Philosophy on suffering
I'm about to go into my "leftist" rant mode. (What that actually means is, I'm going to say things which are core to most religoius beliefs yet are unpopular to actually elucidate. I mean, look at your Bible (the bit about helping people out), the Torah, the Koran, the sutras.. All go for this compassion thing. So maybe not being a total ass is actually (gasp!) a conservative value.)
People are suffering around the world as we speak. The AP image in my non-scheduled post below (regular posts happen nightly at 9p) is just one person in agony due to the thoughtlessness of others.
Be it in Darfur, where one group of Arab Muslims is genociding another group of Arab Muslims, or in the southern part of Africa where HIV and AIDS is depopulating those above the age of majority at a horrific clip, or the violence in Israel and Palestine, or Our Glorious Leader's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, tragedy befalls many innocents.
This should make anyone think. The problems most of us face in life are trivial. (I mean, look at my Easter post, for chrissakes.) These people, most of whom live on less than USD 2 a day, are truly suffering without meaning in many cases. Parents work as hard as they can, but cannot sustain themselves and their families. Groups, whose sole crime is the circumstances of their and their parents' birth, are ostracized, separated, and targets of genocide. People are dying for not following the same deranged view of the Almighty, who I've yet to see actually say in any of Her* works or books, "Killing people who do not follow Us maketh Us happy."
I follow the precepts of Buddhism, mainly because, well, they go together well with a certain reading of the Bible. I mean, Buddha taught balance, compassion, the value of life, and he showed the power of one person to change the world. Jesus taught those same principles. So why do the most adamant Bible-beaters preach money and power as ends? Why do they eschew working to make the world better, claiming sola fides (only faith saves; works mean nothing)? Why do they support the ultimate renunciation of life, the death penalty?
And about the US. (Note, not "our nation". I am a proud citizen or national of a growing number of nations. I collect passports the way kids collect baseball cards.) What happened to "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free?" Immigrants face steep hurdles to get into this country, and the vast majority - somewhere in the five-to-six nines range** - are just decent people trying to get a new start on life, or trying to study, or trying to work and improve the American GDP. Terrorism is being used as a bogeyman for damn near everything. As George Carlin said in his 1999 show, "Americans are willing to trade their civil liberties.. for the illusion of security." (The first track of this disc, "You Are All Diseased," is near-prophetic in what would happen once we were infected with the terrorism bug. )
Now, the Republicans are pushing a bill through Congress ostensibly to prevent states issuing driver's licenses to undocumented persons (read: illegal immigrants). The fine print, though, also is giving a good, hard screw to persons requesting refugee status.
Refugees have a hell of a time, as I will find out in the near future (part of my 'planned' trip is a flight with refugees from somewhere bleak to somewhere hopefully better). Refugees normally have left their homeland due to catastrophe. Sometimes, the problem is natural. Most of the time, other humans have made - and are still making - life hell for a person or group solely upon the basis of skin, or of religion, or of ethnicity, or of sex.
Women get the short end of the stick in this. Think about it - "rape and pillage", for example. Men may lose their belongings, but women lose a lot more - their self-esteem, their self-worth, their mental health, their sanity, their status, just to name what I can pop off the top of my head. Female genital mutilation - the barbaric practice of removing an organ of the female body so that "she will be faithful" - causes hundreds of deaths and eternal pain for the victims. TO top it off, many die in childbirth, the rest struggle keeping their family in some semblance of health..
--
Essentially, a blog is a bully pulpit, like newspaper columns are (or were, depending on your point of view). Part of having one is pointing out problems in society, and finding cool things to point readers to .
The feature on the right, "Charity of the Month: Show You Have A Soul," is an attempt to get people (read: you) helping out groups that work to make the world a better place. Doctors Without Borders is a Nobel Peace Prize winning organization which sends doctors and surgeons around the world to aid in places without basic medical care. They work to prevent infectious diseases and to stop childhood hunger and malnutrition.
cya
drew
d dot valued at gmail dot com
*: In talks about the Supreme Being, I use certain literary conventions most don't. Short version: I switch off pronouns (alternatively Him and Her, because It is rude in English and, well, the Supreme Being is beyond gender) and speech is done in the royal plural-singular (the We and Our).
