A few early morning thoughts
I once lived in Japan. It was very nice to live in a country where everyone, and I mean everyone, followed the same social protocols. What they practiced was etiquette in the same way that Hugh Jackman explained it the other night on "Inside the Actors Studio." He said that etiquette is like learning proper posture which enables one to use one's body with ease, etiquette enables ease in one's social exchanges and maintains social harmony. In other words, when everyone knows the rules and everyone follows them, then people know what to expect from each other and can stop being anxious about it.
Moving on to the next thought.
Not sure what brought this up, but my response to anti-abortion folks changed. It began with moral reciprocity. If they can impose their will on others then other can impose their will on them. That, of course, is not how it's supposed to work in that they can impose their will on others without being subject to the will of others.
From there, I recognized that the effort to make abortions illegal again is purely reactionary. It is a desire to turn the clocks back. Unfortunately, these people are very selective because I don't think they would wish to turn the clocks back to an age before antibiotics or when the state of medicine involved blood-letting or when society burned witches at the stake because of hysterical superstitious beliefs.
In fact, had it not been for these hysterical superstitious beliefs the Black Plague would not have swept Europe as completely or as often as it did. As we know now, bubonic plague is transferred from the rat to the human by the flea. But, because cats were believed to be the familiars of witches and the plague was the devil's handiwork, cats were killed by the millions thus enabling the rat to roam freely speading the plague like wildfire. I am not interested in returning to any such time or set of beliefs.
The anti-abortion folks are just going to have to live with the fact that not everyone shares their beliefs and learn how to let others believe differently. It's a pretty shallow faith if it is so easily disturbed by other belief systems.
At the same time, and getting back to social protocols, I do share their dismay at the state of society today. But it is not the liberals alone that have done this. The greater responsibility is on the shoulders of those who control the media, and, diatribes about the "liberal" media to the contrary, liberals do not own all the airwaves or the printing presses. That (dis)honor belongs to greedy profiteers who would rather lower civilization to its most depraved instincts to make a buck than do anything that would raise it up to the ideals its aspires to.
Moving on to the next thought.
Not sure what brought this up, but my response to anti-abortion folks changed. It began with moral reciprocity. If they can impose their will on others then other can impose their will on them. That, of course, is not how it's supposed to work in that they can impose their will on others without being subject to the will of others.
From there, I recognized that the effort to make abortions illegal again is purely reactionary. It is a desire to turn the clocks back. Unfortunately, these people are very selective because I don't think they would wish to turn the clocks back to an age before antibiotics or when the state of medicine involved blood-letting or when society burned witches at the stake because of hysterical superstitious beliefs.
In fact, had it not been for these hysterical superstitious beliefs the Black Plague would not have swept Europe as completely or as often as it did. As we know now, bubonic plague is transferred from the rat to the human by the flea. But, because cats were believed to be the familiars of witches and the plague was the devil's handiwork, cats were killed by the millions thus enabling the rat to roam freely speading the plague like wildfire. I am not interested in returning to any such time or set of beliefs.
The anti-abortion folks are just going to have to live with the fact that not everyone shares their beliefs and learn how to let others believe differently. It's a pretty shallow faith if it is so easily disturbed by other belief systems.
At the same time, and getting back to social protocols, I do share their dismay at the state of society today. But it is not the liberals alone that have done this. The greater responsibility is on the shoulders of those who control the media, and, diatribes about the "liberal" media to the contrary, liberals do not own all the airwaves or the printing presses. That (dis)honor belongs to greedy profiteers who would rather lower civilization to its most depraved instincts to make a buck than do anything that would raise it up to the ideals its aspires to.
posted by NeoLotus at 8:20 AM
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