I am in a place of higher learning now. Its quite different to all my previous educational institutions. While I have never particularly fitted into any of previous academic institutes, here however I very much stick out like a sore thumb and for quite a surprising reason.
The institute where I go to is a secular one, but whether by unconscious or conscious selection of the staff or by sheer dumb luck, I seem to have been surrounded by Protestants of the Calvinist tradition. I have stated in previous blog articles of my lack of religious faith i.e. I am an atheist. I am an apostate of Roman Catholicism having abandoned it in my teen years, I am now an adult atheist. But the years of indoctrination have left their mark on me. There are certain aspects of Catholicism that I still try to follow. You could say that I am a Cultural Catholic. More on that later.
Getting back to why I stick out where I am now. Its not because I am an atheist weirdly, my associates are quite tolerant of religious beliefs but instead it is of my Cultural Catholicism that makes me a dandelion in field of daises. Strange is it not?
Catholics and Protestants are cats and dogs, they share common stories but differ on everything else. The fundamental one is the idea of "original sin". To put simply Catholics believe that altruism and good behavior is required to get themselves into heaven while Protestants believe all that is required to get to heaven is "Faith" in Jesus. Altruism and good behavior just gets you better rewards in Heaven. Wealthiness is a sign of divine blessing in Protestantism. This fundamental difference has been quite significant. Max Webber even attributed the rise of Capitalism and Industrial age to Protestant beliefs and the Protestant Work Ethic.
This fundamental difference between these two denominations has quite an impact on my current life in a place surrounded by Protestants. As a cultural Catholic, I still believe in altruism and good behavior though I now do those things for different reasons than entering what I consider to be nonexistent swampland. My reason for altruism now is that, I believe as a result of my Catholic background that a person has a social contract with society to improve it. Thus I I volunteer where I can, I join protests, promote social justice to the best of my abilities, I donate when I can too and am generally politically active and try to keep up with the latest events. I abhor morbid self indulgence.
Which brings me to my associates. They are all intelligent, friendly, polite and law abiding individuals but they are quite infuriatingly politically apathetic and unapologetically narcissistic. You can have conversations with them on Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi, two paragons of social justice and activism, but good luck trying to even convince them to attend a local union meeting. They are unabashedly self obsessed with selfies, pop culture, hedonism, etc. They seem obsessed with chasing after money which to me is weird considering that they are all from well to do middle class and upper class families. I would not call them as elitists, they are not even close but they do seem quite materialistic. In my view they seem to believe they are already God's chosen people and no longer have to worry about not getting into heaven. (Weird allegory to use for an atheist but indulge me)
Thus it seems to me that I am quite the odd ball at the moment. Of course its not a major problem for me, a person who quite enjoys his solitude but it does hinder making connections with others. I suppose I will in time grow to accept them for who they are but right now, they baffle me.
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