I got my Groove Back...
I had a wonderful night the other night and now feel completely healed from the whole stress ordeal.
So to get back into the old swing of things, I'm going to write a little political rant against something I can't stand.
I call this rant:
The Myth of a Moral Age: Why the Future is Bright and Grey!
That is the concept of a lost generation, one that superior in every way to the one that exists today. The age, the era, the good old days of decency, wisdom, and moral aptitude that were of such a high calibre, that Jesus Christ himself winked at humanity's progress. Those were the days, as opposed to Today which is marred by an aimless generation of miscreants, foulmouthed gangster rappers, unaccountable artists and journalists, adulterers and sexual deviants all working to tear down every moral fiber of our country that the last generations worked selflessly and honestly to construct.
That concept is probably one of the greatest destructive myths of any era ever. And unsurprisingly, remains the motivating idea behind social conservatism.
Now, to preface my following argument, I’m going to say that I myself am a religious person. I grew up going to church, I believe in a God, and continue to act in accordance with my faith, religious beliefs, and community. I may come off at times as a secular guy, and definitely as an untraditional (i.e. fundamentalist twit) Christian, but that’s because I don’t deal in absolutes or in belief systems that assume unprovable truths. Knowledge is empirical, faith is a feeling, and I am not going to DIE or KILL or OPPRESS others for either. My beliefs are sophisticated, not in an elitist sense, but in the sense that they’re not based on literal readings of fairy tales and rules from a book older than modern civilization.
I love my atheist friends, and my religious friends, and both my liberal and conservative friends. I hope we all end up together in an afterlife (and I know that doesn’t depend on all of us holding the same ideal, otherwise God’d be a pretty partisan fellow. The Devil, in whom I don’t believe, would be more inclusive and open to freedom of THOUGHT and SPEECH, and therefore less boring)
But, if you believe in a time that was on the whole superior to today’s on a moral and value stance, well, you’re going to suffer through one of the greatest inevitable forces in the universe and civilization: Change.
Change happens. You go with the flow, or you swim against it and drown in the violent currents. What a lot of conservatives are trying to do is swindle us into believing that swimming against this current will rewind civilization to that blessed utopia that exists… somewhere … back then.
When is then? Where was it? Who made it happen?
Honestly, someone tell me a time when society’s morals and values were so golden that all lived in liberty and none suffered from moral injustice?
Was it back in the 50s, when the soldiers of the old wars were settling back into a life of peace? When you prayed every night for the health of your dog, and old Aunt Martha, and for the Tonka Truck you’ve always wanted? Back when the paper was a nickel, and no one questioned the patriotic intentions of our government, and sex was something only husbands and wives did to make babies for tomorrow’s greater America? When people didn’t take drugs to enhance their performance in baseball? When presidents didn’t screw around and lie to our faces?
Was it that perfectly idealized CHRISTIAN era? You know, when black people were relegated to poverty simply for being of a different color skin, and couldn’t even play baseball? When homosexuals and pregnant teens lived in fear of humiliation, denigration from their ‘loving’ Christian pastors, and parents? When anyone who dissented against the general political direction of the government was labelled communist and accused of treason against our country? When the idea of women as professionals was laughed and jeered at?
The 50s? No, they obviously weren’t the golden era, and not much else can be said for much earlier or later. What with the slavery of the 1800s, the subjugation of women’s rights of the early 1900s.
Look folks, I’m not saying these days are perfect, but we’ve come a long way morally. That is if your morals consider a greater picture than just the typical family structure.
Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, the right to choose, ALL (yes ALL) were morally repugnant concepts at one point and are still considered so.
Yet, still, the good old days when perfect humans walked the Earth are what we must strive towards, right President Bush? Right, Senators Delay, Frist, and Miller? Right Ms. Coulter?
Didn’t ever exist. The only way is forward. The only morals are those we can justify in our own relative terms. Sure, it’s moral to not kill babies, but state-sanctioned VENGEANCE in the form of capitol punishment is alright. Let’s get consistent people. Let’s understand what’s really going on.
