I read today that civilian Christians are being attacked and killed in Mosul, Iraq. One report blames the Kurds. Conservative Islamic groups condemn attempts by the secular Iraqi government to sign a new US military mandate, and threaten violence. Afghanistan and Pakistan are ripped apart by conservative Islamic militia. These Islamic militia are murdering peaceful village elders in the tribal areas of Pakistan in an attempt to destabilize civic structures.
A born again Evangelical president of the US states he knows God is beside him in his decision to invade a country that has not physically attacked any US citizen or US facility. Drug wars that rip societies apart and drain governments of precious revenues needed for civic improvement are justified in moral terms by both secular and theocratic governments.
Thousands are tortured and executed in the sixteenth century to purify the one true religion of Christ. Europe is ripped apart and hundreds of thousands die over two hundred plus years in the theocratic pursuit of the “one, true way.” Europe is again ripped apart and millions die in a “racial purification” that targets members of a religion as a “racial” group.
How long is this madness to continue? Would God create life and “intelligence” only to destroy it in pursuit of some kind of “perfect purity” that differs from one mad sect to another? How could any sane individual believe such intellectual/emotional poison?
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Faith, Glory and The American Dream
She sat on the curb as the crowd of tourists flowed around her. Normally, such a sight would not affect me in any way, just a woman in a crowd, but I know just enough about this woman to surmise that the expression on her face is a reflection of a feeling of alienation. Of course, the expression may be just the manifestation of a bad case of gas, but I think not. This woman lives alone with two boys, ages 12 and 8. The youngest was recently hospitalized as the result of a car accident while with his estranged father. She works as a clerk in a convenience store and lives in a small apartment in a converted business building. Surely, the life she is living is not the life she dreamed of as a child.
Her image and associated history, for me, illustrates the dark side of the so-called American Dream and the truth of the Fall from Eden.
An odd connection? Not really. America was Europe’s new Eden in the beginning. The newly discovered continent seemed to offer Europeans the chance to regain God’s Edenic grace and European Christianity the chance to redeem its failure to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth in Europe. In the new world, America, Christians could achieve a harmonic dominance over the wild, which was thought the fulfillment of Adam’s original task in the Garden. God’s bounty would fall into the hands of those created in his image, and Christians could establish a Christian “City on the Hill” worthy of Christ’s return, a society clearly established on Christ’s commandments and worthy of God’s bounty. An exaggeration of how America’s promise was conceived by emigrant Europeans? Perhaps, but the mythic principles informing such ideals are clearly evidenced in the many royal charters granted the early emigrants, and the influence of those principles on modern American thought is clearly evident in the Depression-era political slogan, “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”
The error in such thinking is that the Fall as reported in Genesis makes quite clear that the bounty and harmony Adam and Eve enjoyed in Eden flowed from God’s grace, and their naively intelligent awareness of his grace was his special gift to humanity. Animals exist and live according to the natures God created within them but without the intelligent awareness of the spring of Grace their nature flowed from and the potential of wonder and love that accompanied that awareness. When God banished Adam and Eve from the garden he allowed them to keep the intelligence that gave them the ability to sense and understand God’s gift of grace. The ability to know and understand the loss of the immanent and immediately evident connection to that Grace is the curse of the Fall. Christian and Jewish theology teaches us that human society and human ingenuity can never replace the peace and wonder of the experience of the constant presence of God’s grace that was the true bounty of Eden.
But, dear God, we do try. The experience of glory must hold a psychological shadow of the experience of God’s grace since we, as a species, do love to pursue it. The seeking of glory is at the root of our most venal dreams. For example, when a young child dreams of being a pop music star, she dreams of basking in the glory of evident affection. The adulation of millions demonstrated by the purchase of the musician’s music, the roar of human adulation at massive concerts and the millions of dollars earned seem proof of the granting of special favor and everlasting love to the misguided, uninformed and ignorant. In the obverse, the denial or absence of that adulation is de facto proof of an individual’s unworthiness of favor and love.
So, the young woman sits in the crowd celebrating the moment of ease their money can buy them. She is within the crowd but not part of it, denied access because of her financial obligations and inability to fully meet them successfully. The dreams and ideals presented to her in her childhood mock her in her “failure” to achieve social glory and inclusion. She withdraws emotionally and appears as a living ghost, lost to a lie she did not create but is forced to live. Her only hope is faith, which I do not know she has. I pray she does.
