Friendship:
Friendship is another one of those undefinable words. It simply means different things to different people at different times. It is easier to attach characterizations to friendship. These characterizations might include compatibility, kindness, loyalty, tolerance, 'covering another's back', protective inclinations, empathy, amusement, understanding, etc. Most friendships are transient, they come and go with time and place. It is hard to judge anyone based on the number of friends they have since some people are gregarious, others are not, and of course most are in between. Some of the strongest emotional friendships are between people and their pets. I suppose a good test of friendship might be to kick some one's pet and see whose friendship prevails. Good luck with that one. Some friends have been dead some time, yet still their presence is felt and lives within our psyche as some kind of learned understanding or behavior. Damn, I seem to have a lot of them. The lessons of your parents remain throughout life, embedded in your personage. Some friends are non palpable mentor friends upon whom you rely for guidance, much as I feel empowered by the wisdom of Lincoln and to a lesser extent others including Teddy Roosevelt, Churchill, Einstein, JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Barry Goldwater, Mario Cuomo, the Dalai Lama, Victoria Woodhull, Terrell Owens, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, Peter Singer, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, Tecumseh, Barack Obama, and others. Of course I have never even met any of them but they have more interaction with my thoughts than do most of my 'real' friends. As I look over the list I am taken back by the realization there is only one female on the list. I suspect that rather accurately reflects the historical repression of females in political and social circles.
What really is your life except a reflection of your past experiences, real or vicarious? And who are those who determine these past experiences more than these real or vicarious friends? Good friends make you feel good about yourself, you are eager to be around them, you feel even better after you have been around them, and good friends---the real and the vicarious ones---enable the level of contentment in your life to rise. Aside from typical human friends, pet friends, and vicarious friends, I find Mother Nature is a powerful friend. I never feel less alone than when alone surrounded by nature. I can almost feel the power of connectivity to all of history, humankind, and the evolutionary process. It doesn't get much better than that.
I am not too keen on meaningless babble. These days you cannot help but be exposed to mindless babble in a society of cell phones. It is not that I don't think lighthearted, good natured verbal or inane nonsense has no place----I think we all need a good deal of that in our lives----but this kind of intellectual wasteland needs to be kept to a reasonable minimum. I really hate to watch people, as soon as they get a moment to themselves, automatically pull out their cell phone and search desperately for someone to engage with them in idle chit-chat. "Hi, I'm in the checkout line at the grocery store, did you finish the wash yet? Did Timmy get home from school yet? Blah, blah, blah." I think commuter trains need cell phone user cars and no cell phone user cars. And it just seems there is a strong correlation between cell phone use and the loudness of one's voice. That's another thing about Nature, you don't have to listen to shit like that imposed on your own conscious thoughts. Maybe some people barely have any such conscious thoughts.
Friendships may not last, for a multitude of reasons, but their past value can never be negated. It is kind of dumb to deny the value of a friendship because it ends. To a large degree, we are all sort of a sum total of all our friendships, past and present, mixed in with our own peculiar personality. Once distance, change in life priorities, change in interests, or just time limitations impact on friendship the friendship often ends. I can't generate much interest, for example, in attending school class reunions or past reunions of any sort because any current relevance is gone. You can never go home again. Sometimes a friendship ends because to continue it will disrupt an even more important friendship, like between spouses or other members of a group. Often a friendship ends simply because, like a once popular broadway show, you stay on the scene too long. Your 'act' has grown stale, is no longer entertaining, or relevant to changing age or times etc. "I Love Lucy" may have once been a 'can't miss' entertainment, but with changing times and age, it becomes trite, boring, and frankly annoying. And there is nothing "I Love Lucy" can do to restore the once interesting relationship. The magic is gone, gone with the wind, and there is no one to blame or any need to even kick your pet. Life is just that way. One should never view these lost friendships with other than an attitude of 'thanks for the memories'. Some, more foolish than others, refuse to let the curtain fall and, for the sake of habit, endure interactions with others that have become an endless series of multiple irritations and subtle digs of senseless character assassinations. One can always tell when a friendship is over----when you find yourself less than eager to find time to get together. There is little in social life more pathetic and futile than watching certain relatives or friends tensely dance around each other at arranged gatherings, while others involved engage in endless and biased evaluations of what is going on, debating whose fault it is for the situation. Hey, get real. People change, priorities change, age changes, all plays have an ending, some plays are short, some are longer, but all eventually run out of steam, and every group that starts out large will dwindle over time, for varied reasons---and when the curtain falls no sane audience boos and argues over which character is responsible for the play ending---but claps in appreciation for the good experience. A staged act which refuses to close and attempts to stay on Broadway too long, will eventually play to an empty house, have lost all of it's appeal, with any applause a mere insincere courtesy, a kind of obligatory applause for the past with little relevance to the present.
Friends sustain life, give meaning to your life at various stages, and for that contribution should always be fondly remembered. Friends may drift apart but they should never be torched or rudely disrespected because they suddenly no longer fit into your current life milieu. The goal should always be to let them go gently, albeit there may be sub, or not so subconscious pressures, when one feels the need to do it with words too disrespectful for a house of friends---a sort of burn the bridge, 'cut-the-legs-from under' message to your target. Sherman had to burn Atlanta before the South realized it was over. Yet all is well in our saga of life friendships as long as the band plays on with new razzle dazzle dance partners on the floor. Time will come soon enough when the band stops and all the razzle dazzling ends. I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
WORD GAMES
Word Games:
Meaning and understanding---that is really what human life boils down to. We really want to comprehend the meaning of all we see and do throughout our life. Of course all this objective search for meaning and understanding involves our emotions, and emotions are at best loosely connected to, and often contradictory to, understanding. Finally, understanding involves language and language often fails us. We use words like love, terrorist, holocaust, genocide, God, 'life begins', friendship/marriage, justice and freedom but these words mean different things at different times, in different situations, and to different people. Justice, as commonly meant, simply doesn't exist throughout the entire span of species. If we want to seek understanding then history, philosophy and science are the only clues. Religious faith, by definition, is not understanding. History can reveal patterns, philosophy can address rhetorical questions, and science can explain cause and effect. Science reveals that life on this planet has been around for billions of years, not that these kind of numbers can be realistically comprehended. Science keeps increasing our knowledge of the evolutionary process but tells us nothing about the nature of the Creator of this process. While logic dictates God must exist, there is nothing inherent in human nature to remotely enable us to understand anything about God. So every society from the beginning of time invents God---creates an image of God---and the image of God is often amazingly ludicrous. No matter the society, God is always pictured as human-like in thought, only more powerful and all knowing. We pray to God because we assume, or at least hope, that God is either responsible for all that happens or can change our lives for the better. And of course God is most worshipped in the hope there is an afterlife and God will choose the faithful to get to this wonderful afterlife. The science of evolution doesn't, at least so far, give us any clues about an afterlife. If the concept of an afterlife is kind of an abstract absurdity, so is life itself. Yet we know, in every kind of practical way, that life does exist and that each of us is part of life on this planet. Thus if life exists despite any human ability to really understand it's existence, then so might an afterlife exist.
I like to wander around a lot, observing, contemplating, and trying to understand the many and varied pictures of life which abounds around me and around the world. It really is the most intriguing and inexpensive hobby one can have. It kind of brings an appreciation of life, an appreciation of varied species, among varied human groups and societies, and it yields a sobering reflection of mixed emotions including hope, despair, injustice, sadness, happiness, sorrow, and oh just about any other human emotion.
In the big picture, clearly the human species is overrunning the planet. Every trip into Chicago brings me face to face with a mass of humanity that is overwhelming. Just the number of people who board and get off a commuter train is mind boggling. While each one has a unique story to tell, most just live lives of relatively quiet desperation and die leaving essentially no trace they ever existed. Go back one or two generations and what do you mostly have---endless generations of forgotten nothingburgers. Sometimes I ask myself if I really wouldn't like to know who my great, great grandfather was. But what would this knowledge really mean? Mostly just a name, a profession, and how many children. If I went into the Chicago Telephone directory at random, called them up and found out their address, what they did for a living, and how many children they had, what meaning to me would any of that have. None. That I guess is why I don't do that nor research my ancestry. It would be useless trivia.
A major part of the problem is language. Take the hot button issue of abortion. We have those really good people who believe life begins at conception. Then we have those really good people who don't see it that way at all. From any science standpoint of course life doesn't begin at conception. In fact life is a continuum and that little scientific fact is the basis of evolution. The egg and sperm are both quite alive and the resulting egg is still quite alive and a 'vegetative' form of human life is also quite alive. The building blocks of life, the DNA molecules, have been around for billions of years, always getting reshuffled by reproductive methods or mutations, and generating new 'forms' of life all the time. At any rate, human life does not begin at conception---and yet that point alone doesn't justify or invalidate abortion. In the broadest sense part of the evolutionary process includes infertility, premature deaths, abortions (induced or otherwise), random combination of gametes, and infinitely long odds as to which particular members of any particular species, will ever mate anyway. I suppose one could believe God determines which sperm will combine with which egg, who will marry or mate with who, etc. but that seems a stretch. After all why create the process of evolution if one has to manipulate the laws of nature at every turn. Logically, if one believes God does manipulate the laws of nature in the evolutionary process, then Creationism makes sense. That also makes God directly responsible for all the injustices and tragedies that occur to people. It would be difficult for me to lay all this injustice and misery on God. From a broad perspective the evolutionary process is remarkable and progressive. Anything that is remarkable and progressive is good. The truth seems to be that this overall goodness triumphs over individual destinies. For progress and the greater good, many suffer.
