So, this week has been busy for me. I've added another volunteering gig to my schedule, which will take up about 15 hrs a week. I love it- I work in Preservation in the library and right now we are de-acidifying and encapsulating newspapers from 30 years ago. BUT that it not what has been occupying my mind as of late, cool though it is. I have been attempting to run a personal 'public works project' on the state of my social life by joining local meetup groups in the hopes of connecting with other humans, etc. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons: A) if I keep to myself, I realized, I tend to get dumber. The IQ of the State of Me decreases exponentially and B) I need new things to keep me interested in existing. So, here follows the tale of my horror meetup story.
As a rule, I don't talk about my religion with humans, ever because either I get called a heretic/sinner and get preached to OR I meet someone who also claims to be a Pagan who is really just an asshole who has no friends and, by the grace of the two of us being Pagan, thinks that we are now bonded. Neither situation is in any way agreeable to me. But, despite my instinct to run, despite all the warning signs that this would be awful, despite all my years of consistently crappy meetings with Pagans, I went to the Pagan Meetup group.
The first thing the 'leader' (a ridiculous concept in a Pagan group) asked me was what patheon I followed. Umm....WTF is a patheon??? I said I had no idea what he was talking about. He replied that he was the same way and just followed many patheons. Then, we went around in the obligatory circle to share names, beliefs, etc. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON USED THAT GODDAMN WORD: Oh, I follow many patheons. I don't believe in following one specific patheon. Depending on the spell, I'll use different patheons. Etc, etc, etc. I accepted my ignorance and assumed I was just a dumbshit Pagan who was obviously not too up on Paganism, as this was a perfectly possible situation. Until I realized that they were trying to say 'Pantheon.' As in, the Norse or Greek Pantheon of gods/goddesses. It was not just one person. It was every single one. For good measure, I went home and did some Googling, just to make abso-fucking-lutely sure that there was no sure thing as a patheon. There isn't. There is a techno band named 'Patheon'. That's it.
Right, well, I can hear you now: God, you are such a snob, Tinkerbell. Who the fuck are you?? Listen, jerk- I gave them the benefit of the frikkin doubt. I assumed I was the dumbshit FIRST. Then, in the safety and quiet of my own home, I discovered the deep, abiding levels of retardedness.
But that's not all. Let's go back to the part where we are in the circle, sharing our names and chosen patheons that we follow. Everyone basically said the same thing: I'm open-minded, I follow many different traditions, I'm here to learn. Which is a great answer in my book. Not so at this meetup from hell. Everyone who said that was immediately questioned by the other main jerks in the group in a way that put them on the defensive and left them upset. It was a live action drawing-and-quartering of anyone who displayed any type of open-mindedness. You had to be Wiccan or you were a stupid, sorry person who had no idea about anything. For some dumb reason, this seems totally and utterly hypocritical to me. Because, seriously, none of us were born pagan; we are all recovering Christians. For a lot of us, Christianity sucked because it was sooo close-minded in our experiences. To see the reverse happen, where the Pagans were close-minded about being open-minded, was shocking.
The result of this stupid meetup has been me in willful solitary confinement, avoiding computers in general, seeing as it was the computer that led me to the meetup group in the first place. Argh. People can suck so hard sometimes. And not in a sexually gratifying way, either.
As a rule, I don't talk about my religion with humans, ever because either I get called a heretic/sinner and get preached to OR I meet someone who also claims to be a Pagan who is really just an asshole who has no friends and, by the grace of the two of us being Pagan, thinks that we are now bonded. Neither situation is in any way agreeable to me. But, despite my instinct to run, despite all the warning signs that this would be awful, despite all my years of consistently crappy meetings with Pagans, I went to the Pagan Meetup group.
The first thing the 'leader' (a ridiculous concept in a Pagan group) asked me was what patheon I followed. Umm....WTF is a patheon??? I said I had no idea what he was talking about. He replied that he was the same way and just followed many patheons. Then, we went around in the obligatory circle to share names, beliefs, etc. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON USED THAT GODDAMN WORD: Oh, I follow many patheons. I don't believe in following one specific patheon. Depending on the spell, I'll use different patheons. Etc, etc, etc. I accepted my ignorance and assumed I was just a dumbshit Pagan who was obviously not too up on Paganism, as this was a perfectly possible situation. Until I realized that they were trying to say 'Pantheon.' As in, the Norse or Greek Pantheon of gods/goddesses. It was not just one person. It was every single one. For good measure, I went home and did some Googling, just to make abso-fucking-lutely sure that there was no sure thing as a patheon. There isn't. There is a techno band named 'Patheon'. That's it.
Right, well, I can hear you now: God, you are such a snob, Tinkerbell. Who the fuck are you?? Listen, jerk- I gave them the benefit of the frikkin doubt. I assumed I was the dumbshit FIRST. Then, in the safety and quiet of my own home, I discovered the deep, abiding levels of retardedness.
But that's not all. Let's go back to the part where we are in the circle, sharing our names and chosen patheons that we follow. Everyone basically said the same thing: I'm open-minded, I follow many different traditions, I'm here to learn. Which is a great answer in my book. Not so at this meetup from hell. Everyone who said that was immediately questioned by the other main jerks in the group in a way that put them on the defensive and left them upset. It was a live action drawing-and-quartering of anyone who displayed any type of open-mindedness. You had to be Wiccan or you were a stupid, sorry person who had no idea about anything. For some dumb reason, this seems totally and utterly hypocritical to me. Because, seriously, none of us were born pagan; we are all recovering Christians. For a lot of us, Christianity sucked because it was sooo close-minded in our experiences. To see the reverse happen, where the Pagans were close-minded about being open-minded, was shocking.
The result of this stupid meetup has been me in willful solitary confinement, avoiding computers in general, seeing as it was the computer that led me to the meetup group in the first place. Argh. People can suck so hard sometimes. And not in a sexually gratifying way, either.