who we pray to, tell us who we are…
if we Americans pray to Mammon, as we do,
then that tells the world who we are…
we care more about wealth then we do about anything else…
I go on facebook and quite often, I will get one of the those annoying
post about if one repost a particular post, god will give one a vast
amount of wealth… and at the end of the post always ends with an amen…
somehow making god about the money, instead of the spirit…or
the religious…
now if we were to pray to god, god isn’t physical nor is he material,
not alive as we know it…because if he was, where is he? that has
always been the problem, the location of god… so to get around these
particular issues, god has been presented as being spirit… so if we pray to god,
then where are we directing these prayers? now many say, god is inside of us…
so we are praying to ourselves? ok, may has well pray to myself if I am praying to
something inside of me… prayer directed to my liver or my stomach or my heart…
no, that strikes as being silly, so prayer really needs to be directed outward,
away from us…outside of us…
as we have noted, we possess many different facts, for example,
that NY has 8 million people or that the earth is 93 million miles from
earth… but facts, knowledge is changeable… the knowledge we possess
about facts changes… for example, I grew up believing that we had
nine planets, with Pluto being the smallest, furthest planet from us…
suddenly, Pluto lost its status of being a planet, a fact, changed…
Pluto still exists out there, but because of changing considerations,
we no longer call Pluto a planet… a fact changes…
we go to school to learn facts like this… the Declaration of Independence
was signed in 1776 and the French Revolution was from 1789 to roughly 1799…
give or take……… we have plenty of facts that are changeable… we might,
given changing considerations, decide that the French Revolution ended in 1794
or began in 1788……
but more importantly, how does knowing the year of the Declaration of Independence
was signed, make me a better person? How does know that year, help me become
who I am?
we assign a high priority to facts, knowledge and yet, those facts
might change and might not even be all that important…
so many facts are simply not worth knowing… unless one is
a specialist in some area where that fact is important…
that the Greek city of Croton was located in southern Italy…
ok, now your life is complete…….
but how, how would that fact help you become a better person,
or even understand what being a better person even meant…
we are consumed by little facts, that dominate our days,
my wife is obsessed with our getting our employee discount when
we shop at our store…she spends hours calling these poor people when
it is clear we are already getting the discounts, but does a wife ever
believe a husband? nope… she waste so much time dealing with
something that is pretty dam unimportant… and that is the problem
with most people, that they are consumed with little details that
are really unimportant… I have customers go ballistic if they don’t
get their 12 cent discount on cheese… really, how is that going to
help one become a better person or even understand what it means
to be a better person? Our focus is on the wrong stuff, we focus
on unimportant matters while ignoring what it means to be human
or how do we become who we are or to use our energy to know thyself…
or perhaps even to use our energy to understand such questions
as what does it mean an individual within society and what is the
relationship between an individual and society?
all these very important questions demanding to be answered
and yet people are dicking around with getting some bogus
discount on cheese as if that crap really matters…….
that crap takes our eyes off of the important matters that should engage
us, knowing ourselves, a reevaluation of values, of becoming who we are…
or perhaps a religious person can engage in the question, of which law to
obey, man’s law or god’s law? for man’s law has all kinds of workarounds
for the various laws of god……
god says, thou shall not kill…
and man says, thou shall not kill… but you can kill if you are a policeman
defending oneself or if you are solider killing in the name of your country
or if you are temporally insane and then “hay, its all good you had an excuse”…
so, which law do you obey? man’s law or god’s law?
that is why there are no such thing as being Christian in our modern age…
we all have accepted man’s law over god’s law…………
but does anyone actually think about this or do they think about
their own ambition or their wealth or the titles they can achieve…
no, we are adrift because we have lost sight of what is truly important
in our lives… we have lost what it means to be in the human condition…
and we have lost the idea of the human condition to such petty
and irrelevant thoughts as to making sure we get that 12 cent discount
on the cheese…or which restaurant we are going to tonight?
we use our day to day living to mask or hide or deny the important questions
of human existence…
it isn’t about facts or knowledge but about understanding what it takes
to become human, fully human… not a human/animal which is what
most people are………
I oppose modern society because it encourages one to deny or hide or
just not think about, what it means to be human and what is
the real goal of being human… is fighting about a 12 cent discount
really the path to understanding what it means to be human?
past, present and future… all questions must engage in
the past, present and future…
we humans in the past were… and we humans today are…
and tomorrow, what will we humans be?
quite often as I write, I am reminded of the movie, 1776…
when Adams sings a little song… and the words go like this:
is anybody there? does anybody care?
I wonder…
Kropotkin