Human beings seem to be unique in the evolutionary process in that our species has the ability to impact on our own destiny, both individually and collectively. But make no mistake about it---the laws of nature---God's laws----will triumph when human endeavors and behavior become overly destructive to the evolutionary process. Mother Nature bats last---welcome to the world situation today. To the extent our human species is not in tune with the forces of nature, misery and destruction will increasingly prevail. This has always been the case throughout history and there is no logical reason to think any American 'manifest destiny' is going to prevail over the laws of nature. Manifest destiny and God answering prayers is probably a ludicrous human illusion. It just seems strange that Almighty God awaits on our prayers to bring about justice, or relieve individual or group suffering. It seems Americans should give more thought to evolutionary destiny than any American 'manifest destiny' or peculiar sectarian religious dogma. For the most part, outside of psychopaths, everyone everywhere basically understands right and wrong. To what extent anyone consistently does right or wrong is another matter. In the most caustic sense, organized secularized religion becomes the protective blanket which will shield us from punishment for the sins we do all the time for varied selfish reasons. The feeling always exists that God is going to ultimately protect those registered with His preferred religious tribe, a preferred religious tribe that for the most part is inherited. Of all the ways God might send us religious signals, signals via inheritance seems, on the face of it, rather insulting to the mental state of God. Let's face it, for God to meet our personal needs He must be bent like a pretzel for a fit.
Love is another one of those words which is so personal as to be mostly undefinable. I guess one could paraphrase the Supreme Court Justice who said: "I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it." I doubt any of us can precisely define love, but of course "we know it when we feel it". But once something exists based on feelings, all objectivity is lost. In theory those who are in love marry, but even if this were substantially true, then love doesn't often last, and for some couples in love others deny them the right to marry. And of course people marry not just for love but for power, for convenience, for social acceptance, for financial security, and probably for other reasons too. Whatever love is, it is kind of personal. Then too, love is certainly not by any means a question of finding love and acting on it. No one can achieve any love bird status without reciprocation. Thus love, like sex, becomes a highly individualized pursuit that may or may not be achieved, and if achieved, have little relevance at all to others outside this individual personal love bird status. I wouldn't want to hazard any guess as to what percentage of marriages are sustained by 'love'. Love is nothing like going to the grocery store and picking out what appeals to you. Love is more like an auction in which no sale is consummated until both parties are in agreement. That is, it is more like a slave market in which no sale is completed until both the slave and master agree to the arrangement. Naturally, in most instances, by the time any agreement is reached neither party has agreed to be slave or master, all depending on the society, the personality of the two involved etc. And still, when all is said and done marriage becomes a great leap into the dark. The reality is, with precious few exceptions, the ugly don't pursue the beautiful, the dumb the brilliant, the rich the poor, etc. Everyone tries to figure out at what position on this complicated ladder they fit, and pursue love accordingly. Since love as a feeling has little direction, it is unpredictable in duration, and comes with no guarantee of anything. There are few more absurd rituals than for a clergy of some sort to make comments, at some kind of alter, to the effect, "What God has bound together let no man put asunder". Come on now, if God were really putting a marriage together, all marriages would last. For important things like marriage and war and sex and patriotism we always claim our actions in these areas to be with the blessings of God. If so, God must be the ultimate schizophrenic or there are competing Gods or there are more horses asses in this world than there are horses. Your pick.
I personally prefer to keep things simple. If two people of any kind, anywhere, of age, think they are in love it is fine with me. I mean exactly why shouldn't it be fine? What does it have to do with me anyway? Same with sex. Don't bother me with a litany of which sexual practices are acceptable in God's eyes. Frankly I can't logically explain why any of it might be precisely pleasurable outside of a desire to reproduce. If two people want to engage in some kind contorted sex hanging from a chandelier it is ok with me. If some adult wants to spend time looking at pornography of some sort, whether it is a foot fetish, a breast fetish, a huge penis fetish, a lesbian fetish, etc. why am I to care? I really can't say much of my life has been spent fending off fetishites of any sort. Frankly, it appears the handsome and beautiful amongst us are the ones fending off sexual advances. The rest of us should be so lucky. Nor do I see any evidence, to speak of, that attributes anyone's sexual inclinations to someone jumping out from behind a bush tempting us with their feet, or any other body part, or showing us pictures of some sort of peculiar sexual acts. If a person can find consensual sexual satisfaction with another adult, then why would I find it my 'duty' to find fault with it? Of course public display of it is another matter. If something doesn't appeal to me I don't like it pushed in my face. Naturally, if the wife of some guy I don't like asks me if I would like to see her beat him during sex, I might make an exception and say 'ok'.
In short, I hate issues that are personal being dictated by anyone, any group, any culture, any government, any religious sect. And quite clearly, people who fall into that mind set are rarely happy campers, always flailing away at perceived demons in the personal lives of others. Whenever I see these kind of people flailing away, mumbling, screaming, marching, shouting incendiary slogans, mass praying, etc. I always try to promise myself never to feel that way about diversity. Live and let live in matters that are personal and don't concern others allows me to be more accepting and cheerful in life. I suppose let everyone go to hell in their own way. I prefer to say let everyone get to Heaven with their own personal lifestyle, personality, and talents, as best they can.
Terrorist is another word tough to define. If any self explanatory definition is arrived at, the result is humanity all over the globe is surrounded by terrorists of this or that ilk. I guess a terrorist is someone who kills innocent people to achieve political, religious, or economic goals. And of course in every major religion you don't kill people to achieve these kind of goals. Sure. Of course. Dream on. We all know that when you add religion to the mix---any religion outside of Buddhists and Quakers----the level of killing rises exponentially. The person who presses the button to launch a smart missile of some sort which kills innocent people, among others, is really little different than the ragamuffin who straps a homemade bomb to him or herself and blows up others, including him or herself. To one side the other is a terrorist, to the other side the other is also a terrorist. So the word becomes little more than an emotional name attached to those on the other side. And is it only the one who presses the button or the one who straps on the bomb who is a terrorist or are all all those who support the particular agent of terrorism terrorists? And do you have to kill someone to be a terrorist? What about those who support policies which generate massive unemployment or access to health care, are these people terrorists of some sort? The victims might think so.
Freedom is another tricky word. Can there be freedom without justice and responsibility? Is freedom simply majority rule? Is freedom a consequence of democracy? Is a young kid wallowing in a ghetto free to become rich or educated or any of a lot of other things? Is freedom the right to do anything in your personal life if it doesn't impact on the lives of others? Doesn't freedom depend on your environmental culture, form of government, your economic status, sometimes your racial or religious or sexual orientation status? What does freedom really mean to most 15 yr olds in any of our War on Drugs ravished rural or urban ghettoes? What does freedom mean to the millions of Iraqis who have fled their country? Or to the millions still left alive who remain there? Any notion that freedom follows democracy is illusionary. Democracy may be, in certain situations, a way to foster freedom. The 100 million people projected to starve to death in the near future across the globe, are they free? Many people have so much 'freedom' that absolutely no one gives a damn what they do short of they being bothered by them. Freedom has a plethora of definitions and freedom to many means nothing left to lose. I personally feel free but I wonder what percent of Americans would say they feel free? Many, I am sure, would say they feel trapped and oppressed in some fashion or other. And many of us who are free are free by living off the backs of the oppressed, in one form or another.
Then there is the word holocaust. My dictionary defines holocaust as "any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life". Certainly the mass slaughter of Jews by Hitler to the tune of 2 million Jews is a horrific and despicable holocaust. But what are we to call the destruction of 2.1 million Vietnamese during the Vietnamese War? Or the destruction of 200,000 Iraqis by Hussein, or the slaughter and/or homelessness of nearly 2 million Iraqis by the current Iraq War? Or the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans or Sudanese, or the predicted 100 million who will starve to death in the near future? Are not all of these mass slaughters or reckless destruction of life? It may hurt to admit it, but we live right now in the greatest period of holocausts in history, and our own country is knee deep in this mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life. How many Americans, to this day, will admit the Vietnam War was some sort of holocaust carried out by Americans? Of course we thought we were doing the right thing, we were saving the world from communism etc., but I suppose Hitler 'thought' he was doing the right thing, the Hutu's 'thought' they were doing the right thing, the Taliban 'think' they are doing the right thing, Bush 'thought' (if one can use the term loosely) he was doing the right thing by invading Iraq----and yet the word holocaust is simply defined as "any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life". The coming death by starvation of 100 million people across the globe is, by any sane definition, a reckless destruction of life. What kind of mentality 'accepts' the death of 100 million people by starvation and instead launches an emotional crusade against birth control and abortion? Are we really commanded by God to populate the earth to the extent that increasing numbers of these living 'sanctities of life' are destined to die by starvation----or worse, live lives of poverty and fear in hell holes of futile quiet desperation? Is it rational to cling stubbornly, in Bushite fashion, to the notion that the natural resources of this planet are endlessly sufficient to support ever increasing human population levels, and that God cares little about human driven extinctions of other species?
And of course the most hopeless definition is that of the word God. Einstein may have come the closest and been the most honest when he said "I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?" But nevertheless, humans from the beginning of our arrival on this planet have invented God and the resulting hundreds of religious sects, all insisting that God has communicated with their sect, and conveyed to their sect, through their leaders, an array of rituals, ceremonies, and commandments peculiar to their particular religious sect. All of this is well and good, and harmless enough, except when God is on your side, and every other side too, the slaughter begins, and has never ended throughout human history. For me personally, I can't accept this scenario of some sort of partisan, sadistic God whose method of communication is so limited and so dependent on inherited religious beliefs. I think most every person everywhere has the inherent capacity to understand right and wrong. To what extent any of us choose to do right instead of wrong is another matter. The Universal Golden Rule is my religion. That of course doesn't shed any light on whether I follow my religion anymore than any one else follows theirs.
