In the past few months, three broad classes of people have been made really obvious to me. I have seen it online playing videogames, at work, and in my classes. I have decided to throw them out here and see what sort of a reaction I get. The three classes are the leaders, advisors, and sheeple. Because I find they have very interesting parallels to common class distinctions in ancient cultures, I have listed their historical parallels in parentheses after the class name.
Sheeple (Commoners)
The sheeple class is by far the largest of the three. The people in this group do the grunt work. They show up at their eight-to-five jobs day in and day out. They will gain a few raises and promotions as their experience grows, but their destiny is limited. They exist because work needs to be done. Most of their purpose will be replaced by mindless drones in the coming decades, maybe centuries, but I doubt it. In all honesty, if one dies tomorrow, the world will never know. Those in direct contact will be upset momentarily before work resumes once again. Their lives are grinding. Fortitude and endurance for monotony are perhaps their most redeeming qualities. They have either come to accept their place in life or live on with misguided delusions of grandeur. It is a sad, cold, hard life they live.
Advisors (Priests)
Advisors are the experts in their respective fields. This includes not only professors, but also those out actively working. While they may very well be doing some of the same work as sheeple, they are working constantly to push the limits. They are inventing new techniques and technologies. They have come up through the status quo, and now challenge it. They have seen how things are, but yet understand how they could be. Their passion is for their work. This most often prevents them from organizing large change. They do not have time to bother with engaging others and convincing them of the greatness of their ideas. More often than not, they publish their ideas in some way that a leader can get a hold of them. They are rewarded for their insight and talents. They will not be glorious figures, but footnotes in history books. History remembers them not as changing the direction of civilization, but as the creators of new things. Those things are then responsible for impacting society. More often than not, there are several advisors behind every great leader.
Leaders (Warriors)
Leaders have a natural skill for knowing when and how to connect the new creations of advisors with the common sheeple. They craft mass opinion in a way to drive their respective communities forward. Their talent is not in new creations, but in rallying the masses around the developments of others. Leaders have best-seller autobiographies. The greatest of them are remembered forever in history books. They are self-starters. They seize upon an idea, and strive to make it reach its full potential. It is not about developing further upon the idea, but rather, embracing the idea into current practice. Their knowledge is more diverse than an advisor, but not as deep. They are dependent on advisors for guiding them in the right direction as well as providing a new direction to guide the sheeple. They also require the sheeple to affect the mass change which makes their efforts meaningful. While perhaps the most prestigious of the classes, it is a symbiotic relationship.
I turned twenty-two today. My Ancient Near East professor jokingly asked our class what we had done with our lives when talking about Alexander the Great. The man was twenty years old when his father, King Philip II, was assassinated, most likely in a plot formed by Alexander himself. By the age of twenty-two, he was invading the Persian Empire and Asia. People always talk about turning over the reins of control to the next generation. I am seven months out from my collegiate graduation. I watch the fate of today on the news. I think about the fate of tomorrow when I go to bed. I have spent the last 17 years of my life studying in school for the day when I will look down and see the fate of the world in the palms of my hands. You can call me arrogant for thinking I will have such importance when that day comes. I will call you ignorant for not realizing the weight which rests on your shoulders. It is not about you or me. It is about us. The choices we make as individuals affect us on a whole. Whether we like it or not, we are in this together. Remember those classes in school when you were assigned a group to complete a project? It is time to pull those skills down off the shelf and dust them off. You are on this planet with the rest of us and we have to find a way to make it work. You can stand in the corner uncertain of what to do. If you do, I will climb up on the table and start to direct you. We might do everything wrong. Maybe we will do everything right. I am guessing we will make some mistakes along the way, but we will also get a lot of things right. However, in the end, rise or fall, I am determined to make it one hell of a story. Regardless, get involved. I do not care where or with what, but do your share to make a difference.
In my Perspectives on Death & Dying class on Wednesday night, we were talking about the notion of God. A lot of this was simply a logic game based on assumptions of a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving. The concept of evil had a lot to do with whether such a combination was truly possible. My professor claimed it came down to how you define the three assumptions. Things like whether omniscient means knowing everything from the past and future or only all of the present and past. I beg to differ with his logic. I did not bother bringing it up in class for two reasons. First off, I never like getting into these discussions in a class rarely is the other person in the argument capable of putting together a proper argument. Secondly, he already had preconceived notions about everything. If you say something different than he is used to hearing, he will adapt it to something similar that he has an argument for.
Anyways, a portion of this discussion was a mentioning of two main themes in the Bible. The theme for the Old Testament was a notion of creation while the New Testament is characterized by love. Cool. The popular topic during our discussion was the idea of freedom. The idea to create something. Supposedly, God made us in his image by allowing us to create things as he did. This took form in free will and our ability to perform bad (not good, but not necessarily evil) choices. This broke down into why an all-loving God would allow us to make poor choices knowing their results. I guess if he does not know the future, he does not know the outcome, but how smart do you have to be to figure out the consequences for various things, particularly when you know everything, and I do mean everything, that has ever happened?
The purpose of this was trying to determine why an all-loving God would allow evil to persist. The topic which spurred the whole discussion was Alzheimer’s. My thinking this whole time was following the idea that from creation we got the independence to choose, or create, our own suffering and pain. This was supposed to be from the good, all-loving nature of God. What if it simply came out of the fact that the ability to create is the greatest power? God had the power to create and made us in his image by allowing us the power to create. With said power, we chose to create these vague notions of good and evil which have been discussed over the millennia. Maybe we also created the concept of omnipotence and omniscience. That being said, if one has the ability to create anything, include other powers, then in theory, they are omnipotent. This comes from the ability to create the power to be omnipotent or to create the ability to be omniscient.
