"a growing camp of religious historians are concluding that early religions were understood much more metaphorically than we understand religion today"
Interesting point - that stories were more stories than "rules" or strong beliefs. Which goes to show how many problems we face when looking at the far past - being unable to actually go inside peoples heads? Or for that matter, simply when writing about someone other than ourselves? The simple adage of "when you assume you make an ass out of u and me" ... trying to understand how we understand is no simple feat. So how would you describe our current relation to religion - based on the recent coverage of the Pope (both the death of the late JP and the "divine selection" of the new Benedict)? Do we believe that a old polish man, with a variety of medical issues, is a direct line for contributing the will of the one true God? And that this includes having millions die from aids in Africa because condoms are a sin? Right...
Source for more? - Karen Armstrong, A History of God(London:Vintage, 1999).
[Geek Fu Action Grip: Your Podcast Sucks, Let Me Do It - Mur Lafferty ] about marketing, and how a lot of messages say "this it what you're doing wrong - pay me to fix it" Great wry wit.
"Channel surfing and similar behaviour became equated with a very real but variously diagnosed childhood illness called Attention Deficit Disorder."
I'm not to sure if I should get started on this... but the fact that we find it completely acceptable to drug children because they don't want to sit still inside in a stuffy room ... ooh boy. "Prozac Nation" and "Requiem for a Dream" anyone? What does it mean to by normal? How much or little do we except to handle on our own? Not saying that life for a lot of people has greatly improved due to medical advancements - be it lithium or antibiotics - but there should be a little more thought going into the consequences and the values that lie as the foundation of drugging anyone who fails to comply 100%.
One of the most widespread realisations accompanying the current renaissance is that a lot of what has been taken for granted as hardware is , in fact , software capable of being programmed"
We are the choice we make - even when we simply let someone else make them for us, be it intentionally or with out our (or their!) knowing about it. The shows on TV? The tax levels? The representation each county or parish is given? The way we write and pronounce words?
(Sidebar: The Munch debacle here in Norway recently - no, not the paintings being stolen, but how his name should be pronounced; his heir threatened the national broadcaster NRK with withholding displaying rights unless they tightened up the policies - and said Munch rather than Monk (a sharp U rather than more of a o-sound))
Choice is all about applying reason or chance to a set of rules. But who makes the rules - and for how long? Compare flipping a coin to playing football - Calvin&Hobbes style. One straight forward and fixed, the other complex and ever-changing. But both governed by their set of rules. Defined and complied with during the "game". Society works the same way. "Don't cross when the light is red" - but we do anyway - at least when there isn't a car in sight - or when other people are already crossing.
We begin to see how salvation has been traded in for retirement as the new ultimate goal for which Westerners suspend their lives and their ethics
Retirement as the new "heaven on earth"? Salvation in the age of instant gratification? Looking at the ads from a lot of financial companies, I have no doubt about it - "When do you want to quit working? How much can you save a month? Click here to see your allowance" With the default age at 60 - a full 7 years under the current norm for retirement, and with the "pension commission" recommending raising the age to 70 and then some for those who do mostly mental work (yes - that's all of you out there sitting at a desk with a compute). What is the good life? When do we have the time to enjoy it? Is it raising kids - or after we have gotten the house to ourselves again? Is it when we get a breakthrough at work - creating a new product, making jobs for other people - or when we close the door on work, shut of the cell and take a vacation?
[filling my head with the beats of: Tempo of the Down: Session 02 - Various Artists ] nice riffs, 'round 20 minutes in
...and the sun was really hot today, summer is definitely coming on strong
