It really depends on what you mean by harassment. I have received comments both online and in person, but nobody I would classify as “harassing” me. Death threats, yes I’ve gotten a bunch of those since 2005… but nobody sticks around… everyone makes their comment or sends their threatening email, then they disappear.
The only people I have been “harassed” by (continuing to contact me after concluding communication) are people seeking help because they believe they have been chipped against their will… hearing voices… etc. Basically people who are desperate, and misguided. I no longer engage at all with those people… I don’t even send them to dngr.us/help anymore because that’s useless. Sad really.
I usually wear black clothes, have some titanium in my face and if everything else fails, I can quote some parts of the satanic bible, Nietzsche or something similar - usually, that’s enough to scare them away. If I’m having some spare time, I can discuss at least some of their beliefs with them - I was on a catholic school, I’ve got some good points against their own religion…
I mean, to each his own, but people trying to convert me don’t deserve better…^^
I’m with you there, I did the same when I was in high school. Now I don’t have anything that might deter people from talking to me so I just say “hail Satan” when it comes up.
I’m from Kansas originally and I currently live in Arkansas, both in the USA.
Kansas is less fairly conservative, but is home to the nutbags at westboro baptist church, which NOBODY in Kansas is happy with.
Arkansas is “In the South”. For those not familiar with USA culture, it’s the region of southerly states east of Texas. Due to a variety of factors dating back to the Civil War we had here, it’s considered a hotbed of backwardness. It’s also part of the deeply conservative religous region known as “the bible belt”.
Basically this is the area most likely to find people hopelessly ignorant of and opposed to implants.
People have fairly normal reactions. Either, Cool!, Why Would You?, or Mark of the Beast.
Mostly it appears to be a knee jerk type reaction. With very little explanation most people who get excited calm right down. Those who are truly put off by it usually just get quiet, change the subject and that’s it.
Edit.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find satanism and / or the practice of to be foolish. The same way I feel about Pastafarianism.
That said, I have a book called “The Devil’s Dictionary”, that has nothing to do with the devil, that freaks people out when they notice it.
I mean, I’m a Christian and I’ve served my church as a missionary as well, but I don’t think there’s a doctrinal basis for anything about microchips and implants being the mark of the beast. Heck, if you go to my church’s website and look up info about it, they even make it clear that there’s no reavealed information on what the mark of the beast means.
As far as missionary work and conversion goes, I get it. No one likes to have others’ beliefs pushed in their face. As a missionary, I tried my best to simply build friendships with people and look for ways to serve them. I spent two years in Japan teaching free English classes every week among other types of service. I personally think there’s good and bad ways to do missionary work, but religion aside, I don’t think anything good ever comes from condemning others. If someone is seriously getting mad about you having an implant for any reason, I think they’re out of line.
It’s definitely not just you^^ I’d even agree with you, because there are so many forms of that… and you can safely assume most of them are foolish The LaVeyan-part is mostly philosophical (so not about killing cats at full moon on a graveyard…), but honestly, he stole most of it from Nietzsche. I’d say I agree on several things there, and I deeply disagree on others; but I know it to a degree I can discuss about it - and to chase away people who annoy me
I just have to ask - out of honest curiosity - why do you do missionary work at all? I know many people working for church simply because they want to help people, and I hold that in high regard, absolutely. But why is that combined with the offer (don’t know a better word, I think you get what I mean) of conversion? I’m really just asking because I think I don’t get that concept, hope that doesn’t offend you…
From my understanding a big part of religious missionary work is teaching/bringing the work of god (regardless of denomination) to those that may otherwise never hear of it.
I don’t feel offended at all I think, put simply, I wanted to help people and serve them in any way that I could, whether that was by sharing the things that I’d learned for myself about God or by helping in other smaller ways. I just wanted to help people be as happy as they could. The English classes weren’t tied to discussions about God. They really were just free English classes that we taught inside the church building (because that was the only place that we could had where we could have a group of people come). Of course, we were delighted if people approached us with questions about our church, but we really wanted it to be a no pressure thing.