I guess the meaning of life and understanding life is tied up hopelessly with the limitations of human language. To solve this, from now on, I mean what I mean, not what I say. I know you believe you understand what you think I say, but am not sure you realize that what you heard may not be what I meant.
Meaning and understanding---that is really what human life boils down to. We really want to comprehend the meaning of all we see and do throughout our life. Of course all this objective search for meaning and understanding involves our emotions, and emotions are at best loosely connected to, and often contradictory to, understanding. Finally, understanding involves language and language often fails us. We use words like love, terrorist, holocaust, genocide, God, 'life begins', friendship/marriage, justice and freedom but these words mean different things at different times, in different situations, and to different people. Justice, as commonly meant, simply doesn't exist throughout the entire span of species. If we want to seek understanding then history, philosophy and science are the only clues. Religious faith, by definition, is not understanding. History can reveal patterns, philosophy can address rhetorical questions, and science can explain cause and effect. Science reveals that life on this planet has been around for billions of years, not that these kind of numbers can be realistically comprehended. Science keeps increasing our knowledge of the evolutionary process but tells us nothing about the nature of the Creator of this process. While logic dictates God must exist, there is nothing inherent in human nature to remotely enable us to understand anything about God. So every society from the beginning of time invents God---creates an image of God---and the image of God is often amazingly ludicrous. No matter the society, God is always pictured as human-like in thought, only more powerful and all knowing. We pray to God because we assume, or at least hope, that God is either responsible for all that happens or can change our lives for the better. And of course God is most worshipped in the hope there is an afterlife and God will choose the faithful to get to this wonderful afterlife. The science of evolution doesn't, at least so far, give us any clues about an afterlife. If the concept of an afterlife is kind of an abstract absurdity, so is life itself. Yet we know, in every kind of practical way, that life does exist and that each of us is part of life on this planet. Thus if life exists despite any human ability to really understand it's existence, then so might an afterlife exist.
I like to wander around a lot, observing, contemplating, and trying to understand the many and varied pictures of life which abounds around me and around the world. It really is the most intriguing and inexpensive hobby one can have. It kind of brings an appreciation of life, an appreciation of varied species, among varied human groups and societies, and it yields a sobering reflection of mixed emotions including hope, despair, injustice, sadness, happiness, sorrow, and oh just about any other human emotion.
In the big picture, clearly the human species is overrunning the planet. Every trip into Chicago brings me face to face with a mass of humanity that is overwhelming. Just the number of people who board and get off a commuter train is mind boggling. While each one has a unique story to tell, most just live lives of relatively quiet desperation and die leaving essentially no trace they ever existed. Go back one or two generations and what do you mostly have---endless generations of forgotten nothingburgers. Sometimes I ask myself if I really wouldn't like to know who my great, great grandfather was. But what would this knowledge really mean? Mostly just a name, a profession, and how many children. If I went into the Chicago Telephone directory at random, called them up and found out their address, what they did for a living, and how many children they had, what meaning to me would any of that have. None. That I guess is why I don't do that nor research my ancestry. It would be useless trivia.
A major part of the problem is language. Take the hot button issue of abortion. We have those really good people who believe life begins at conception. Then we have those really good people who don't see it that way at all. From any science standpoint of course life doesn't begin at conception. In fact life is a continuum and that little scientific fact is the basis of evolution. The egg and sperm are both quite alive and the resulting egg is still quite alive and a 'vegetative' form of human life is also quite alive. The building blocks of life, the DNA molecules, have been around for billions of years, always getting reshuffled by reproductive methods or mutations, and generating new 'forms' of life all the time. At any rate, human life does not begin at conception---and yet that point alone doesn't justify or invalidate abortion. In the broadest sense part of the evolutionary process includes infertility, premature deaths, abortions (induced or otherwise), random combination of gametes, and infinitely long odds as to which particular members of any particular species, will ever mate anyway. I suppose one could believe God determines which sperm will combine with which egg, who will marry or mate with who, etc. but that seems a stretch. After all why create the process of evolution if one has to manipulate the laws of nature at every turn. Logically, if one believes God does manipulate the laws of nature in the evolutionary process, then Creationism makes sense. That also makes God directly responsible for all the injustices and tragedies that occur to people. It would be difficult for me to lay all this injustice and misery on God. From a broad perspective the evolutionary process is remarkable and progressive. Anything that is remarkable and progressive is good. The truth seems to be that this overall goodness triumphs over individual destinies. For progress and the greater good, many suffer.
Human beings seem to be unique in the evolutionary process in that our species has the ability to impact on our own destiny, both individually and collectively. But make no mistake about it---the laws of nature---God's laws----will triumph when human endeavors and behavior become overly destructive to the evolutionary process. Mother Nature bats last---welcome to the world situation today. To the extent our human species is not in tune with the forces of nature, misery and destruction will increasingly prevail. This has always been the case throughout history and there is no logical reason to think any American 'manifest destiny' is going to prevail over the laws of nature. Manifest destiny and God answering prayers is probably a ludicrous human illusion. It just seems strange that Almighty God awaits on our prayers to bring about justice, or relieve individual or group suffering. It seems Americans should give more thought to evolutionary destiny than any American 'manifest destiny' or peculiar sectarian religious dogma. For the most part, outside of psychopaths, everyone everywhere basically understands right and wrong. To what extent anyone consistently does right or wrong is another matter. In the most caustic sense, organized secularized religion becomes the protective blanket which will shield us from punishment for the sins we do all the time for varied selfish reasons. The feeling always exists that God is going to ultimately protect those registered with His preferred religious tribe, a preferred religious tribe that for the most part is inherited. Of all the ways God might send us religious signals, signals via inheritance seems, on the face of it, rather insulting to the mental state of God. Let's face it, for God to meet our personal needs He must be bent like a pretzel for a fit.
Love is another one of those words which is so personal as to be mostly undefinable. I guess one could paraphrase the Supreme Court Justice who said: "I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it." I doubt any of us can precisely define love, but of course "we know it when we feel it". But once something exists based on feelings, all objectivity is lost. In theory those who are in love marry, but even if this were substantially true, then love doesn't often last, and for some couples in love others deny them the right to marry. And of course people marry not just for love but for power, for convenience, for social acceptance, for financial security, and probably for other reasons too. Whatever love is, it is kind of personal. Then too, love is certainly not by any means a question of finding love and acting on it. No one can achieve any love bird status without reciprocation. Thus love, like sex, becomes a highly individualized pursuit that may or may not be achieved, and if achieved, have little relevance at all to others outside this individual personal love bird status. I wouldn't want to hazard any guess as to what percentage of marriages are sustained by 'love'. Love is nothing like going to the grocery store and picking out what appeals to you. Love is more like an auction in which no sale is consummated until both parties are in agreement. That is, it is more like a slave market in which no sale is completed until both the slave and master agree to the arrangement. Naturally, in most instances, by the time any agreement is reached neither party has agreed to be slave or master, all depending on the society, the personality of the two involved etc. And still, when all is said and done marriage becomes a great leap into the dark. The reality is, with precious few exceptions, the ugly don't pursue the beautiful, the dumb the brilliant, the rich the poor, etc. Everyone tries to figure out at what position on this complicated ladder they fit, and pursue love accordingly. Since love as a feeling has little direction, it is unpredictable in duration, and comes with no guarantee of anything. There are few more absurd rituals than for a clergy of some sort to make comments, at some kind of alter, to the effect, "What God has bound together let no man put asunder". Come on now, if God were really putting a marriage together, all marriages would last. For important things like marriage and war and sex and patriotism we always claim our actions in these areas to be with the blessings of God. If so, God must be the ultimate schizophrenic or there are competing Gods or there are more horses asses in this world than there are horses. Your pick.
I personally prefer to keep things simple. If two people of any kind, anywhere, of age, think they are in love it is fine with me. I mean exactly why shouldn't it be fine? What does it have to do with me anyway? Same with sex. Don't bother me with a litany of which sexual practices are acceptable in God's eyes. Frankly I can't logically explain why any of it might be precisely pleasurable outside of a desire to reproduce. If two people want to engage in some kind contorted sex hanging from a chandelier it is ok with me. If some adult wants to spend time looking at pornography of some sort, whether it is a foot fetish, a breast fetish, a huge penis fetish, a lesbian fetish, etc. why am I to care? I really can't say much of my life has been spent fending off fetishites of any sort. Frankly, it appears the handsome and beautiful amongst us are the ones fending off sexual advances. The rest of us should be so lucky. Nor do I see any evidence, to speak of, that attributes anyone's sexual inclinations to someone jumping out from behind a bush tempting us with their feet, or any other body part, or showing us pictures of some sort of peculiar sexual acts. If a person can find consensual sexual satisfaction with another adult, then why would I find it my 'duty' to find fault with it? Of course public display of it is another matter. If something doesn't appeal to me I don't like it pushed in my face. Naturally, if the wife of some guy I don't like asks me if I would like to see her beat him during sex, I might make an exception and say 'ok'.
