These observations are, for the most part, not original on my part. They are concepts stolen from others via reading mostly, and changed, adapted, and worded so as to fit my peculiar leanings at this point in time. It is hard to have original thoughts about life, and the best we can do is to fit pieces together so as to have one's own unique outlook on life. Some of the applications are purely my own, some additions have been made, some concepts expanded, some altered a lot, some just abbreviated, maybe some butchered up. But they all help me put my own personal puzzle together.
Observations II
Our planet has essentially two societies. One is the world of Presidents, Chancellors, Generals, Religious Dignitaries, Ambassadors, Corporate Executives, Lawyers, Estate Barons, Country Club Members, etc. The other less visible world, much larger and growing much larger, is a repressed reservoir of revolution and terrorism. No one knows exactly what those in this potentially explosive society think, feel, or are how close to chaotic eruption.
Most of the insurgents, rebels, terrorists across the globe belong to oppressed economic, religious, or ethnic groups. That hardly means they fight for freedom and justice. Most are fighting for power---for revenge---for the right to be the oppressors.
I always fight for humanity. It is those around me who are so hard to love. Smile.
Those who reason least are often the dregs of society. This observation cuts across economic, religious, and ethnic lines.
By being born you have committed an act which carries a mandatory sentence of capital punishment. Everybody gets to say goodnight.
What is scariest about religion is that, given the right environment, most anyone can be made to believe in anything.
How can anyone expect third world nations, seeped in poverty, hungry, imbedded with fear and violence, to be anything but cruel, desperate, and angry?
The laws of nature were created by God to improve life progressively over millions of years. The dogmas of religion purport to bring salvation to the few and damnation to the many. The two are simply not compatible.
Rearranging your prejudices is not progress.
Typically, rigid religious conservatives cut off reasoned discussion about their beliefs with a curt: "I don't want to talk about it". Thus, they are sure of their beliefs, all wrapped in a cocoon of self imposed ignorance.
Stupid honesty is worthless; knowledge without honesty is dangerous.
The greatest and most important problems of life are correctable only by the laws of evolution. Mother Nature always bats last. Humans concoct, fiddle, battle, and innovate but cannot make major alterations in evolutionary progress because, as part of a much more vast process, humans cannot see the forest for the sake of the trees. All of us are pawns in the process, limited to improving our own peculiar lot in this process.
Humans claim they are impressing God with ornate temples of worship, but these temples are really built to impress other humans and themselves.
Perhaps everyone who believes in the infallibility of the Pope and views the Pope as mediator between God and man should have to stand on a stage, read some of the absurd words Popes have uttered; read aloud all the crimes of every sort which have been committed by Popes and then bow before busts of all the Popes and proclaim to all, "These are God's mediators for my beliefs".
Without God's created process one might conclude God is unable to prevent suffering and thus not omnipotent. If God intervenes with His own created laws of evolution to help some and not others then he is not merciful and admits His own created laws of life are not adequate to ensure progressive evolution of life. Some seem to feel if we will just pray to God, God will then be merciful, that WE control God's mercifulness via prayer. Interesting, but kind of a stretch.
Religious dogma tends to make so many of life's issues black and white. The sooner more worshippers realize the world, according to God's evolutionary process, is a continuum, the sooner the human species will be able to reach a legitimate ethical state.
Famine seems to be the last and most dire resource of Nature to control overpopulation. Tis' sad human reason has not evolved enough to generate responsible reproduction. We know when deer populations need to be culled, but are remarkably unable to enforce responsible reproduction in ourselves.
Education is the major tool which enables those with little to acquire more. Where academic talent is limited, a good life depends on the willingness of those in the House of Have's to share with those in the House of the Have-Nots. Sharing is often not a human strength.
Acquaintances are often more palatable to our disposition than good friends.
Is democracy in this age of information overload reduced to the persuasive power of slogans invented by slick ass self serving managers of politicians?
To fool all of the people, by definition, starts with yourself.
