Social Mores

I’m wondering where we are going as a society these days and even as a global humanity.

It seems there are more deceptions, disagreements, and more contentions within our frequent exchanges of thought and action. Daily transactions often end in arguments over innocuous issues. Negotiations over important matters in the chambers of government and corporate boardrooms lack conversational courtesy and compromise.

What has happened to us? Are we so cemented in a blind opinion that we refuse to consider another thought or idea as valid? Are we so busy, so tied to the construct of time, that we cannot read a little more, research a bit more and even change the channel once in awhile to hear another viewpoint?

My career as a reporter, writer, and producer in broadcast television began and was sustained in the era of fairness and strict rules. There were and are always more than two sides to every story, and you were not a good reporter unless you sought out and checked all conceivable sides to the story and reported only the facts as you discovered them. If you didn’t, there was always a reliable, experienced senior editor who demanded you verify your facts and eliminate conclusions or the story did not run.

These old editors were not just sticklers on facts and fairness they were curmudgeons on grammar and spelling. Find that today in the television newsrooms of America.

I see more blatant errors in news stories today than I ever did.

I see more opinion in news stories today than ever would have been allowed in my era and should not be allowed today.

Opinion should be left to the certified experts and not to the reporter of the story. We, as free citizens, have the responsibility to inform ourselves by listening, reading and watching widely.

To listen to only one station, read one newspaper, or read one magazine you are narrowly informed about as much as a flashlight beam lights the whole darkness.

How do we as a society, with a multitude of informational choices, get back to informational accuracy and fairness and back to social and intellectual civility?

I think if society embraces courtesy and civility first, the media will have no choice, but to follow. The media today is a reflection of all social mores. And that's a shame. The News media today needs to ge back to its foundations and "speak reason to power."

Prayer

Every so often a report comes out in some magazine or another about prayer and whether it works or not.

There was one report I read awhile back that prayer didn’t do any good in an experiment on healing. There have been other studies that suggest just the opposite. One comes from Dr. Larry Dossey, the author of Healing Words. He defines prayer as a "benevolent concern for the well-being of another", not necessarily attached to any dogma.

To some people, a prayer is connected to a religion via faith. To others, prayer is a placebo that makes one feel a momentary good with no effect on the physical body. To those who believe they have been healed or helped by prayer no explanation is necessary, to those who don't believe, no explanation is possible. No matter what your position, most experts agree that one should not forsake traditional medicine in the quest to be cured by alternative means.

Laughter is also a healer. Laughter may be a way to balance the disease imbalance within the body. Laughter is a conduit through which the intellect slips behind the illusion of the ego and into the knowing dimensions of awareness.

Laughing may be a gift to those who want instant access to that awareness to better understand and accept the experience called life.

There is an interesting footnote to laughter. It's the same in any culture. Try laughing in a different language.

Separations!

Families and friends are being split today into a political environment that mimics the contention before the US civil war and the beliefs between the North and the South.

Then, 155-years ago, brother opposed brother and state opposed state in the volatile consideration for the right of slavery.

Today it is not the moral or economic issue of slavery. It is a political issue of concretized belief. 

Fortunately, it will not develop into a bellicose contention, but it is harmful nonetheless. On one side is liberal thought; on the other conservative thinking, each side believes their way is the way to and for a sustainable future.

I have friends on both sides of the issue. There are robust and valid reasons on both sides, but our problem today seems to be that we have no common ground, no attack free zone in which to meet and compromise for the greater good. Rhetoric fogs the field of compromise and negotiation.

Contention builds when political and verbal salvos are lobbed into the other side’s comfortable camp and dander rises as rebuttals are necessary.

I am very tired of political rhetoric. I am very tired of Republicans. I am very tired of Democrats. Both of their political diatribes invalidate the democratic principles of our founding fathers. They pledged their lives and their fortunes for the hope of liberty and freedom and equal opportunity. I don’t see lives and fortunes pledged anywhere, by anyone today. All I see is a manipulation of the truth for the aggrandizement of power and wealth.

This is what needs to be changed in America today.

A Valley of Life

I crossed a high mountain ridge the other day to attend a 100th birthday celebration. It was a three-hour drive, and I decided to take the back roads. From my car, I could see a long way into a valley below as the road wound down the mountainside. It was a scenic wooded land with only a few cleared farm fields visible as quilted patchwork in the occluded distance.

