Hi! In this inaugural episode, I introduce myself and explain what I'm doing with this podcast. To summarize, I'm a non-religious liberal who loves America. Or the idea of it, anyway. I explain more in the show, so give it a listen. Welcome!
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I'm Jaime Escuder and welcome to this inaugural episode of None Sense.
What is a "none"?
(I'm actually not that kind of nun that you're thinking about. Quite the opposite.)
None, N-O-N-E, is someone who is secular or unaffiliated with any religious denomination.
I'm not only a none I'm also a lawyer, a liberal a father, a husband, other important and meaningful things, but I wanna focus on my none-ness, because I think it's very important to be open about being that type of person in America at this time. And there's a couple of reasons [for that].
First, there's a lot of us. In "The New York Times" I was reading an article that said one third of all millenials actually identify as a none, and as many as 23% [of all Americans], so nearly a quarter of the entire population of the United States is unaffiliated religiously. And when I say that, I'm not talking about that we're all atheists, or agnostics. [We're] just people who don't for whatever reason subscribe to religion.
And it's important for those people to have, I think, people like me out there being open about this, because America, and I really feel like frankly, the world, the way we're going, needs more people who are willing to be upfront about their lack of belief, because the way we view the world makes us behave, and I know this probably is gonna offend a lot of people who are religious, but I just feel like it makes us behave in a much more responsible way towards the earth and towards each other. And here's the reason: we don't believe in heaven. We imagine that there was no heaven, and what that does, is it places incredible importance upon now. Now both in terms of time and here in terms of place.
If we don't believe in heaven that means that if we're ever going to experience ecstasy or happiness or joy, it's gotta happen here on this planet, and it also means that we have to be responsible stewards of this planet, because it's all we have; we're not going anywhere else.
I believe that if you believe in an after-life, you believe that something is gonna get better later on, then it's okay to abuse the people around you now and the place where you live now because it's just gonna get better. So it's okay to pollute, it's okay...you know, I actually know religious people who are okay with and even in some kind of a warped way, look forward to the apocalypse. They want the world to end because once that happens they're gonna go to a better place.
Well, if you are someone like me, and you don't think there's anything after life, other than just nothingness, oblivion, well then you don't really want the apocalypse to happen because it means it's all come to an end, and there's many wonderful things about being alive and being on earth that are not something that I want to end. I have to enjoy it. I enjoy being alive and I'd like to stick around and I wanna enjoy my life and I wanna enjoy the biodiversity of this planet, and I like, you know, I like things like drinking a clean glass of water or breathing in fresh air. Those are good things. And I would like those things to continue and I don't want to diminish those things or cheapen those things by pretending that there's something better waiting, when really it's hard for me to conceive of a more beautiful planet that's possible of creating more vibrant, wonderful, rich experiences than this one.
So I don't wanna diminish the now and the earth by talk of some future, and that's part of the reason why I think being a none and practicing a way of life that is kind of an areligious, "there is no god" way of conducting oneself on earth is actually a very responsible and a good way to live.
And I have some stories about...
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