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| Thursday, August 14, 2008 |
| Listening to God |
The school I work for has an ad up for Ode Magazine, which I'd never heard of before now. I knew I would probably like it because of its tagline: "for intelligent optimists." But a good tagline does not a good magazine make, and I started reading.
I was hooked by the first article: "Because God Whispers." It's about people who try to get a little bit (or a lot) of silence into their days in busy Western life and in particular the author's experiences with silence in Bali (if only we could all rely on our Balinese meditative experiences). But I like what I read here because this article can apply as well to a Buddhist as it could to me (a Catholic). It is a part of what I consider to be prayer. Key point in the article:
"Of course it's scary to be confronted with all those voices in your head. It's unpleasant to hear voices of pain, despair or depression. But the point is it's far scarier not to hear these voices. Silence may be scary, but a lack of silence is much scarier. Those who don't seek occasional silence to make contact with their deeper core, higher self, pure soul, Buddha nature or whatever you want to call it, become detached from God.
As a yogi friend said, "To hear the voice of God, you must be silent." I asked why. He looked at me as if the answer were obvious. "Because God whispers." Labels: life, peace, people, religion |
posted by Steve @ 4:56 AM  |
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| Friday, April 11, 2008 |
| Police and Shepherds |
People on both sides have decried the United States' role as the "world police" - endlessly stomping out trouble in other people's back yards for fear it will spread into ours. Such difficulties are to be expected in the new, connected world, but the financial burden as well as the lives lost are difficult to justify. The Republicans, in their recent stint in office, have taken the "world police" notion to a whole new level of ridiculousness: the preemptive war. This sort of thing was once a funny joke in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"The phases [of the history of warfare] are retribution, anticipation, and diplomacy. Thus, retribution: "I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother." Anticipation: "I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother." And diplomacy: "I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it."
It takes a conspiracy theorist to believe we are at the "diplomacy" level, although there are plenty of them, and they probably could make convincing arguments that we have killed people in our "brother" nations and that we've framed others for it, or otherwise mixed up the politics enough to make the situation similar. Remember: we gave Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan most of their guns. Same goes for the warring factions in Somalia, too. It's pretty clear that this method of giving lots of guns to people who hate each other, and then going in and fighting with everyone in the name of security isn't working.
I am a political Independent, because above all, I'm a pragmatist. With apologies to SNL, bitches don't get things done. Hard-thinking, level-headed, smart people get things done. And the only way to get meaningful change like universal health care, an end to abortion, worldwide green power, and especially relative world peace is to make it profitable and in every single person's best interest to make sure it happens. The very powerful have to be given a reason to care, and the weak have to be given a way and the hope to act.
So how can the powerful be given reason to care about world peace, given the military-industrial complex, and how can the weak be given hope and means when they are at its mercy?
This, above all, is the role of government. The government is able to change the rules for normal people. For example, right now you get a tax break for donating a lot of money to charities. It's also in the best interest of rich owners to treat their workers well, because of laws and unions. That wouldn't exist without government. The execution of this responsibility has made great strides in the U.S. and elsewhere, although the U.S. took several leaps backwards in the last 20-30 years or so.
But it's time for it to get back on the horse. Because the world is more connected, turning a blind eye to corporate greed abroad is as harmful in the long run to us as arming the Middle East to the teeth, because irresponsible greed breeds hate. On the other hand, we already have rules that encourage green technology, programs like the Peace Corps, and other worldwide charity - and we need more of those rules.
The ways and means have been defined well, and they've been shown to work. We just need to see them implemented.Labels: economics, environment, global, government, peace, people, politics, war, work |
| posted by Steve @ 10:18 AM |
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Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
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