![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyykiI know my journal has been pretty quiet for a while. I've been laying low, avoiding rocking the boat. But I have also been seriously busy. Some people are not going to like this entry - it challenges some fundamental assumptions some sects take as self-evident.
Balancing perspectives is tough. I firmly believe that it is right in the universe for wolves to eat rabbits. Yet I find myself not liking predators in human society. And I am not completely comfortable with the concept of society rewarding those who cannot or will not contribute by providing welfare and assistance - I feel like programs that encourage multiple children to parents who will not work and must be supported are especially heinous. It's like diluting the gene pool by rewarding the weakest element of our society.
I do not feel that humans should be obligated to constantly increase the number of people on the planet. Having hordes of children is not good for the earth, our society, or even our local communities. In fact, the only organizations that benefit are the large corporations, as they then have more consumers. After all, no other predator reproduces like we do. In fact, some factions tell us that it is our spiritual duty to have litters of children. We can thank them for this mess we're in.
In the pagan community there is a marked contradiction of concepts. Most neo-pagans claim to want to work in tune with nature, but it all too evident that this a concept of nature that is wholly sanitized and impotent. Guess what folks: bears and wolves die in the winter. Nature is a harsh place, and all that the "save the world so nothing has to suffer" mindset is going to accomplish is to make some silly self-righteous sanitized suburbanites feel better about themselves.
We do ourselves a great disservice in trying to protect the infirm in our society from the harsher aspects of life. And it is all done in the name of compassion. When I tell someone who is near suicidal that maybe she should dump her lazy boyfriend, (the guy who thinks that sitting on his couch and watching old sitcoms and occasionally gassing up the car is a productive career) she tells me that he's trying as hard as he can and I have no compassion for his situation. You know, she is probably right. I find it hard to feel compassionate toward people who seem to serve as speed bumps on society's path to growth. According to early Science Fiction, we should have flying saucers to drive by now, and I feel that these people slowing down the process is why we're not there yet. And I want my flying saucer.
But on a more serious note, protecting the meek because they can't handle life is noble up to the point that the meek stop realizing that they are meek. Then, they're like the Lhasa Apso barking at the Pit Bull while standing under the legs of the Great Dane, except that that picture is comical, while in real life it's just pathetic. The meek need to realize that the meek never seem to inherit anything until the stop being the meek and become the pissed off.
According to my uncle, the defining moment in any person's life is when they wake up one morning and realize "It's up to me." They realize that no one else is going to bail them out, and that they cannot ever rely on someone else being there to bail them out. Cynical? Well, duh. But it is also taking responsibility for one's own actions to a high degree.
We all see people every day who expect others to be their emotional, mental, spiritual and quite often physical support network. They're friends, not a support group. Personally, I'll listen to a friend who needs help, but there is a point where I draw the line. (One of my Pathways buddies was in a bad situation, and was calling me a lot. I asked this person who else in our class of 52 she'd talked to. No one. Just me. I told her that until she called at least half of the group, I wasn't going to discuss it with her any more. One of the other people in the class had some excellent advice that turned things around for her…) Friends have an obligation to let the people they care about know when they're being dumb, a problem, or oversensitive. And they also have an obligation to the person to point out when the ridicule they are getting is based in fact.
I have a friend who I still talk to from High School. This friend made a statement over 18 years ago that still lives with me:
"If people were more honest with each other and less prone to taking offense, the world would be a much better place."
Wise words.
Balancing perspectives is tough. I firmly believe that it is right in the universe for wolves to eat rabbits. Yet I find myself not liking predators in human society. And I am not completely comfortable with the concept of society rewarding those who cannot or will not contribute by providing welfare and assistance - I feel like programs that encourage multiple children to parents who will not work and must be supported are especially heinous. It's like diluting the gene pool by rewarding the weakest element of our society.
I do not feel that humans should be obligated to constantly increase the number of people on the planet. Having hordes of children is not good for the earth, our society, or even our local communities. In fact, the only organizations that benefit are the large corporations, as they then have more consumers. After all, no other predator reproduces like we do. In fact, some factions tell us that it is our spiritual duty to have litters of children. We can thank them for this mess we're in.
