This quote from one of my favorite authors, Henry Miller, got me to thinking:

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such

It is my belief that we are all born with minds that, as the philosopher John Locke put it, begin with a clean slate, or a “tabula rasa”, devoid of built-in mental content, other than ultra primitive instincts. For example, a newborn sucks at anything placed near it’s lips because instinctively it must feed to survive. However, because it cries out loudly when hungry regardless of circumstances, it has a weak survival instinct at best. An infant will cry out for food in the comfort of a warm apartment or home, and it will cry out for food when silence is critical to avoid the attention of a hungry predator or a wanton criminal.

Life goes on, as Mr. Miller wrote, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life goes on whether a crying baby lives or dies. Life goes on without a pause by most, even with the assassination of a President of stature and righteousness such as President Lincoln. Life waits for no one; it especially does not wait for one who is waiting on friends or colleagues to give his life meaning.

Each life is unique. Some of us are born to live 100 years or longer. Some are born only to die within hours or even minutes of their first breath. Some are born with the ability to quickly recognize and to classify existents and to combine existents into concepts that form the basis for all knowledge. Others take a bit longer, and yet others blind themselves to existents in favor of the promised unknown of the mystics; the intangibles, and unknowables that can never be combined to give knowledge, but instead reduces or limits knowledge to an understanding of faith alone.

Thomas Jefferson recognized the dangers of operating in a faith-based system of government, and the rewards of allowing people of faith to freely practice their belief systems and traditions, while living under a government driven by secular laws based upon reason, certain knowledge and fact. Each religion has its own house in which common beliefs among specific communities are shared, encouraged and exchanged. Those voices can be lifted to unimaginable heights with booming prayers that would awaken the sleepiest inhabitants of heaven and all would be well.

“From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:545

When the conflicting voices of disparate believers come together, instead of a common voice, one hears a cacophony of conflicting views and heated tempers that rise as high as the voice to which it belongs. This is no different than when disparate views of political parties are held onto more firmly (almost religiously) than the necessity to hold strongly to the obligation to protect the national interest, and hence it’s survival, as a primary obligation. The greater family subdivides into multiple versions of the Hatfields and McCoys, and each in turn blames the other for the ills of society and the world at large as they seek to gain power over the other – and everyone looses.

It wasn’t that long ago that the United States was self defined as a Christian nation. As a boy I recall people I grew up with accepting without question that Jewish people were less trustworthy than blacks and I was born only 4 years after the end of WWII and a year before the onset of Korea. The only people who could be completely trusted back then were the Christians, except the Catholics, of course. Catholics were (and still are, for some) the true heretics of faith and the reason why many thought John F. Kennedy should never have been President of the United States.

Now, it seems that all of Christianity has coalesced to stand strong against the rising tide of Moslem radicalism (or is it silently understood that the entire faith of Islam is a heresy that needs to be contained and reduced in modern society?) Suddenly, the United States is self defined as a nation of Judeo-Christian philosophy, even if, as Ann Coulter put it, “the Jews could use more perfecting to get into heaven (as if heaven were the galactic version of a whites only golf club)”.

If we truly are a nation of Judeo-Christian philosophy, then why do we have just a Christian Coalition alone involving itself in politics and not a Judeo-Christian bloc to fight back the tide of rising secularism? How strong is the alliance between the various sects of Christians, or more importantly, how long lasting and accepting will those alliances remain?

Suppose the clash with Islam were to end, how long do you suppose it take before Catholic and Protestant clashes recurred; or are we past that? How long do you think battles between the Anglican Church of England, American Episcopalians, and Southern Baptists or other charismatic groups began bickering with each other over which is the true faith? How long before all of Christianity turns to “perfect” or exclude the non-Christian Jewish community again?

Again, Mr. Jefferson:

“I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.” –Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78

Mankind isn’t born predisposed to discriminate or to hate and it never was. Mankind is taught how to discriminate and to hate. Children’s comments are reflections of their parents, teachers and immediate social circle – they are not mouthing the original ideas or thoughts of a child. See if you can find the old country song, “Skip a Rope” from about 30-40 years ago, and see if anything has changed from what you hear in the song and what you hear from uninhibited children at play.

When one child at the age of 5 calls another “brown boy” as a result of not knowing “brown boy’s” name, that is not hate speech or prejudice or racist speech – it is a comment made illustrating that the child recognized that the other child exists, that s/he is different from the other children in the immediate area, and that, perhaps, (by being able to form concepts) if he called out to him naming that difference, he could get the other child’s attention.