Outside of the activities that we did purely as a public service, we did also, of course, talk to people about God. It was really hard for me to share some of my deepest feelings to complete strangers in a language that I wasn’t even able to speak in fluently at first, but I wanted to share the happiness that I have felt with others because I know the difference living the gospel made in my life and what it can do for others.
I’ve never wanted to push any of my beliefs on others by trying to get them to listen to what I have to say. Talking about religion with people who don’t want to talk about it is actually probably the fastest way to drive someone away When there was no one who actively wanted to learn about what I had to teach about God, I would go out and try to meet new people and make new friends. Most of those conversations weren’t about God, but about the people I was talking with. I worked hard to work with people where they were at and I was happy to help in whatever ways they were willing to accept.
Focusing on helping others and serving them. When I do that without any other motive, I feel so happy! I can’t put it into words very well, but I feel truly, deeply happy. I’ve never felt anything that’s so fulfilling. That’s not to say my time serving as a full-time missionary was always happy. I’m far from perfect and I find it far too easy to think about myself, but in those moments where I was able to forget about myself, I felt that joy.
That’s all fine and dandy because you live in Gernany. Go to the deep south in the US with your outfit and see how long you last with all your teeth in. Seriously…
That’s what I keep saying: in Europe, there are no real fundamentalists - christian or otherwise. Europeans generally enjoy levels of tolerance unknown to many other parts of the world. We have it good here: having lived elsewhere, I can’t believe how lucky I am every time the sun rises on this peaceful land.
I’m from Florida. I live in Pennsylvania, which is technically North of the mason-dixon…technically. From what I’ve seen, there is illogical craziness all over the US. I do get push back, because I’m so vocal about it. I try to normalize implants and technological improvements in general everywhere I go. Most of the criticism I’ve received use the words “God’s Plan” (predetermination denominations).
If your god is omniscient and omnipotent, and I infringe upon it’s plans, how do I persist? Show me your god, I will fight it.
I took a course in university that talked about this and other pagan/ non-christian religions, they basically just preach that you should do what you want. while I think it’s kinda stupid I would have gladly taken an entire course on the church of satan rather then rest of the bs I had to sit through.
I’m from Canada and I feel like it’s pretty good up here too in regards to that although some of it is starting to bleed through from the US. When I went to the US years ago I was really surprised by how prominent religion was. People and teens would go to church every Sunday, this was unthinkable to me since I and everyone else I knew didn’t even wanna go to church for school things even though it meant I would miss class for it.
Well, the US was founded by a group of religious crazies on the run from persecution from another variant of religious crazies. What do you expect.
I’m only surprised magical thinking is still so widespread 400 years later in one of the most developed countries in the world. Usually education drives religion away. But perhaps that too isn’t too surprising, as the US has been steadily slipping in the OECD education rankings for years.
But this is what I mean, in my mind Canada and the US was basically the same with different governments until I actually went to the US and was shocked. I thought people were messing with me when I heard teens go to church voluntarily. It’s not like they were bow tie wearing choir boys either, some had a bunch of piercings and stuff
The US was colonized by religious freaks seeking a place to be crazy on their own terms. Canada was colonized by merchants and traders seeking their fortune. Very different countries.
Yep, I know that… and I am absolutely grateful to live in a place in the world where I - and everybody else as well - can express myself in any way I like to. What I don’t get about the american approach to all that: America puts a biiig emphasis on freedom, yet there is, in several areas of life, very little freedom for its residents. It’s nice that you have the freedom to have guns or drive a freaking big car, regardless of what all that may cause, but you’re not free to dye your hair, modify your body, love who you like or have sex the way you want. I really don’t understand that mindset. At all.