In the pagan community there is a marked contradiction of concepts. Most neo-pagans claim to want to work in tune with nature, but it all too evident that this a concept of nature that is wholly sanitized and impotent. Guess what folks: bears and wolves die in the winter. Nature is a harsh place, and all that the "save the world so nothing has to suffer" mindset is going to accomplish is to make some silly self-righteous sanitized suburbanites feel better about themselves.
We do ourselves a great disservice in trying to protect the infirm in our society from the harsher aspects of life. And it is all done in the name of compassion. When I tell someone who is near suicidal that maybe she should dump her lazy boyfriend, (the guy who thinks that sitting on his couch and watching old sitcoms and occasionally gassing up the car is a productive career) she tells me that he's trying as hard as he can and I have no compassion for his situation. You know, she is probably right. I find it hard to feel compassionate toward people who seem to serve as speed bumps on society's path to growth. According to early Science Fiction, we should have flying saucers to drive by now, and I feel that these people slowing down the process is why we're not there yet. And I want my flying saucer.
But on a more serious note, protecting the meek because they can't handle life is noble up to the point that the meek stop realizing that they are meek. Then, they're like the Lhasa Apso barking at the Pit Bull while standing under the legs of the Great Dane, except that that picture is comical, while in real life it's just pathetic. The meek need to realize that the meek never seem to inherit anything until the stop being the meek and become the pissed off.
According to my uncle, the defining moment in any person's life is when they wake up one morning and realize "It's up to me." They realize that no one else is going to bail them out, and that they cannot ever rely on someone else being there to bail them out. Cynical? Well, duh. But it is also taking responsibility for one's own actions to a high degree.
We all see people every day who expect others to be their emotional, mental, spiritual and quite often physical support network. They're friends, not a support group. Personally, I'll listen to a friend who needs help, but there is a point where I draw the line. (One of my Pathways buddies was in a bad situation, and was calling me a lot. I asked this person who else in our class of 52 she'd talked to. No one. Just me. I told her that until she called at least half of the group, I wasn't going to discuss it with her any more. One of the other people in the class had some excellent advice that turned things around for her…) Friends have an obligation to let the people they care about know when they're being dumb, a problem, or oversensitive. And they also have an obligation to the person to point out when the ridicule they are getting is based in fact.
I have a friend who I still talk to from High School. This friend made a statement over 18 years ago that still lives with me:
"If people were more honest with each other and less prone to taking offense, the world would be a much better place."
Wise words.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
bravo.
if the Pagan community as a whole were more on the beam with a lot of the stuff to which you refer here, there'd be a lot fewer people on the outside making unfair generalizations about 'flakes' and 'space cases.' good show!
pf.
Good one
Date: 2001-05-04 02:54 pm (UTC)I have met people who can only invoke fairy energies, ie drink lots of caffeine, and invoke air energies, and wonder why their lives are a big chaotic mess.
We should encourage our folks to be responsible. We should also say that magic is a tool, not the method.
Third degrees who do bad things and then wonder why the karma shark comes to their house, knocks on the door, and hits them with the universal baseball bat all the while saying YOU ARE NOT ABOVE THE LAW!!!!
You have to do. Do or Do not, there is no try....
Do what thou wilt be the whole of the law.....
And before you tell me to take that statement and shove it in my bearcave.....
There is something analogous to your statement.....
With your will, your internal drive coupled with intent and consciousness, if you actually say in your head, today I will get a job....and mean it....your inner self and the universe can possibly line you up for possibilities before unattainable.
Who knows, you could look in the greensheet and see that newspaper delivery job you have always wanted. Or you could be in a bar, meet a guy, bs, and then get offered a vp position.
But until you turn your cosmic turnsignal on to say I want X....Y....or Z, then it isnt going to happen.
Bears BTW, dont have to die in the winter. They hibernate so that they dont have to worry about food. It is a great lesson on abundance and prosperity. Wolves arent so lucky.
Hey hey dont eat that rabbit, it's the last one in the bag. Damn, now I have to go out again.
But yeppers, it takes work to be free and clear in your life. It takes work to be comfortable.
It takes responsibility to decide that being a victim isnt healthy.
Cause you can make all the excuses you want, but it is up to you to provide for yourself in your life.