Index 
Acceptance Human Rights (Freedom and Security) Happiness Morality
"Mr Hollande (French president) said: “Africa is not free until it is totally free from insecurity, from wars, from underdevelopment, from poverty and inequality." from The Telepraph (London News Service) Good luck, Mr president and, especially the reigning foreign minister in achieving freedom, any freedom according to you. But I think your goal futile, hopeless, and its pursuit the source of much of the world's pain. Insecurity and inequality, if not development and poverty, lie in the human heart, not in the world around. We can find cause for such maladies of thought whatever our circumstances; just look at my neighbors in the very heart of the strongest empire in the world fearful of a terrorist's possible attack. Strange, very strange this security we pursue. Equality, ah yes, that paragon of unassailable truth in justice before man and God. Yes my leige, my pope, yes sir, my president and boss, we are all equal; I salute that flag, just as you demand. Poverty. Yes, of course, but if you mean "decent" living compared to the average rather than "minimum" living compared to need, I would have a word against thee. If you tie this call to end poverty with your call for equality, you call f or coercion of those with more to give to those with less, and I would have a word against thee; but if you call for a minimum of food and shelter for all, no more, then I might listen more intently to your proposals. Development? Sure, but to what purpose other than greed if not for minimally comfortable life? This reminds me of Hebert Marcuse's observation of distinction between freedom "to" and freedom "from". The right wing stresses "freedom to"; the left "freedom from". I suspect the first article of the Bill of Rights was intended to assure freedoms "to": to think what we want (religion), say what we want (speech, press), meet with whom we want (assembly), and sue the government. The enlightened founders enacted the first amendment to restrain the natural tendency of government to absolve freedom of the individual. We, both the left and the right, currently seek security, equality, and economic development as measures of freedom; all achieved better by better by cooperation and less by individualism. How far we have come to the left, as the quote above shows. So my paraphrase of the president and the pope: "If we would all just get with the beat, we would all be better off." To which I say, hogwash, because we can never agree on the beat except we all want to live; we all love to live. And that is Jesus's golden platter*. It's right there in our love of life, right here inside us. Let those with ears, hear; and hearts feel; and minds think; and souls anguish --- God's glorious gifts, among others, of life, human life (I can't speak for others, even other humans, but I sense other creatures love life too, especially humans, perhaps too much). But when we curse pain, suffering, and even death itself as evils that need to be cured, we curse the very things that make life possible, sustain it, and let it recognize itself, therefore death. Some suggest the latter is the cause of our imagination, which I at times equate with our insanity, while acknowledging a role, perhaps large, for time-borne fear of future pain and death. Chronos makes us fear, Ananke makes us hope.** * And Epictetus's and Lao Tzu's, and, well, lots of the old guys's. ** We must learn there is naught to fear from inevitable time, he is our father and enabler; nor much to hope for from inevitable cause, she is our mother, substance, and giver of laws we cannot break, except in delusions we call imagination, like believing the earth is not the center of the universe, as mine is, at least my universe. |