Monday, August 9, 2010

What some words mean to me

WARNING: RANT

Most of you know I had a hellish job for a year working at a Furniture Chain back in 2003. Part of my civilian experience before I came back on active duty. I don't begrudge it one bit as I see it as a very valuable experience and something that has made me much more open minded about somethings when compared to other officers who have never worked outside of the military.

Everyone knows I hated that job. Specifically I hated the people I worked for, who were mostly bullies, people who didn't know that they could have done much better, or vicious careerists who would sell you down the river in one second; and the people we did business with that I had to interact with which were usually low income, racist as all hell (I had never been called a "cracker", "honky", "white trash", or "gringo" until I worked here), and usually had zero sense of honesty, keeping an agreement/your word, or just paying what you owed.

Which leads me to the rant.

"Free-Spirit": a worthless thief who feels no obligation to pay for anything, or to keep his/her word, or feels that they have any obligation to anyone other than themselves. These scumbags usually prattle some BS about the evil of wealth, or some progressive babble about equality while they felt free to come in and order the most expensive TVs, stereos and other electronic equipment we sold and then would make off with it. Most of them usually ended up stiffing their roommates for shares of rent (I heard lots of that), or pissing them off by using them to co-sign and then leaving them on the hook.

"Spiritual": a worthless jackass who wants to have their religious/spiritual cake and eat it too. I mean it like so: religions are fine and they address a simple issue (what happens when we die, aka our souls). Religions have all developed rules over time, and all of them usually have some caveats to the tune of "if you want a heavenly reward, you need to try and do the right thing while on earth". This usually means you have to do some not fun things, and attempt to make amends when you (inevitably) screw up (we are humans, and humans are by definition imperfect, so we are expected to screw up). In other words, try to do the right things, even if not fun. Someone who touts being spiritual usually is saying (and this is my experience) "I don't want to ignore my soul, and the possibility of what might lie in the great beyond, but I want to have fun and I don't like guilt. Religion gives me guilt and I would just rather not deal with it. I'll continually bring up organized religion's problems and since I don't belong I can be smug and condescending about it without feeling bad."


Both of these groups are continually found within the "progressive" community. They are not very damn progressive, they are lazy, opportunistic slobs who get off by getting over and feeling smug about it. "Spiritual"? Bite me, if you are going to worry about your soul then that means you need to have some guilt, not a get of jail free card. You should feel bad when you do something wrong. Of course if you haven't been taught right from wrong by your progressive parents, you are going to have an uphill battle. "Free-spirit"? Again, bite me. Get a job, stop stealing, stop screwing over your roommates and figure out that you actually ARE hurting someone with your BS world-view.


For the curious, this rant is brought to you courtesy of an article I read earlier today extolling "a simple, progressive life" that mentioned these two terms in gushing, glowing words. I knew a lot of "free-spirits" and "spiritual" people in Austin, and they were all thieves and self-righteous prats. And no, I am not perfect or sin-free. I jack up all the time, and have plenty of sins to worry about. But I will damn well call a jackass a jackass when its called for.