Abrahamic religions Judaism is the first – Christianity and Islam are branches off that tree, no?
You know I have dear, dear family friends who are Jewish and as a result I’ve gone to Temple, celebrated Passover, etc.
There is a lot to like about Judaism. There is a lot to like about much of religion if you allow yourself to do so.
I was watching something the other day which was a discussion between Cardinal Dolan and a Rabbi at the 92nd St Y and one of the comments that stuck with me was that faith comes from God and religion comes from man.
I am not big on churches really, going to church and all of that but surprisingly as much as I would pretend to escape those things I find myself praying fairly regularly. This is truly something of a miracle in and of itself considering how much of a deviant I am deep down.
I like praying, I mean... if I didn’t I probably wouldn’t do it at all now would I?I don’t talk about it or really like talking about it because that relationship to me is something special. It’s private and I don’t even like writing about it because that is a relationship between me and God (whatever form a Supreme Being or force takes). It is not something that makes me better than anyone else, certainly if anything I often believe I am ‘worse’ than a lot of people in the sense of being vain or vindictive.
But, it’s mine and mine alone.
There have been times in my life when I’ve been around people who have used their belief, their faith as something of a cudgel against others. I’ve found people using it as a way to hold themselves above the people around them and to justify their actions and behavior.
I’m enough of a dick to use things like that to fuck with someone.
In the end though I can’t help but think all of us would be better if we just learned to follow the ‘Live and let live’ dictum which has surprising origins:
And why it appears so hard for us to do:
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