It is only later when an adult or parent tries to explain why calling the other child “brown boy” is “not good to do”, that the first child begins to process the existence of prejudice in the abstract. As more time passes, that abstract grows either into:

1. intolerance toward people who are different,
2. acceptance of people who are different but without prejudice against those who are practitioners of hate,
3. or toward defenders of the enlightened concept of individual rights, individual freedom and the recognition that all men are created equal regardless of race, color, creed or religion.

This intellectual capacity is the hallmark of being human and of human survival and dominance as a species: recognizing existents, forming concepts and using concepts to construct knowledge. What is not a hallmark of humankind is to choose to not use rational faculties to survive in place of relying upon others for your survival; yet, here we are in the 21st Century and we can all find examples of people not taking interest in their own rational interests or the rational interests of their own children.

If we want more hopeful and happy children, then I think we need to act more hopeful and happy as adults. Instead of looking to engage in combat, we need to look to engage in using our intellectual abilities to govern our own lives and our own rational self-interests first; then perhaps the rational self-interest of the community as a whole without having to sacrifice principles, ideals or to coercively serve others. Each life belongs to each person and each person should decide for him/herself how to live that life through their own natural right to free choice and free will.

Yes, we do need to be aware of those who would cause us harm, to those who would steal from us or our community and we need to build up defenses, but those defenses cannot exclude action based upon understanding, wisdom and tolerance. Faith alone does nothing but delay the inevitable decision making that must be done, but the delay in deciding can cause irreparable harm. For example, look at how many Jews of faith walked in fear, but silently, steadily onto the rail cars that would take them to horrible ends to their lives and even more grisly deaths.

Old images from the liberation of those camps are not far off from images in the bible or from the days of conquest of Alexander the Great or Roman streets lined on both sides with heads on pikes or the crucified dead and dying. Man’s cruelty to man is boundless; but man’s kindness and love for each other lasts only until the next argument. To deny that is to deny being human. Man is a savage who can only be restrained by forced adherence to the rule of law and the guarantee of an impartial trial and an unsympathetic, but just punishment of the guilty.

If a man dressed as a minister told you that if you gave him a thousand dollars for the church that you would be assured of a seat in heaven, would you give the money to him? Most will say, “no” to the request (you can always find exceptions) because he may not be a minister. But even if he were a minister, how would you know that he was truly a man of God, or that was the true price of admission? It’s obvious from the priest sex abuse scandal that all members of the clergy are not men of true faith or free of the most abominable of sins even if they are men of faith.

Man was given a brain and basic, primitive instincts at birth for a reason – to survive. Left without instruction, a baby would certainly grow up to become a savage, or it would die from lacking the knowledge survival requires beyond innate instinct; that which is all there is on the “blank state”.

We all have one life, and the length of time and the quality of that life, for most of us, is relatively unknown. When you fall and hurt your knee, your neighbor does not feel your pain. When you are feeling depressed and are having a hard time just getting out of bed, your misery will not affect your neighbor’s day. Nor would you let it affect yours were the situation reversed. You would go on living life, enjoying your liberty and pursuing those dreams that you’ve determined for yourself will make you happy.

How many mornings have you gotten out of bed, looked out the window and thought about the starvation, the oppression, the tyranny, and the legacy of death that returns with each sunrise or sunset in Darfur? How many of you have imagined a life without free speech, freedom of choice, rational debate, the exclusive access to your spouse, the ability to protect your child or other things that characterize a free, capitalistic society?

How many of you can imagine having to do what the government tells you to do regardless of what you want to do, or to marry someone your parents chose for you rather than a person you choose for yourself? How many people out there can imagine trying to do one thing imposed by the government, while simultaneously having to perform another imposed by the church and not offending either authority in a system of two masters such as that which existed in the middle ages (The Regnum and the Sarcedotium)?

In a land where everyone has an opportunity to do great things, why do so many choose to see everything so negatively; to work against others, rather than work for themselves? Why, when an argument could be settled through reason, do so many choose to ignore reason, and instead, rely upon either anger or faith as a guide or negativity as a gatekeeper? Why do people look at most things and most people through a prism of distrust instead of working toward mutual understanding? Is it because, not matter the lip service we pay to the virtue of simply being a human being as enough to warrant our sympathies and support, or is it because when we look at others, we see ourselves and our survival instincts warn us to be wary? Let me end as Henry Miller ended above: Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such; and every moment has the potential for harm to he who fails to acknowledge human failings.