“I have to remember, too, that sex is one of those areas—like religion and politics—where otherwise decent and rational people may have intense, irrational feelings.” -Oliver Sacks

I’m more the type to fangirl over artists, writers or philosopher types...like if Oliver Sacks walked into my room, that’d be unreal; he’s one of my heroes. An amazing humanist, writer, neurologist, scientist, historian and physician who was a patient himself living with prosopagnosia (facial blindness). In his 2015 autobiography (On the Move) Oliver, 82, came out after living in the closet his entire life, including celibate for much of it. In 2008, at 75, he had his first real gay relationship with a NY writer and photographer (Bill Hayes), and they stayed in love and partners until he died at 82–shortly after his autobiography came out. 

Oliver received news of his cancer diagnosis two weeks after turning in his manuscript for his autobiography.

Oliver, a passionate humanist, deeply cared for his patients and people. Read his books. His work helped humanize the stories behind patient cases; an example of what a good doctor should be. He put humanity into medical care; humanizing his patients by not focusing on what they were “missing” and instead, armed with exceptional curiosity, looked for the richness in differing experiences; a perspective he could never have but took the time to ask. 

From London to California Muscle Beach to a cross country motorcycle ride through America to NY, from self-destruction to finding his way in the human condition and storytelling—his life story is musical. Robin Williams’ ‘Awakenings’ was based on Oliver awakening years long catatonic patients. There’s also a beautiful documentary about his life called Oliver Sacks: His Own Life that was filmed once discovering he was dying. 

Oliver grew up Jewish. He lived as a naturalist. His mother’s religious conservatism shamed him into loneliness for most of his life. 

I’m glad he had 7 years of true love. 

Greece just legalized same-sex marriage; the first Orthodox Christian country to do so. Religious groups are now protesting. This is what I don’t like about religion-the way humans behave with it.

With thousands of different religions in the world, I wonder how we can be arrogant enough to start wars over beliefs. Pretty much every religion has throughout history—committing mass crimes against humanity and extremism in the name of religion including, yes, Catholicism and Christianity (hello…Christian Crusades killing millions). 

Many religious factions use existentialism to rally their followers and this can justify violence one might not otherwise do.

Within just one religion alone, you will get tens of thousands of different views and opinions, interpretations and expressions from the same book (within the same generation), as well as a spectrum from mild followers to ferocious objectors or extremists. This spectrum has existed in EVERY religion, nation, identity, culture, or group throughout history including today. For example, most have no idea that there are Buddhist nationalists/extremists; a religion that’s known to be among the most peaceful, yet also has extreme Islamophobic Buddhists (look in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, a Buddhist majority country) who commit atrocities in the name of their religion and fear. Violent Buddhist mobs have driven millions of innocent Muslims from their homes and carried out fire bombings and beatings of any non-Buddhist minorities. It doesn’t help that the government has incited anti-Muslim propaganda that makes it easier to dehumanize. Monks are even reinterpreting teachings to fit their narrative and justify their violence and bigotry; a commonality throughout religious history. You only need one “charming” person to take the center stage with a brand of hatred to completely pervert an ideology or a group, and create a mob of mirrored hatred. Any words in any book can be warped or wrapped in multiple ways—leaving human interpretation and translation with a lot of questionable inaccuracies. 

Look into the plight of the Rohingya that virtually much of the global community has never heard of. We never hear of or see 24/7 mainstream splashes of innocent Muslims who are being killed all the time in other countries because it doesn’t concern our political agenda. But they have been victimized, too.

Religion has technically been on the decline. but religious extremism and cultism across the bar has been on the rise, much to the help of social media. During the pandemic, online cults shot up because people were bored, in fear, depressed, disconnected, lonely, angry, uncertain and emotionally primed to be led by questionable hucksters and ideologies.

There’s a perception with extremism—we incorrectly think it’s isolated to only one religion, one race or one kind of person—this is assisted by decades of endless war in the middle east which has subliminally trained us to think in only one note. In 2015, the same pastor who started "Starbucks is anti-christmas" hysteria posted a call to his near 2 million followers to assassinate Planned Parenthood affiliates and to fight same-sex marriages with guns. Is this not extremism? 

The problem with justified violence is technically everyone feels justified, so allowing it for one, means allowing it for all. 

We’re in a bubble. Throughout history pretty much EVERY religion has had factions that demonstrated horrific extremism and mass bloodshed. Read a book. Please. 

If we remember nothing, please know ALL religions, groups and identities can and have been perverted and misused for political purposes and power, who then dehumanize the powerless, and get the powerless to dehumanize fellow powerless, in a finger-pointing PR campaign in order to maintain that power. Period. The “others” are often used as scapegoats as an old-age political tactic to balm a society that feels political unrest or dissatisfaction or anxieties over their government, but feel powerless, because they are. 

We must accurately remember that any one in any group has a potential of being radicalized; this is not privy to one religion or one race. Please stop this horrible and dangerous thinking. Every group has the spectrum of possibilities in them-from peaceful interpreters to hateful ones.

Also remember religions are not God-led, they’re people-led—sometimes by exploiters, revisionists, flawed, rage-filled, ego driven, dishonest or not sound people. Using religion to gain power is incredibly common throughout history, and most often in ancient times religion and government worked together to gain and maintain power. And the ones who ALWAYS suffered in this great thirsty quest—and still do through acts of war, oppression and systemic injustices because arrogant leaders can’t work together or have ulterior motives—are the powerless and impoverished.

I respect people believing as they see it, but I wish they'd give the same respect to others. We fail to realize that with 8 billion people on this dot, we can’t push our beliefs onto others, and each individual has the right to craft their life as they see it, as long as it’s consensual, doesn’t involve children or crimes against humanity.

I strongly feel it's nobody's business what you do with your body, even if I disagree, and I wish we would absorb that, because this fear prevented people like Oliver Sacks, a wonderful man, from being himself, finding love, and unnecessarily in shame for much of his life. I dislike this about religion, and the endless wars and bloodshed over it since its inception. And for what? 

Do you know we used to demonize people who were left-handed? The word ‘sinister' is derived from a Latin word meaning “on the left side.” We used to see left-handed people as evil and demonic, and more than a few of the mainstream religions considered it the “devil’s hand” that had to be banished or even killed. 

So yeah, we’re kind of ridiculous sometimes. 

I wished we'd see how little all these things we get upset over actually matter. Just let people be in love. We could use more of it in this world. 🌍

*This ended up being very long (no surprise), but I tend to see things more as patterns and systems intersecting with human motivation and behavior. I'm passionate about people seeing the bigger picture, and not getting caught in bubbles or “sides” because this infringes on humanity, other people’s rights and our ability to live peacefully as a humanity. As Carl Jung said, “Wisdom accepts that all things have two sides.” (I’d argue more than two, Jung.) #kamwrites

For more ♿️ travels, disability and accessibility musings, mini-memoirs @ https://Instagram.com/kamredlawsk