Winning at anything combines self industry and talent with the stupidity of others.
Here's my choice for an award winning 'Onward Christian Soldiers' quotation: "The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its ends when rebels against it disturb the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics who cannot be restrained by any other penalty from continuing to disturb ecclesiastical order." Pope Leo XIII. Seems like words right out of Christ's mouth. Hardly, but maybe out of the mouth of a Jerry Faulwell, Pat Robertson, Bin Ladin, etc.
A problem with democracy is that liberty produces wealth and wealth then enslaves the economic class upon which wealth depends until liberty to the poor means little more than nothing left to lose.
Fear of death creates religions.
He who is content with little has more real treasure than he for whom enough is never enough.
The highest level of slap stick comedy are politicians in one of their periodic fits of morality.
It is so natural for humans to be intolerant about matters they really care about. Diversity of most shades goes against the grain of our gut, of how we want the world to be, or at the very least, seem. Appreciation of diversity is one of the most admirable achievements of the human mind.
A truth believed simply because it is a part of our culture, inherited religion, or authority indoctrination is seldom the kind of truth which genuinely drives your life. These truths are believed mostly when it is convenient. When not convenient, they are ignored. Just ask most members of any religion.
It is our own mind which makes our Heaven or our Hell OR one out of the other.
Perhaps sexual virtuosity is merely a reflection of opportunity and peculiar taste. If I am not into bestiality most likely it has more to do with with taste. If I am not sexually promiscuous it may in large part have to do with lack of opportunity. Maybe the Government could hire young beautiful people to test every one of us. Tax those who succumb. Solve our major deficit.
Each day, especially during retirement, is best spent in search for truth and understanding, for the beauty of nature, and to be kind to those with needs. Contentment will be the reward.
I am reluctant to believe in a God Who is vindictive, or requires begging (praying) to be kind, merciful, or just. Nor do I believe in a God Who, if He wanted to communicate with the human species, would do so via human written dogmas made ages ago, available through inheritance to select tribes of humans. Nor do I see any evidence that humans are a favored species, made in the image of God. Is the frog favored over the amoeba because the frog is a more complex form of life? It just seems any special interest God has toward any specific humans is over-exaggerated. I suppose there might be exceptions, but the overriding evidence is that all living creatures are governed by God's created laws of evolution. Seems fair enough to me---without God's evolutionary process I wouldn't exist. I do exist, I am thankful for it, and try to make the best of it. That's about the all of it for me. For God's Will to be done does not require my consent.
Violence seems most often to rise, not out of excess power, but precisely out of feelings of powerlessness.
Marriage seems to be built upon standards which few can meet. I think most couples do the best they can, with the best of intentions, in a marriage God did not put together, but reality ends up trumping illusion. An honest effort is not failure.
Two jobs, three cars, a huge mansion, piles of gadgets, acquired power, titles, and control over others requires a life spent with an inordinate amount of stress and effort, whose reward in the end is a lengthy obituary. It may be better to stop and smell the flowers.
To live is to CHANGE and to CHANGE after reasoned analysis is to become a more perfect person. Those who cannot CHANGE are destined to suffer the bitterness of their creation----a pot of rancid stew.
Modern conflicts are rapidly becoming conflicts without winners.
Evolution will conquer wars just as evolution has conquered slavery, discrimination against women, human sacrifices, head hunting, and cannibalism. The questions about better life on earth are not IF but WHEN. We need to remember that God's evolutionary process is never ending. The process is full of personal tragedies and massive catastrophes, but the progress over time is ever upward.
One of Lincoln's stories illustrated the following observation: Many of those with none of the common vices such as smoking, drinking, promiscuity, gambling, etc. often appear to have shallow virtues also. They seem to have little temptation to be human. Cold, critical, and pious comes to mind.
The notion that religion cannot be based on reason, that college degrees are required to preach morality, doesn't fit the subject matter. The Golden Rule----who needs to go to college to understand it?
