This week politics will dominate the minds of most Americans. As an Englishman I get to look on with a small amount of wry amusement as the candidates and their supporters vie for public attention and their votes. It’s not that I’m not interested it’s just that I’m detached from the whole thing. Despite that I know who I would vote for if I had the opportunity. Unsurprisingly for a die-hard atheist like me it is the candidate who seems to be most secular.
Why is that important? The USA is made up of diverse states with diverse people as citizens. Many are indeed Christian but some are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist. To represent all the people the President must treat all citizens as if they hold the same faith and none. He must treat them equally. Certainly he should not ignore the religious concerns of the people (or any concerns really) but his own faith should not be the deciding factor. He must weigh up the needs of the people in representing them and treat them as fairly as he is able.
A selective reading of scripture can also support just about any view and my own preference is to dispense with this sort of fallacious argument and concentrate on things that can be supported by reason. If scripture supports the reason in some way (and it probably will if you read it in the appropriately selective way) then so much the better.
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I was listening to a message this week that touched on the global financial crisis, and how hard times like this global recession can reveal three different levels of conviction.
Public Convictions - These are the things you pretend you believe - or you wished you believed - or maybe you really do believe, at least on the surface - but really they’re little more than the right thing to believe. For example, “Real wealth is measured, not by the amount of money in your wallet, but the the number of friends in your heart.” I think we would all agree. But in reality, now that the financial market is taking a turn for the worse, it’s not keeping our friends that captures our attention, it’s our money.
Private Convictions - These are the things you really believe in your heart, that serve as a guide for how you live your life. For example, “I would never prioritize my job over my family.” All other things being equal, this really is a conviction you would try to hold to. But again, now that the market has soured, would you really never prioritize your job over your family?
Core Convictions - These are the convictions you find out you hold that you didn’t know you held until life took an unexpected turn. When you simply have to do what you have to do to survive, your core convictions surface and override your private convictions out of necessity. For example, “I know I said I would never prioritize my job over my family, but this is different.”
With that said, I think it’s interesting to see these in action around you. The political ads that we’re being bombarded with here in the U.S. show us the public convictions of each candidate. From that, we try to pick the candidate who holds similar private convictions as ours. And their track record shows what their core convictions really are.
On Tuesday, we’ll be electing a new president of the United States. We hear their public convictions. Will their private and core convictions line up? Time will tell.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Mike O | 4 Comments »
I’m quite a practical person. I don’t just mean physically in the way I implement plans or use my skills. I don’t even mean intellectually in the way I come up with ideas or see solutions to problems. I also mean emotionally. If there is something that has the potential to hurt me I distance myself from it. I do this without any real conscious effort although I am aware of separating myself from the situation.
As an example my father in law died a few months ago. He was in his late eighties and had been ill for…well…ever since I’d known him. For fifteen years he’d say “Don’t get me anything for Christmas, I won’t get the use out of it”, till it became something of a joke. When he became very sick and went into hospital I volunteered to look after the kids and I offered support to Hil and the other family members. In the back of my mind I was aware that by being supportive I could come to terms with his impending death in advance of it happening.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, it’s just one aspect of my personality. Some people see me coping well with bad news like a death in the family and admire how well I cope. Others see the same thing as me being heartless. Not that I’m particularly concerned about how my behaviour is seen by others, only on how I see it.
This defence mechanism works in other aspects of my life too. I might distance myself from a lover when a relationship starts to turn sour. I might put aside a work friendship when the other person’s standard of work starts to slip and I might have to discipline them. I think that we all act like that to some degree to keep ourselves safe from emotional turmoil and pain.
That still leaves us open to the unexpected. On Thursday we had an unexpected death at work. One of our local field agents, Richard, died suddenly. It was probably a heart attack but he was barely 60 and in reasonable health. He was popular with managers and general staff alike so it’s no surprise that people were naturally upset.
Inevitably a few trotted out the same old platitudes. He was in a better place now, he was free from pain, he was with his loved ones who passed before, etc. Normally I’d bristle at this sort of dismissal of grief as part of some divine plan. It irritates me that some people can sound so sure of an afterlife with no evidence to support it. It irritates me that some people feel it necessary to transfer their own opinions and religious beliefs onto those who are grieving.
I prefer either to remain silent or to recall for others some happy time in the life of the deceased. To take joy in a happy memory can relieve the tension of mourning and allow the pain to find an outlet. That’s just me though. Some people, I’m sure, find comfort in the idea of heaven. I simply find this to be false. My way offers no such comfort, false or otherwise, and so may be less effective. Nor does it refute the beliefs of any who do find comfort in an afterlife. I think that pointing out the possible, even probably, falsehood of their beliefs in the face of emotional pain would be the height of crassness and extremely hurtful.
My preference is to concentrate on the living and to remember the things about a person who dies that give us pleasure. For me a fond memory is better than a belief, whether true or not, and honesty is better than false hope.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Jason | 8 Comments »