Bryan W. Alaspa 1When the masks slip
October 1st 2009 13:37
It is my belief that humanity wears a mask. The good people of the world are the ones who are better at holding their masks on tight. They are just better at covering up the seething pit that lurks in each of us. Holding onto those masks is a noble goal, I believe. I try to hold onto mine. I struggle each day with the beast within. However, I think we are far from evolved enough to firmly hold those masks tight and it takes very little to make those masks slip. When they slip, they reveal the ugliness that I think is our true nature.
I wrote a book called “Dust” that told the story of a small town that destroys itself over the course of about 24 hours. When I pitched that to a publisher located in Australia, the editor there couldn’t understand why the town fell apart at the end. I pointed out that I felt it didn’t take much to make the civil façade we put on every morning to fall away. Just look at the destruction that often follows a sports team’s victory. If people are willing to destroy when something good happens, how more willing are they to destroy or kill when something bad happens.
Sometimes it can still be surprising when the masks fall away. You might just be having a political discussion with someone you think is fairly intelligent. Maybe that person is a doctor or a lawyer and they seem relatively normal. Then, in course of a simple political discussion, you nudge the mask that person wears just enough for the rubber band holding it on to snap and you see the terrifying beast that lies beneath.
Sometimes the masks we hid behind have names. God is a popular one to hide behind. I think God exists, but I think the people who hold him up over their own face and hide behind him are the kind of people even God would lower his head and shake it back and forth sadly. That’s what happened in a discussion I had recently. Before too long I realized that the person I was talking to was a homophobe and was using God to hide people that and to justify that way of thinking. This person was so self-centered and arrogant that they felt what two other adults did somehow, in some unexplained and muddled way, affected their marriage. I know, it makes no sense, but when you hide behind religion you can justify a lot of things.
There are lots of things I think God has wept over when man has done them in his name. There were the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. There were the heretics burned at the stake because they dared to believe the earth revolved around the sun and the earth was not the center of the universe. There are the people who used writings of Martin Luther to justify the Holocaust. There are the people who, to this day, use religion to kill and discriminate against homosexuals or promote racism and segregation. When you affix the God mask, you can mold it and conform it to almost anything and turn the beast within into any mask of civility you can imagine.
It can be shocking to see even when you believe that’s the way things are. I know it was surprising for me to see it so blatant and for the seething creature before me to show its true colors and its fangs. It’s like looking at something familiar and seeing it change into a poisonous snake in your hand. Our masks are thin and they slip so easily.
I wrote a book called “Dust” that told the story of a small town that destroys itself over the course of about 24 hours. When I pitched that to a publisher located in Australia, the editor there couldn’t understand why the town fell apart at the end. I pointed out that I felt it didn’t take much to make the civil façade we put on every morning to fall away. Just look at the destruction that often follows a sports team’s victory. If people are willing to destroy when something good happens, how more willing are they to destroy or kill when something bad happens.
Sometimes it can still be surprising when the masks fall away. You might just be having a political discussion with someone you think is fairly intelligent. Maybe that person is a doctor or a lawyer and they seem relatively normal. Then, in course of a simple political discussion, you nudge the mask that person wears just enough for the rubber band holding it on to snap and you see the terrifying beast that lies beneath.
Sometimes the masks we hid behind have names. God is a popular one to hide behind. I think God exists, but I think the people who hold him up over their own face and hide behind him are the kind of people even God would lower his head and shake it back and forth sadly. That’s what happened in a discussion I had recently. Before too long I realized that the person I was talking to was a homophobe and was using God to hide people that and to justify that way of thinking. This person was so self-centered and arrogant that they felt what two other adults did somehow, in some unexplained and muddled way, affected their marriage. I know, it makes no sense, but when you hide behind religion you can justify a lot of things.
There are lots of things I think God has wept over when man has done them in his name. There were the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. There were the heretics burned at the stake because they dared to believe the earth revolved around the sun and the earth was not the center of the universe. There are the people who used writings of Martin Luther to justify the Holocaust. There are the people who, to this day, use religion to kill and discriminate against homosexuals or promote racism and segregation. When you affix the God mask, you can mold it and conform it to almost anything and turn the beast within into any mask of civility you can imagine.
It can be shocking to see even when you believe that’s the way things are. I know it was surprising for me to see it so blatant and for the seething creature before me to show its true colors and its fangs. It’s like looking at something familiar and seeing it change into a poisonous snake in your hand. Our masks are thin and they slip so easily.
| 12 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