@happykitsune: Don’t want to make a full quote of your post here Thanks a lot for explaining the way you approach missionary work! If people actively come to you, ask you about your religion and give you the opportunity to tell them how your live has improved through faith, I’m totally okay with that - that’s the way it should be, but, more than often, it’s not like that. I’ve got family in mosambique, and the church behaves in the worst possible way (in modern times) down there, so I’m always a little… sceptical about missionaries But the way you describe it is something I can totally tolerate. Just not my way of life
That’s the way I see it, too - and additionally, how narrow-minded and small must a god be who really cares if one of his “creations” gets himself a chip or whatever… I always smile when I think about an all-mighty entity, sitting in the clouds in total awareness, and then enraging about some little person down on earth, one of several billion, who puts a chip in his hand.
I maintain that I’m agnostic despite basically being atheist. I feel the difference lies in how controllable the universe really is. If we could never control everything given infinite time, I feel like that is equivalent to God. I have no problem with additive practice of religion, where practitioners make the world better. Its very frustrating how much religion has become subtractive. I do love media that treats major monotheistic religions like older mythologies though. Think Good Omens, Evangelion, DaVinci code etc. I find it entertaining and enlightening.
That’s because they are. Religions have been cooked up by a bunch of desert bedouins millenia ago, at a time when humanity was still wondering why that big ball of fire in the sky kept disappearing and reappearing every day. They have exactly zero relevance in the modern world, yet people still live their lives according to the utterly nonsensical mumbo-jumbo they contain.
Case in point, this sentence from our friend happikitsune (nothing personal ):
Er… Of course there’s no doctrinal basis for microchips and implants: they didn’t exist when the cavemen wrote the f*ing doctrine. Even L. Ron Hubbard had nothing to say about them, and he was quite a bit more recent than the ancient sheperds in Judea. How can you even say that! Arrgh, believers are so maddening sometimes
Yep, there is no real difference between “old” mythology and religion, except the amount of current followers… ultimately, all those beliefs were / are there to explain the world to human beings who could not understand it. That’s why many really old religions are very nature-based, and more modern ones moved away from that, as humans started to understand nature better. It lost its magic, quite literally.
Still, humans can’t understand everything, and so it’s a very common way to create some kind of “higher” entity, be it a god, a “life-force”, the universe, karma, whatever. People have a real hard time handling uncertainty.
That’s why this here…
…is quite true as well, though I wouldn’t call all religious people uneducated. Being an atheist as well, I admit that there are things that actually frighten me to some degree (like, for example, the total void coming after death - it’s really hard to imagine not to be there any more… dunno how I feel about that); and religion offers solutions and relief of those fears. The belief in singularity might be the atheist’s solution to that, but it might just be some kind of substitute to religion…
I prefer to recognize that I’m only a slightly evolved ape, with the biological inability to comprehend most of the universe around me. I stare at the void of ignorance and non-being, and accept them for what they are - scary voids. I think it’s more intellectually honest than believing in, or hoping for, an explanation or a continuation that isn’t there.
The LaVeyan-part is mostly philosophical (so not about killing cats at full moon on a graveyard…), but honestly, he stole most of it from Nietzsche. I’d say I agree on several things there, and I deeply disagree on others; but I know it to a degree I can discuss about it - and to chase away people who annoy me 
I think, put simply, I wanted to help people and serve them in any way that I could, whether that was by sharing the things that I’d learned for myself about God or by helping in other smaller ways. I just wanted to help people be as happy as they could. The English classes weren’t tied to discussions about God. They really were just free English classes that we taught inside the church building (because that was the only place that we could had where we could have a group of people come). Of course, we were delighted if people approached us with questions about our church, but we really wanted it to be a no pressure thing.
When there was no one who actively wanted to learn about what I had to teach about God, I would go out and try to meet new people and make new friends. Most of those conversations weren’t about God, but about the people I was talking with. I worked hard to work with people where they were at and I was happy to help in whatever ways they were willing to accept.