If you want to be proud and happy and feel fulfilled doing evil----cloak it in religious duty and 'Away You Go' Jackie Gleason fashion.
I guess one, coupled with God's approval, make a majority. But it little matters if you are being burned at the stake while the votes are being counted.
Important truths often survive, not because the opponents give in, but because a new generation is capable of recognizing the truth in question.
Amusement and thinking are distinctly different forms of mental activity and lead to different ends.
Diversity is the engine which drives God's created evolutionary process. To stifle diversity is to battle against evolutionary progress.
I don't know if miracles occur or what defines a miracle, but they seem to occur in certain eras and in certain countries which believe in them and in the presence of those predisposed to believe in them.
If we draw from the same pie and if I take too much it means others get too little. When 1-3% of the people own 90% of the wealth the 1-3% probably are taking too much.
Paying less than a living wage is a wretched sin and those who say it is good for the economy or even for these employees (better than no job at all) should be forced to be a part of that good.
When you separate the spirit from the flesh, perhaps all you get are convents and brothels.
Wouldn't it have been great if Bush/Cheney had announced a War and nobody came?
The abortion debate has long since become a moot and inane debate. Just flip a coin and pass the law of the winner. Any law is irrelevant. Proper pills can induce a safe abortion and any law to make the pill illegal will be about as effective as the laws of alcohol prohibition, marijuana use, condom use, etc.
Buddhism seems to be the only religion never to kill on a grand scale. While Buddhism works to rid a soul from conflict, Christians and Muslims seek to purge conflict with fire and brimstone.
To call war and soldiering the apex of courage and virtue (except when defending your homeland) is like calling whoring the apex of love.
Science gives facts, feelings give us meaning.
People are not becoming less religious. More people are rejecting the absolute authority of man written dogmas penned centuries ago. Instead, more people use these and other sources to formulate reasonable beliefs about the nature of their ethical obligations. It is not any belief in God which has declined but a belief in God as dictated by self appointed prophets of ancient years. God is alive, well, and yes His Will, via evolution, continues to be done. Those robed and titled religious prelates who have the illusion God has appointed them Site Managers for the Evolutionary Process are just fools of a peculiar ilk.
The truth of an opinion cannot be measured by how many believe it.
If humans evolve to the point where they can measure happiness, not in the level of misery of their enemies, but in the happiness of the greatest number, than peace will reign and conflict minimized.
In truth, a person of true compassion, despite acquired knowledge, a comfortable secure lifestyle, and good health can never lose a melancholic sadness for the greater world of loneliness, poverty, and pain that so makes a mockery of what human life should be.
Of all emotions, hate is the most destructive to ourselves as well as the targets of our hate. The horrific genocides across the globe seem unreal---no civilized gang of any ilk should be capable of such senseless slaughter---not in Germany, not in Darfur, not in Rwanda, not in Somalia, not in Ireland, not in Vietnam.
I suspect most people are capable of deep thought if they could but discipline themselves to find the time and find the data needed to fuel deep thought.
We may try, but cannot tear out a single page from our life. And why bother? The whole book has an expiration date.
The titled, affluent of society wage wars; it is the poor, for the most part, who DIE and are REWARDED by patriotic parades and music at half time of a football game. If the same patriotic parade and music were held at a separate time in the same stadium a handful of people would attend. This staged charade is simply DISINGENUOUS. These people in the stands and watching on TV turned are turned in to watch football. Wars are not entertainment and to push them as such seems INAPPROPRIATE.
To faith based believers of TRUTH, victory will be felt only when the heretics have been killed, jailed, or silenced. TRUTHS not based on reason cannot be assuaged in the mind of a faith based believer any other way.
Man's advantage over animals is REASON. An animal's advantage over man is not to understand the concept of death.
To be aloof or social varies depending on the circumstances. Which, for any individual, is chosen, is the least grievous of the two.
