👏👏👏👏👏🙏🏻🖖 - you always seem to get me right in the feels!
Thank you again for another wonderfully grounding reality check, and reminding me how much I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child, and how I appreciate her even more as a grandfather.
My mother's family are Oregon Trail Pioneer Homesteader 'Hillbilly' immigrants and my father's family are Nebraska frontier Homesteader immigrants. As a child I read all of the Little House on the Prairie books. I grew up in the self-reliance of Pioneer family culture. My grandparents grew & canned their food. The results of hard work were our gifts, and our entertainment. I learned a lot about being grateful and appreciating the labor of my parents/grandparents from Laura Ingalls Wilder.
I see a lot of people (understandably) who are making the case that "religion" is responsible for the wars and chaos we see in the world.
I do believe that some religions (or at least some portion of them) are promoting war and chaos.
But I think that the fundamental problem is that of hatred, which may or may not be promoted by one's religion. It can and is promoted by the type of politics running rampant in this world. And other cultural aspects can play a major role in that mindset.
I love what you write and your insights and am grateful that you share them and that I've found them, but I see things differently here. In the spirit of not remaining silent, I thought I would respond. Full transparency at the start: unfortunately, I am dependent on government assistance due to health issues. It is a complex situation that I don't want to be in, but here I am.
From my perspective, focusing on government assistance is focusing on a symptom, not a cause. I believe (and please correct me if I'm wrong), that you are saying that hate and rage are cultivated when (and because we are) removed from the 'brotherhood of man'. And this happens because of government assistance. If this is what you are saying, I feel that the cause goes much deeper. What I share below is my effort to explain how I see it.
An anecdote has stuck with me from the book, The Continuum Concept, by Jean Liedloff. It is a book about the child-rearing practices of a tribe in the Amazon. In it, she tells the story of a man who was a member of the tribe but who was raised by "civilized" people in the city. A tribe elder came across him working in the mines. He was miserable. He went back to the tribe and stayed with someone there. For several years, he did nothing. But he was given lots of space. One day, he felt inspired to start a garden. Keep in mind that growing a garden would probably be meaningful work in that environment, not just a hobby. His friend (the person he'd been staying with), pitched in to help.
When asked how he (the friend) saw things, he said that everyone wants to work. It's only natural. But, it seems he also understood that sometimes, it takes time for that natural impulse to return.
So that would be my question. Why are people feeling this unnatural impulse to take advantage? What in society is creating this aberration? Perhaps I am just being naive. It wouldn't be the first time. But I feel like we can't isolate one thing and say that's the problem. It seems to me that it's all part of complex interconnections.
A metaphor also comes to mind. I remember reading once that bacteria isn't the cause of disease. When it was looked into, it was found that the dis-ease came first. Only then did bacteria show up. I don't have a reference for this. I may have read it in the book, Dissolving Illusions, but can't be certain. And I am not qualified to judge this beyond that it feels right, intuitively. Nevertheless, it does reveal how I tend to see things.
Thank you for listening. And for sharing what you share.
I agree that Dissolving Illusions is an excellent book that may prompt questioning of your view of the world: https://amzn.to/46xYhrF
I agree too that cause and effect run deeper than can presented in one essay.
In this essay, I was writing about a narrow form of government assistance directed to people who can work but are choosing not to in order to devote their lives to hate.
I could have covered college campuses too where students and professors are subsidized to teach and study hate.
The short answer to your question: "Why are people feeling this unnatural impulse to take advantage?" is this. We all have a right mind and a wrong mind and if we reward decisions for choosing our wrong mind we will get more of it, not in all people but in enough people to matter.
Thank you so much for your reply, Barry. Greatly appreciated. One thing I wanted to clarify is that I brought in the reference to bacteria (which I believe came from Dissolving Illusions) as a way to elucidate my perspective. I think one of the things that is so fascinating about these times is how heightened the experience is of all of us seeing the same things yet drawing different conclusions. I understand your perspective better now. It is different than mine, but that is ok. Thank you, again.
👏👏👏👏👏🙏🏻🖖 - you always seem to get me right in the feels!
