What do You Believe?

Life for life’s sake;
     No matter how hopeless you feel.
     No matter how dismal the future looks.
     No one knows what the future will bring.
     Do what you need to do to stay alive.

The rules are made up;
     Rules are made up for a reason. At some point someone thought every rule would be helpful. Because a rule was once deemed to be useful does not mean that it has to be followed or that it is even still necessary. Evaluate rules to see if you agree with their intent and their expected effect and then decide if you will follow them. The problem with rules is that they are written. When rules are part of an oral tradition they can more easily change. They can fade away as they become nonviable.

Laws are always the same and are always obeyed;
     You will always obey the natural laws of time, physics, gravity, motion, chemistry, etc. You have no choice. If you have a choice then it is not a law of nature and it is a rule that was made up. It is a belief.
Beliefs are not laws and beliefs are not absolute.
And beliefs do not have to be obeyed;
     If you do not differentiate between what you believe, and laws that are absolutely true, you are one of the throngs of people who cause and perpetuate the vast majority of the strife, terror and pain that has been and continues to be part of our daily life.

Believing in absolute good includes believing in absolute evil;
     Acting on a belief in absolute evil violates rights. Behavior that does not exist in the hearts and minds does not exist in the real world.

You have a choice;     You can ‘Ohm-m-m’ and smile and proceed or
     You can ‘Gr-r-r-r’ and frown and see where it gets you.
Morality is personal;
     No two people use the same set of beliefs to define what is right and what is wrong. Individual as well as crowed behavior is controlled by a multi layered mechanism where right and wrong overlap.
In units of humanity;
     There is nothing a single individual can accomplish. You do not even exist if you do not interact with others. You only exists for a reason if what you do is acknowledged. You may be able to change yourself and that change may effect others but it is far more likely that you will remain the same and struggle to be the most compassionate person you can be with little or no effect on anyone. And that is all I ask.

Enjoy!

No! Murder is NOT OK.

