'As Soon As You're Born,
They Make You Feel Small'
Dan Johnson
From: "Dan & Marquerite Johnson"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Saturday, August 05, 2000 11:47 PM
I get you thru Yahoo. I don't understand the technical terminology.
About your cute quote about "as soon as you're born, etc" There is an unjustified paranooid touch to that. "They make your feel small": it blames "they." Fact is that at birth you are small. Recognizing that fact is part of reality testing. See the hurt child in "I'm OK You're OK."
How sad to start blaming others or the world for what can not be avoided.
Dan Johnson,
Sonora CA
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Dan & Marquerite Johnson"
Subject: Re: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Sunday, August 06, 2000 2:13 PM
Hey, it's John Lennon coming down from heroin. What do you expect?
The "they" that I see in this (which is not necessarily what Lennon saw) are those who would tell us we are powerless or sinful, or that we need to submit to a god or to a religious dogma. I put it there to contrast the quip from Gora which follows. I put the ellipsis ("...") there to point to the rest of the line, which says, "...by giving you no time instead of it all." To me, this means that they are saying that our time on earth is but a blip compared to the time we will spend in Heaven or Hell, whereas, I think this is all the time we get. This is just my interpretation, though, and I'd bet Lennon had something entirely different in mind. I just wanted to contrast this phrase with Gora's in the context of the bigger scheme of things.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
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