Thank you again for another wonderfully grounding reality check, and reminding me how much I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child, and how I appreciate her even more as a grandfather.
My mother's family are Oregon Trail Pioneer Homesteader 'Hillbilly' immigrants and my father's family are Nebraska frontier Homesteader immigrants. As a child I read all of the Little House on the Prairie books. I grew up in the self-reliance of Pioneer family culture. My grandparents grew & canned their food. The results of hard work were our gifts, and our entertainment. I learned a lot about being grateful and appreciating the labor of my parents/grandparents from Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Thanks for the kind words.
Your heritage is rich. So wonderful that you are passing it on.
I see a lot of people (understandably) who are making the case that "religion" is responsible for the wars and chaos we see in the world.
I do believe that some religions (or at least some portion of them) are promoting war and chaos.
But I think that the fundamental problem is that of hatred, which may or may not be promoted by one's religion. It can and is promoted by the type of politics running rampant in this world. And other cultural aspects can play a major role in that mindset.
David, I'll be dealing with the nuances of your point in 4 other essays this week.
Excellent, I am looking forward to reading these essays.
I love what you write and your insights and am grateful that you share them and that I've found them, but I see things differently here. In the spirit of not remaining silent, I thought I would respond. Full transparency at the start: unfortunately, I am dependent on government assistance due to health issues. It is a complex situation that I don't want to be in, but here I am.
From my perspective, focusing on government assistance is focusing on a symptom, not a cause. I believe (and please correct me if I'm wrong), that you are saying that hate and rage are cultivated when (and because we are) removed from the 'brotherhood of man'. And this happens because of government assistance. If this is what you are saying, I feel that the cause goes much deeper. What I share below is my effort to explain how I see it.
An anecdote has stuck with me from the book, The Continuum Concept, by Jean Liedloff. It is a book about the child-rearing practices of a tribe in the Amazon. In it, she tells the story of a man who was a member of the tribe but who was raised by "civilized" people in the city. A tribe elder came across him working in the mines. He was miserable. He went back to the tribe and stayed with someone there. For several years, he did nothing. But he was given lots of space. One day, he felt inspired to start a garden. Keep in mind that growing a garden would probably be meaningful work in that environment, not just a hobby. His friend (the person he'd been staying with), pitched in to help.
When asked how he (the friend) saw things, he said that everyone wants to work. It's only natural. But, it seems he also understood that sometimes, it takes time for that natural impulse to return.
So that would be my question. Why are people feeling this unnatural impulse to take advantage? What in society is creating this aberration? Perhaps I am just being naive. It wouldn't be the first time. But I feel like we can't isolate one thing and say that's the problem. It seems to me that it's all part of complex interconnections.
A metaphor also comes to mind. I remember reading once that bacteria isn't the cause of disease. When it was looked into, it was found that the dis-ease came first. Only then did bacteria show up. I don't have a reference for this. I may have read it in the book, Dissolving Illusions, but can't be certain. And I am not qualified to judge this beyond that it feels right, intuitively. Nevertheless, it does reveal how I tend to see things.
Thank you for listening. And for sharing what you share.
Thanks, Ellen. I was glad to read your ideas.
I agree that Dissolving Illusions is an excellent book that may prompt questioning of your view of the world: https://amzn.to/46xYhrF
I agree too that cause and effect run deeper than can presented in one essay.
In this essay, I was writing about a narrow form of government assistance directed to people who can work but are choosing not to in order to devote their lives to hate.
I could have covered college campuses too where students and professors are subsidized to teach and study hate.
The short answer to your question: "Why are people feeling this unnatural impulse to take advantage?" is this. We all have a right mind and a wrong mind and if we reward decisions for choosing our wrong mind we will get more of it, not in all people but in enough people to matter.
Thank you so much for your reply, Barry. Greatly appreciated. One thing I wanted to clarify is that I brought in the reference to bacteria (which I believe came from Dissolving Illusions) as a way to elucidate my perspective. I think one of the things that is so fascinating about these times is how heightened the experience is of all of us seeing the same things yet drawing different conclusions. I understand your perspective better now. It is different than mine, but that is ok. Thank you, again.