Morality has its entire basis in how you choose authority. Authority may be God, the Bible, the Constitution, Grandma, or whatever you can get away with without getting caught.
The thing is, nobody is the same. Nobody has the same authority, or morality. There are no universal rules for behavior because every rule is made of language, which can be interpreted and broken 7 trillion times in some minute way and be just as easily justified using the language against it self. There is no true common sense, because no one can agree on what the hell common sense is! Interpretation, diversity of thought, and human nature make it so that we each have our own systems or morality no matter how much they may seem perfectly similar.
So if we each have our own morality, how can we claim that one time was more moral than the other? My morals place more value on the rights of individuals, while others place it on the sanctity of life. Thankfully, time usually sides in the improvement of my beliefs (tho Mr. Bush some less moderate conservatives are trying wheel and deal around that).
The point is, get over your stupid and irrational belief in a Golden Age. The only golden age in sight can be seen if you stop looking back, and start looking forward. Stop judging by surface of things and disregard them in totality. “All rap is trash. It’s not art because it’s base and stupid and promotes anger and indecency”….WRONG. It’s a reaction from a cultural group. It’s a form of expression and has its negative and positive qualities as do all others. It’s an art form that you don’t understand. So you throw it away into the category of something created by a misguided generation. You sir, are a fogey. And you don’t have to be old to be a fogey, you just have to be ill equipped for change and new things.
Dig in. Work with what we got. Speak the language. See change, see change work.
You’re never going to witness one dominant morality guiding the mass of society towards another golden age. If you believe you will, I’m surprised you’ve read this far into this little rant of mine because your ignorance probably had your head popping off when I said “gay rights” a few paragraphs ago.
The future will be defined by the intersection of ideas, moralities, beliefs, and change. You can’t predict it, you can’t contain it, you just got to adapt to it. Black and white was something the 50s tried to keep apart. Now we’re in the 21st century, where we got interracial dating up the ying yang. The future will be grey. And, it’ll be great.
Remember kids! Only a Sith deals in absolutes!
So to get back into the old swing of things, I'm going to write a little political rant against something I can't stand.
I call this rant:
The Myth of a Moral Age: Why the Future is Bright and Grey!
That is the concept of a lost generation, one that superior in every way to the one that exists today. The age, the era, the good old days of decency, wisdom, and moral aptitude that were of such a high calibre, that Jesus Christ himself winked at humanity's progress. Those were the days, as opposed to Today which is marred by an aimless generation of miscreants, foulmouthed gangster rappers, unaccountable artists and journalists, adulterers and sexual deviants all working to tear down every moral fiber of our country that the last generations worked selflessly and honestly to construct.
That concept is probably one of the greatest destructive myths of any era ever. And unsurprisingly, remains the motivating idea behind social conservatism.
Now, to preface my following argument, I’m going to say that I myself am a religious person. I grew up going to church, I believe in a God, and continue to act in accordance with my faith, religious beliefs, and community. I may come off at times as a secular guy, and definitely as an untraditional (i.e. fundamentalist twit) Christian, but that’s because I don’t deal in absolutes or in belief systems that assume unprovable truths. Knowledge is empirical, faith is a feeling, and I am not going to DIE or KILL or OPPRESS others for either. My beliefs are sophisticated, not in an elitist sense, but in the sense that they’re not based on literal readings of fairy tales and rules from a book older than modern civilization.
I love my atheist friends, and my religious friends, and both my liberal and conservative friends. I hope we all end up together in an afterlife (and I know that doesn’t depend on all of us holding the same ideal, otherwise God’d be a pretty partisan fellow. The Devil, in whom I don’t believe, would be more inclusive and open to freedom of THOUGHT and SPEECH, and therefore less boring)
But, if you believe in a time that was on the whole superior to today’s on a moral and value stance, well, you’re going to suffer through one of the greatest inevitable forces in the universe and civilization: Change.