In short, I hate issues that are personal being dictated by anyone, any group, any culture, any government, any religious sect. And quite clearly, people who fall into that mind set are rarely happy campers, always flailing away at perceived demons in the personal lives of others. Whenever I see these kind of people flailing away, mumbling, screaming, marching, shouting incendiary slogans, mass praying, etc. I always try to promise myself never to feel that way about diversity. Live and let live in matters that are personal and don't concern others allows me to be more accepting and cheerful in life. I suppose let everyone go to hell in their own way. I prefer to say let everyone get to Heaven with their own personal lifestyle, personality, and talents, as best they can.
Terrorist is another word tough to define. If any self explanatory definition is arrived at, the result is humanity all over the globe is surrounded by terrorists of this or that ilk. I guess a terrorist is someone who kills innocent people to achieve political, religious, or economic goals. And of course in every major religion you don't kill people to achieve these kind of goals. Sure. Of course. Dream on. We all know that when you add religion to the mix---any religion outside of Buddhists and Quakers----the level of killing rises exponentially. The person who presses the button to launch a smart missile of some sort which kills innocent people, among others, is really little different than the ragamuffin who straps a homemade bomb to him or herself and blows up others, including him or herself. To one side the other is a terrorist, to the other side the other is also a terrorist. So the word becomes little more than an emotional name attached to those on the other side. And is it only the one who presses the button or the one who straps on the bomb who is a terrorist or are all all those who support the particular agent of terrorism terrorists? And do you have to kill someone to be a terrorist? What about those who support policies which generate massive unemployment or access to health care, are these people terrorists of some sort? The victims might think so.
Freedom is another tricky word. Can there be freedom without justice and responsibility? Is freedom simply majority rule? Is freedom a consequence of democracy? Is a young kid wallowing in a ghetto free to become rich or educated or any of a lot of other things? Is freedom the right to do anything in your personal life if it doesn't impact on the lives of others? Doesn't freedom depend on your environmental culture, form of government, your economic status, sometimes your racial or religious or sexual orientation status? What does freedom really mean to most 15 yr olds in any of our War on Drugs ravished rural or urban ghettoes? What does freedom mean to the millions of Iraqis who have fled their country? Or to the millions still left alive who remain there? Any notion that freedom follows democracy is illusionary. Democracy may be, in certain situations, a way to foster freedom. The 100 million people projected to starve to death in the near future across the globe, are they free? Many people have so much 'freedom' that absolutely no one gives a damn what they do short of they being bothered by them. Freedom has a plethora of definitions and freedom to many means nothing left to lose. I personally feel free but I wonder what percent of Americans would say they feel free? Many, I am sure, would say they feel trapped and oppressed in some fashion or other. And many of us who are free are free by living off the backs of the oppressed, in one form or another.
Then there is the word holocaust. My dictionary defines holocaust as "any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life". Certainly the mass slaughter of Jews by Hitler to the tune of 2 million Jews is a horrific and despicable holocaust. But what are we to call the destruction of 2.1 million Vietnamese during the Vietnamese War? Or the destruction of 200,000 Iraqis by Hussein, or the slaughter and/or homelessness of nearly 2 million Iraqis by the current Iraq War? Or the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans or Sudanese, or the predicted 100 million who will starve to death in the near future? Are not all of these mass slaughters or reckless destruction of life? It may hurt to admit it, but we live right now in the greatest period of holocausts in history, and our own country is knee deep in this mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life. How many Americans, to this day, will admit the Vietnam War was some sort of holocaust carried out by Americans? Of course we thought we were doing the right thing, we were saving the world from communism etc., but I suppose Hitler 'thought' he was doing the right thing, the Hutu's 'thought' they were doing the right thing, the Taliban 'think' they are doing the right thing, Bush 'thought' (if one can use the term loosely) he was doing the right thing by invading Iraq----and yet the word holocaust is simply defined as "any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life". The coming death by starvation of 100 million people across the globe is, by any sane definition, a reckless destruction of life. What kind of mentality 'accepts' the death of 100 million people by starvation and instead launches an emotional crusade against birth control and abortion? Are we really commanded by God to populate the earth to the extent that increasing numbers of these living 'sanctities of life' are destined to die by starvation----or worse, live lives of poverty and fear in hell holes of futile quiet desperation? Is it rational to cling stubbornly, in Bushite fashion, to the notion that the natural resources of this planet are endlessly sufficient to support ever increasing human population levels, and that God cares little about human driven extinctions of other species?
And of course the most hopeless definition is that of the word God. Einstein may have come the closest and been the most honest when he said "I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?" But nevertheless, humans from the beginning of our arrival on this planet have invented God and the resulting hundreds of religious sects, all insisting that God has communicated with their sect, and conveyed to their sect, through their leaders, an array of rituals, ceremonies, and commandments peculiar to their particular religious sect. All of this is well and good, and harmless enough, except when God is on your side, and every other side too, the slaughter begins, and has never ended throughout human history. For me personally, I can't accept this scenario of some sort of partisan, sadistic God whose method of communication is so limited and so dependent on inherited religious beliefs. I think most every person everywhere has the inherent capacity to understand right and wrong. To what extent any of us choose to do right instead of wrong is another matter. The Universal Golden Rule is my religion. That of course doesn't shed any light on whether I follow my religion anymore than any one else follows theirs.
I guess the meaning of life and understanding life is tied up hopelessly with the limitations of human language. To solve this, from now on, I mean what I mean, not what I say. I know you believe you understand what you think I say, but am not sure you realize that what you heard may not be what I meant.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
GHOSTS OF THE PAST
Ghosts of the Past:
The return address on the envelope caught my attention: "1958 Class Reunion". And sure enough somehow someone found out my current address and sent me an invitation to our 50th High School Class reunion. Since I have never been to any previous reunion I wondered how did they ever find me? Nor have I had any communication with these former classmates. I have never been big on reunions, not high school, not college, not family---in fact it is never wise to bet I will attend most anything involving hours and hours of shallow chit-chat. It must be some sort of genetic deficiency on my part. I think if this affair were within driving distance for a day I might go, just to gawk. But it is over 900 miles away. There were 40 some odd classmates for whom they were still trying to find a current address. One was Charles Merritt. That is strange, he never graduated and a few years later was killed in a car crash. As a young teenager he and I were friends. I don't know why, we had nothing in common. Maybe that is why my dad would drive me over to the 'wrong' side of town to spend the day with Charlie---to prove you can be friends even if you have little in common. Others might suggest my dad was just taking me as far away as possible for the day---or even worse hope some young ruffian would beat the hell out of me. I doubt the latter.
Two names on the list stood out from the rest. No sense trying to locate these two, you can be sure the last thing they would do is attend this class reunion. They were two of the ugliest girls in the school and no one ever talked with them. No guy would ever talk with them for fear of endless teasing. Of course it was considered good fun to tease your friends about either one of them being their girlfriend. Even the other girls didn't talk to these ugly ducklings, I guess for fear their own reputation would suffer. Years later, with a bit more maturity, I looked back on all this with sympathetic horror. They must have hated to come to school. It must have been unbearable. HOWEVER, I noticed from the way their names were listed they both were married. It would be the best of justice if these were the happiest marriages in the class. The truth is, probably 9 out of 10 people are not really all that sexy, and never were. I am with the 9 out of ten and am blessed with a really effective birth control method-----------------------my personality.
I managed to dredge up my 1958 Class yearbook. I remembered a good number of them from the class pictures, but the truth is I lived out of town, was bused in, jumped on the school bus right after school, so my close friends pretty much lived in my neighborhood and all of them were either a year older or a year or two younger, so they were not in my class. As I paged through the yearbook I noticed I was nowhere in the class "Hall of Fame". Not a Leader in Industry; or Stars on the Dance floor; or MVP Champions; or Brain Power; or First in Popularity; or Fashion Leaders; or Masters of the Art; or Destined for Success; or Mr. and Mrs. America; or Court Jesters; or Oscar Winers. Nope. Nowhere to be found. Then I got to the Activities Section. There I was amazed to find myself in a picture of the Student Council. Student Council? I am pretty sure that would be an elective post. If I ever was on the Student Council it brings absolutely no recollection to my mind. Then there I was pictured in the Key Club, described as the 'leading boys' club of the school. Draw a blank about any participation in that organization either. Suddenly I remembered how I ended up in these two organizations. For the first three years of high school I was just there, no one bothered me, I didn't bother anyone, and I pretty much came and went unnoticed. You might say I hardly knew which end was up, quiet as a mouse in school albeit over-spirited in my rural neighborhood enclave.
The class I hated most was gym class. The only sports we played in my neighborhood were baseball, football, and hockey. That was it. Period. In gym class there was basketball, soccer, wrestling, and I forget the other stuff. I especially hated wrestling. It might have been one thing if you could just go at it till the other couldn't get up. But there were all these rules and techniques that were really foreign to me. So I would just play Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick and avoid letting my opponent grab onto me. The gym teacher, Mr. Bonelli, hated me. And vice-versa. In soccer if anyone kicked the ball to me I would just kick the ball as hard as I could way up into the air so it would go out of bounds. That way no one would kick the ball to me. In basketball I would just run up and down the court always looking off into the stands so no one would even think of throwing the damn ball to me. Bonelli would always scream, "Throw the Ball to R_____, throw the ball to R______. " But they couldn't because I would never look their way. Hell, I didn't even know how to dribble the ball, let alone make any basket. Bonelli hated me most because for most gym periods I would have a pass to my English teacher's room, Mrs. Swanson---who had a free period then. She and I would talk about everything under the sun. I think she liked me because I had a lot of off the wall ideas. Nothing much has changed there. At some point Bonelli complained to the principal and my pass privileges were revoked. I can still see the smirk on Bonelli's face.
