Esoteric Religious and Political Views

When we edit our public media profiles we use that information to proclaim our spiritual thoughts and our political views.  We add emotive modifiers to proclaim spiritual or secular ideological bias.  My circle of friends and family includes many unabashed, unapologetic liberals and many unwavering and consistent conservatives, whose profiles presage all their comments in internet media dialogue.  Some acknowledge membership in a political party without hyperbolic extremism.  Others add liberal or conservative as adjectives of redundancy. Occasionally one will add moderate to party affiliation, but more often moderate implies marginal allegiance in voting patterns, and would deny them a place at the table of either party.

Profiling is usually considered prejudicial for making hasty judgments about others from non-substantive preconceptions.  Profiling in internet media is a method of self-expression.  We open a window to our mind and soul to tell our friends and their friends, ad infinitum who we are.  This demographic multitude, created by some college geek, is now the third (?) most populace country in the world.  We are willing to sacrifice our privacy in a quest for approval and commonality beyond our education, occupation, books, music, progeny, pets, culinary arts, and our voluntary and physiological habits.  We post photographs in our finery and our grungiest, immaculate or disheveled, seductive or grotesque, sharing conflicting first-impressions with strangers we will never meet.

Why?  I can only answer for myself.  The internet came to me after I left entrepreneurial retail and I missed the benefit of internet customers. I miss my USPS mailing list of 5500 pre-sorted, bulk-rate customers, who shared my world at 4^th & Main in Historic Downtown Franklin. Many have died; some are too old to use a computer; many live far away; the store is closed; sixty-thousand new people moved to Franklin and without email, I was destined to premature anonymity. Unless you have lived in a town of 5,000 or fewer people, you may not feel the sustaining elation of knowing people and being known.

With our profile information we reveal who we are in exuberant avowal, protective ambiguity, or intentional omission.  This is who we are, maybe.  This is what we believe, read, listen to, watch, join, buy, or would impose on others.  Under a broad category of philosophy we are allocated limited space for “religious views, political views, and quotes.”  After some thought, I entered rational Christianity and liberal Democrat.  Some Democrats choose to define their party affiliation with either Yellow-dog or Blue-dog for clarity.  Some enhance the image of liberal with bleeding-heart, tree-hugging, or flaming. I didn’t think that was necessary.  One person questioned my rational designation with Christianity.  Was there an irrational Christianity?  Time and space did not provide for explaining my respect for the Unitarian Universalist religion and a lifelong membership in the Church of Christ, and the interconnectedness of faith and reason.  Pollsters will tell you that how often you attend church is a better political indicator than denominational labels.

Those who advocate separation of church and state would not advocate separation of religious views from political views.  We cannot, nor should we want to, separate our principles of ethics and morals from our faith and spirituality, nor from our philosophy of civil government.  I did find some patterns of linear probability – Baptist Conservative Republican, Unitarian Universalist Liberal Independent, United Methodist Flaming Liberal, Catholic Elephant, Bible-believing Conservative Republican.  Some were less specific with – non-partisan, moderate, open-minded, progressive, not quite libertarian, crossing party lines, and sometimes a simple yes or no to religion or politics.  Some posted the assumed generic ecumenical word—Christian.  Some indicated religious views in degrees of alienation in non-denominational transition, or the skepticism of disbelief.

Much of what I write on the subjects of politics, theology, and philosophy is intentionally esoteric.  The long paragraphs, the disjunctive sentence structure, the unlikely choice of words are deliberative efforts at concurrent conflicting ideas, or at least reader perceptions of conflicting ideas.  Media profiling for any author, cleric, or public official is designed for self-promotion to enhance image of reputation and collection of work. Yet it is not ourselves, or our books, or our religion or politics, but rather our ideas that we brandish for praise and agreement.

The reader’s window into my mind and soul is a collection of four [5]books, 94 [372] blog posts, and five emails each month to persons, with or without their approval.  Two frequent negative comments are my being too cerebral and being too non-committal on issues that should be obvious to everyone. I admit to both. My email contact list includes about thirty preachers, a dozen or more college professors, and about twenty politicians, left and right, plus writers and editors, and high school English teachers who are tough critics.

I like to believe my writing is esoteric — something understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest.  Remember, I read your profiles, and you have told me who you are.  From this, I have determined that you are among the special few.

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Tags: Facebook, Labeling, Profiling

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