Monday, April 03, 2006
People are Being Distracted
I've seen two blogs today that bother me. One is George Breed's blog entry called What Does This Mean? The other is Anonymous Julie's blog entry entitled Making lepers in 2006. The former entry in my opinion deals with greed and fear. The greed part is because 1% of the global population has 33% of the total wealth. The fear part is because the US outspends every other government about 9.5 fold overall. Evidently, arms sales are profitable (there's the greed again) and we want to hold on to our wealth . After all, most Americans are in the top 20% of wealthy individuals on the planet.
Julie's entry deals with politics in the Church. Evidently, people within her Church are exhorting their fellow Christians to vote against gay marriage. Voting against gay marriage is part of a trend that the GOP has excelled at, although, the Democrats can use it was well. It's the tactic of diverting people's attention from important issues that affect their lives to values issues that either hurt a select few or no one at all. Examples of values issues are Intelligent Design and gay marriage. Few people are hurt by ID, but gays are discriminated against, or at least, inconvenienced by gay marriage bans. Values issues show a lack of critical thinking by many otherwise intelligent people. If you asked someone why they are against gay marriage, likely they will say, "Because it says so in The Bible". The Bible also tells you to love your fellow man as yourself, and that the laws were made for Man, not Man for the laws. Which hurts you more, paying high gas prices at the pump or gay marriage? It's a no brainer. right? Yet, our government gave tax cuts to Big Oil for R&D research. Those savings will not be passed on to the consumer. Will gay marriage affect any heterosexual in the least? The obvious answer is No. We have important issues to deal with, economic, environmental, political, foreign policy, et cetera. Instead of calling voter's attention to such important issues and calling for informed public debate, people's energies are distracted on values issues which are essentially nonissues. This is the fault of our elected leaders. Julie is looking at the gay marriage issue from a spiritual viewpoint. But spiritual viewpoints are generally called by another name, wisdom. Wisdom is just another form of critical thinking. Except for people like George and Julie, we seem to have a critical lack of it right now.
Julie's entry deals with politics in the Church. Evidently, people within her Church are exhorting their fellow Christians to vote against gay marriage. Voting against gay marriage is part of a trend that the GOP has excelled at, although, the Democrats can use it was well. It's the tactic of diverting people's attention from important issues that affect their lives to values issues that either hurt a select few or no one at all. Examples of values issues are Intelligent Design and gay marriage. Few people are hurt by ID, but gays are discriminated against, or at least, inconvenienced by gay marriage bans. Values issues show a lack of critical thinking by many otherwise intelligent people. If you asked someone why they are against gay marriage, likely they will say, "Because it says so in The Bible". The Bible also tells you to love your fellow man as yourself, and that the laws were made for Man, not Man for the laws. Which hurts you more, paying high gas prices at the pump or gay marriage? It's a no brainer. right? Yet, our government gave tax cuts to Big Oil for R&D research. Those savings will not be passed on to the consumer. Will gay marriage affect any heterosexual in the least? The obvious answer is No. We have important issues to deal with, economic, environmental, political, foreign policy, et cetera. Instead of calling voter's attention to such important issues and calling for informed public debate, people's energies are distracted on values issues which are essentially nonissues. This is the fault of our elected leaders. Julie is looking at the gay marriage issue from a spiritual viewpoint. But spiritual viewpoints are generally called by another name, wisdom. Wisdom is just another form of critical thinking. Except for people like George and Julie, we seem to have a critical lack of it right now.
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Everybody must find his own way.
There is no need to compare or judge. For some people it's not easy to comment on these.
There is no need to compare or judge. For some people it's not easy to comment on these.
The US is the Richest Country in the World, It spends more, gives more than any other country, to Charitable Causes, BUT..
It gives far less Proportionally, than any country in the World.
The US is Greedy written in all Capital letters.
It gives far less Proportionally, than any country in the World.
The US is Greedy written in all Capital letters.
That's the funny thing John, it's coming down "from on high" as it were, from the Catholic bishops in my state, and just giving an opportunity to people to sign a petition... so we're duly supposed to make our voices heard to the lawmakers.
I honestly don't know where God stands on the homosexuality issue, don't feel a need to, (love your neighbor, right?) just that making this law isn't right. Big difference there.
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I honestly don't know where God stands on the homosexuality issue, don't feel a need to, (love your neighbor, right?) just that making this law isn't right. Big difference there.
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