Her image and associated history, for me, illustrates the dark side of the so-called American Dream and the truth of the Fall from Eden.
An odd connection? Not really. America was Europe’s new Eden in the beginning. The newly discovered continent seemed to offer Europeans the chance to regain God’s Edenic grace and European Christianity the chance to redeem its failure to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth in Europe. In the new world, America, Christians could achieve a harmonic dominance over the wild, which was thought the fulfillment of Adam’s original task in the Garden. God’s bounty would fall into the hands of those created in his image, and Christians could establish a Christian “City on the Hill” worthy of Christ’s return, a society clearly established on Christ’s commandments and worthy of God’s bounty. An exaggeration of how America’s promise was conceived by emigrant Europeans? Perhaps, but the mythic principles informing such ideals are clearly evidenced in the many royal charters granted the early emigrants, and the influence of those principles on modern American thought is clearly evident in the Depression-era political slogan, “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”
The error in such thinking is that the Fall as reported in Genesis makes quite clear that the bounty and harmony Adam and Eve enjoyed in Eden flowed from God’s grace, and their naively intelligent awareness of his grace was his special gift to humanity. Animals exist and live according to the natures God created within them but without the intelligent awareness of the spring of Grace their nature flowed from and the potential of wonder and love that accompanied that awareness. When God banished Adam and Eve from the garden he allowed them to keep the intelligence that gave them the ability to sense and understand God’s gift of grace. The ability to know and understand the loss of the immanent and immediately evident connection to that Grace is the curse of the Fall. Christian and Jewish theology teaches us that human society and human ingenuity can never replace the peace and wonder of the experience of the constant presence of God’s grace that was the true bounty of Eden.
But, dear God, we do try. The experience of glory must hold a psychological shadow of the experience of God’s grace since we, as a species, do love to pursue it. The seeking of glory is at the root of our most venal dreams. For example, when a young child dreams of being a pop music star, she dreams of basking in the glory of evident affection. The adulation of millions demonstrated by the purchase of the musician’s music, the roar of human adulation at massive concerts and the millions of dollars earned seem proof of the granting of special favor and everlasting love to the misguided, uninformed and ignorant. In the obverse, the denial or absence of that adulation is de facto proof of an individual’s unworthiness of favor and love.
So, the young woman sits in the crowd celebrating the moment of ease their money can buy them. She is within the crowd but not part of it, denied access because of her financial obligations and inability to fully meet them successfully. The dreams and ideals presented to her in her childhood mock her in her “failure” to achieve social glory and inclusion. She withdraws emotionally and appears as a living ghost, lost to a lie she did not create but is forced to live. Her only hope is faith, which I do not know she has. I pray she does.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
New Lows of Despicableness
Although I do hold certain political tenants as inviolable, I do not believe a particular political ideology provides a universal framework for solving human problems. In other words, I’m a pragmatic Jeffersonian Democrat. In the past, I have enjoyed watching the political process play itself out but in the last fifteen years or so the ideological gridlock in nearly ALL US political venues and the political tactics that have arisen from that gridlock have not only conspired to destroy the health and well-being of the body politic but of the citizenry as well. I always voted a split party ticket when I voted, making my decisions on priority assessments of social needs of the moment and the candidate’s stated approach or solution in addressing those needs. In the 80s, almost overnight, sound bite campaigning put an end to considered decision making on the part of voters as all the information provided was designed to feed into pre-existing ideological platforms. In the 90s push polling made the situation worse. Today, negative campaign ads have created a new level of cynicism in political campaigning.
Both political parties engage in negative campaigning but the Republicans have attained a level of cynical character bashing that I would never have thought possible in a civilized, first world democracy. The ad hominen attack on Barack Obama via a “guilt by association” fallacy is a new low in presidential campaigning. Implying that Obama is corrupt because of his life in Chicago politics and casual working association with ex-Weatherman William Ayers is like saying George Washington was a traitor because he commanded and worked with Benedict Arnold. The fallacious strategy is as ancient as human politics and succeeds only among the woefully ignorant. I cannot help but believe the decision to launch such a smear by association campaign was motivated or enhanced by the ever-present racism of American society (for the record, I’m not African-American). The Republicans have succeeded in completely alienating me from accepting any of their party’s political platform. GW’s announcement of a direct line to God a while back is indicative of the incredible hubris of a party that has been the dominant power in American politics for far too long. This latest tactic simply proves, to me at least, the complete ethical, if not moral, corruption of a party that was founded in the pursuit of human rights .
