And the universe is shaped exactly like the earthIf you go straight long enough, you'll end up where you were

--Modest Mouse, "3rd Planet"

So like a month and a half ago, someone asked me what I missed most about America. And...I couldn't think of anything. I mean, ok, I miss my friends, but I won't really be much closer to most of them when I'm stateside. And I guess ready access to cheap sushi would be nice, but...really? There wasn't a single thing I could point to that I missed about living there, or that I'm looking forward to now that I'm going back in ten days. Which is bleak as hell, and kind of made me sad, since it's not like I loathe the U.S.

But I was listening to this song, 3rd Planet, and all of a sudden I came up with what I do miss about the States...and it sounds almost bleaker than missing nothing. What I miss about America is: the atheists. That seems strange, given that atheism is pretty much the norm in Europe, especially in the Czech Republic. Pretty much everyone I've met here is a mild and unexamined atheist; when they find out that I'm Catholic, on more than a purely ethno-cultural level, they react not with hostility, but with mild amazement. It's like I've just announced that I've made it my life's work to collect antique paperweights; they're not judging at all, they're just kind of mystified as to why I would remotely care about that stuff. God is just not...something that occurs to them even to wonder about, it seems like.

Whereas almost everyone in the U.S. is a mild and unexamined "believer in a Spirit that moves through all of us" or some such shit. It's at least somewhat rare to find an American who flat-out doesn't believe in God, at all. And...this doesn't seem to me to be much closer to the truth than the European attitude. Plus it's more annoying. Shut up with the fucking angels, America. People talk about angels like they're little cute God-substitutes, with the fun powers but minus the scary judging thing.

But. The point is. The corollary to this American attitude is that those who do take that stand, that God doesn't exist, take the position more seriously. At least for some of them, it seems like the fact of having to consciously choose that belief makes them more aware of what a tragic discovery it is. They're not comfortably at peace with it, they're full of resentment and grief. Like people who've realized they're being cheated. And not because they thought there was a god and there isn't. It's because your soul needs God, or something, like a drowning man needs air, and you can sense that, even if you never articulate it to yourself on a rational level. And so what kind of a bullshit world is it where you ache for something you can't name, that doesn't even exist? If there is no God, then we're children abandoned by parents we never even saw.

Which is why I started thinking about this just now. Because I'm listening to Modest Mouse, who embody this attitude more than anyone else I can think of. Their songs are like all of Flannery O'Connor's characters rolled into one: the tragic bitter atheist, who doesn't believe, and faces up to the full bleak reality of what that unbelief means. There is no God, and it's a fucking tragedy. There is no God, and why is there anything at all? There is no God, and we'll never forgive him for not being.