Political Crossfire Forums

[Chingu]

We people at all levels and of all nationalities, status's, races, backgrounds tend to live our lives rather isolted from the big picture; that big picture being the direction humanity is heading in. We often neglect, for a feeling of powerlessness or of having too many other important things to think about, idealistically philosophizing about the large scope of the human condition here on Earth. In fact, in ages long past, the people that philosophized about such matters were often considered the most important, they were given special notice be it positive or privileged or negative and ostrasized. Today though - we are all too busty to spend our hours thinking about the world we live in on a macro scale and it is in many ways a shame. We see what it has done to our societies - it has reduced us to a shameful level of neglect regarding the future and an overly pragmatic sense of the present. We seem more or less oblivious that tomorrow will come and favor today. We think less of future generations and more of ourselves - sacraficing less and less to get more and more.

In todays world it is impossible to imagine the sacrafices that people in our past have made. Today, a weak recession grabs headlines and talk of doom and gloom whereas in days gone by - people managed through great depressions, potato famines, plagues, world wars and so on. Today, people rely on the federal or state governments of on modern conviniences whereas in days long since gone - people relied on their instincts and on the Earth and on one another and the idea of a safety net in government was unheard of. Today, we consider wars and conflicts from teh comfort of airconditioned homes believing it impossible that at any time - we ourselves might be threatened whereas in days gone by - we stood at the brink of world change and fascism taking over or communism launching a nuclear strike or of british Royal Forces taking away newly found liberties or of Confederate or union Soldiers marching down our main street. We can not imagine these things today though they all occurred not so awefully long ago. We've come a long way haven't we?

Sure, we've come a long way. I would argue that it is good we have too. however, we seem increasingly divorced as individuals from center stage. We've come more and more to believe that the individual can not change the "system" and we've become increasingly diseffected in our resolve to hold ourselves personally responsible fro our lives and the lives of our children - our loved ones and our friends and countrymen and fellow human beings.

Of course - in years gone by - we've been at war with each other - we've fought bloody battles to settle scores, advance our agenda's, win or defend our freedoms and move forward. Yet, with the advent and increasingly rapid excelleration of technology and convenience, we've largely neglected and forgotten from whence we've come and in so doing risk making the same mistakes we've battled bl;oody battles to overcome - but once again.

By failing to educate our children fairly to the lessons of history and in our collective failure to impress upon them the importance of personal responsibility and with the rapid growth of freedom and priviledge accessible to the least educated - and through perpetuating and in fact supporting the continual growth of irresponsible and ignorant sub-cultures within our society we seem to fail in as much as we gain.

I therefor ask all who might read this if it is not true that we should do our level best to be personally responsible ourselves and to play our individual roles as citizens of humanity? I ask - is it improper to want to see all the worlds people free? I ask - is it irresponsible to want our children to understand their worlds history in context - in truth and in perspective? And I ask - is it not true that if we become politically correct to the point we sacrafice truth - or liberal to the point we sacrafice moral principles or cautious enough where we withold truths of our past - then are we not doing a great disservice to our children? Shouldn't our children know from whence they've come? Shouldn't we all know the bloody battles we've fought - the mistakes we've made, the gains we've come to? Of course we and they should.

So, where does humanity go? What policies as leaders of the world do we press for? What degree of involvement do we take and where? Do we pressure for all huamnity to have the same inaliable rights as we? And then - how do we go about that?

[kingcourage]

:bby: human is not God .

but human sometime can't remember that

1000 years is a short time.

single soul or body , whatever you call, only exist in day and night.

you can't tell a bug born in summer about the truth what is a winter.(Chinese proverb)

human have their limits.....

The limits is the humanity defined in God's dictionary.

[eynon]

:clap: go Chingu!! that was great! As usual your skill at the keyboard comes through..if you had lived 230 years ago I think you would have been one of those great patriot phamplet writers.

One very small bone I must pick though...I believe what you are describing is not humanity's direction as a whole, but rather the direction of western civilization. The cult of personal responsibility and understanding who you are is making a HUGE ressurgence over here...after a western political philospohy tried to destroy both concepts and Chinese civ in general...but it failed :-D

Anyway I digress...seems to me that western civ(or American civ) is at a major cross-roads, and is split between the more traditional Grecco-roman/Judeo-christian culture and 19th/20th century neo-humanist culture. I mean most political disagreements now-a-days seem less over direct policy issues as much as a basic disagreement in world views. It is the cultural conflict or aptly named "culture war" that has created many of the syptoms you described...I could go on and on about this but I'll spare you :wink: