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| A side effect of an Ignorance Storm is spewing shit from your mouth. |
To
reiterate, an Ignorance Storm brews in our minds feeding off of a
general lack of knowledge about a certain issue. We don't get it and we
don't like it.
Much like this:
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| NORMAL |
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| NORMAL |
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| WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?! |
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| FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.......!!!!! MIND EFFING BLOWN! |
To
clean up our mental ecosystem thereby reducing the amount of Ignorance
Storms, which may give lead to hatred, greed, confusion, and general
feelings of discontent, it is wise to pursue knowledge about the
subjects which perturb us. Further, upon your journey it is important to
keep an open mind and laugh. The discord will be thick and the waters
murky, but you'll have to immerse yourself in a culture to better
understand the people. Immersion, however, is hard and some people are
scared and want to live with blinders on.
To these people who blindly agree with stereotypes I challenge you to speak, civilly, with someone who agrees with a cause/issue which you generally dislike. Take yourself out of your comfort zone to see how others experience life; learn. Learning from others opens up the path for us, as humans, to progress as a society and truly embrace the idea of being civil furthering us from the idea that we are no more than just animals. However, if you can't learn from others and therefore let anger and ignorance manifest itself then you're not brave enough to grow as a person. For these people I guess it's just easier to hate someone.
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My story:
When I was 12 my mom took my sister, a cousin, and myself down to Florida to see either Disney Land or Universal Studios. Ultimately we settled on Universal Studios because fuck yeah Terminator. Now, this trip was really awesome for multiple reasons, not only was I going to go see Florida for the first time or go rock out with the Terminator or ride the Jaws ride but I FOUND my FIRST porn magazine. I found my prized possession when I inspected the night-side stand drawer. Much like a sci-fi film, a heavy fog rolled out of the drawer, trying to mask the brilliant light bursting out of the seams. As I slowly pulled on the handle to inspect what usually is a dusty Bible tomb, there it lie in all its glory. On the cover a scantily clad blonde woman gazed at me as if she needed to show me something, she beckoned me to flip through the pages. I shut the door in disbelief but quickly opened it up in a rush of excitement. Yup, there she was. Silently I sent out a thank you to the Lord of Porn and threw my new prized possession into my suitcase under my clothes. It was mine... my new (probably used and thereafter certainly overly used) Precious!
Anyhow....
As a 12 year old boy you haven't realized that that girls are going to ruin your life and your dick is only going to get you into trouble... but I knew one thing: I liked girls. My young brain did the basic math that Boy + Girl = Normal... and according to my new Precious, Boy + Girl + Girl =AWESOME and Girl + Girl = Great, but as I've always been bad at math, my ignorant child-brain couldn't process Boy + boy. At the time I didn't know what the term "gay" really meant and used it frequently in my vocabulary in such ways as:
"Magikarp has no
good abilities and therefore is the gayest Pokemon ever,"
"You have a
gap in your teeth, how gay,"
"Rugrats is the best TV show making CatDog
gay."
As we walked around Universal Studios I pointed out that I wanted a particular ride, one which is lost on me at this time, and my cousin, who I should mention is two years older than me and is indeed gay in the correct sense of the word, did not want to go on the ride, nor did anyone else. This is the first recollection of an Ignorance Storm rolling through the barren wasteland that lies within my thick skull... at that moment I had to unleash my dissatisfaction with the fact that my cousin had somehow convinced everyone to conspire against what I wanted to do and uttered something along the lines of:
"Yeah, well at least I'm not gay and like girls. Idiot."
As soon as those words exited my mouth a rapid succession of words began streaming out of my mother's in defense of my cousin and at the same time chastising me for my ignorance. What I had said was wrong and she, like all women, particularly mothers, needed to educate me in exactly how much of an idiot I had sounded. My cousins shoulders went into a sag and his face vividly portrayed just how much my simple, ignorant words had taken this otherwise enjoyable time away from him. This trip was an escape from the rural simple mindedness that we were growing up in. Now not only was he getting picked on at school by assholes who didn't understand him, but he was currently being berated by someone in his own family who was supposed to be supporting his life choices. I had neglected to put myself in his shoes, to see how others were repressing him from simply being himself and instead I joined in with the other monsters belittling him for the sake of making myself feel better.
It took me some time to process what had happened at that moment- all I knew what that the words I said had REALLY pissed off my mom. Currently sexual, racial, and religious intolerance simply do not have room in my life anymore because life itself is just too short to be angry at other people for the mere fact of being different. Instead of letting negative experiences mold us into who we are in the future I recommend introspectionism to find out how we can avoid negativity in the future. What I eventually learned is that we all have to coexist on this world and my introspection into that event nearly 14 years ago has allowed me to form many bonds in the LGBT community.
And not to contradict myself people but: Now(Me + Girl^2)= STILL AWESOME.
