OKIE IN EXILE: The Radical Stance

In the ocean of tattoos and body-piercings, I’ve seen evidence that some of our young people are not happy with the prevailing culture. They are not happy to go with the flow. They have the ability to endure pain to achieve a goal. They want to mark themselves as unique individuals. They want to take a radical stance.

Okay, I am ready for them.  Here is a radical stance: Every human being deserves a chance to live. This might not sound radical to you, but let me put flesh on that. It doesn’t matter the color of that human’s skin; it doesn’t matter the person’s sex; it doesn’t matter what religion they are; it doesn’t matter their sexual orientation.

You say you are still with me? You say there’s nothing radical there? What about this: It doesn’t matter if they are crippled; it doesn’t matter if they are mentally challenged; it doesn’t matter even if they can think at all or will ever think again. If they are human and their heart is beating and they are not actually trying to kill you or someone else, they ought to be allowed to go on living, regardless of their age.

Are we being radical yet?

I think we are.

And in case you’ve missed the point, the age scale the youth goes all the way back to the point daddy’s sperm met mommy’s egg and all the way ahead to someone on a deathbed who can only feel pain and cost money.

The defense of human life is a radical thing. We want to carve out exceptions to avoid the things that cause pain. We feel for the young girl who has been made pregnant; we feel the need to revenge the crimes of a killer. Our emotions flood us; they press us to set aside the Radical Stance “just this once.”

Our emotional pain is just as real as our physical pain and it was put

there for a purpose. It alerts us to the fact there is something that needs our attention. When I am hurt physically, I need to make a judgment of what to do next. What is more important my pain or my purpose? Is the finish line near? Have I dug my family from the burning car yet? We judge and if necessary find a way to push through the pain to take care of what needs to be done.

Or, knowing that there is pain in a particular direction, we attempt to order our lives to minimize it.

Emotional pain is the same: I can choose to endure it for a purpose or I can order my life to minimize it or some combination of the two.

There is no avoiding either type of pain. Anyone who tells you there is is a liar and is trying to sell you something.

Taking the Radical Stance and taking it seriously, requires some choices on your part. There are certain things you are going to have to delay. If you are a woman, you will have to choose sexual partners who you believe are able and willing to help you raise a child. In some cultures in the past, the ability to produce a golden ring of a particular type was considered an indication of this.

If you are a man, you will have to be willing to take the corresponding actions or inactions.

I think you will notice that I’ve never said this was going to be easy. It’s definitely not something for wimps. I am not going to dress it up and say there’s not going to be any pain involved, because there will be. There always will be with anything, but especially with something so radical, so different that it will set you apart from the herd the way this does.

You are different, right? You are special, right? You are able to endure pain to show that, right? If you are, then consider the challenge to choose the Radical Stance.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University.  He blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com.