Then a miracle happened. The track and crosscountry coach was in the gym watching guys run up and down the basketball court; as I darted to the locker rm at the end of the period he pulled me aside and told me I should come out for track and crosscountry. I was a junior at the time. I ignored him but finally agreed when he said he would drive me home after practice. Gas was probably 25 cents a gallon back then. I told him the only thing I was willing to run was the 100 yd dash. What the hell, I could out run anyone in my neighborhood. Well, there were 3 blk kids who could outrun me in the 100 yd dash. So I never even got into a meet. The coach then got me to agree to try crosscountry since the course was right up behind my house and ran through all these woods. By this time I was a senior. I practiced with the team and ran in the races, but for the first three races I got a stitch in my side and just stopped. The fourth race I didn't get a stitch in my side so kept on running and set the course record.
The next day I was sitting as usual 'non persona' in my homeroom seat when the Principle was reading the announcements for the day. He congratulated me on setting the course record in the race the day before. The whole rest of the class stared at me---"R_____ set a record?" Most everyone else in the school wondered, "Who the hell is R_____"? And just like that other jocks and 'kids of importance' started saying hello to me in the hallway. Absolutely nothing else about me changed but suddenly (I guess) I would get elected to the Student Council and Key Club. I doubt I ever went to any meetings and suspect my mother forced me to show up for the picture sessions. So there you have it, I am in the year book as a Student 'of importance', a sudden leader. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Genetics gave two girls a face that no one would talk to and genetics gave me the ability to run a long time better than anyone else in the school. If someone else had been given a better set of genes for running I would never have been on the Student Council or the Key Club or gotten such a big scholarship to college. I guess I chose the right parents or God directed the right sperm to the right egg.
Recently Congress passed a law that prevents any genetic testing knowledge to be used to not hire or to fire anyone from a job or stop them from getting health insurance coverage. Interesting. On the other hand genetics can be used to pass on to offspring large sums of money which they in no way earned. This is a strange world. In the late 1800's, in order to break up the Rockafeller, Vanderbuilt and other such family monstrous estates, real severe inheritance taxes were set up. Today, in our more elevated wisdom, all these inheritance taxes have been, or are being, eliminated. Thus, Bill Gates Junior can inherit wealth that is greater than the financial wealth of the bottom 25 countries on the earth without himself earning a penny of that money. All this wealth rapidly accumulating in the hands of a few has to come from someone. I wonder who the someone's are? Maybe those forced to work two jobs, those losing their pensions, those losing health insurance, etc. Crazy world.
But, as much a stranger as I am to those classmates of 50 years ago, they and I are all kindred spirits of times past; times which were simpler, times in which we at least felt safe, when jobs tended to be more secure, health care more limited but available to all, we had more overt prejudices but less hatred, and while daily life was more trite and boring, we all were forced to think more, to create our own amusement----while neighborhoods were bustling with interactions, Mother Nature had yet to start bearing down on us with a vengeance, and humor was I Love Lucy, Abott and Costello, and Jackie Gleason. Times are more advanced now, more complicated, and filled with mindless babble on cell phones, reality sought on TV shows, and electronic amusements pegged to the mindset of giddy-brained goofiness. I can financially afford to go back to this 50th reunion, I have the time to go back, but why pretend---you can never go home again.
Goodnight, ghosts of the past, wherever you are.
The return address on the envelope caught my attention: "1958 Class Reunion". And sure enough somehow someone found out my current address and sent me an invitation to our 50th High School Class reunion. Since I have never been to any previous reunion I wondered how did they ever find me? Nor have I had any communication with these former classmates. I have never been big on reunions, not high school, not college, not family---in fact it is never wise to bet I will attend most anything involving hours and hours of shallow chit-chat. It must be some sort of genetic deficiency on my part. I think if this affair were within driving distance for a day I might go, just to gawk. But it is over 900 miles away. There were 40 some odd classmates for whom they were still trying to find a current address. One was Charles Merritt. That is strange, he never graduated and a few years later was killed in a car crash. As a young teenager he and I were friends. I don't know why, we had nothing in common. Maybe that is why my dad would drive me over to the 'wrong' side of town to spend the day with Charlie---to prove you can be friends even if you have little in common. Others might suggest my dad was just taking me as far away as possible for the day---or even worse hope some young ruffian would beat the hell out of me. I doubt the latter.
Two names on the list stood out from the rest. No sense trying to locate these two, you can be sure the last thing they would do is attend this class reunion. They were two of the ugliest girls in the school and no one ever talked with them. No guy would ever talk with them for fear of endless teasing. Of course it was considered good fun to tease your friends about either one of them being their girlfriend. Even the other girls didn't talk to these ugly ducklings, I guess for fear their own reputation would suffer. Years later, with a bit more maturity, I looked back on all this with sympathetic horror. They must have hated to come to school. It must have been unbearable. HOWEVER, I noticed from the way their names were listed they both were married. It would be the best of justice if these were the happiest marriages in the class. The truth is, probably 9 out of 10 people are not really all that sexy, and never were. I am with the 9 out of ten and am blessed with a really effective birth control method-----------------------my personality.
I managed to dredge up my 1958 Class yearbook. I remembered a good number of them from the class pictures, but the truth is I lived out of town, was bused in, jumped on the school bus right after school, so my close friends pretty much lived in my neighborhood and all of them were either a year older or a year or two younger, so they were not in my class. As I paged through the yearbook I noticed I was nowhere in the class "Hall of Fame". Not a Leader in Industry; or Stars on the Dance floor; or MVP Champions; or Brain Power; or First in Popularity; or Fashion Leaders; or Masters of the Art; or Destined for Success; or Mr. and Mrs. America; or Court Jesters; or Oscar Winers. Nope. Nowhere to be found. Then I got to the Activities Section. There I was amazed to find myself in a picture of the Student Council. Student Council? I am pretty sure that would be an elective post. If I ever was on the Student Council it brings absolutely no recollection to my mind. Then there I was pictured in the Key Club, described as the 'leading boys' club of the school. Draw a blank about any participation in that organization either. Suddenly I remembered how I ended up in these two organizations. For the first three years of high school I was just there, no one bothered me, I didn't bother anyone, and I pretty much came and went unnoticed. You might say I hardly knew which end was up, quiet as a mouse in school albeit over-spirited in my rural neighborhood enclave.
The class I hated most was gym class. The only sports we played in my neighborhood were baseball, football, and hockey. That was it. Period. In gym class there was basketball, soccer, wrestling, and I forget the other stuff. I especially hated wrestling. It might have been one thing if you could just go at it till the other couldn't get up. But there were all these rules and techniques that were really foreign to me. So I would just play Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick and avoid letting my opponent grab onto me. The gym teacher, Mr. Bonelli, hated me. And vice-versa. In soccer if anyone kicked the ball to me I would just kick the ball as hard as I could way up into the air so it would go out of bounds. That way no one would kick the ball to me. In basketball I would just run up and down the court always looking off into the stands so no one would even think of throwing the damn ball to me. Bonelli would always scream, "Throw the Ball to R_____, throw the ball to R______. " But they couldn't because I would never look their way. Hell, I didn't even know how to dribble the ball, let alone make any basket. Bonelli hated me most because for most gym periods I would have a pass to my English teacher's room, Mrs. Swanson---who had a free period then. She and I would talk about everything under the sun. I think she liked me because I had a lot of off the wall ideas. Nothing much has changed there. At some point Bonelli complained to the principal and my pass privileges were revoked. I can still see the smirk on Bonelli's face.
Then a miracle happened. The track and crosscountry coach was in the gym watching guys run up and down the basketball court; as I darted to the locker rm at the end of the period he pulled me aside and told me I should come out for track and crosscountry. I was a junior at the time. I ignored him but finally agreed when he said he would drive me home after practice. Gas was probably 25 cents a gallon back then. I told him the only thing I was willing to run was the 100 yd dash. What the hell, I could out run anyone in my neighborhood. Well, there were 3 blk kids who could outrun me in the 100 yd dash. So I never even got into a meet. The coach then got me to agree to try crosscountry since the course was right up behind my house and ran through all these woods. By this time I was a senior. I practiced with the team and ran in the races, but for the first three races I got a stitch in my side and just stopped. The fourth race I didn't get a stitch in my side so kept on running and set the course record.
The next day I was sitting as usual 'non persona' in my homeroom seat when the Principle was reading the announcements for the day. He congratulated me on setting the course record in the race the day before. The whole rest of the class stared at me---"R_____ set a record?" Most everyone else in the school wondered, "Who the hell is R_____"? And just like that other jocks and 'kids of importance' started saying hello to me in the hallway. Absolutely nothing else about me changed but suddenly (I guess) I would get elected to the Student Council and Key Club. I doubt I ever went to any meetings and suspect my mother forced me to show up for the picture sessions. So there you have it, I am in the year book as a Student 'of importance', a sudden leader. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Genetics gave two girls a face that no one would talk to and genetics gave me the ability to run a long time better than anyone else in the school. If someone else had been given a better set of genes for running I would never have been on the Student Council or the Key Club or gotten such a big scholarship to college. I guess I chose the right parents or God directed the right sperm to the right egg.