I extrapolated the idea of creation being the only thing in the beginning. If this is the case, then we created good and evil. It carries over then to examine what else we might have created. One thing that came to mind were the ways in which we define success, fairness, justice. Almost all of our abstract ideas suddenly need to be reconsidered. In the new light, it comes down to an individual deciding which ones he likes or dislikes, which ones to keep and which to throw away. Personally, I feel honesty, respect, and cooperation become the dominant factors. Humankind has made it to where it is because we work together better than any species on this planet. We could fight amongst ourselves trying to gain something over our rival, but ultimately we end up with less because the struggle is costly to everyone involved.
So my lovely sister posted this comment on my initial blog about Apatheism:
What about after this life? Do you care what happens then? I know your ‘” don’t care” attitude is more leave me alone about it. I think you do care more than you are letting on.
I did not respond directly to her because I intended to post another full blog post on it. However, I got busy and put it off way too long. So, no, Suzanne, I had no intentions of blowing you off. 
I have to say she makes a very valid point. If I did not care, why would I blog about the notion of Christianity/religion as much as I do? So if it is not a matter of caring, then what is it? My sister suggests it is a preference to be left alone on the topic. That is probably right. The next logical question then proceeds to why do I want to be left alone about it? As I ponder the answer to that question, it seems to come down to serious personal affairs. In my entire life, I have lamost never directly confronted a serious conversation about personal matters. When it comes to less personal topics (such as politics or education), I am ready to debate for hours if it is an issue on which I have an opinion. The distinction seems to be on the focus of the topic. Only with an internal focus do I tend to avoid the issue. I believe my ex-girlfriends could attest to this.
I would also say this is where a large portion of my sense of humor comes from. I joke about everything these days, but I most certainly use it as a defense mechanism in tough situations. I am the guy who will joke about absolutely anything. I suspect if you are going to use humor as a shield, this must be true; otherwise, it would make for a lousy defense. One might even go so far as to say defining a new religion, such as “Apatheism” itself, is a joke in an effort to avoid the issue.
So the other week, I was talking to a few people about religion. Being the group of humorous people that we are, we had got on the topic by making jokes about each other’s respective denominations. I tend to bash on Catholics just because it’s so easy. It just happens to turn out that the majority of the people I hang out with have a Catholic upbringing. Meanwhile, they enjoy bashing on Baptists (aka my upbringing). In other words, we have a mutual affection for each other.
The result of this conversation was that Dana, a roommate’s girlfriend, and I decided while we were raised Baptist and Catholic, respectively, we now consider ourselves to be “apathists.” This name being based on the word apathy, of course. We’ve dealt with the debates between Christianity and other religions, along with the debates between denominations. Ultimately, we’ve both come to the conclusion that we just don’t care.
At least from my perspective, does it even matter if there is a God? I am going to go out into the world every day trying to be the best person I can be no matter what. It isn’t about whether there is a Heaven or Hell. It isn’t because I owe it to the community of humanity. It has nothing to do with anyone or anything other than myself. I want to be the best person I possibly can be. Do I need to believe in a God to do this? No. Am I an atheist for saying such? No. I am simply a person who does not care. These days, when someone asks me directly if I believe in God, I almost never give a direct answer. The reason is that it is not important to me. Thus, I have converted to apatheism.
So the other week I received a call from my mother. Nothing special including when she asked me if I had made it to church that Sunday morning. Now I haven’t “made it” to a church service when I wasn’t at home in over a year. Still, she tends to ask on a regular basis. Then she proceeded to ask me if I’d like help finding a church in the Des Moines area (I only have lived here for 3 months last summer and since May this summer). She even remarked, “I could probably look something up on the internet for you.” … … This is coming from my mother who has a notecard detailing how to turn on her home pc. All you have to do is flip the switch on a surge protector… Meanwhile, I am the computer science major who has her new computer at the moment so I can set it up in the exact same manner as her current one. That way she will still know how to use it. Despite all of this, she asks me if I want her to look churches up on the internet!
So now let’s move pass the question into why I have not been to a church service except for as a family tradition in a couple years. She thinks I need to go to church so I can be a better Christian. Of the churches she approves of, all they do in a church service is tell one how to live their life. I am 21 years old and have an above average intelligence. My intellectual strength is learning things quickly. So after going to church every Sunday practically of my first 18 years of my life, I pretty much know inside and out how a Christian is supposed to live their life.
My question is this, why should I waste my time getting up on a Sunday morning to be told how to live my life? I would be much better spending that time being a good individual to others and attempting to make an impact on the world. So many Christians today are way too complacent with going to church and making a public display of their piety. I am not saying all of them do this, but unfortunately, a fair portion is. Maybe one day Christianity will be more concerned with making an impact on the world it is a part of and less time trying to separate itself from it. Sure, I get the idea that “worldly things” are “evil”. That being said, it doesn’t mean we can’t try to salvage as much as possible. When a town is destroyed by a tornado, flood, hurricane, or other disaster, do we just completely abandon it? No! We donate our time and money to salvaging as much as possible. At the very least, we attempt to rescue the people affected. We attempt to pick them up and get them back on their feet. Why should things be any different for someone who is down on their luck in spiritual ways?