We all, in varying degrees, grasp at straws. Anecdotal 'science' cannot be dismissed as always irrelevant, since like in all lotteries, there are some winners. Medical science uses proven technology to cure diseases and conditions. Alternate 'anecdotal science' focuses on improved mental health which helps sustain a healthy life. People need to be in the right frame of mind to be successful with preventive medicine. To the extent unproven anecdotal exercises and supplements improve anyone's mindset they are useful.
Death is a long protracted process. Part of us dies with every passing of a person close to us until finally, if we live long enough, there is little left of us to die.
With terrorism the prevailing methodology of warfare, is victory distinguishable from defeat?
Ireland, Israel-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, our Drug War, the Abortion War---do these conflicts ever end? It is more an endless shift of which side, at any point in time, are committing the terrorism.
If one believes living well is the good, not the act of living itself, then one chooses to live as long as they should, not as long as they can. LIKE: "I am 96 yrs old!!!!!" "Really.....AND is there anything else about your present life to brag about?"
To consume happiness or wealth without producing a similar effort to promote happiness and wealth in others seems unethical.
True love probably extends past logic and reason. It is maybe the grand daddy of positive emotional experiences. IRONICALLY, once in that emotional state, marriage follows. Ironically is the right word since emotional states are not always sustainable.
Let's see how it often works: The rich accumulate wealth off the backs of the poor. The government staves off insurrection with food, blankets, etc. while religion promises the poor a good life after death when all the suffering will be alleviated. Those feeling the most desperation and who send themselves prematurely to 'Heaven' and take their perceived persecutors with them, are labeled deranged lunatics. The poor who remain, on average, will die an earlier death than the affluent, and thus get rewarded with heaven sooner. OK, I guess I understand, at least chronologically.
Personal contentment matters in matters of health. The immune system works best in a physiological state absent the stresses extraneous to actual microbial antigens. When microbial antigens are not the source of stress, the immune system is like a fire company trying to put out a fire without a specific address.
Martin Luther King's 'Dream" was noble for the context of his time. Today, with a global economy, global environmental threats, global resources dwindling, global overpopulation---with all this, patriotism is obsolete and like a cancer to humanity. All humanity is now in the same boat, like it or not, and will soon sink into chaos; a chaos which neither Obama, the Pope, an Ayatollah, or any dictator can save humanity from, and the terrorism which follows. Limbaugh may bellow away, Sarah Palin may dumb it all down to cliches, but sadly, it will be the terrorists best fitted to prevail.
When we believe love is forever, dogmas are valid forever, war is the answer to conflict, trickle down will raise up the poor, prayer is the answer to human salvation, friendships are forever, natural resources are inexhaustible, freedom to reproduce is unlimited, etc-----when we believe wishful generalities like these are solutions, the battle is lost and all these problems left to be solved by God's laws of evolution. Evolutionary corrections are never pretty.
When a petty thief robs at gunpoint we take away his gun. When corporations rob the same populace, and in a grander more costlier scale, the government does little, defending the robbery as 'free enterprise'. Reasonable profits from free enterprise are healthy; unlimited profits, no matter the process, remove too much wealth from the many to the hands of the few.
Many laws are like cobwebs. The weak get trapped, the strong break right through. Of course, in the interests of justice, it is against the law for the rich as well as the poor to beg in the streets or sleep under bridges.
Tyranny is pervasive. It is a matter of degree. There is the tyranny of the few over the many (dictatorships), or the tyranny of the majority over a minority. Majority rule maximizes freedom but creates a tyranny of it's own for the few.
Nations that tolerate the present, despise the future, and find satisfaction only in past glories, are dying.
Is 'God Bless America' meant to be a fact, a demand, or a plea? It also reeks of some sort of all or none proposition, a 'my country, right or wrong' mentality. Is there any country not infested with this same self serving demand, fact, or plea to God?
The affirmation of the origin and function of religious leaders is best understood from Pope Stephen V and Pope Stephen I: "The Popes, like Jesus, are conceived by their mothers through the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. All Popes are a certain species of mini-Gods, for the purpose of being able to conduct the functions of mediator between God and mankind. All powers in Heaven, as well as on earth, are given to them". "Let them (the people) innovate in nothing, but keep the tradition". As a kid I always wondered why a religious leader was the final word on everything. I still do.