Recently Congress passed a law that prevents any genetic testing knowledge to be used to not hire or to fire anyone from a job or stop them from getting health insurance coverage. Interesting. On the other hand genetics can be used to pass on to offspring large sums of money which they in no way earned. This is a strange world. In the late 1800's, in order to break up the Rockafeller, Vanderbuilt and other such family monstrous estates, real severe inheritance taxes were set up. Today, in our more elevated wisdom, all these inheritance taxes have been, or are being, eliminated. Thus, Bill Gates Junior can inherit wealth that is greater than the financial wealth of the bottom 25 countries on the earth without himself earning a penny of that money. All this wealth rapidly accumulating in the hands of a few has to come from someone. I wonder who the someone's are? Maybe those forced to work two jobs, those losing their pensions, those losing health insurance, etc. Crazy world.
But, as much a stranger as I am to those classmates of 50 years ago, they and I are all kindred spirits of times past; times which were simpler, times in which we at least felt safe, when jobs tended to be more secure, health care more limited but available to all, we had more overt prejudices but less hatred, and while daily life was more trite and boring, we all were forced to think more, to create our own amusement----while neighborhoods were bustling with interactions, Mother Nature had yet to start bearing down on us with a vengeance, and humor was I Love Lucy, Abott and Costello, and Jackie Gleason. Times are more advanced now, more complicated, and filled with mindless babble on cell phones, reality sought on TV shows, and electronic amusements pegged to the mindset of giddy-brained goofiness. I can financially afford to go back to this 50th reunion, I have the time to go back, but why pretend---you can never go home again.
Goodnight, ghosts of the past, wherever you are.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
RANKING TRAGEDY BY THE NUMBERS
Ranking Tragedy by the Numbers:
I have seen a lot of tragedy in my life. Notice I said SEEN. My own life has been remarkably free of real tragedy, mostly luck---not the kind of escape from tragedy I could remotely claim I earned. But teaching in an urban area exposed myself to good people living lives of quiet desperation. While my terminational years to date have been encapsulated with relatively good heath, financial security, pleasant interactions with others, and days filled with my own peculiar activities---including all this writing---there is always present this keen awareness of how much tragedy is part of so many lives. Yes, these pictures from life's other side sort of haunt me. My defense, not unlike the defense of others living the good life, is to keep these realities and responsibilities at bay. You know, the "well there is not much I can do about it" solution. In moments of stark honesty, I wonder about Christ's statement that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven". I wonder what constitutes being rich? Like others I probably hope that refers to those with more wealth than I.
Unnecessary death is certainly a tragedy. But how do we measure the tragedies of unnecessary deaths? My favorite cat recently died and that still makes me feel like choking up. But outside of me there is no one to mourn. When that bridge collapsed in Mn I felt real bad for those who died. I guess if 25 had died instead of 8 it would have been even a greater tragedy. And of course it is, but the truth is I felt even worse when my cat died. It is hard to be objective about tragedy, to give it any quantitative value. I suppose the more who die unnecessary deaths the greater the tragedy. And the greater the tragedy the greater should be the response to the tragedy. But really, there is little correlation between the quantity of the tragedy and the response to it. I have put together some numbers below which indicate the number who suffered from particular tragedies:
100 million, 57 million, 40 million, 10.6 million, 5 million, 4 million, 2.2 million, 2.1 million, 2 million, 700,000, 106,000, 38,000, 29,000, 15,000, 6000, 5200, 4000, 3,700, 2500, 1,836, 23.
One could reasonably postulate that the greatest priority and and greatest resources should be spent on those tragedies which involve the greatest number of people. At least if one were a Christian this would seem to be the case since according to Christian doctrine we are "all God's children". Of course!. But human nature doesn't work that way; thus most organized religions are based on delusionary rituals, emotional prejudices, and self serving egos. This pattern has not changed since the beginning of organized civilizations. But with this little logical game here let's assume that we SHOULD spend the most resources and give the highest priorities to those problems causing the most deaths. Here goes:
100 million---according to the U.N., in the near future, this is how many humans on the earth will die from starvation. No matter, I don't personally know anyone who is dying of starvation. If there are such people I could slip in a little prayer for them before I go into some food satiated sleep. And if this is a problem, I have never heard anyone bring this up in social conversations. The existence of the U.N. can be a real annoyance, always trying to bring into the forefront matters which just irritate the hell out of those of us who think they make it all up anyway.
57 million---these are the number of deaths worldwide from preventable diseases each year. Well, I have good health insurance and I did it the old fashion way----I earned it. The last thing this country or this world needs is socialized medicine. I got's mine, let them get's theirs. What is wrong with these people anyway? Don't they know how to take care of themselves? Dumb bastards.
40 million---number of people in the United States with no health insurance. Too bad, that's the way the free enterprise system works. If they would just show the initiative to get a good job they would have health insurance. The sooner more of them die the better off this country will be.
10.6 million---number of children who die from preventable disease. Well---okay, maybe kids can't be expected to know how to take care of themselves. At least they weren't aborted which really, really, really would infuriate me. Human life is really, really, really precious and I think any female, for whatever reason, who aborts a child is going to hell. I mean, this kind of thing really, really, really, infuriates God---at least the God in the religion that I inherited. The 10.6 million children that die from preventable diseases---Hey! that's life. And who wouldn't want to be pro life.
5 million---the number of deaths, in proportion to today's U.S. population, who would have died in the American Civil War. It is unfortunate that some Muslim country back then didn't invade our country and impose some sort of solution on us. Maybe Muslim countries don't have 'Freedom fighters', or generate a big enough weapons industry to be of such kind help.
4 million---the number of Iraq refugees with no homes after we invaded Iraq. Well, war is just that way, and those who supported the invasion of Iraq understand that-----like if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (or your home). The decent amongst us who support this kind of invasive behavior into sovereign countries understand that supporting our young soldiers is not in the form of not sending them into such a situation, but wailing over their deaths and cheering them on to continue the killing. After all, after you send a young person to some sort of needless death, a good heart felt cry or public tear or two with marching bands and large flags and wounded soldiers on display is good for one's soul. Nobody ever meant for them to be dead. They are heroes. Heroes? After you push somebody in front of a bus, they are then heroes? I don't think so. Whoever supported pushing them in front of the bus are guilty of something period. Or maybe it is just those leaders who convinced their citizens to support such a venture who are guilty of something. Placing blame is always so difficult. Will Rogers was probably right in that if you shot 10 people at random, probably 7 of them deserved to be shot for something. I wonder where all these Iraq refugees will go? I suggest putting them next door to those who supported this war and giving them their jobs. I mean fair is fair. Well, maybe just once in a while it ought to be. Life is rarely fair, these dumb homeless war refugees probably can't grasp the realities of life or appreciate the sacrifice of those Americans who support the Iraq War. Ok, ok--it is the next generation paying for the war, but if called upon no doubt my generation would sacrifice if asked to do so. Well, maybe. Frankly, I can't remember any war past my childhood in which the average American suffered in any way. This is really remarkable---war without pain, at least for the vast majority of us. Some sarcastic bastards even suggest that war keeps our economy in high gear.
2.2 million---These are the number of persons in prison in the U.S. That represents 23% of all the people in prison across the globe. The reason crime in this country is rising according to those in the know, is that we don't put people who break the law into prison long enough. And look, there is nothing heartless about this---we spend $30,000/yr to cage 'em up. The worst are the yng punks who sell recreational drugs to those who can afford them---they get locked up for mandatory 10 yr sentences. We call it tough love. If they can't get a job now, imagine their chances when they get out. Why do these slime balls even exist? It makes you almost wish their mother had aborted. And her mother before that. Maybe we could send these punks to fight in our invasions, make them be useful. Fortunately, the only reason we have room for them in jail is that we rarely jail white collar criminals. There is something not so compulsive about jailing white collar criminals, the finest and most successful amongst us. The behavior of white collar criminals is just more understandable, more close to home. Being a little over zealous about money is not exactly something any of the rest of us are guilty.
2.1 million---Vietnamese battle deaths during the Vietnamese War. Damn, we killed 2.1 million of these creepy midgets and they still won the war. Well, Bush wasn't the President then. And we weren't smart enough to have invented a voluntary army back then otherwise we might be still over there in the killing fields, driving little creepy midgets like that into extinction.
2 million----number of Jews killed by the Germans during World War II. This really gets confusing. If one is a holocaust then the other is not? Well fair is fair after all. The Jews got their own country after suffering such a loss and so did the Vietnamese. I wonder if the Vietnamese have a Holocaust Museum. Probably.
700,000---number of Iraqi dead in the current Iraq War. I guess Bush is right, we are winning the war, there are only 4000 Americans dead. I doubt we can get up to the 2.1 million mark here, I don't think the population of Iraq is big enough. Imagine if we ever left the country what kind of slaughter might ensue? On the other hand could it possibly get any worse? When will those dumb bastards, of a religion which supports such widespread killing, ever learn that 'Father (the U.S.) knows best'? I am sure Jesus would be right out front for us, leading the charge, and by now there would have been enough dead to have ended this war. By common sense definition, if we go to war God is on our side. Has there ever been an exception?
106,000---number of deaths in American hospitals from drugs properly prescribed and administered. This is kind of different from the rest of the figures since it is not clear what could be done to stop this. These same drugs save far more lives than are ever killed by their use. These, by definition are not avoidable deaths.
38,000---number of Vietnamese who died after the war from unexploded bombs and land mines. This use of violence to solve conflict is getting real efficient on both sides. And for those who support violence to resolve conflict be patient----soon this violence will likely come to your own neighborhood, if not from foreign terrorists then from angry rascals on the bottom of the economic totem pole. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice greed and to deceive.
