by We live in a wild and crumbling world. We used to subsist in a universe of extremes. There were the bad people and the good people and the moral among us fought a couple of World Wars as an entire generation leapt from the continent to save the world from repression.
As I look around us today, I wonder why all our shared common sense has disappeared. Where are our moral protectors? Where have our Truth Tellers gone?
Common Sense has been replaced by Street Smarts. You get over on your neighbor. You scare your friends into doing your bidding — or else! You ambush your enemies. It’s all about “me” and “I” and never “we” or “us.”
Our moral protection has decayed. We celebrate venial deaths and coercive destruction in our entertainment venues. Where once violence was a means to a moral end; violence today is perpetrated out of boredom with living.
The most common loss that we are aware of, but haven’t quite yet completely discerned, is the hole that our missing Truth Tellers have left in our common lives. We used to have people on television and in the Holy shelters and even on the street corners who were wise beyond us, and who could be trusted not to mislead us, and who had a moral core that was kept and polished because their word was their bond and their behavior was their honor. Today, we weep for the loss of those Truth Tellers because we are left in a purposeful political lurch — wondering which way to turn and if it is even worth deciding which way to go. We spend so much time repeating history and chasing our vestigial tails in circles that we have become our own satire.
How did we become so lost? We’re overwhelmed with information that deluges us in facts and offers us zero manna. We have no human perspective into living a common, proper, life. Left to fend for ourselves, we turn inward and nasty and the mode of self-preservation becomes our moment-to-moment mandate as we propel our darkest wishes into the core of society: “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine and if you don’t believe me, I’ll meet you out back with a gun.”
We are lost. We are yearning. We are searching for a new way out of the constant fire and into the cooling waters of solemnity and sacrifice. Can any of us make it there alive and unscalded?
Those of us who follow certain religions feel our truth tellers lie at the head of our organizations but even they will tell us that the ultimate truth lays with the word of G-d — but without the belief in such a G-d, there is no truth, I suppose. In my own community people do not seem to behave in these beastly selfish manner.
I’m with you on the everlasting quality of belief in a religion, Gordon, but what about other religions with charismatic leadership that misleads and deceives? Is religion the only answer to creating a cohesive and moral society? If so, must everyone believe in the same Godhead to make it matter?
I suppose the problem would lay not with the religion but the individuals who are misleaders and deceivers. Not sure if religion is the only answer however it certainly is a good way to learn the importance of doing things in a morally correct manner.
Yes, I think that’s right Gordon. Religions that have a living “leader” are more apt to be humanly corrupt, while religions that are historically text-based have a much more freeing life of the mind that is greater than a single person’s current interpretation of the same text.
I would agree with that last comment of yours David. For me it still comes down to that line which I think we discussed previously. That it is not that religion corrupts man but that man corrupts the religion.
D Charles QC
Gibraltar
UglyFringe —
Excellent point! Faith can be a magnificent thing — but I don’t think it requires a religion. Many people put faith in literature and technology and art and receive the same benefits as those who believe in a Godhead. It’s all variable, but equally consequential.