©
July 30, 2015
A
READER REACTS:
I
would take issue with your headline "We are not living in a religious age."
We
may be in transition, but religion continues to play a prominent role in the
lives of followers and non-followers alike.
Whether
it is used as an excuse for infringing on the rights of others, or as a purpose
for communities to join in support of the less fortunate, religion both unites
and divides us. Just as it has for thousands of years.
For
a long time religion had a monolithic quality. Heretics began to question and
disprove much of the religion-based science that church dogma had forced on its
constituency.
Martin
Luther and King Henry VIII chose to ignore the center of power and do what was
convenient. We bemoan the breakdown of society and attribute that to the
dissolution of the nuclear family pointing to the ease with which parents can divorce
and now don't even bother to marry. Thank you King Henry VIII.
This
massive case of group think foisted upon us by religion finally boiled over to
two world wars and tens of millions of deaths.
The
collective "slap in the face" eroded our confidence in institutional
leaders. Wow, look what these guys did. They killed and maimed our brothers and
sisters, destroyed our families, wiped out large portions of international
sects for what?
What
did we learn? Well, let's have smaller wars instead, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and
maybe Iran.
The
great thing about technology is it has allowed more of us to separate ourselves
from the mass. It has allowed us to express that we are individuals who do not
necessarily want to follow blindly the leaders who wish the common person to
protect their lives of privilege.
We
shouldn't let our confusion over how that individuality is expressed to obscure
why people want to separate from a culture that has over and again attempted to
pit the have nots against each other so the top can sustain its self-actualizing
lifestyles.
DR.
FISHER RESPONDS:
Thank
you, Michael, for your candid remarks.
The
purpose of my writing is to get readers to think, usually to things they take
for granted.
What
you learn or fail to learn from what I say has much to do with your own set of
biases, as my writing has to do with mine.
We never totally escape what has been programmed into our heads
practically from birth no matter how much education, experience to the contrary
or the reality of that experience.
Don't
be offended when I say I disagree with you in this response in nearly every
way.
Religion
was once responsible and accountable for something approaching a civil society.
Religion has become increasingly political and combative fearing the
handwriting is on the wall of its relevance if not extinction.
Religion
has gravitated to the status of a civil religion where money and power dominate. The church is as guilty as any other
institution fighting to have a share of this brand of civility, which I find is
not very civil at the moment.
Civil
society no longer exists in the United States or many other parts of the
world. Everything is ultimately measured
in terms of wealth and power.
Nor
is religion a functioning reality as purported in Christianity, Judaism, or
many other isms. These ideologies have
become tainted with postmodernity greed and corruption as progress is measured
in territorial imperatives.
Conflict
is the operational protocol of the planet and no place is safe with nuclear
weapons of mass destruction the appetite of rogue nations.
The
only comforting aspect, and I agree we are in transition and in transformation,
is that power is not having a good day.
Power
corrupts, as Lord Acton suggests, and absolutely power corrupts
absolutely.
The
negative aspect of this is that leadership has become leaderless and dissonance
reigns supreme. Nobody is in charge!
It
is a curiosity of the times that Harper Lee who is nearly blind and deaf has
been encouraged to publish her first novel, which is the antithesis of "To Kill a Mockingbird."
"Go
Set a Watchman"
(2015) exposes the other side of her mind, perhaps the real side. The world so wanted to believe that side did
not exist.
If
you have ever read some of Mark Twain's dark prose, you have had an
introduction to this sad and some might say sick side of his mind. Only those interested in the exoteric are
likely to know such writing exists.
The
difference today is that this the sick side of the mind, the side we all have,
has become commercial. I call this the
"surreal economy" for reason.
As
far as technology connecting us, in my view, it has done just the
opposite. It has not only separated us
from each other but separated us from ourselves.
It
is no accident that Bernie Zilbergeld has written a book with the title, "The Shrinking of America: Myths of
Psychological Change" (1983).
Thirty-two years later, it still holds true only it has been
accelerating into obfuscating mythology, fertile soil for exploitation.
Nor
has technology liberated us, but instead incessantly bombards our sensitivities
subliminally with a recipe of sick, senseless messages that we all have adopted
to various degrees as variations of corporate speak.
Once,
Roman Catholicism was my anchor and the focus of my life, but I came to find it
was more political and vicious than any of my corporate employers only it could
hide it with impressive subtlety.
Every
age has an explosive vocabulary that seeds confusion that assists those in
power to remain so. I've written about
this in some detail in THE WORKER, ALONE!
Here I will mention only a couple of expressions: "false
expectations."
Most
Americans, whatever the color of their skin or circumstance, are precisely
where they expect to be. We gravitate to
where we see ourselves being and how we see ourselves living.
No
matter how smart you are, no matter how well educated, no matter how low you
are born into the food chain, no one owes you a living. That is the mantra of America and has been
since colonial days.
Another
expression is "social justice."
This expression is predicated on the misleading concept of what we all
refer to has "the haves and the have nots."
When
barely 50 percent of those eligible to vote find the will to do so, and when
those who vote tend to vote for people who express the same vitriolic contempt
for the other side that they do, then the "haves" have no threat, no
threat at all.
Just
as politics have become vanilla with Democrats and Republicans being equally
ineffective and dissembling and the same, religion has become vanilla as
well.
We
live in a vanilla age and this has been unwittingly amplified by the
Information Age.
Obviously,
you disagree with me, but that is all right.
You have had the courage to express your views and that is your private
window to your soul. I respect that.
Thank
you for sharing your thoughts, and
Always
be well,
Jim
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