29,000---number of people killed by firearms in the U.S. per year. In the whole Iraq War only 4000 deaths. I guess the whole Iraq War is safer by the numbers than our own streets. Should we flee to Iraq? This numbers game gets really complicated. Ah, not to worry, a large percentage of these firearm deaths occur in the ravaged areas of our War Against Drugs. These are, for the most part, expendable citizens, the shallow end of the gene pool, those not smart enough to have selected the right parents, the right schools, the right neighborhoods, etc. You make enough bad choices---you pay. Bang. You're dead. One less enemy. Of course with our love of guns today it is more like rat-a-tat--tat-tat-tat a whole bunch of you are dead.
15,000----deaths from recreational drug abuse. Wow, 106,000 die from properly prescribed drugs in hospitals and only 15,000 from recreational drug use. Maybe we need a war against Hospitals.
6000---number of American Soldiers committing or attempting to commit (not sure whether this figure includes both) suicide during or after their stint in Iraq. I mean, wow---more American soldiers have killed or tried to kill themselves than were killed by the Iraqis. Nice war. You just don't find that kind of self murder in legitimate wars of defense. Next time I see someone running around yelling 'support our soldiers' instead of yelling "bring the soldiers home" I will wonder why they get such a buzz out of soldiers being driven to commit suicide. Reminds one of the Christians being fed to the lions. Well, I choose to be religious here and say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they say." I guess good people get suckered into bad things.
5200----number of homicides per yr in the U.S. of young people between the ages if 15-25. Let me do the math here. In five years there have been 4000 young people killed in Iraq. In five years there have been 26,000 young people killed in this country by our own citizens. Maybe that is why young people volunteer to be sent to the killing fields----for safety. Also maybe to get a paycheck. My younger years were quite dull. I don't recall ever worrying for a minute that someone would shoot me in school or in a drive by shooting or some stray gang bullet might kill me. More of these American young people die in a year than people killed in the world trade center bombings. Maybe we should find out what cities these murderers of innocent people come from and bomb these cities into some kind of Iraqi style Stone Age. Seems we do have a good number of terrorists amongst us. But at least they are American terrorists. I mean family is family, give me a break.
4000----number of Americans killed in Iraq War. The 'surge' has slowed the rate a bit out in the killing fields so the point at which we reach the peace of eery desolation across Iraq will likely be postponed. 'Tis a pity, there are so many other places we need to invade for this or that reason, and the longer it takes us to pulverize one country the more our empire building gets derailed.
3700--the number of Afghanistans killed last year in the Afghanistan War. Look you slimy bastards, you can run around in those mountains, but our smart bombs will find you sooner or later. These dumb ass simplistic heathen hillbillies have been fighting foreign invaders for centuries, and each time one of them gets an American missile up their ass an appropriate revenge for one of the twin tower victims has been achieved. I kind of wish Jesus would just sort of put a missile up their ass for us, this mountain guerilla warfare is most inconvenient. I mean, if we are fighting this war in God's name why doesn't He help in the slaughter? Maybe God is some kind of peace-nik wimp.
2500---number of people killed in the Twin Towers. I am not good at numbers but maybe we have killed enough innocent people to have avenged the death of these people. I sure pray violence doesn't beget violence or the repercussions for all our 'freedom fighter' killings is going to get out of control. Going to? Get ready to hide.
1836--number of dead from the New Orleans flood. Wow again. That's less than half the young people killed in our country every year. Well, if these groups will just hang in there until we have left the killing fields we will find the money to make things better for New Orleans and the urban/rural ghettoes across our land. No doubt it will be a short wait.
23---number of people shot in one day recently in Chicago. Well, boys will be boys. They can't spend all their time playing violent video games, rap music, waiting to be deployed to the killing fields, and being stirred by Bush's 'you can run but you can't hide' or the even more stirring, "Dead or alive" message to perceived enemies---I mean at some point they feel a need for some direct involvement in this violence to solve conflict. If I weren't such an indecisive person I could rat-a-tat-tat on a select few myself. But there are so many to choose from.
I will not attempt to rank the above senseless deaths according to the amount of money and effort extended to prevent these unnecessary deaths. This would take more effort and time than I am willing to spend. Still, I think any reasonable person would agree that some unnecessary deaths we tolerate and others we do not. We are not, after all is said and done, "all God's children". So much of what we pretend to be our ethics, morals, religion----whatever the term chosen-----is really an illusion. My sarcasm aside, there is no halo around my head either. I used to tell students, "I am not prejudice, I hate everyone." As I have gotten older I see more clearly the injustices and cruel absurdities prevalent across the globe. Of course my age is the most useful excuse for non engagement in any of these matters. I kind of just hope the bubble on the good life experienced by so many of us doesn't break for a good 15 years. And I wonder, if there is a heaven of some sort, will all these people who suffered unnecessary deaths be ahead of me? Maybe when I get to the the entrance way to Heaven the entrance will be the eye of a needle and myself a camel. Maybe some clamoring to get in will be screaming how good they were to their own family but find out there is something called 'my brother's keeper' involving all humanity. On matters like this I just don't really know what to think. Maybe all of us as individuals, in the total scheme of things, don't really matter at all. Ethics has always been the toughest aspect of life for me to comprehend. When all is said and done, even if so little is really done, I see the Golden Rule as the best companion for an ethical life. For every action and belief one needs see if it meets the Golden Rule. That is perhaps the best anyone can do. It is universal, it is fair, it is comprehensible, and it cuts through all the ceremonial and pompous bullshit of religious sectarianism.
I have seen a lot of tragedy in my life. Notice I said SEEN. My own life has been remarkably free of real tragedy, mostly luck---not the kind of escape from tragedy I could remotely claim I earned. But teaching in an urban area exposed myself to good people living lives of quiet desperation. While my terminational years to date have been encapsulated with relatively good heath, financial security, pleasant interactions with others, and days filled with my own peculiar activities---including all this writing---there is always present this keen awareness of how much tragedy is part of so many lives. Yes, these pictures from life's other side sort of haunt me. My defense, not unlike the defense of others living the good life, is to keep these realities and responsibilities at bay. You know, the "well there is not much I can do about it" solution. In moments of stark honesty, I wonder about Christ's statement that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven". I wonder what constitutes being rich? Like others I probably hope that refers to those with more wealth than I.
Unnecessary death is certainly a tragedy. But how do we measure the tragedies of unnecessary deaths? My favorite cat recently died and that still makes me feel like choking up. But outside of me there is no one to mourn. When that bridge collapsed in Mn I felt real bad for those who died. I guess if 25 had died instead of 8 it would have been even a greater tragedy. And of course it is, but the truth is I felt even worse when my cat died. It is hard to be objective about tragedy, to give it any quantitative value. I suppose the more who die unnecessary deaths the greater the tragedy. And the greater the tragedy the greater should be the response to the tragedy. But really, there is little correlation between the quantity of the tragedy and the response to it. I have put together some numbers below which indicate the number who suffered from particular tragedies:
100 million, 57 million, 40 million, 10.6 million, 5 million, 4 million, 2.2 million, 2.1 million, 2 million, 700,000, 106,000, 38,000, 29,000, 15,000, 6000, 5200, 4000, 3,700, 2500, 1,836, 23.
One could reasonably postulate that the greatest priority and and greatest resources should be spent on those tragedies which involve the greatest number of people. At least if one were a Christian this would seem to be the case since according to Christian doctrine we are "all God's children". Of course!. But human nature doesn't work that way; thus most organized religions are based on delusionary rituals, emotional prejudices, and self serving egos. This pattern has not changed since the beginning of organized civilizations. But with this little logical game here let's assume that we SHOULD spend the most resources and give the highest priorities to those problems causing the most deaths. Here goes:
100 million---according to the U.N., in the near future, this is how many humans on the earth will die from starvation. No matter, I don't personally know anyone who is dying of starvation. If there are such people I could slip in a little prayer for them before I go into some food satiated sleep. And if this is a problem, I have never heard anyone bring this up in social conversations. The existence of the U.N. can be a real annoyance, always trying to bring into the forefront matters which just irritate the hell out of those of us who think they make it all up anyway.
57 million---these are the number of deaths worldwide from preventable diseases each year. Well, I have good health insurance and I did it the old fashion way----I earned it. The last thing this country or this world needs is socialized medicine. I got's mine, let them get's theirs. What is wrong with these people anyway? Don't they know how to take care of themselves? Dumb bastards.
40 million---number of people in the United States with no health insurance. Too bad, that's the way the free enterprise system works. If they would just show the initiative to get a good job they would have health insurance. The sooner more of them die the better off this country will be.
10.6 million---number of children who die from preventable disease. Well---okay, maybe kids can't be expected to know how to take care of themselves. At least they weren't aborted which really, really, really would infuriate me. Human life is really, really, really precious and I think any female, for whatever reason, who aborts a child is going to hell. I mean, this kind of thing really, really, really, infuriates God---at least the God in the religion that I inherited. The 10.6 million children that die from preventable diseases---Hey! that's life. And who wouldn't want to be pro life.
5 million---the number of deaths, in proportion to today's U.S. population, who would have died in the American Civil War. It is unfortunate that some Muslim country back then didn't invade our country and impose some sort of solution on us. Maybe Muslim countries don't have 'Freedom fighters', or generate a big enough weapons industry to be of such kind help.