It was also a beautiful day and under the green canopy of a vast forest, I could sense where some homes were located by the light gray plumes of wood fire smoke rising from beneath the thick tree cover.

It was a pleasant experience and one of pastoral empathy; I even imagined the comfort of porch sitting and innocuous conversation.

When peaceful scenes like this occur, it engenders in me a profound sense of loss for my mind remembers more of the world’s chaos than my eyes could sustain while enjoying a singular grand vista.

I do ask myself the proverbial question. Why is this so?

I have experienced villages and cities in many parts of this magnificent world. I’ve had conversations and laughs with the simple souls of life, and I’ve conversed with the leadership of nations on the major questions of the day.

It is my observation that both groups want nothing more than to sit by a comforting fire with the calming aroma of wood smoke and share their experiences of life, doze a little, maybe even whittle some creativity in their minds while enjoying the simple things in life: family, friends, good food and drink, children’s laughter and a comforting sleep.

It seems that is our nature, and all we have to do is claim it by being it.

Would conflict end then? Would children no longer cry from hunger and adult carelessness? Would love then fill the little hearts of humankind? I wonder.

Aleppo

Everyday this happens in Syria.

Everyday!

This is the legacy of hate.

This is the idiocy of prejudice.

This is the lunacy of war.

This is the dispassion of power.

This is the political signature all belligerents leave to the future.

Is not this child everyone’s son?

Among Women

Among Women by Carol M. Perry SU

A review by a reader and friend.

Sister Carol Perry gave me this book as we were having dinner.

When I finished reading the book, I started to write her a thank you note, but decided it could be both a blog and a note to her for this is an exceptional tome of women in Bible history along with Sister Perry's extrapolated thoughts as a religious scholar.

It is inspiring, comfortable, astute, and informative and as I went from story to story, I learned more about the "Good Book" than I ever expected. Sister Carol Perry's knowledge of the Old and New Testaments are exemplary and her ability to translate ancient stories into modern understanding is a gift to the reader.

I am not a bible reader per se; I read it fully once because I thought I should. I've also read the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and other religious texts, for the same reason. Even though I was reared in the Christian tradition, what I remembered of the Bible's Old Testament was minimal. Not anymore.

In reading the book, I was reminded of the ritual affectations of the ancient Jewish tribes. They had their arguments, intrigues, and assignations among themselves and they had their wars, plots, intrigues and slaves from other cultures and regions.

Slaughter and pillaging seemed more pronounced in those days, but then I read headlines today out of the Middle East, and it may not be so different. Despite the admonitions of the Prophets and the dictates of love in the sacred books of all faiths, humankind cannot stop some from believing their faith is better than another's, and they are willing to kill to prove it.

Thank you, Sister Carol, for the stories of Biblically catalytic women in the Bible. Each of us, whether male or female must acknowledge the other in ourselves to be humanly and spiritually complete. "Among Women" is a gem.

Worries and Ways

A tragedy the magnitude of 9/11, with its continuing worries of more. The ongoing wars and subsequent deaths of our young in the fields of harm around the globe fighting an ideology and not a country is another worry and the rhetoric of blame, and ethnic separation in the current political arena can force a tolerant democracy into a society of contentious non-compromising ideologues.

Uncompromising, passionate certainties, wherever you find them, in politics, in business, in our neighborhoods and even in our families, are always dangerous. If we find ourselves heading that way, we might want to rethink our position for cemented thought always hardens into a shape that may not fit a positive future.

Our founding fathers demonstrated that all opinions are to be valued for their contribution to the whole, and by majority vote, incorporated into the greater good, even though their singular intrinsic value may be suspect.

Shared ideals are the essence of collective growth, for they are not only the building blocks of freedom and liberty, but they also nurture hopes and wishes and encourage individuals to let go of demeaning and constraining beliefs and when that is done the only value left is reason.

Despite our internal penchant for prejudice, profiling and pandering to our fears, America is still the haven for the oppressed, for the dreamer, for the builder, the scholar, the poet, the artist, and the idealist, even the mystic, for all know America is the place where the manifestation of great thoughts sustains the precious opportunity of creation.

The freedoms we have are sacred. The only way we lose them is through fear, and prejudice. Great thoughts, great opportunities, and great creations need an inclusive society to flourish.