The strictest justice is NOT ALWAYS the BEST JUSTICE and therefore can become an INJUSTICE.
The most agreeable, least grievous, and most thought provoking companion is solitude.
Some of us can remember war as a patriotic defense of one country being invaded by a government army of another country. The World Wars, Korea, Kuwait, Balkans/Serbia are examples. Somehow in the last decades it all got drastically changed. With minor exceptions, the only military invasion into other countries has been American military forces. America is now the only country with military bases spread across the globe. It is no longer a patriotic venture where citizens from all walks of life defend themselves, or another country, from invasion, these ventures are now all volunteer mercenary armies in it for adventure, economic reasons, or blind patriotic/religious beliefs that might makes right. For too many, it is a chance to travel, meet new people and kill them. Cast in the worst light, which I am now doing here, the aim of these wars is murder. The methods of these wars include spying, bombings, terrorizing communities, torture, and demolishing a country's infrastructure. These modern invasions last for years, creating in the invaded country the absence of freedom, widespread poverty, idleness, debauchery, drunkenness, ignorance via closed or inoperative schools, a mindset of tit for tat with all the cruelty that comes with it, and ever growing masses of people with nothing left to lose, including the soldiers bunkered down in 'green zones' waiting for themselves or their buddies be at the wrong place at the wrong time for hidden home-made bombs. There are no battlefield army of soldiers fighting decisive battles. The only identifiable enemy is the American soldier in uniform. It is no wonder that American soldiers often return home with an emotional dead zone for any compassion for others, traumatized by a dangerous situation over which they have little control and for which it is luck more than any bravery or skill which determines their survival. We all know violence begets violence but pretend our soldiers are immune. We also know many of those who volunteer for these kind of ventures are violence prone to begin with. These volunteer soldiers are not heroes, but victims. These wars turn violence into a sport. Tough? Yes. Violent? Yes. Angry? Yes. Victims? Yes. Heroes? Hardly. How can one be a hero in immoral wars? Those who join a mafia or gang or vigilante group are not heroes. Victims, yes; heroes no.
To be an honest thinker one must use his/her minds without prejudice, and be open minded about matters that clash with prior customs, privileges, or beliefs. When any of this is absent when we think, any discussion is useless.
Nations who give the least to the people and the most to military adventures implode in the long run. The practice is not sustainable.
If one wants to always be in love, perhaps marriage is not for him/her. Yet musical beds create more of a mindless obsession than any real satisfaction. Addictions of any sort lead to no promised land.
If we live different lives, each hidden from the others, then we will die more deaths than one. Of course we all do live different lives and when each chapter closes, a part of us dies.
There is something about a morality based on disdain for perceived sinners which carries with it the dark baggage of heartlessness, revengefulness, vindictiveness, tunnel visioned morality, and a disingenuous sense of humanity. What is emitted from these people is hate and intolerance.
The kind of God we worship tells us more about ourselves than God.
Here is one of my favorite poems:
"You can't go back home to your family
to a young man's dream of fame and glory
to the country cottage away from strife and conflict
to the Father you have lost
to the old forms and systems of things which seemed
everlasting but are changing all the time."
Thomas Wolfe
I couple this with another favorite:
"I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth;
but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity."
William Worsworth
To want no more than we need is to be moral in the purest sense; for it leaves something for others. The less we want more than we need---the more contented we become, like it creates a heaven on earth.
We need learn not to fear death. Then we have no reason to fear our enemies; the worst they can do is kill us. No need to fear friends, the worst they can do is betray us; We do need fear the indifferent, those whose indifference allows wars, injustices, poverty, etc. to exist on a wide-scale level. They really don't care, and this creates a culture of permissiveness for massive human misery. We can gate ourselves off from all the misery, but it still is out there.
