My apologies if you are not interested in politics. Some people consider this the most boring subject. Yet I say to you that it is likely one of the most important things in your life. The actions taken by elected officials affect your life greatly. We are fortunate to live in a time and place where we can voice whatever is on our mind. Do we agree with it all? Certainly not. With some, we disagree on how to get something done. With others, they are borderline insane and push out ideas, conspiracies and backwards logic that would make Einstein's brain spin. But we embrace it all. No one gets to stifle ideas, thoughts and opinion.
That being said, I thought I would talk about fear. Fear is a natural human emotion. It triggers one or more built in processes in ourselves. It can paralyze or energize. However, fear, taken to its extreme can make us do some pretty stupid things. Since it makes us do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, to change the immediate or perceived situation.
I was once in a situation where there was a boat fire. One of the guys on the boat with me thought that it was going to explode so he jumped off. I grabbed a fire extinguisher. His fear was that the boat would explode immediately like in a cartoon. In the end, nothing happened. His perception of the situation caused him to have a faulty outlook, which triggered a false fear and consequently he took an erroneous action.
The bible says not to fear. It is a theme that is repeated many times.
Our country is changing. It is not the same country it was in 1620 or 1776 or 1866 or 1910 and so on. Change is the way things are. Indeed, America itself is the result of even more changes that preceded her founding. Do not fear the change. And do not let falsehoods guide you. We live in an age where it is easier than ever to locate sources of information. Yet these sources also are carriers to fear based falsehoods and fallacious arguments all intermingled so that it is difficult to tell one from the other.
The ten commandments says not to bear false witness. If you know something to be false you are obligated to do something about it even if it is contrary to your own interests. We call this "Doing the right thing". And yet we may be presented with a situation where we feel that doing the right thing won't get us where we feel that we have to be.
In politics there are always lies, inaccuracies, misleading statistics. What infuriates me the most is the stupid logic that goes like this. All terrorists use water, therefore water must be bad. We primarily have two parties and no doubt both engage in these practices to one extent or the other. Which one does it more? I have no idea. I have no studies to say one way or the other. I'm certainly not going to make something up.
Remember that the ends NEVER justify the means. Not ever. There can be no rationalization that doing something unscrupulous or unethical or evil because it will bring a good result.
Do the right thing. All will be well.
No comments:
Post a Comment