I have been really enjoying the SciFi Channel's reality TV show
Mad Mad House. The premise of the show is fairly straightforward: guests live in a house with five hosts who are called the Alts. They consist of a witch, a modern primitive, a vampire, a naturist, and a voodoo priestess. The guests have to pass a number of trials to get to the final prize of $100,000, though of course the "greater challenge" is to prove to the Alts that each is growing as a person. Every week, one guest is eliminated.
It's interesting that a number of people have had fairly intolerant attitudes toward the show. What is surprising, though, is that they display such attitudes to me even with the knowledge that I am a ceremonial magician and pagan. I would like to illustrate the problem as I see it.
In Berkeley, we typically are very, very careful about the words we use, the generalizations we make, the jokes we crack. Among some circles, it may be okay to say the phrase "That's so gay!" This is especially true for circles which, for instance, include gay people, so that the joke is already assumed to be nothing more than a joke--a sarcastic and ironic quip, as it were. But in any other situation, particularly among strangers, you would never, ever think to use such a phrase, regardless of your own beliefs regarding the implications of using it or your own opinions regarding homosexuals. The fact is that you would not risk offending someone else so audaciously and directly.
Therein lies the surprise for me, when someone so blatantly writes off vampires, witches, etc. as strange, freaks, what have you,
with prior knowledge that I live in that same world. Given the correct presumption that these people--usually good friends of mine--are not assholes, the reason is thus: they must assume, a priori, that even
I think of these people as strange or weird or what have you. And that's surprising, because I want to say to them, "If you think
they're freaks, how is it that you don't think that
I'm one?"
I had pondered such an issue as this my freshman year in college. That year I had escaped many, many prejudices I'd held, including prejudices towards queer people in general, including lesbians, flamboyant gay males, those into BDSM, and political activists, socialists, and so many others. And it dawned on me, "If I had lived in prejudices before, only to learn that they aren't the true measure of people, who or what is to say that I won't escape more prejudices
in the future?" Indeed, I proved myself correct most recently when I learned to rethink my preconceptions of witches, sorcerers, pagans, vampires, psychics, and this whole occult community.
So it has come to my attention that as we continue to learn more, hear more stories, become more mindful, we will learn to remove all of these preconceptions, all of these systematically indoctrinated perceptions of the world, all of these preconceived notions about others that really do not accurately tell us
who they are--not that I'm saying we will ever truly understand how others work. And what I can say for myself is that I have expanded my consciousness and perceptions past the typical mind, for if I am able to think more openly about the most open-minded people in a place like Berkeley, that is quite commendable. I say this not to boast, for none of this is a result of some talent, skill, or even effort on my part. I was just lucky to run into the right people who helped me along the way.
But I do hope that we will learn to rethink the way we understand anything and everything. When we do, from darkness we will truly ecsape, into the greatest light of reality. And I dare say that that reality will be both surprising and familiar to you. Perhaps it will be surprising because it is more familiar than you had thought. Regardless how you take this, I challenge you to accept the fact that
you do not know everything. Please do not pay lip service to that just to keep others happy. Live that truth, and then discover how much you do not already know.
