Being a Conservative Atheist is a bit challenging. For one thing, most Conservatives are religious, and I'm an polite but hardcore atheist. I don't openly mock people's religions unless they are the more obvious cultists that are aggressive about their recruiting: Jehovah's Witnesses surprisingly do understand "No thank you. I am not interested." Far better than telephone evangelists. In most Western States you better belong to the right church or you will be facing all sorts of social trouble. The one exception is California, where it is okay to be an Atheist and treat Sundays as a day for hikes, cycling, or fancy breakfast. So I sort of have to live here.
I volunteer, as a Conservative Atheist, because I like books. I also have a strong work ethic, which is valuable around here. I also don't smoke dope, which is rare around here. It means my head is together and I notice things and I don't stink. But it is rare. Many library patrons here in the Sierras are either potheads or growers. We don't get many religious folk at the library because books have ideas and straying from God is dangerous. Might invent something new, and new things upset the delicate balance that the preacher has created, wherein he is necessary. Ahem.
Working with the North San Juan library patrons can be disconcerting when they are really stinky potheads. The eye-watering reek of pot smoke is exactly as painful as it sound. They compound this by needing a long bath with soap, a shave, a haircut, and that stuff called shampoo. Dreadlocks are often multiple colors and generally indicate a subhuman interest in simple courtesy. They sometimes ask for help when their question would be easy to answer themselves if they weren't so high they didn't notice the big signs above the library catalog computers. I suspect CATALOG is incomprehensible when really high. But they use the library so I help them or direct them to the librarians for a more in-depth search, as required by law. I'm not allowed to type it in for them. Some weenie lawyer had to justify his position. This, btw, is a very easy job. About as unstressful as you can get. This is one of the reasons I like it. Job stress really hurts me.
It can also be interesting shelving books in the non-fiction section for both religious texts, cults, fantasy medical witchdoctoring con-games, snake oil, and Apologist Biographies for Treasonous Politicians who indifferently demand: "What difference does it make?". I shelve these things and laugh at the nonsense people believe enough to both publish a book, and for someone else to buy it, and someone else to read it. Reflexology? Amulets? Eating Bugs? Hillary Clinton? Hilarious nonsense.
There is an unlimited amount of ignorance. Still, going into a library you will eventually learn some more mainstream truths, and sometimes people unlearn their ignorance. Other times, ignorance is deliberate and fatal. We get lots of Darwin Awards in the Sierras. Usually in the form of drug overdose, exposure, arrest, or single car accidents on the curvy roads. Usually the driver is drunk or high. Sometimes there's other people in the car that die with them. And I'm okay with that. I grew up in the place where wine tasting is a drunk driving game. Its ridiculous that you would ban the entire point of the tourism just because the drunks wreck their cars. They're mostly a threat to themselves. Headon collisions were rare. Driving off of corners and into fields or trees or rocks and the bloody mess they sometimes turned into, or more commonly the ditch the car had to be pulled out of, was just part of life. There's no Jesus involved. No Buddha or Allah or Loki or Coyote either. Just driving too fast.
There's a lot of hypocrisy too. I laugh hard, inside, when I meet stinking hippies who can't find soap but own an iPhone with apps, though they don't believe in technology like that which keeps their AWD Subaru running, and never read the manual for their phone but want help to use it. Hypocrisy from the older generations is so very willful. At least they're consistent. They were useless spoiled children that grew into useless spoiled teenagers that got all the STDs and did a bad job raising children who themselves grew up useless and spoiled until they either grew out of it or died from Darwin award behavior. I'm astonished so many of my generation survived Baby Boomer parents.
It's weird being part of the generation that gave us the internet. I spent a couple decades teaching people how to use it. The Internet is everywhere. Its useful. It cuts down on stupid questions because looking stuff up is so easy. And people still come to libraries to learn more, from printed books. They aren't obsolete yet. Even with Kindle Fire HD being down to $90 right now. That's less than I paid for my Kindle Paperwhite, but my paperwhite has very long battery life and I still enjoy it. My generation loved the Sony Walkman, and we got MP3 players (or iPods) and listen that way. I was one of those people talking on a cellphone in a supermarket before everybody else did it, via headset that looked so weird. And then I stopped. I don't really carry a phone, not one turned on, anymore. When you sell smartphones, and you notice your customers are all DUMB, you start to connect the two and not wanting to be dumb, I don't have a smartphone. QED.
My life is way simpler, and rather than require constant opinion polling from friends like the Millenials, I prefer reflecting and observing life from my own position, or listening to comedy audiobooks that wryly describe the ignorance and hypocrisy around me in funnier ways. Because you can't force people to think. And many of them will die from deliberate ignorance. I refuse to feel guilty about surviving their asinine behavior when life and death are going to happen regardless, and not getting dead is often a matter of looking both ways before crossing the street, and waiting for that one car with backup lights engaged and huge clouds of acrid smoke right before they jam the throttle open and then fumble for the brake. Because its that kind of world, and those kinds of Liberals, still thinking they're superior despite forgetting that even the discount grocery sells soap for a very reasonable price.
Honestly: North San Juan would do itself a favor if it built a serious water supply system and a bathhouse with very cheap hot showers. Do that and it wouldn't stink so bad. Please North San Juan. Teach your people to bathe!
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