Man, I could not be any less enthused about writing this entry. I am so damned tired it’s not even funny. I had a busy last week, a busy weekend, this week has not been any easier on me, and the weekend is shaping up to be a fun-filled hell. This might not be my best entry ever, but there will be an entry at least.

As usual, let’s get some personal business out of the way first. Still haven’t called up anyone who might know where Marla Suppes, my birth mother, is. The only time I could have possibly made that call would have been last Sunday night or tonight – both nights I simply got wrapped up in doing something else and it just slipped my mind. I really need to do it, but it just hasn’t happened yet.

I have finally gotten some Space Monkey X merchandise designed and ready. Again, I’m not expecting any of you to buy jack shit from my little online store at Café Press. I’m mainly doing it for myself so I can get some stuff with my logo on it – especially a hat, a beer stein, and maybe a t-shirt – so don’t feel like you need to buy anything. Hell, I’ve marked the items as their absolute lowest price in the store, so it’s not like I’m making any money off the sale anyway, so I could really care less. However, if you would like to at least see the store, go here and check out the fun little items I’ve developed in what amounts to an afternoon’s worth of work.

My big web project is slowly coming about. I haven’t had the chance to work on it much at all since we last saw each other. Just been too damned busy.

I just finished reading Ray Bradbury’s classic novel The Martian Chronicles. It’s an unusual book, little more than a collection of short stories that all take place during man’s many attempts at conquering Mars. Now the book was written at a time when we didn’t know nearly as much about the angry red planet than we do now, so quite a bit of artistic liberty was taken with the setting and it’s inhabitants.

Bradbury’s Mars is a planet, not just of red and brown, but of gentle blue waters of canals, and light green grass that flows in the harsh, Martian wind that blows through the hills. The locals are much like us except their skin is a tan redder and it is their custom to wear beautiful, metal masks when in public; that is, at least, until Man infects them with Small Pox and they are wiped out. And that is when things begin to get really weird.

One of the short stories that most impressed me was one that took place about in the middle of the tome. Two priests, as well as many others but we only get to know these two, are preparing to rocket to Mars – the first organized religion in the new colonies. There are two schools of thought, personified by the two priests, on just what exactly they were going to do “up there.”

One priest felt it was rather obvious – that they were to bring civilization and moral righteousness to the humans in new territory much like the preachers who traveled to the Old West. They would have to prevent men from becoming drunkards and gambling and murdering and otherwise having fun.

The other priest had a much more philosophical viewpoint. He believed that, yes, yes, they should keep the humans in moral check, but what about converting the Martians? Does a Martian have a soul? Or are they like animals, created to serve man and cannot reason enough to believe in a higher power? If they do have souls, how does one convert them to the idea of the One True God? What if they do not look like us and why would they believe in a Messiah who does? What if their customs went against our moral stances? What if their civilization was millions of years old and we were asking them to give up all that tradition to follow The Salvation? How on Earth could we convert Mars?

I got to thinking, and I’m sure this was Bradbury’s intention upon writing it, that these were the same questions that had to have been asked when missionaries began working their way down the Amazon River or into the Congo. How do you get an indigenous people to forget their traditions and follow a Messiah that does not look like them (remember, Jesus was strictly a White guy back then), that does not speak their language, and comes from some place they’ve probably never heard of? Or like the people in Africa, who had dealt with the Arab people for centuries, usually fighting them off their land; and now you want them to believe that one of those guys died for their sins? How in the hell did they do it?

There are only two possible “routes of convincing” I can come up with - deceit and violence. “But it was God’s love that convinced him!” “The missionary consistently taught and helped the man find the err of his ways.” Divine intervention, God's Will, - call it whatever you want to disguise the truth.

Deceit is an easy one. I can imagine this was most commonly done in the jungles as “giving, with other intentions”. Let’s say you’re a member of the Tabonken Tribe (Hey, Tabonken is kinda fun to say!). Last week, your twelve year-old son was injured trying to kill a raging rhinoceros with his bare hands during his “passage into manhood” ceremony. The kid’s hurt pretty badly - broken leg at least - and this White dude comes out of the jungle and says he can fix your son’s leg.

At first you don’t trust him, but he seems nice enough, so you figure he might know what he’s doing. The guy sets your son’s leg and in a few months he’s back walking again. He did something that the medicine man sure couldn’t do; seems like a pretty cool guy.

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This White guy must be one heck of a medicine man because all your village’s medicine man was doing was rubbing a combination of bat guano, river water, and antelope blood on your son’s leg while waving a stick over his head - and it didn’t seem to be doing shit. This White guy comes along and now your son’s leg is healed; his magic is powerful, he must be sent from the gods. This is one guy I’m gonna listen to.

Next thing you see there are no more sacrifices to Yana Hanara, the God of the Hunt, there are no more dances around the fire the night before a bride is to be given to her husband, there is only a village who has lost their way of life – all just because no one had their First Aid kit handy.

Now violence, that’s another matter entirely. Attrition is the repentance of sin motivated by fear of punishment. You don’t feel like you’ve committed a sin, but someone does and they’re willing to hurt you or your family “for your own good.”

The Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials are both perfect examples of the church forcing confessions and penitence from people who felt they’d done nothing wrong. But ya know, I’d convert to Catholicism too if my choices were going to Sunday Mass or being stretched on the rack and having my intestines cut out of me and fed to the dog while I was watching.

The same type of thing had to have happened when missionaries were “converting” the savages. You just can’t change someone’s entire culture without conquering them first. We did it with the Indians – took their land, wiped them out if they resisted, moved them to reservations so we could control them, and then started converting them to Christianity as a means to separate them from their “savage” past.

Worst of all, the missionaries were operating without any kind of law and order in the Amazon. They were essentially Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (or Heart of Darkness, if you prefer the more direct analogy), in that he became God to his men. It was either his way or you were thrown into a bamboo cage to starve, while yourself being eaten at by hungry flies and other critters that refused to wait the few days for you to die. I have about thirty other possible references from movies and books, but I think you get the point. If you want to control a man you have to break his mind and spirit first or kill him trying.

Now where is this entire thing going? That’s right, boys and girls, the Taliban.

I’m no expert on the unrecognized, ruling party of Afghanistan, this is simply what I’ve gathered from the last few weeks. (Which I’m sure has just a dash of American propaganda thrown in for flavor.)

We’ve all heard the terrible things the Taliban have done during their tenure. For example, women have to wear veils, and they can’t be educated; men must wear beards at least as long as the width of their fist, and all young men are forced to serve to defend the Taliban (whether they agree with them or not) or face the possibility of execution - or worse, imprisonment. Pretty rough, huh?

Whew! I tell ya, thank God I live in America where we don’t have to worry about those kinds of religious extremists.

Can you imagine someone in America telling us how to live our lives? Telling us that everything we're doing is wrong and if we just listen to them we can be redeemed and step back into the good graces of God? But they say if we don't follow them God will become angry with us and punish us, right? Like in Revelations, only those who have not accepted the Mark of the Beast and are willing to die for God, only they get into heaven while the rest will toil in the pits of hell for all eternity. If that doesn't convince you to change your ways, what will?

Or so they think. But we're smarter than that, aren't we? Yeah, we'd never listen to someone like the leaders of the Taliban. Those religious extremists are dangerous people.

Aren't they Pat Robertson?

Aren't they Jerry Falwell?

Man, I sure am glad WE don't have any religious extremists in this country. No Siree.

Space Monkey X