Both political parties engage in negative campaigning but the Republicans have attained a level of cynical character bashing that I would never have thought possible in a civilized, first world democracy. The ad hominen attack on Barack Obama via a “guilt by association” fallacy is a new low in presidential campaigning. Implying that Obama is corrupt because of his life in Chicago politics and casual working association with ex-Weatherman William Ayers is like saying George Washington was a traitor because he commanded and worked with Benedict Arnold. The fallacious strategy is as ancient as human politics and succeeds only among the woefully ignorant. I cannot help but believe the decision to launch such a smear by association campaign was motivated or enhanced by the ever-present racism of American society (for the record, I’m not African-American). The Republicans have succeeded in completely alienating me from accepting any of their party’s political platform. GW’s announcement of a direct line to God a while back is indicative of the incredible hubris of a party that has been the dominant power in American politics for far too long. This latest tactic simply proves, to me at least, the complete ethical, if not moral, corruption of a party that was founded in the pursuit of human rights .
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Just Have to Say It
Even the remotest prospect of Sarah Palin as President of the United States creates an involuntary pucker in my shorts.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Living in a verifiably insane world
I take a daily medication for hypertension. Sam’s club recently placed the type of medication on their $4 list, and I decided to give the medication a try. Yesterday, I noticed the pills are manufactured in India. India!!! I have no issues with importing products from India or any other country --- providing those products meet US standards are in direct competition with US made products, not replacing US products.
What surprises me here is the amount of energy required to move those tablets from India to Indiana. Aside from the annoying fact that the Indian workers who manufacture those tablets must be paid next to nothing, the use of dwindling world oil resources makes the logic of transporting tablets literally halfway around the world can only be called insane. I don’t use that word lightly. Greed is an insanity, no matter how many so-called capitalists wish to call the pursuit of unbridled profits desirable. When the obsessive pursuit of a goal or objective creates a harmful environment for the community and the individual the mental state created by that obsessive pursuit can only be called insane.
Using dwindling world oil resources to fuel a so-called global economy is short sighted at best and suicidal in any sense. We hear repeated predictions about how few years are left in the world’s oil reserves at present levels of consumption (about a generation) and how present levels of development in Asian and Latin American countries exacerbates the dwindling supply problems. We are now experiencing a vicious downturn in the economy arising from dwindling credit reserves that came about by the obsessive pursuit of wealth. What kind of crash can we expect when the fuel that drives the present forms of industrialization dries up?
As globally oriented humans we need to focus on developing strong, stand alone, energy efficient national economies. Global trade has existed for millennia. It won’t end regardless of what economic theory is prevalent among government planners at the moment. Any amount of thought given to the situation recognizes that until ALL national borders fall and ALL areas of the globe are administered by a single, central government a global, free market economy merely shuffles the geographical site of the exploitation of centers of wealth and poverty stricken workers from one hapless society to another.
What surprises me here is the amount of energy required to move those tablets from India to Indiana. Aside from the annoying fact that the Indian workers who manufacture those tablets must be paid next to nothing, the use of dwindling world oil resources makes the logic of transporting tablets literally halfway around the world can only be called insane. I don’t use that word lightly. Greed is an insanity, no matter how many so-called capitalists wish to call the pursuit of unbridled profits desirable. When the obsessive pursuit of a goal or objective creates a harmful environment for the community and the individual the mental state created by that obsessive pursuit can only be called insane.
Using dwindling world oil resources to fuel a so-called global economy is short sighted at best and suicidal in any sense. We hear repeated predictions about how few years are left in the world’s oil reserves at present levels of consumption (about a generation) and how present levels of development in Asian and Latin American countries exacerbates the dwindling supply problems. We are now experiencing a vicious downturn in the economy arising from dwindling credit reserves that came about by the obsessive pursuit of wealth. What kind of crash can we expect when the fuel that drives the present forms of industrialization dries up?
As globally oriented humans we need to focus on developing strong, stand alone, energy efficient national economies. Global trade has existed for millennia. It won’t end regardless of what economic theory is prevalent among government planners at the moment. Any amount of thought given to the situation recognizes that until ALL national borders fall and ALL areas of the globe are administered by a single, central government a global, free market economy merely shuffles the geographical site of the exploitation of centers of wealth and poverty stricken workers from one hapless society to another.
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