Change happens. You go with the flow, or you swim against it and drown in the violent currents. What a lot of conservatives are trying to do is swindle us into believing that swimming against this current will rewind civilization to that blessed utopia that exists… somewhere … back then.
When is then? Where was it? Who made it happen?
Honestly, someone tell me a time when society’s morals and values were so golden that all lived in liberty and none suffered from moral injustice?
Was it back in the 50s, when the soldiers of the old wars were settling back into a life of peace? When you prayed every night for the health of your dog, and old Aunt Martha, and for the Tonka Truck you’ve always wanted? Back when the paper was a nickel, and no one questioned the patriotic intentions of our government, and sex was something only husbands and wives did to make babies for tomorrow’s greater America? When people didn’t take drugs to enhance their performance in baseball? When presidents didn’t screw around and lie to our faces?
Was it that perfectly idealized CHRISTIAN era? You know, when black people were relegated to poverty simply for being of a different color skin, and couldn’t even play baseball? When homosexuals and pregnant teens lived in fear of humiliation, denigration from their ‘loving’ Christian pastors, and parents? When anyone who dissented against the general political direction of the government was labelled communist and accused of treason against our country? When the idea of women as professionals was laughed and jeered at?
The 50s? No, they obviously weren’t the golden era, and not much else can be said for much earlier or later. What with the slavery of the 1800s, the subjugation of women’s rights of the early 1900s.
Look folks, I’m not saying these days are perfect, but we’ve come a long way morally. That is if your morals consider a greater picture than just the typical family structure.
Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, the right to choose, ALL (yes ALL) were morally repugnant concepts at one point and are still considered so.
Yet, still, the good old days when perfect humans walked the Earth are what we must strive towards, right President Bush? Right, Senators Delay, Frist, and Miller? Right Ms. Coulter?
Didn’t ever exist. The only way is forward. The only morals are those we can justify in our own relative terms. Sure, it’s moral to not kill babies, but state-sanctioned VENGEANCE in the form of capitol punishment is alright. Let’s get consistent people. Let’s understand what’s really going on.
Morality has its entire basis in how you choose authority. Authority may be God, the Bible, the Constitution, Grandma, or whatever you can get away with without getting caught.
The thing is, nobody is the same. Nobody has the same authority, or morality. There are no universal rules for behavior because every rule is made of language, which can be interpreted and broken 7 trillion times in some minute way and be just as easily justified using the language against it self. There is no true common sense, because no one can agree on what the hell common sense is! Interpretation, diversity of thought, and human nature make it so that we each have our own systems or morality no matter how much they may seem perfectly similar.
So if we each have our own morality, how can we claim that one time was more moral than the other? My morals place more value on the rights of individuals, while others place it on the sanctity of life. Thankfully, time usually sides in the improvement of my beliefs (tho Mr. Bush some less moderate conservatives are trying wheel and deal around that).
The point is, get over your stupid and irrational belief in a Golden Age. The only golden age in sight can be seen if you stop looking back, and start looking forward. Stop judging by surface of things and disregard them in totality. “All rap is trash. It’s not art because it’s base and stupid and promotes anger and indecency”….WRONG. It’s a reaction from a cultural group. It’s a form of expression and has its negative and positive qualities as do all others. It’s an art form that you don’t understand. So you throw it away into the category of something created by a misguided generation. You sir, are a fogey. And you don’t have to be old to be a fogey, you just have to be ill equipped for change and new things.
Dig in. Work with what we got. Speak the language. See change, see change work.
You’re never going to witness one dominant morality guiding the mass of society towards another golden age. If you believe you will, I’m surprised you’ve read this far into this little rant of mine because your ignorance probably had your head popping off when I said “gay rights” a few paragraphs ago.
The future will be defined by the intersection of ideas, moralities, beliefs, and change. You can’t predict it, you can’t contain it, you just got to adapt to it. Black and white was something the 50s tried to keep apart. Now we’re in the 21st century, where we got interracial dating up the ying yang. The future will be grey. And, it’ll be great.
Remember kids! Only a Sith deals in absolutes!