     When is it OK to believe that someone must die and then take their life? There is the obvious example that all but the most committed pacifist will accept, in defense of ones own life. That is not what I want to comment on.      It bothers me that there are murders, who choose to end someone’s life because that person does not conform to their beliefs, and they do not want to have it be judged as murder. It is not OK to say ‘You don’t deserve to live any longer’ and with that, end someone’s life. But the death penalty can do this, when a person is judged, by a jury of their piers, to have acted unacceptably and is believed to be without any redeemable future. Neither is this what I want to comment on.
     I have my criteria for the appropriate time to end a life that I think has no redeemable qualities, as I believe most people do. But I have never given in to the desire to act on my belief. But I believe that I could end the life of a person who has committed a heinous act. Someone who has done to others such awful things that I choose not to reiterate them here because it makes me uncomfortable just to think of what they have done let alone describe it to you. Yes, I believe I could end the life of these miserable creatures. But I haven’t acted on this belief. Merely believing that it is OK to commit murder is not what I want to comment on.
     There must be at least one person that you have read about or heard of that has behaved in a way that makes you believe that their life no longer serves a viable purpose and that the world would be better off without them. I think most people can come up with at least one example that fits this description. Maybe you couldn’t kill the people you thought of but you can enumerate them. Your thinking of the uselessness of these people doesn’t bother me.
     What bothers me is when I hear that someone, I believe to be worthy of continued existence, is murdered. I want to know, when is it OK to end someone’s life when the person in question has a family and job, friends and is generally thought to be a fine, upstanding person by those that know them best? And It bothers me that not only can this life be taken, it is believed, by the murderer, that their ultimate authority should they believe in one, will give them an enthusiastic thumbs up once they have committed their crime. Now that sounds crazy doesn’t it? But it is done all of the time. And there are published accounts that would lead us to believe that it has been going on throughout recorded history.
     1st Samuel 18:7 “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands“. Don’t you think that at least one of those ’slain’ in this example might fit my description of ‘people who were thought to be generally worthy people by their family and friends’ etc and yet they were offenceably killed anyway, and it was OK! Actually it was more then OK. It was approved of by the All Mighty! And of course all of the infidels must die, that’s common knowledge. And their absolute authority says ‘Go for it, I’ll even reward you’! I find it impossible to believe that all of the infidels deserve to die and be damned for eternity.
     So who’s life can be justifiably ended and not have the act of killing them be deemed murder? Seems like just about everyone’s, if you look at it from the proper perspective.
     What I want to focus on here are the people who believe they have the right to kill because they believe in the concept of absolute correctness. What bothers me is that there are people that believe that there is an unquestionable right and an absolute wrong. It isn’t that there is, or is not, an absolutely correct set of rules, the problem I have is with the people who believe they can know absolute truths. There are no absolutely true beliefs.
     I’m not talking about natural phenomena like gravity, which I hope we all believe in as absolute. You don’t even need to believe in these laws, they‘ll still work even if you don‘t. Let’s just say that some things have to be givens. No one teaches you that gravity is. Gravity just is and every one agrees that it is and you learn to live with it. And all the laws of motion, they always work in the same way in our day to day lives and we come to depend on it. Every one who has ever stepped out in front of a moving vehicle has been hit. And every one that has jumped off a tall building has fallen and most have gone splat. It is nice when you have a human guide to teach you about the natural, absolute laws but you don’t need one. Their absoluteness will teach you about the laws of nature.
     The problem I’m talking about is the belief in the absolute truths that have been made up or, if you prefer, handed down. Absolute rules that were made up to prevent or support ideas and behavior that you would never know about if someone didn’t teach them to you. For every made up rule/law/belief that someone thinks is absolutely true there is someone else that says ‘Oh no you don’t, that ain‘t necessary so‘.
     Time, as we experience it in our day to day life, always goes forward, never backward and it never stops. Now that is absolute.
     If you want to prove me wrong don’t show me the laundry list of unsubstantiated miracles that you have in your coat pocket that say other wise. If you want me to believe that gravity and time are just good ideas and not absolutes in our every day life (we don’t generally travel near or beyond the speed of light) that have been violated again and again by miracles, then give me proof, verifiable, duplicatable proof. Show me the proof. Then do it again. Perform a miracle. Oh yea, you can’t.
     You can not know, absolutely, that the parent, spouse, hard working, devout worshiper, well respected (in their own circles) person you want to murder because they do not fit your definition of righteous, really deserves to be dead. And the voices in your head don’t count. Those voices are not real!
     Consider for a moment what it would mean if we could all agree that all of the questionable, made up beliefs (everything but time and gravity and their peer, absolute, natural laws, that are not disputed by sane people) are not absolute.
     What would it be like if we could agree that there was a time before ‘offenceably killing another human’ was murder. If this time existed and murder was not always against the law then, at some point, an individual decided that it wasn’t such a good idea to end a human life without just cause. And for what ever reason, others were swayed by the power of the logic and from that point on, human life was too important to snuff out per a personal belief, and from that time forward it was against the law and it was called murder. So from that time forward, just because the kid was not yours, you weren’t allowed to off him. ‘He’s not just an animal ya know, he’s human like you. He’s special. Leave him be and we’ll see what use can be made of his life‘.
     Ah, and now humans are special, not just animals to be killed or used for what ever. Not because humans have souls but because humans can makeup and agree to go by rules that don’t necessarily benefit them at the moment. Humans enjoy the rule of law. Humans seek to be self governed. Most humans have an evolved sense of time and an evolved form of symbolic thought. Oh, but you don’t believe in evolution now do you.
     I am not suggesting that all made up rules should be ignored. I am not an anarchist. There are some that should be adhered to, like those that keep you from killing people (not those that explain when it is OK for you to kill people).
     I know, what a concept, rules to protect rights not rules to take rights away!

Enjoy, and have a nice day!