I’ve met my fair share of theists. As a Latino who was raised in Latin America and in various parts of the Bible Belt, believe me I’ve met my fair share of theists. And virtually all of them, when I’ve asked “what drives you?” have responded with at least some mention of a deity, even if it wasn’t the primary focus of their response. So my fellow skeptics, free-thinkers, atheists, agnostics, and otherwise irreligious people let me ask you a simple question? What drives you? What gives you inspiration?
I am driven by two motivations. A desire to make sure things, people, and civilizations aren’t forgotten, and a desire to educate people. As a historian, I dislike the idea of things becoming forgotten. It truly saddens me to think that one day entire civilizations, beliefs, names, and ideas could be gone from remembered and accepted history. This is part of what drives me to do things like Mythology Monday. Having a single person remember a story is enough to expand it’s life for a number of years but if something is placed on the Internet it is immortalized, to an extent. Especially in a commonly spoken language like English. Mythology Monday’s are part of a personal effort of mine to revive interest in foreign mythologies, especially in an age where shows like Supernatural and Teen Wolf are insanely popular. Mythology Monday’s are a fusion of my two goals. Because with Mythology Monday’s I can honor the often forgotten peoples who inhabited the Americas both Europeans came and Christianity decimated older beliefs and beliefs that were once commonly accepted.
LAMMP (The Latin American Mythology Media Project) is also the result of a desire to immortalize myths and to ensure that people get to actually learn about them. In a lot of ways LAMMP is something very distinctly “Me”. But ultimately what I want with LAMMP is to build a culture which cares about and preserves its history including its mythology. A culture which respects the ancient myths, even if it realizes they aren’t true. I don’t think that we as a society have to forget about our past and what our ancestors believed just because we realize that the more extraordinary stories aren’t true. I’ll be writing more about LAMMP either later today or tomorrow. But it’s something I care about. And it’s a something I could live my life happily working for/in. The LAMMP is a concentrated effort to get more people to learn about and care about mythologies, myths, legends, and all sorts of “supernatural” stuff found in the area that is now known as Latin America (which is arguably parts of the U.S., Mexico, and all of Central and South America. And parts of the Caribbean.).
When it comes to LAMMP be sure to join our Facebook group if you want to get news as it happens! We’re small but we’ll grow fast in the future 🙂
I feel like knowing what motivates other skeptics is valuable. Partially because as skepticism becomes more and more common, there will be lots of people with questions for free-thinkers and irreligious individuals. Perhaps the best way to answer those questions is for us to have articles like these where we explain our personal motivations and ask others who are like-minded (in the context of religious beliefs or lack thereof) to also say what motivates them. I also feel like this could show them that as far as personal drive, and motivations go, we aren’t that far apart. When I got less “God” filled answers, both the people I asked and myself were pleasantly surprised to see that our motivations aren’t that far apart. Additionally I also got the chance to comment on how I thought it was funny that God never told people to become things they didn’t want to be. It was a great “coincidence” that everyone I asked (I’ve done this multiple times before and in the future I’ll try and record it somehow so that I can show evidence to back up my statements) who gave a religious answer wanted to be exactly what it was that God told them to be. Weird how that works huh?
Let me know what drives you! I’d love to read about whatever it that drives the people who read this article. Motivation is awesome and I feel more motivated when I learn what drives my friends and acquaintances.
For me, all morality comes down to a two-step process:
1) Imagine a better world.
2) Work to make it happen.
Obviously every word in that creed needs to be parsed and expanded. “Better” — who’s it better for? If it’s better for a few, and worse for everyone else, than that isn’t better at all.
I think the key that a lot of people forget, though, is “imagine.” I think that the failure of many conservatives is a failure of imagination — they literally cannot think of a world that’s better than the one we’ve got, and they’re afraid of one that’s worse.
I think, for me, motivation comes down to a desire to pay it forward.
I’m a biologist, and also something of a disaster health-wise. I have one fatal-but-treatable genetic disease on each side of the family; my dad was diagnosed in time, but his dad and uncle weren’t, and neither were my mom and (probably?) her father. I am alive and kicking only by the grace of improved genetic testing, diagnostics, information sharing, and apparently, a prototype infant heart-lung machine being beta-tested at the hospital I was born at. Seriously, I should not be alive, on multiple grounds – but the science got there, multiple times, just fast enough to prevent my well-deserved removal from the gene pool.
Now it’s my turn to do some science on behalf of those who are going to need it. I feel a drive to pay it forward – not really out of karmic obligation, I don’t believe in that, but more out of empathy. I was lucky. Some of my relatives weren’t; they were born too early, and they paid the price. (I’ve known since I was small that whatever killed my mother was coming for me too…I was right, though I wasn’t properly diagnosed until age 28. My dad felt the same way about his own “family curse”, before he knew what it was. This stuff leaves a mark; I don’t want this for anyone else.)
More broadly, I realize that all the human progress I enjoy comes from human effort. I don’t believe there’s any cosmic parent out there who can clean up our messes and forgive our screw-ups – if we as individuals do harm, whether out of selfishness or laziness or whatever, it makes everything that much worse. But over eons of people leaving things better than they found them, we’ve done remarkable things as a species, and that’s a tradition I would be proud to carry on.
Do what I can, as best I can, when I can, to help people and make things better.
But helping people, really helping people, as opposed to giving trivial assistance that mostly strokes the ego of the giver, is hard. It is trivially easy to give help that sabotages or sets up a trap for those you try to help. Too little or too much, the wrong form, or the wrong presentation can ruin the chance of a good outcome and make a boon into a burden.
It is important to try even while knowing it seldom works out.
Beneath that is a deeply abiding desire to stick around long enough to hear the punch line of what looks to be a cruel joke.