Project Memento

Supernatural is like that as well just double the seasons I'm half ways through 7 and I started 6 weeks ago about.

More like Project D E S P A C I T O

I think about those discussions sometimes. They did get pretty heated at several points. I think I still mostly hold the same opinions I did then, especially when it comes to religion, but I would never have those kind of discussions again. The thing is, I grew up in a place where religion does not really exist. The old church buildings (you know the really large ones) function as medical centers or even indoor playgrounds. Sure, there are still religious people, but no one ever mentions religion. At the time I did not know a single person who was actually openly religious. And, aside from the really small political party which gets all its votes from a few isolated villages, religion plays no role in politics. To me it seemed like religion and modernity were two incompatible entities.

So imagine my surprise when I had my first serious conversations with Americans... I could not comprehend how religion seemed to play a large role in some of their lives despite the fact that the United States is a developed country. I heard people talk about things like "Church camp" (specifically remember that) and that seemed like so strange and, well old-fashioned to me. So I think a lot of the religious discussions were driven by complete disbelief, as a result of growing up in a completely secular environment.

Yeah, Ridgeback was quite the character back in the day. Can't remember if he identified as a Neo-Nazi, but I'm certain he held onto some Nazi views. I can understand your distaste of the clones characters. Honestly, when it gets down to it, I would've much preferred if they were more unhappy with their role and job as expendable soldiers, but kept on because that was what they did. Could've made way for some good ol' dry humour in most of them. Plus that kind of approach would've been perfect if they got Temeura Morrison back instead of the whole cheering, battle hungry football team machismo feel they have in the show.

Surprise hit me too. Here in Texas, nearly everyone I know is raised in a religious family. They aren’t all Christian though, the second largest here feels like Hinduism. We all get a long and I never disliked anyone for having different views. But I was always taught the God and religion were nascantly good things with only positive results. I never really questioned these things until middle school. I didn’t want to admit how skeptical I was, so I went to the other extreme and became really defensive.

Even though I’m still involved in the community, I’ve kinda decided it’s not my place to truly know God. If I were born in India, I’d believe in Brahman. If I were born in Saudi Arabia, I’d believe in Allah. If I were born in Europe, I probably wouldn’t believe in anything. I’m not more right than anyone else just because I was born into a Catholic family. I didn’t choose for myself, I believed what people told me to. And anyways, there’s better things to do than worry about something that happened 4 billion years ago.

It's probably more than 50% though. I am not sure how they calculated it, but in some statistics I could be considered a catholic because I was baptized. But that was more a traditional thing in the two, originally catholic provinces, no one in my family is religious. And even baptizing is no longer a thing anymore, it kind of started declining too around the turn of the millennium.

But secularization has been happening for a long time. It really started to speed up in the 1960's though. Before that society was "pillarized" which meant that people of similar believes stuck together and basically lived in segregation. So if you belonged to the Catholic or Protestant pillar you were likely to want to stay religious. You also had the socialist and liberal pillars, which were secular, so there was a stable balance between religious and non-religious groups. But religion disappeared with depillarization and the rise of individualism.

Actually this reminds me of an interesting story. I had to do an interview for an assignment about identity recently and I interviewed a brother of my grandmother, who lived in a pretty large village near my city all his life. He told me that when he was really young his village was really catholic and they thought people from the city where I live were all "filthy socialist atheists". The hatred went so far that every week the names of villagers that had gone out in my city were announced to the public, so they knew who to hate.

Pillarization was weird... Things changed fast.

Well, it's kind of reminiscent of this whole "bubble" thing that is currently discussed a lot. How people only hear from like-minded people and therefore their point of view keeps getting confirmed further. Each of the four main pillars (communism and fascism were minor pillars in the 20's - 40's) had their own radio, their own section in public TV broadcasting, their own newspapers, political parties, clubs, organizations and even their own schools (though liberals and socialists shared theirs, because they did not believe in separate schools). You basically had four different societies in one. Elections always had pretty much the same results because people did not change their minds. People complain about "bubbles" now, but things were so much worse then.

Well, that's because it wasn't a geographical divide. Liberals and socialists were all over the place. Also, they cooperated quite well in politics, especially after World War II. You sometimes had coalitions of parties from all four pillars. That's where the term Polder Model comes from.

Well, I guess I did learn something in those history lessons that dealt with Dutch history, as boring as they were sometimes.

Well, it helps if you study history for three years. And my knowledge is mostly limited to the modern. I tried to avoid ancient and medieval history whenever possible.

Reading about it is not too bad. I love the Roman era. But studying it is not as fun as you have to try and make sense of all the different Emperors, dynasties, location names... and the medieval era is even worse at that. All these different kingdoms with different kings, and different dynasties... and to make matters worse, they all have the same names and are all related... Try remembering at an exam which Charles Charles the III was again... because not only are they A LOT of Charles, there are also about 20 Charles IIIs in the medieval era...