Where Did Humans Start to F*** It Up?

So yesterday I was told I should be raped.

I actually expected the conversation to resort to that, and even called it on my personal Facebook saying I expected to be called a “whore” or told to “make a sandwich” after getting into an online heated discussion with what I call a “conservative redneck”.

You know what really surprised me the most about this argument I was in with this individual?  A woman jumped to his defense and started spitting out the same type of ignorant vile as the guy.  She wasn’t saying I should be raped, but she continued on every other type of insult that had already been thrown my way, subsequently supporting the very bullshit that this situation had turned into. My thoughts on these type of women will be in a whole other blog.

Now, I grew up around “conservative rednecks”, and a lot of times I love them to death.  I love the down-home country feel when I’m around that branch of family.  Some of them have a lot of good conviction that you’ll find in the typical “blue-blooded American” in regards to keeping jobs local, buying local American products, lowering taxes, the right to bear arms, and all the glorious republicy things that I support 100%.  I grew up a country girl and farmers daughter.  We go hunting, we butcher our own chickens and rabbits, we own a 1947 Model-A John Deere, and one of the loves in my life is my 1978 Ford Bronco.  I completely relate to that mind-set.  I get it.

But part of me also grew up different.

To be fair, perhaps I should just call these type of people “ghetto humans”, as I have an appreciation for some conservative redneck mindsets.  Certainly these type of people are not exclusive to the country, as we have some uneducated folk in the city as well.

I told my fiance (a Texan) about the rape remark on the way home from work yesterday, and he was pretty pissed. We had a very lengthy and enlightening discussion about how it feels like the ghetto humans resort to these types of insults (Bit***, Cun*, Whore) due to their lack of education or manners growing up that prevented them from developing the skills to respond in a non-dickish way.  We agreed that a lot of this is parental upbringing either through lack of discipline or just plain bigoted manners.

The discussion mentioned religion in as far as, if we raised our children in one faith, and they decided to grow up and choose another faith, would we be upset?  We’d be disappointed, yes, but we would be 100% supportive.  I believe that the some conservative parents would not be supportive and some would get down-right nasty.

We discussed the fact that bigoted parents raise bigoted children, and I argued that slightly because while my father is not bigoted, he -is- a farmer and he does have traditional mindsets.  My mother, on the other hand, is very closed-minded in a lot of aspects.  I feel being raised by two parents who, while I don’t consider to be entirely conservative, at least one of them had threatened to disown me at one point for my religious beliefs.  Despite being raised in -that- environment and around a fairly conservative family, I was still raised with what I would consider a very enlightened mindset.

So I begged to question, how is it I was raised around “conservative rednecks” and I still grew up with a lot of liberal viewpoints?  Was there a moment in time in my childhood that clicked and changed my view?  I tried to think through each decade of my growing up and couldn’t think of any point in time where I felt hatred towards someone for being different, where I was disgusted or was trying to push away someone that was foreign to me.  There wasn’t a time where I didn’t accept people for who they were, even if that meant they weren’t like me.

So how did that happen?  If bigoted parents raise their children to be bigoted, how did I end up being liberal scum. I don’t know, but I feel like a unique gem in that I have the best of both worlds.  I support gay rights, and I want my guns and support local and American-made.  I’m a paradox.

As we continued to discuss our impressions and theories on why some people act the way that they do, I started to think back over the many movements over the centuries that have changed society.  I started naming off a list of things that, by modern standards, are completely effing stupid:

• Women used to not have the right to vote
• We used to own people as slaves
• Women used to not be able to own lands or titles
• Blacks used to have to use different facilities and were denied basic human rights
• Gay’s are still denied the ability to marry in some states
• We used to not be able to practice Christianity
• We committed genocide in order to steal lands from natives
• Humans slaughtered millions in order to create a supreme race

And the list could go on and on.

So while in this discussion with my sweetheart on the way home, it really got me wondering where the hell did this all start?  When did humans develop this mindset where we though it was right, appropriate, or even logical to deny basic human rights to other people.  When the hell did that become okay to do?  Who gives me the right to deny a basic human right to anyone else?  What gives anyone the right to rape someone, to kill someone for their religious beliefs, to deny someone the ability to marry someone else, to deny women the right to vote or own land. WHO?

Honestly I am curious to know where it all started.  I doubt we’ll ever really know, but I am so thankful that we have evolved beyond most of that.  This is a great time for us, despite the fact that we are still dealing with religious persecution and religious & civil wars.  We HAVE come far.

But where did it all start?  When was the human logical brain at the point that we thought for the first time that owning someone or raping someone was okay?  The Viking era?  10,000 years ago?  Did cavemen own each other?  When was this the “norm”.

Towards the end of our conversation, my fiance and I somewhat dismissed the answer to humans having an animalistic nature that is either similar to animals, or mimics animals.  Lions in a pride have many lionessses that they are territorial over.  They fight for hunting lands and superiority, and perhaps these were the original teachers on how to behave.  Does this sound a lot like gangs?

Humans are territorial by nature, and I really think we should let some of that go.  I don’t know how I ended up with the enlightened mindset where I truly feels every human has basic human rights that we have no right to take away from them, but I’m so very glad that I do.  I wish more people did, and I hope that my children grow up the same way.