It's Time for a Change..
You Need to Read These Words...
That is, you need to read them if you care about the future entries of my journal. Which is somewhat a self important assumption that you do, but I'd hope you'd want to adjust to the changes I've made. :) So, for all of you out there who actually read what I fill this electronic void with, and for those of you who care about where to find them, I've changed my journal to driedtored, and it's up to you to add this new journal to your friends list because after this Collective0009 will be updated no more. I realized I couldnt change the user name Collective0009 to something else without shelling out some money, (which does not seem all too appealing to me), and since I dont really care about most of these older journal entries, (most of them are embarassing and indicative of some desperate attempt to sound important, both linguistically and content-wise), I dont mind starting over. The two journals look the same, and I took the time to manually add some of the most recent journal entries that made me smile, but the name had to change, and I'll tell you why... although the literary summary might bore you to tears... sorry in advance!!!
I made this journal in 2003, two years ago... almost three years now! I had reacently read Ayn Rand's book Anthem and I respected it a lot, despite the negative things I had heard about it morally, and found the symbolism and literary description of it very intriguing and exciting. The book is very captivating in terms of the setting and mood, and there are a lot of books out there like it, ones that have purely imagined, futuristic societies where people's individualism is stripped away and micromanaged, and these gray figures are grouped into generic control groups like herds of cattle. The Giver is another such book where individualism is denied to society. I liked them for whatever reason, they really transported you to somewhere new and nonexistant and they were so novel because the culture we develop in, America, is all about individualism and the progress and successes of the self. Well in the book people do not have individual names, and there is no use of the pronouns "I", "mine", "my", "me"... those were forbidden words. People, although individuals, had to refere themselves in pluralized terms to avoid the discovery and power behind one's own self. I liked the way the people were named like groups, and one labeled Collective0-0009 because, although the symbolic value behind that group having that name slips my memory, I felt like there was some depth to it. All the groups had significant names, although mechanical and and unindividualistic, like Equality, or some others that I cant remember. It was stupid, really. I knew at the time that Ayn Rand had some of her own, self created politics and that she was an athiest. I also knew the very purpose of her book was to create some platform for self-glorified individualism and the almighty power found in "I", a natural and fleshly current that we as Christians fight against in the attempt to deny ourselves and take up our Cross... But I kind of just ignored it. After all, it's just a user name. But yeah, even though no one has really read that book, or can make a connection between my user name and her novel, the things she stands for now repulse me more than ever, and I dont want to have anything to do with her humanistic obsession with self, and her hatred of the True and Living God. The bomb dropped on me today. I was reading some of the opinion articles in my college's newspaper, The Daily Targum, an activity that almost always tends to nasueate me because it is ALWAYS chock full of articles by Christian bashers and conservate haters, who try at all opportune moments to dismember Christianity, the legitimacy of that religion in our history, and the "irritating" presence of it in our society today. I'm actually praying about maybe writing my own opinion piece to the newspaper, because I'm sick of this one-sided religion bashing. God forbid someone wrote an article attacking Islam.. that would be barbaric... (secular huminist hypocrites). Obviously I'm not going to bash anyone's religion if I do write it, and it wont be as heated as this journal entry (remember that I'm venting) but I am going to stick up for the only religion that it's okay to discriminate against. But anyway, to the point, in the article I was reading today, titled "Christmas Does Not Apply To All", in which it argues that conservatives and christians need to get over themselves and stop trying to make CHRISTmas universally applied, (how about this, if all those secular idealogues hate that Christmas has to do with, oh i dont know, CHRIST, how about we just stop nationally celebrating the holiday all together? Leave it for the Christians who REALLY know what it's about! Oh how the economy would suffer. I dont want this country celebrating Christmas if they're not going to ALLOW it TO BE what it HISTORICALLY and CULTURALLY IS!...the birth of Jesus Christ of Nazereth!!! GET OVER IT!) UGH. so much frustration. But anyway, I need to stay focused, toward the end of this hienously offensive article (but of course it doesnt matter that we're offended... as the author Scott Lichtenstein, who is Jewish, says, he's the one who "feels slightly alienated when constantly greeted with 'Merry Christmas'"... I'm so sorry you feel "slightly alienated" Scott, because I feel OPPRESSED!...I'm sorry, what if I feel "slightly aliented" when schools take off to celebrate Purim... [I don't actually feel that, I'm just trying to make a point]) Ugh, okay, I promised I would focus... so toward the end he name drops Ayn Rand like it would stinkin qualify his article as valid and absolute truth, and says, "This objection holds just as true for the dogged atheisists, like my good old buddy Ayn Rand, who uses quotes to argue against, not for, the idea of America as a Christian nation". And thats where I realized Collective0009 needed to go... and fast! I want nothing to do with this oppressive, bordering on religiously persecuting, psycho babble... it's one of my strongest passions as a Christian AND as an American citizen, and I find myself contending with this hideous national theme over and over again. Which is why I also feel lead to maybe, someday, if God leads, inspires, and calms me down, to give The Daily Targum a piece of my mind. But regardless of all this nonsense I've made you read, I just wanted you to know not only that I have gotten rid of the use of this journal, but why. So as a personal conviction from the Lord, and as open defiance against Ayn Rand and what this country is trying to do as a whole, which I know I should expect, but still infuriates me just the same, Collective0009 is now extinct...
The end.