Friends, et al.
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Blog Entry #2


I have very few friends, especially male friends.  What seems to be the ‘problem’ with men - - aside from the fact that I are one?  (Joke)

Well .. .. my father was one, and he abused the hell out of me.  In the army, all of my superiors were men.  Far more often than not, they didn’t strike me as the sharpest pencils in the box.  They often made decisions/choices that weren’t very sensible, to be polite about it.  Unfortunately, they sometimes got people killed needlessly.  Let’s face it, in combat people are going to die, no matter what you do – it’s a fact of life (as it were) – but you don’t need to make things worse by being stupid!

Males tend to be aggressive and competitive.  I was abused – I don’t like “aggressive”.  Get aggressive with me and I’m most likely to simply walk away.  If you get in my face and don’t let me walk away .. things could get very dangerous very quickly, for you.  I literally don’t know how to fight.  At best, I only know what I was taught in the army - - and it wasn’t how to play “patty-cake”.

As for competitive, I simply won’t.  All it means to me are the things my father harped on: stand up for yourself (an extremely dangerous thing to do around him), the world is dog-eat-dog, so you have to look out for yourself first, last and always (yes, he grew up during the Great Depression – how could you tell).  Also, the world doesn’t care about you, so you have to fight for everything you get.  Often, you simply took what you needed, no matter what it was – food, clothes, women, whatever.  It was simply what “real men” did .. or you didn’t survive.  Now, OTOH, I can understand how he got these attitudes, but, OTOH, I wanted nothing to do with them.  If these attitudes made, or helped make, him what he was, I was going to do something else.  No, that did not mean I was going to become a SNAG¹!  Those guys simply make my skin crawl.  Yeah, yeah, the Age of Aquarius and all the rest of it.  Nuts!

Add in to all this the fact that my mind simply works “differently” than almost all people I’ve known (not just men), and we have a curious ‘situation’.  For example, I’ve said elsewhere that I’ve known about and interacted with elves, fairies, and all sorts of other folks and creatures from 'Beyond the Veil' since I was a small child.  To most people, that’s just plain crazy.  In addition, those BNPs² who are the supposed “experts” on this sort of thing maintain that I have no idea what I’m talking about, that I’ve simply fallen for the ‘Disney nonsense’, yadda, yadda, yadda.  When I’ve asked my “little friends” about the attitudes and images of the BNPs, et al, they just roll their eyes and say they can be like that if people insist .. but they’d rather not, thank you very much.

In another example, Lord Shiva of the Hindu pantheon is the aesthetic God of Destruction.  He is always covered in ashes from the cremation grounds, his hair is a tangled mess, he hangs around with ghosties & ghoulies & demons of all sorts, and he really doesn’t care about the niceties of (polite?) society.  [>NOTE: then again, how much of this “description” is simply a PR campaign by the Aryans trying to put him down and make him ‘go away’??  Think about it for a second.<]  Generally speaking, he will interact politely with all the other (Vedic, i.e. “invader”) gods, but acts neither subservient nor superior to them.  After all, they came here – He already Was.

Shiva “is” extremely contradictory.  He is an aesthetic who is constantly ‘meditating’ and ‘withdrawing from the world’, yet his ‘image’ or symbol in temple is the erect phallus!  He is The Destroyer, yet he is the one who dances the world and the universe into being.  (While he can destroy anything, even gods, he usually destroys the out-moded, or that which needs to be removed for new growth to take place.  He also “destroys” ignorance, even in other gods {he teaches them many things, including Magic, for example} .. .. but, yes, stupidity is beyond even his ultimate ability .. .. ..)  He always seems to be sitting in peaceful meditation, yet he has a rage/anger that is only matched by his wife, Kali, who terrifies the ever-lovin' shit out of all the other gods (interestingly enough, by their own admission)!  Once she gets on a killing/ destroying jag, he is the only one who can bring her back to her senses.  The list of contradictions just goes on and on.

And yet.. and yet.. HE is the only deity, or major power in the universe that I identify with.  Don’t get me wrong – I can and do respect and sometimes even honor gods from other sources, but identify with?  Nope, only Shiva.

Now, what does all this have to do with “friends, et al”??  I know of few people, and fewer men, who could read any of the above without thinking I was certifiably crazy .. at best.  According to “society”, okay, I’m probably crazy as hell .. certainly delusional .. but I am what I am, and if you can’t accept or handle that .. .. >>shrug<< .. ..


¹ -- SNAG : Sensitive New Age Guy
² -- BNP : Big Name Pagan
These two terms should be fairly easy to figure out, but ask if you can’t get it.


ADDENDUM:
I just recently ran across an article about "Omega" males.  I'm sure everyone has a good idea what an "Alpha male" is -- you know: macho, best at everything, gets all the gals, always 'the leader', aggressive, more than willing to fight to get what he wants, =has= to be -acknowledged- as #1, etc, etc.

It turns out that what are called "Omega males" are =very= different from Alphas, and not -at- =all= "submissive", to Alphas or anyone else.  The description fit me perfectly!  Now I just wished I had bookmarked the location, so I could cite it.