Castles in the mud

I have a certain care or consideration for believers.

This may not be apparent from reading my less than supportive posts on the imperial cult that is Christianity, and especially the rogue imperial sub-cult that is Catholicism, statist moves which give us the definition of religion and its over-application to practices which might best be regarded as ‘worlding’ rather than ‘religious’.

This concern with the person rather than the believing probably dates from a friendship, as a newly arrived 11-year-old child from “the mainland” in a Tasmanian “hydro” village (where workers lived to maintain the hydro-electric power station of Poatina). This friendship was with a homeschooled boy of similar age whose family were with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Back then they were the only crazies. Now they seem completely sane, compared, say, to sovereign citizens.

Some of the straight Tasmanians were a lot more strangely behaved.

I should add that many decades later when I asked how long we lived in Poatina, as I thought it was over a year, I was told, “3 months”.

The consideration is like that watching a friend fall into a muddy puddle, as they are now wet and muddied but unlikely to die. Perhaps they even enjoy the shock of it.

“Let me help you!” you offer, you might get muddy too but who cares really.

What may matter is pride, in particular the pride that doubles-down, where it may reject help, or at least fellowship, especially in those inclined to the paranoia of sub-dom gaming, where everything is a threat, even kindness. And if it isn’t a proximate threat someone else watching may see it as a weakness and save the information for later. Pride and shame can be so easily played into bad worlding by bad actors with nothing better to do.

There is a fine line in any rejection of help, between the embarrassment of dirtiying one’s Sunday Best, "I'm fine." And the fear of becoming prey and food for others.

What matters is that the choice to become dogmatically protective, is a matter of pride, or at least some sort of laziness that cannot see the world within which that choice is made possible. Perhaps this emotionally-driven framework ‘blindness’ is driven by fear of the world as a game one cannot win.

So I always chat with visitors knocking on my door helping to spread the word, after all I may have fallen in the dogmatic mud myself.

No that it matters, no man is a castle.