Car Tags and Deities

There is something that has been bothering me for a while now – the new design of the state-issued car tag for Alabama. For those who don't live in my current part of the country, or for those who haven't noticed a problem, allow me to expound.

The tag issued by the (let me emphasize again) State of Alabama reads as follows on the bottom: “God Bless America” If you now see what my issue is, good on you. For those who still don't see the problem, I'll take it a little further.

By having such a statement as “God Bless America” on a tag – and making getting any other tag more expensive – the state is then purporting to endorse a religion, specifically a monotheistic, if not Judeo-Christian religion. Now, I am not overly shocked at the fact that Alabama, being as deep in the bible-belt as it is, has so far gotten away with this. However, it bothers me on a basic level as a citizen of the United States – which, remember, has freedom of religion and (in theory) separation of church and state – that if I want to obey the law and have a tag on my car, I have to endorse a religion that I might not believe in and drive everyday with a religious message on my personal vehicle.

So what to do? Well, personalized tags are $50 extra – even that amount is too much to pay for a matter of principle. The state could, I suppose, expand their horizons and issue other tags. If they feel they must include religion, I have a few suggestions. How about “Gods Bless America” or “Goddess Bless America”? Or, if they're feeling really creative, how about “Deity Bless America”? I suppose it would be difficult to fit in “Some Higher Force That Might Exist” for the agnostics but they could always just leave a blank space for the atheists. “Bless America”... might work for everyone. If not, we could just put "Bob-the-Fluffy-Cloud Bless America" on instead. It might fit.

Hopefully I'll be moving soon and the issue will become moot on a personal level. In the meantime, write your politicians so I can stop ranting.

So here we go, into transitions

I've written in journals for years but this is a new experience - it's not that I've been avoiding blogging, just perhaps a bit on the biased side towards ink and paper. Still, even if no one reads this but myself, the nature of blogging at least means that I will still have my musings around in future years - provided that I don't just want to forget that I was ever young and idealistic.

There is a bittersweetness to life right now. As a graduating college senior I am understanding, perhaps more thoroughly than I ever have before, the mixture of joy and sadness that comes with transitions. Looking back through my studies, I see that this idea is not a new one but rather one that has been explored across time and culture. In the Odyssey, the idea of victory containing grief is one of the major themes and, while I can't match Homer I at least hope to understand this concept more for insight into my own life.

It has been my experience that Western modern culture has a penchant for placing things into their own little niches, for creating binary oppositions, for categorizing and pigeonholing. The gray areas of life are merely confused, straddling the fence, or in need of a deeper look that will classify them once and for all. From Descartes onward there has been a split in ourselves - it's time to pull ourselves together. As one who lives in said Western culture, I think it is time to again explore our identities.

The joy and sadness I spoke of as a graduate - are these truly separate emotions? Joy at having worked hard and succeeding, sadness at leaving this phase of my life behind? On the surface maybe, but I find that the more I delve within myself, the more difficult it is to pry them apart. Instead, I find the need to recognize this emotion as something else, an entity in and of itself. It is more than bittersweetness; it is a feeling of loss through victory. If there is a word for it in English, I don't know it. So to perform a bit of neologism - it is malvictos.