Change without Changing... the ultimate challenge
Technorati tags: Socio-Politics, Insanity, Democracy, Dogma
And speaking of pictures, I wanna give special attention to the one below, which I had to include the old-fashioned blog way.
And what a picture it is! This is a new, citizens’ democracy activism site. Check it out if:
a) you feel that democracy in dying a slow, painful death
b) you feel just a tad bit less free when you woke up this morning than you did yesterday
c) you think that enough is enough
Life must be worth living. To have a life worth living, we need to make it worth living. To do nothing is suicide. Apathy kills - the puppetmasters know this. It's also ironic that this coming Chinese Lunar New Year is the year of the Dog. More like the year of the Dogma, if you ask me.
"a belief or doctrine held by a religion or any kind of organization to be authoritative and not to be disputed or doubted" (emphasis by myAsylum)
Now, I can, and do, accept that there needs to be a certain amount of dogma in religion - such as that there is a God - no one professing a monotheistic religion would ever dispute that. However, I would rather call these the basic tenets of a religion.
What I cannot, and do not accept is religious dogma that is based on a myopic view of the world, distortion of truth, gross overgeneralization (a side-effect of myopia, usually), and the need to be suffocating; the mindset that insists that repression and suppression are the paths to paradise.
Our reality today is filled with all sorts of challenges - globalization of the economy, the need to be competitive on a real-world level, violence as the way to settle disputes, the ever increasing fragility of our inter-racial relations; the list is endless. Yet, the focus of our religious leaders (and those that claim to be righteous) seems to be how the youth of today are on a sure path to damnation; that there is an urgent need to pummel these kids, by whatever means, towards the straight and narrow, or more accurately, their definition of "straight and narrow".
This mindset, it seems, isn't just confined to how religion is administered. I see it manifest itself (to one degree or another) in our education system, in government, in business... almost everywhere.
Thou shall not question. Thou shall do as we have told thee. To question is heresy. To hell with you, you thinking heretic. Hell-fire is kindled with your lot, you thinkers and questioners!
I, for one, am a firm believer that a dogmatic and rigid approach to anything achieves nothing. When the new and different are dismissed, simply because they are new and different, and somehow must be 'wrong', what one is bound to arrive at would be the same old, same old. Like Benjamin Franklin once said,
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"
It is, after all, in the nature of human beings to fear change. The danger here is that these despots hold real power; the power to incarcerate, the power to suffocate. You're damn well gonna do as we say, or die in the process.
Ironically, change, is exactly what our nation's (err.. I mean asylum) leaders outwardly seem to be striving for. We need to change our way of thinking to be able to compete globally, they say. And almost in the same breath, but we need to preserve our culture from the evil influences encroaching from the outside.
Insanity? Or just plain confused? I don't know. You tell me.
Thus lies the ultimate challenge facing us today - how to achieve change, without changing. Dry-cleaning society to achieve a sparkling-clean sheen-like exterior, while the fabric slowly rots from within.
