There was an immediate shift in behavior and mood in both the combatants. The skirmish deflated to face-to-face taunting then into a slow backing away from each other into their own corners while mumbling bite-sized, over-the-shoulder jeers. It finally smoldered down to subtle glares as each grabbed their “gear” with angry, dramatized swipes of their hands. They both hunkered down in their desks. Disappointed hecklers in the class booed. A couple of girls applauded. We could have been at a karaoke club.
Still, the usual sanctions had to be administered. I told them both to stay after class. A “steer-clear” contract would be signed. I would write up the incident on the all-too-familiar pink form, place it in the appropriate basket in the dean’s office, and get in touch with both students’ parents later that night.
I barked the name of a student who had never spoken in class—I suspected lockjaw—recommended a tetanus shot—and asked him to go the office and cancel the “call.” The office staff was aware my button didn’t work and knew the routine. Someone in the dean’s office would state a few words of thanks and send him back to class.
Was this incident of noxious energy just about adolescent egos and mechanical reactions? Pushing mental and emotional buttons? No, I thought. This had something to do with the bigger business of human life. Real life—not a still life.
Today’s episode was not just an unvarnished portrait of teenage self-image and unsuppressed emotion surrounded by huddled groupings of giddy teens in splashy clothes bickering about who knew the most about what matters least. It was a retrospective exhibit of historical adult histrionics on a stretched canvas of human ignorance, lathered with divisive opinions and critical desires.
The tragedy in my mind was that socially conditioned forces were compelling these young men into conflict. Religion had become an adornment for their egos. Both students were wearing culturally imprinted medals of honor as they defended what they were taught to believe … taught to defend.
Religion is a perspective on life. A perspective on life is a viewpoint and a lookout. It is always a point of view with an angle. There are always different outlooks at the same picture of life. Different slants—imaginings in the mind’s eye influenced by minds no longer alive.
Religion provides comfort, yet it produces fears. Fears in the affiliates of the majority religion of a particular society that they will lose their power status, and fears in the members of minority religions that they may be in jeopardy. If there were no fears of religion, no one in my class would have taken notice of Katelyn’s brainstormed blurt of “School prayer!” and she would not have even uttered it.
Religion motivates and moves an individual toward good and evil. Absolute beliefs can create unrest within an individual and between individuals. When such convictions emotionally overtake a person, a society, or culture, they hurl living out of balance, out of perspective—but not out of control.
The religion of religion is control.
Points of view can become views with sharp points.
The lives of a billion human beings have been lost in religious conflicts.
Innate spirituality is to absolutist religion as patriotism is to nationalism. Patriotism is a love of country. Nationalism is to think your country is best. Genuine spirituality does not plead, declare, or argue. These behaviors are noise of the ego.
The ego is not interested in truth. Neither is religion. Both are concerned with your opinion of yourself. This opinion is paramount and reveals itself in the image you reveal to the world. We all play roles in life, but if we get lost in them, the drama we produce is from a fictional self. To be interested in truth, you must exercise self-responsibility, conscientiousness, and blameless accountability.
To be open to truth, you must see yourself in the other.
To know others is nothing more than to know yourself. We all exist in a network of interdependence. This perspective paves the way for understanding others and ourselves. This perspective brings peace.
We would revisit our “rooms” of one-point perspective in tomorrow’s class. Next week’s project would be a practiced understanding of two-point perspective.
“Now can I go to the bathroom?” Alexi pleaded.
“Da.” I handed him the sticky bathroom pass as the welcome calm of the room
was shattered by a declarative reared up from a back corner.
There it came again! That reflection of humanity—the search for self—the fallacy around the quest for perfect love in the real world. “You love me? You would die for me? You don’t even know me … baybeee!”
“The best religion is tolerance.”
— Victor Hugo (1772–1821)