fandomhigh | Heroes v Villains | Period 1 | Wednesday

Loki was actually up and standing when the students started filing into the room today. He looked a little cranky but that was mostly due to spending most of last night dreaming about Bartleby. Look, he loved that guy but those dreams just needed to fucking stop. He didn't need people thinking he was fantasizing about his long dead friend. It wasn't like that.

It wasn't. Shut up.

"Religion," he started once everyone had settled down, "in the simplest of terms, is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe. That's the simplest fucking terms. Obviously, that definition has grown and branched out and trying to define religion these days is near fucking impossible. Needless to say, religion is something that divides even the most harmonious of societies. People are going to have different beliefs whether their king/czar/dictator/president whatever likes it or not. Nothing can stop a person from believing in what they want to believe save for fucking extreme measures."

On this island, he suspected extreme measures might be a little more commonplace. "Christianity is one of the world's bigger religions and that has about a billion fucking branches. New ones pop up all the goddamn time. It's a wonder God can keep up what between that and His fucking skee ball habit. So, biggest heroes of Christianity? Moses, Jesus, Noah, Martin Luther, and Elijah. Now, why the fuck are they heroes? Because they listened to God. They listened to the guy who lives in fucking heaven and that makes them heroes. Why? Who said that God's the one we should all be listening to? God is an omnipotent, amazing person who most people think of as always right. That's just been what they've been told, passed down from generation from generation. From someone who knows, He wasn't always fucking right. God has screwed up. He's not human but He can be fucking fallible. He used to be full of fucking vengeance. I know that. I did His work during that time. God could be just as hell bent on fucking destruction as Satan, my friend. What's so heroic about that?"

Hopefully God didn't smite him for this. It was for education! Education! The bad guy of Christianity is Satan or, in easier terms, the fucking Devil. He's the bad guy. Why? Because God said so? Who the fuck put God in charge? Satan's not a nice guy, no. He's a fucking prick but he does his job well. That's probably why there are people out there that worship him. Satanists. So, what's making their belief system better than yours or mine? Typically, people think of Satanists as following the personification of evil, that being the devil. What if they're just following something they believe in more than God's word? Why the fuck do they get faulted for believing in that yet we're tolerant of all other sorts of religions with questionable tactics. Cults can exist and worship easier than Satanists. It doesn't make fucking sense."

Satan was a fucking prick. But, again, education! Loki wanted to see if he could get people thinking. "Satan's a different kind of thinker. The people that follow him, they're called villains. Why? What's the difference in one of you deciding you liked what Satan preached rather than what one of the many branches of Christianity preached? Does that make you incurably evil? Think about that. If you choose to worship, to join some religion that is seen as evil, you're basically being ostracized and called a villain for your beliefs. You're a villain, you have no worth, you're going to persecuted. Why does that make fucking sense?"

Religion, apparently, was something Loki could talk a lot about. Anyone that knew him should know why. "For today's activity, I want to tell me how you would feel if, after knowing someone for years, becoming close to them and trusting them, you find out their beliefs follow that of Satan or whomever might be the evil force of religion in your world. They've never been evil or violent towards you but they choose to believe something with a nasty stigma attached. Are you going to accept that? Or are you going to automatically label them a villain because they don't believe and follow the so called heroic branches of religion?"

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//I suppose that would depend on their reasons why, after all of those years, I still hadn't learned about it,// Jono decided, shrugging. //A person can believe whatever th'hell a person wants to. I'm more worried about actions than... prayers or incantations, or what books a person reads while trying to tune themselves with the meta-bloody-physical.//

Jono didn't much believe in anything, anymore. That probably made it a little easier for him to refrain from pointing fingers at other people for choosing to in the first place.

"Never had someone keep secrets from you for long periods of time?" Loki wondered curiously.

//I've got more than a couple of my own,// Jono replied. //Once you collect enough of them for the most naffin' idiotic reasons, after a while you have to take a step back and wonder if it's all really as bad as everybody wants you to think it is. Sometimes, secrets are perfectly valid. Sometimes, they're dangerous.//

"So, you'd be fine with the long kept secret as long as this friends of yours wasn't going off and enslaving the innocent or doing something equally as bad because of what they believe?" Loki asked now.

"Actions speak louder than words? They're able to follow their god as long as their god's not doing bad things?"

That took a moment of serious consideration before he could piece together an actual framework of an answer.

//My... Great-granddad. He was very open with th'family about where he'd come from, about the mad god that he'd serve. And about his opinions on that mad god and what his service had cost. To him, to th'family. He'd walked away. I don't much blame him, it was the smart thing to do.// Jono shrugged. //But just because he didn't show up to meetings where simply calling on that so-called god meant that somebody at the table had to die, immediately and without mercy, that didn't mean that he'd stopped... carrying a bit of that so-called fear of god around with him.//

He looked up at the ceiling, thoughtfully.

//I think it's entirely possible to believe in something, even to give it respect, possibly even worship, without immediately making yerself into a tool for whatever deity or devil is close enough to snap yer neck at the time, yes. And I can understand why a person would keep something like that locked away from th'rest of th'world. Sometimes, the fear that people have about something is just because of ignorance. But sometimes, there are very real reasons to be afraid of what's different, too.//

"That's probably one of the most thought out answers to this question I've ever heard," Loki said, impressed. "Most people don't think of it in the broader sense. They focus on the person and not society's effects on a person who believes differently. Persecution and oppression are powerful motivators for keeping secrets if you're different. Someone finds out you're different, there's really no limit on what they have the potential to do."

//It helps a bit to understand, when yer different as well,// Jono replied, in that carefully idle sort of tone that seemed more word and less inflection. Words, with meanings, but no emotion behind them to speak of. //That doesn't just apply to religion, mate.//

"I know it doesn't, kid," Loki said, giving him nod. "Don't worry, I've seen what being different can do firsthand. It's not fucking pretty."

//Especially not when people begin to follow that herd mentality that says that if one person is afraid, then, naturally, everybody else ought to be, as well.//

There was very little that Jono had seen in his lifetime that was half as terrifying as a prejudiced mob of people too frightened to form their own opinions.

//Thinking is just too bloody difficult.//

Heroes v Villains | Period 1 | Wednesday | July 14

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]

Re: Class Activity | Religions Revelations [HvV 07/14]