Faith or Fear

Religion has played an integral role throughout human history. People have worshiped deities, the sun, gods, and goddesses. Over time, religion has turned into a very profitable business. The advent of televangelists is a testament to this phenomenon. There are a multitude of religions throughout the world and many of them believe that they are the true followers of the creator. This seems to divide people more than it unites them. It is as if the choice to follow any religion has been relegated to a proposition of faith versus fear. Humans are the only species that can contemplate their own demise. Therefore, we are always wondering what is next after this life. According to the first law of thermal dynamics, energy can be transformed (changed from one form to another), but cannot be created or destroyed. This leads humans to believe that there is quite possibly something more beyond this life.
I grew up in a religious family that practiced Catholicism. I remember being inundated early on with dogmatic rhetoric and trying to follow it as best I could at the time. As I grew older, I started to question the actual values that this faith espouses implicitly and explicitly. I definitely still believe in the Ten Commandments and the beatitudes but overall I have become disenchanted with this domination. The fact that so many molestations have happened to alter boys with no accountability has tuned me away from organized religion in general. I feel that an intermediary is not necessary for me to feel connected to the universe. I experience happiness everyday through my interactions with the natural world. In no way am I saying not to follow your heart with what you believe. I am just saying that I do not believe that I will go to hell if I don’t go to church or follow any established religion.

WAR (What is it good for?)

Throughout human history, war has been a constant threat. Many civilizations have been conquered and co-opted by other nations. People fight for a variety of reasons. They fight for basic survival, to maintain their dominance, and for commodities such as oil. Many people believe that one day there will be wars over water rights. The United States of America was established through war. First, the settlers attacked the indigenous people and fought with them almost to the point of extinction. Then, the settlers fought with the country that many of them were fleeing for “the new world.” Eventually, these settlers would fight each other in one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The United States was essentially build on war and has averaged at least one war every ten years. We were warned by President Dwight Eisenhower to “beware the military industrial complex.” These turned out to be prophetic words because Eisenhower was a general during World War II and he knew all too well the peril that we could face if we continue to wage war on other cultures.
War is also declared in abstract ways such as the war on drugs, the war on poverty, and the war on terror. These types of wars could be waged for the rest of time since there is no actual enemy. In fact, these wars are actually waged on our own people with some profiting from them. The prison system is a multi-billion dollar business that does nothing more than to warehouse offenders. It does nothing to rehabilitate our citizens or to help them to become better citizens. It is impossible to fight against an ideology as we have learned with Communism. Communism was not sustainable because of the way it is enforced in various countries around the world. All of our overt and covert wars against it did not seem to make a difference in the long run. We are a great nation just like many other nations around the world but I am concerned that our national fervor and patriotism has turned us into a civilization that we never hoped that we would become. People are too distracted and detached from one another to stand up to their government or corporations that are pushing them into directions that will polarize us from the rest of the world.