Ray RedSpider got his last name from a Cherokee naming ceremony. I didn't ask for it. It was just sprung on me, I guess, as a gift from a white woman who fancied herself Cherokee, like so many white people do. Now I know what you're saying. I'm white, and that's stupid. You are correct. But that's why I kept the name. It reminds me of how people do some pretty silly things to escape this reality in search for fantastical pasts that didn't really exist. Not as critically of them as much as understanding them. The way our world works just seems equally unsatisfying for almost all of us, like humans all chose the worst possible pizza for us all to be forced to eat.

I write of things spiritual, even though I am completely atheist, simply because I identify that within a person's religious wishful thinking lies a lot of hope, and a lot of deep insight into the person. It's hopes that have driven us. Yes, to some horrible places, but to some pretty wonderful ones as well. It's a crap shoot, really. I just know that people won't stop being religious, so instead, I join the playground of the mind in my own way: like an anthropologist.

I love people. I love this world. I despise what people are doing to the world, but know that it's not all people. If we are to change the world and heal it from these harms, it is an anthropological issue. We must understand the depths of the human psyche, and one does so by learning their beliefs, in all of their sacredness and feel-goods worth, but mostly in their devils and demons, the violence, the bigotry, and the evil done by it. Each one has demons that drive them. It is in embracing those demons, those things that they hate, that they heal.

I am liberal. I am silly. I am gay. I am all kinds of things. But mostly, I am human. And if one is to be judged by the world, let me be the thing they hate. Because those are the people who bring the new insights they fear, but need.

I hope all that bullshit just now made sense.