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No Higher authority
Jun. 14th, 2011 10:21 amOne of the things that preoccupies me - well, sometimes - is the nature of faith. And not just when I'm on a wind up mission.
I know amongst my friends, there's a range of viewpoints on the subject. So I often ramble, and in part that's trying to straighten out what I think, and in part, that's to encourage others to do so.
I remain, I think, in my opinion that there may be 'something more'. However, I'm afraid I still don't hold that it follows that that 'something more' might be conscious in ... well, any meaningful sense of the word.
So what I was mulling over - regardless of religious inclination - there's a sort of temptation to believe in a Higher authority. A sort of abdication of responsibility, that 'someone else' knows best. Be that a religious belief, or a secular one, or just an apathetic one.
It's quite clear that this belief is widely held, because - if nothing else - the voter turnout is pretty abysmal.
There's always a temptation to believe in a Higher Authority. Someone who - at the end of the day - holds judgement of what is right.
There's a danger in that though, of abdication of our own responsibility to make the world a better place. To use our own judgment. To accept that we're the arbiters of our own fate. Because lets face it - even if there is that Higher Authority, the feed back timescale is long enough that ... it'll always be too late, if you wait for the judgement.
Even our legal and political systems are - essentially - feedback mechanisms, and deliver a verdict after the fact.
That will always be too late to fix the problem. And no one else is going to do it, either. There's been a few stories lately, in the news, that ... have been really rather shocking, and all because that 'Higher Authority' has failed.
That people have done things, that have ended up... at best ill considered, and at worst outright negligent. And yet they continued, because they were relying on 'someone else' to notice and do something about it.
I think that really is the proof of the adage - that all it requires for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing. But to take it down to a basic level - there's no real thing as absolutes of good and evil. Merely people who are prepared to stand up, and not just demand something better, but commit to making it happen themselves.
It's not complicated, but for all that, neither is it easy.
I know amongst my friends, there's a range of viewpoints on the subject. So I often ramble, and in part that's trying to straighten out what I think, and in part, that's to encourage others to do so.
I remain, I think, in my opinion that there may be 'something more'. However, I'm afraid I still don't hold that it follows that that 'something more' might be conscious in ... well, any meaningful sense of the word.
So what I was mulling over - regardless of religious inclination - there's a sort of temptation to believe in a Higher authority. A sort of abdication of responsibility, that 'someone else' knows best. Be that a religious belief, or a secular one, or just an apathetic one.
It's quite clear that this belief is widely held, because - if nothing else - the voter turnout is pretty abysmal.
There's always a temptation to believe in a Higher Authority. Someone who - at the end of the day - holds judgement of what is right.
There's a danger in that though, of abdication of our own responsibility to make the world a better place. To use our own judgment. To accept that we're the arbiters of our own fate. Because lets face it - even if there is that Higher Authority, the feed back timescale is long enough that ... it'll always be too late, if you wait for the judgement.
Even our legal and political systems are - essentially - feedback mechanisms, and deliver a verdict after the fact.
That will always be too late to fix the problem. And no one else is going to do it, either. There's been a few stories lately, in the news, that ... have been really rather shocking, and all because that 'Higher Authority' has failed.
That people have done things, that have ended up... at best ill considered, and at worst outright negligent. And yet they continued, because they were relying on 'someone else' to notice and do something about it.
I think that really is the proof of the adage - that all it requires for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing. But to take it down to a basic level - there's no real thing as absolutes of good and evil. Merely people who are prepared to stand up, and not just demand something better, but commit to making it happen themselves.
It's not complicated, but for all that, neither is it easy.
