Chaster here, bro of Cactus Jim and the same chaster who frequented Cactus Jim's Aimoo board.

Damn. They sure had to think about it awhile before deciding I could come onto this forum. I guess the standards are pretty high here. Well that's good. I'd think twice about allowing guys like me on here too. But then how did some of the other people who are on here get on? I won't mention names.

My philosophy: most religion is full of crap and is actually doing more harm than good in the world.

My near obsession: People say I'm obsessed with climate change. I say no. I merely suggest quite often that it's a serious deal that deserves to be taken seriously and dealt with adaptively sooner than later. Is that too much to ask? I ask you.

My background: I was brought up Mormon within the heart of Mormon country, Utah, but gave up that really really bad fiction around age 15 when the reasoning started to kick in.

Then I was a hippy draft dodger drug crazed Eastern mysticism enlightenment seeking in a USA pop culture self-indulgent sort of way environmentally conscious longed haired Jesus looking red neck riling freak for awhile.

I will say this: I've been on the climate change band wagon longer than just about anybody. Al Gore was nursing from the breast when I first got on that band wagon.

Now I'm a middle aged middle class guy who is still kind of sexy who has installed a solar panel on his middle class house. Do I draw attention to that fact at every opportunity? Damn right I do.

I feel an essay coming on. That happens quite regularly. One person awhile back likened this habbit of mine to masturbation, and that actually bears on this essay.

The power of thought. Your thoughts are powerful. They have a lot of power over you and also others. The power of that thought that this is masturbation was quite a zinger to me. That really hurt. It seemed to me the power of that person's thoughts was imposing upon me a negative hurtful perception of me I couldn't escape. A definetion of somebody can be something of their prison. Much as they pretend otherwise, they can't but be influenced by the power of your prejudice. And here I was painfully in the prison of another person's definetion of me, which, of course, is really my own prison I've made for me but which has elements of you in it. It's a joint you-me prison we're in here.

I am the Johny Cash of the Maycum County Jail of others' minds, I tell you.

Maybe it can be helpful too, knowing that you're being seen some way that brings upon you this negative judgement. But quite often at the time anyway it seems to be holding you back rather than helping.

So that reminded me of a system of thought I was quite into as a hairy hippy. I mean I pursued this with a discipline that was rare for me. There was a time I was getting up at 4 am to do this one kind of Yoga excercise. I'm not sure that I'm entirely done with religion. Now and then, I'm drawn to this system of thought that isn't so much a view of reality that I get this Mormonesque burning in the bosom about but is more of a way of how to view reality.

The idea, see, is that this is one big university we're attending here. We're taking love 101, and we have to keep taking it until we pass it. Something draws you back into a dark corner of paranoia and hate and fear, well this is your homework assignment. You haven't gotten it yet.

So by that system of thought, that's one way you can take the stuff that happens to you. You're learning love 101 from this, and every time you flunk the course, you just have to repeat it, that's all. You are attending the university of hard knocks toward a degree in being a loving being.

I think Osama Bin Laden is wrong about us. We are spiritual. I am anywy.

I think this is how religion starts. It starts with the very best of intentions, with the goal of being a loving being. And, we being the systematic animals we are, we need a system of thought to help us along in this.

So where does it go wrong? How in the sam hill does that system of thought end up getting twisted into motivating young men to fly airplanes into office buildings?

Maybe Red Green has it right. "I am a man. I can change if I have to, I guess."

Yes, we have to.