**: Five-nines and six-nines are usually reserved as technical terms for system uptime, be it computers and internet, or the electrical grid, or the phone network. Five nines, or 99.999%, represents a total amount of unscheduled downtime of.. abacus please... five minutes in a year. Six nines (99.9999%) represents a tenth of that, or half a minute.
People are suffering around the world as we speak. The AP image in my non-scheduled post below (regular posts happen nightly at 9p) is just one person in agony due to the thoughtlessness of others.
Be it in Darfur, where one group of Arab Muslims is genociding another group of Arab Muslims, or in the southern part of Africa where HIV and AIDS is depopulating those above the age of majority at a horrific clip, or the violence in Israel and Palestine, or Our Glorious Leader's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, tragedy befalls many innocents.
This should make anyone think. The problems most of us face in life are trivial. (I mean, look at my Easter post, for chrissakes.) These people, most of whom live on less than USD 2 a day, are truly suffering without meaning in many cases. Parents work as hard as they can, but cannot sustain themselves and their families. Groups, whose sole crime is the circumstances of their and their parents' birth, are ostracized, separated, and targets of genocide. People are dying for not following the same deranged view of the Almighty, who I've yet to see actually say in any of Her* works or books, "Killing people who do not follow Us maketh Us happy."
I follow the precepts of Buddhism, mainly because, well, they go together well with a certain reading of the Bible. I mean, Buddha taught balance, compassion, the value of life, and he showed the power of one person to change the world. Jesus taught those same principles. So why do the most adamant Bible-beaters preach money and power as ends? Why do they eschew working to make the world better, claiming sola fides (only faith saves; works mean nothing)? Why do they support the ultimate renunciation of life, the death penalty?
And about the US. (Note, not "our nation". I am a proud citizen or national of a growing number of nations. I collect passports the way kids collect baseball cards.) What happened to "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free?" Immigrants face steep hurdles to get into this country, and the vast majority - somewhere in the five-to-six nines range** - are just decent people trying to get a new start on life, or trying to study, or trying to work and improve the American GDP. Terrorism is being used as a bogeyman for damn near everything. As George Carlin said in his 1999 show, "Americans are willing to trade their civil liberties.. for the illusion of security." (The first track of this disc, "You Are All Diseased," is near-prophetic in what would happen once we were infected with the terrorism bug. )
Now, the Republicans are pushing a bill through Congress ostensibly to prevent states issuing driver's licenses to undocumented persons (read: illegal immigrants). The fine print, though, also is giving a good, hard screw to persons requesting refugee status.
Refugees have a hell of a time, as I will find out in the near future (part of my 'planned' trip is a flight with refugees from somewhere bleak to somewhere hopefully better). Refugees normally have left their homeland due to catastrophe. Sometimes, the problem is natural. Most of the time, other humans have made - and are still making - life hell for a person or group solely upon the basis of skin, or of religion, or of ethnicity, or of sex.
Women get the short end of the stick in this. Think about it - "rape and pillage", for example. Men may lose their belongings, but women lose a lot more - their self-esteem, their self-worth, their mental health, their sanity, their status, just to name what I can pop off the top of my head. Female genital mutilation - the barbaric practice of removing an organ of the female body so that "she will be faithful" - causes hundreds of deaths and eternal pain for the victims. TO top it off, many die in childbirth, the rest struggle keeping their family in some semblance of health..
--
Essentially, a blog is a bully pulpit, like newspaper columns are (or were, depending on your point of view). Part of having one is pointing out problems in society, and finding cool things to point readers to .
The feature on the right, "Charity of the Month: Show You Have A Soul," is an attempt to get people (read: you) helping out groups that work to make the world a better place. Doctors Without Borders is a Nobel Peace Prize winning organization which sends doctors and surgeons around the world to aid in places without basic medical care. They work to prevent infectious diseases and to stop childhood hunger and malnutrition.
cya
drew
d dot valued at gmail dot com
*: In talks about the Supreme Being, I use certain literary conventions most don't. Short version: I switch off pronouns (alternatively Him and Her, because It is rude in English and, well, the Supreme Being is beyond gender) and speech is done in the royal plural-singular (the We and Our).
**: Five-nines and six-nines are usually reserved as technical terms for system uptime, be it computers and internet, or the electrical grid, or the phone network. Five nines, or 99.999%, represents a total amount of unscheduled downtime of.. abacus please... five minutes in a year. Six nines (99.9999%) represents a tenth of that, or half a minute.
posted by Drew Vallas at 11:00 PM
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