Halloween debacle…..

Well it’s been a while since I wrote and I’m sorry I’ve been a little busy but this morning I need to vent.  I’m suppose to go to a party tonight for two of my friends and normally I would be pretty excited everyone hanging out and having good times talking and looking goofy.  This morning however my wife said that one of the ladies she works with asked her if I would be offended by her costume.  That’s right “offended” well let me just throw this out if you think that your costume might offend someone then either do it and say to hell with them or don’t wear it and be polite.  To ask means that your conscious bothers you and you want to get guilt off your chest, which means you’re not strong or possibly heartless enough to just go around pissing people off. 

But Chris what is the costume?  I’m glad you asked.  It’s really a harmless thing, they’re going as a priest and a pregnant nun.  Some of you probably think that I’m going a little overboard so let me explain myself.  If I went to a party wearing a yamaka but with horns coming out of it, people would be offended because you’re being anti-Semitic.  If you wore blackface you would be looked at as a racist, but they sold this costume at the local store.  It’s ok to rip the faith system of over 1 billion people.  The fact that the majority of them say there ok with it is because a) they don’t take there spiritual journey seriously enough to get something out of it or b) they are uncomfortable standing up for what they believe in, so they don’t want to come off as un-cool.  Well I’m already un-cool  so I don’t give a shit about that and while my faith journey is all over the place I do take it seriously so I want to say something about the whole thing.   

Forget the Catholic part, forget the fact that some priests are assholes, and forget the fact that some nuns are bitches.  You should even forget the fact that in our society the idea of celibacy seems odd and unfulfilling because we have the god giving right to sleep with whomever we feel like.  By wearing this costume you are absolutely pissing on the efforts of many people most of whom are good natured people, who are trying to adhere to something bigger than them.  You are also pissing on a hell of a lot of people that stand by these men and women because they are living testimonies that it is possible to give yourself to something hopeful, that a human being doesn’t have to give in to there baser instincts all the time (they have a time and place for some of us but we usually screw that up but that’s a blog for a later time).  I know there are priests that chase tail on the side and I know there are some priest and nuns who have done bad things but that has more to do with human weakness than divine aspiration.  And if the people wearing this costume which makes fun of someone’s human weakness had to watch someone parade around in a costume showing off their own weakness I bet they’d think twice about wearing this damn costume.

Are we better if we turn off the technology?

This is an article I found on GodSpy which I really enjoyed.  I hope you like it.

BETTER OFF: FLIPPING THE SWITCH ON TECHNOLOGY

One day Eric Brende shut off his computer and asked himself: “Am I addicted?” Not to drugs—to technology. This Catholic convert began to suspect that modern men and women were shrinking their lives to fit their machines. To test his theory, he left M.I.T. and took his new wife Mary to live with a primitive Amish community. Their mission: To see how much technology is really necessary, and what life was like before it took over.

By Eric Brende…….(more)

I think I’m going to be sick…….

I was watching MSNBC this morning and they where covering a story where Senator Barack Obama (God please let him beat Clinton) is apparently not patriotic because he doesn’t wear a lapel pin that looks like the American flag.  Barack explained that he thinks real patriotism is taking on the issues that involve the country (wow that almost makes sense).  Well when I first saw the story I think I vomited a little in my mouth because this has got to be proof that America is the stupidest freaking country on the planet.  What happened to America being about something that resembled substance over style.  Have we really become such robots that we will pick our candidates over whether or not they wear a freaking lapel pin?  I really love my country but I have to admit it’s getting harder day by day.  If for some reason your one of those people who get upset because your candidate doesn’t wear American lapel pins then do me a favor and write me a let me know how in Gods name that matters. 

Sorry for venting but I felt like I had to say something about this stupidity,

Chris

Three Culprits

I was reading somethings on the economist E.F. Schumacher and I came across  what he called the three culprits so I hope you like it.

Three Culprits

For Schumacher there were three main culprits, that had all been corrosive agents in a world which had lost sight of individual responsibility and a world bound to the parameters of realism and science. These were Freud, Marx and Einstein. Freud had made perception subjective through his teaching that perception was subject to the complex interplay of the ego and the id, literally rendering it self-centered. This led inevitably to a change of attitude in human relations where self-fulfillment took precedence over the needs of others. Marx, by seeking a scapegoat in the bourgeoisie, had replaced personal responsibility with a hatred for others. His fault lay in his blaming of others for problems with society. Einstein had undermined belief in absolutes with his insistence on the relativity of everything. The application of ‘relativity’ in all other fields including morality, led to rejection of moral codes and responsibility.

Decentralism

What is Decentralism?

Transcending traditional categories of “right” and “left,” decentralism has been the logical meeting place for those in many fields of endeavor who believe that preserving human scale and encouraging a spirit of community are essential for the human spirit to thrive. In a world afflicted with giantism in its social, economic, and political institutions, decentralism is often mistakenly identified as radical, but it is in fact based on many traditional values. Decentralists are a diverse group, but they share a common belief in restoring community self-reliance and bringing economic and social activities back to a more human scale.

Over the centuries, human scale has had many eloquent advocates, ranging from Lao Tzu and Aristotle to Kropotkin and Jefferson, Gandhi and Chesterton. Fritz Schumacher introduced the concept of human scale to mainstream industrial society in the book Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered. In it he called for an economy of permanence, based on human values and sustainable uses of natural resources, and this marked a cultural shift in our thinking about economics.

Schumacher’s ideas rekindled a modern interest in the human scale, decentralist approach, one which has been intensified by today’s social, economic, and environmental crises. The modern environmental movement has awakened an interest in the decentralized approach as issues of energy use, resource consumption, bioregional preservation gain urgency. Intensified globalization has brought forth the need for cultural and community preservation and appropriate technologies. Many visionaries and activists in a variety of fields have opted to develop small-scale, community-based solutions to these problems. Together with the writings of Leopold Kohr, farmer Wendell Berry, economist Ralph Borsodi, regional planner Jane Jacobs, bioregionalist Kirkpatrick Sale, and many others, they continue to build a modern decentralist legacy.

The Schumacher Society is dedicated to gathering this rich decentralist tradition, continuing to bring the values of scale and sustainability into our modern discourse, and demonstrating that small is not only beautiful– it is a viable alternative.