4 million---the number of Iraq refugees with no homes after we invaded Iraq. Well, war is just that way, and those who supported the invasion of Iraq understand that-----like if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (or your home). The decent amongst us who support this kind of invasive behavior into sovereign countries understand that supporting our young soldiers is not in the form of not sending them into such a situation, but wailing over their deaths and cheering them on to continue the killing. After all, after you send a young person to some sort of needless death, a good heart felt cry or public tear or two with marching bands and large flags and wounded soldiers on display is good for one's soul. Nobody ever meant for them to be dead. They are heroes. Heroes? After you push somebody in front of a bus, they are then heroes? I don't think so. Whoever supported pushing them in front of the bus are guilty of something period. Or maybe it is just those leaders who convinced their citizens to support such a venture who are guilty of something. Placing blame is always so difficult. Will Rogers was probably right in that if you shot 10 people at random, probably 7 of them deserved to be shot for something. I wonder where all these Iraq refugees will go? I suggest putting them next door to those who supported this war and giving them their jobs. I mean fair is fair. Well, maybe just once in a while it ought to be. Life is rarely fair, these dumb homeless war refugees probably can't grasp the realities of life or appreciate the sacrifice of those Americans who support the Iraq War. Ok, ok--it is the next generation paying for the war, but if called upon no doubt my generation would sacrifice if asked to do so. Well, maybe. Frankly, I can't remember any war past my childhood in which the average American suffered in any way. This is really remarkable---war without pain, at least for the vast majority of us. Some sarcastic bastards even suggest that war keeps our economy in high gear.
2.2 million---These are the number of persons in prison in the U.S. That represents 23% of all the people in prison across the globe. The reason crime in this country is rising according to those in the know, is that we don't put people who break the law into prison long enough. And look, there is nothing heartless about this---we spend $30,000/yr to cage 'em up. The worst are the yng punks who sell recreational drugs to those who can afford them---they get locked up for mandatory 10 yr sentences. We call it tough love. If they can't get a job now, imagine their chances when they get out. Why do these slime balls even exist? It makes you almost wish their mother had aborted. And her mother before that. Maybe we could send these punks to fight in our invasions, make them be useful. Fortunately, the only reason we have room for them in jail is that we rarely jail white collar criminals. There is something not so compulsive about jailing white collar criminals, the finest and most successful amongst us. The behavior of white collar criminals is just more understandable, more close to home. Being a little over zealous about money is not exactly something any of the rest of us are guilty.
2.1 million---Vietnamese battle deaths during the Vietnamese War. Damn, we killed 2.1 million of these creepy midgets and they still won the war. Well, Bush wasn't the President then. And we weren't smart enough to have invented a voluntary army back then otherwise we might be still over there in the killing fields, driving little creepy midgets like that into extinction.
2 million----number of Jews killed by the Germans during World War II. This really gets confusing. If one is a holocaust then the other is not? Well fair is fair after all. The Jews got their own country after suffering such a loss and so did the Vietnamese. I wonder if the Vietnamese have a Holocaust Museum. Probably.
700,000---number of Iraqi dead in the current Iraq War. I guess Bush is right, we are winning the war, there are only 4000 Americans dead. I doubt we can get up to the 2.1 million mark here, I don't think the population of Iraq is big enough. Imagine if we ever left the country what kind of slaughter might ensue? On the other hand could it possibly get any worse? When will those dumb bastards, of a religion which supports such widespread killing, ever learn that 'Father (the U.S.) knows best'? I am sure Jesus would be right out front for us, leading the charge, and by now there would have been enough dead to have ended this war. By common sense definition, if we go to war God is on our side. Has there ever been an exception?
106,000---number of deaths in American hospitals from drugs properly prescribed and administered. This is kind of different from the rest of the figures since it is not clear what could be done to stop this. These same drugs save far more lives than are ever killed by their use. These, by definition are not avoidable deaths.
38,000---number of Vietnamese who died after the war from unexploded bombs and land mines. This use of violence to solve conflict is getting real efficient on both sides. And for those who support violence to resolve conflict be patient----soon this violence will likely come to your own neighborhood, if not from foreign terrorists then from angry rascals on the bottom of the economic totem pole. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice greed and to deceive.
29,000---number of people killed by firearms in the U.S. per year. In the whole Iraq War only 4000 deaths. I guess the whole Iraq War is safer by the numbers than our own streets. Should we flee to Iraq? This numbers game gets really complicated. Ah, not to worry, a large percentage of these firearm deaths occur in the ravaged areas of our War Against Drugs. These are, for the most part, expendable citizens, the shallow end of the gene pool, those not smart enough to have selected the right parents, the right schools, the right neighborhoods, etc. You make enough bad choices---you pay. Bang. You're dead. One less enemy. Of course with our love of guns today it is more like rat-a-tat--tat-tat-tat a whole bunch of you are dead.
15,000----deaths from recreational drug abuse. Wow, 106,000 die from properly prescribed drugs in hospitals and only 15,000 from recreational drug use. Maybe we need a war against Hospitals.
6000---number of American Soldiers committing or attempting to commit (not sure whether this figure includes both) suicide during or after their stint in Iraq. I mean, wow---more American soldiers have killed or tried to kill themselves than were killed by the Iraqis. Nice war. You just don't find that kind of self murder in legitimate wars of defense. Next time I see someone running around yelling 'support our soldiers' instead of yelling "bring the soldiers home" I will wonder why they get such a buzz out of soldiers being driven to commit suicide. Reminds one of the Christians being fed to the lions. Well, I choose to be religious here and say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they say." I guess good people get suckered into bad things.
5200----number of homicides per yr in the U.S. of young people between the ages if 15-25. Let me do the math here. In five years there have been 4000 young people killed in Iraq. In five years there have been 26,000 young people killed in this country by our own citizens. Maybe that is why young people volunteer to be sent to the killing fields----for safety. Also maybe to get a paycheck. My younger years were quite dull. I don't recall ever worrying for a minute that someone would shoot me in school or in a drive by shooting or some stray gang bullet might kill me. More of these American young people die in a year than people killed in the world trade center bombings. Maybe we should find out what cities these murderers of innocent people come from and bomb these cities into some kind of Iraqi style Stone Age. Seems we do have a good number of terrorists amongst us. But at least they are American terrorists. I mean family is family, give me a break.
4000----number of Americans killed in Iraq War. The 'surge' has slowed the rate a bit out in the killing fields so the point at which we reach the peace of eery desolation across Iraq will likely be postponed. 'Tis a pity, there are so many other places we need to invade for this or that reason, and the longer it takes us to pulverize one country the more our empire building gets derailed.
3700--the number of Afghanistans killed last year in the Afghanistan War. Look you slimy bastards, you can run around in those mountains, but our smart bombs will find you sooner or later. These dumb ass simplistic heathen hillbillies have been fighting foreign invaders for centuries, and each time one of them gets an American missile up their ass an appropriate revenge for one of the twin tower victims has been achieved. I kind of wish Jesus would just sort of put a missile up their ass for us, this mountain guerilla warfare is most inconvenient. I mean, if we are fighting this war in God's name why doesn't He help in the slaughter? Maybe God is some kind of peace-nik wimp.
2500---number of people killed in the Twin Towers. I am not good at numbers but maybe we have killed enough innocent people to have avenged the death of these people. I sure pray violence doesn't beget violence or the repercussions for all our 'freedom fighter' killings is going to get out of control. Going to? Get ready to hide.
1836--number of dead from the New Orleans flood. Wow again. That's less than half the young people killed in our country every year. Well, if these groups will just hang in there until we have left the killing fields we will find the money to make things better for New Orleans and the urban/rural ghettoes across our land. No doubt it will be a short wait.
23---number of people shot in one day recently in Chicago. Well, boys will be boys. They can't spend all their time playing violent video games, rap music, waiting to be deployed to the killing fields, and being stirred by Bush's 'you can run but you can't hide' or the even more stirring, "Dead or alive" message to perceived enemies---I mean at some point they feel a need for some direct involvement in this violence to solve conflict. If I weren't such an indecisive person I could rat-a-tat-tat on a select few myself. But there are so many to choose from.
I will not attempt to rank the above senseless deaths according to the amount of money and effort extended to prevent these unnecessary deaths. This would take more effort and time than I am willing to spend. Still, I think any reasonable person would agree that some unnecessary deaths we tolerate and others we do not. We are not, after all is said and done, "all God's children". So much of what we pretend to be our ethics, morals, religion----whatever the term chosen-----is really an illusion. My sarcasm aside, there is no halo around my head either. I used to tell students, "I am not prejudice, I hate everyone." As I have gotten older I see more clearly the injustices and cruel absurdities prevalent across the globe. Of course my age is the most useful excuse for non engagement in any of these matters. I kind of just hope the bubble on the good life experienced by so many of us doesn't break for a good 15 years. And I wonder, if there is a heaven of some sort, will all these people who suffered unnecessary deaths be ahead of me? Maybe when I get to the the entrance way to Heaven the entrance will be the eye of a needle and myself a camel. Maybe some clamoring to get in will be screaming how good they were to their own family but find out there is something called 'my brother's keeper' involving all humanity. On matters like this I just don't really know what to think. Maybe all of us as individuals, in the total scheme of things, don't really matter at all. Ethics has always been the toughest aspect of life for me to comprehend. When all is said and done, even if so little is really done, I see the Golden Rule as the best companion for an ethical life. For every action and belief one needs see if it meets the Golden Rule. That is perhaps the best anyone can do. It is universal, it is fair, it is comprehensible, and it cuts through all the ceremonial and pompous bullshit of religious sectarianism.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)