Graduation

Good morning!

How are you today? It's a beautiful day here in the Lou. A good one for a holiday. Early May is just filled with graduations, holidays and late spring fun.

As the next class of students leaves the ranks of high school, college or professional/graduate school, I think back on the way my education started. It actually happened this morning with my breakfast toast, etc.

The thought stemmed from an inner dialogue I was having with myself about accepting not being "a good Christian" anymore. That led to my contemplating the main themes in Christianity versus my understanding of what is right and "true". What I know to be best is: develop the self; be a steward to all others, in the collective "self". This is known as Brahman in the Hindu religious belief system. I concluded that the overarching themes in institutional Christianity are or are variations of: obey now; reward later.

That blind faith and discouraging of challenges to authority reminded me of the classroom setting. And I'm not sure that its true or not, but I believe the first real "schools" were all religious. So, if that's true, then religion is the institution from which we derive our modern philosophy of classroom teaching. Prior to that, there were many teaching styles such as those used in Ancient Kemet, Greece and Rome.

What really struck me is our Pledge of Allegiance.

It's a statement that I never really thought about until I was in college. That was when I dissected what we were saying. When you do that, you see something more than simply something I couldn't bare to stand and say (especially after we learned about slavery). It is a mind shaping tool - brainwashing - if you will, carried about through rote learning, repetition. Every time that I think of something similar - from the pledge to the arbitrary subjects we learned that we will never use - I get angry! If you don't, then you just don't see it like I do...

Not that there's anything wrong with that :)

However, if you like to see things for the outcomes that they produce, then you see that the things we "learned", more like we were inculcated or indoctrinated with as children, were tools of a government or governments ensuring their power into perpetuity. Like my friend B. Jones says "they found a way to drown it all out... with cobless corn... techno porn". What they're drowning out is not your votes. They're drowning out your independent thought with gobs and gobs of stimuli - from sports and entertainment to prescription and "illegal" drugs. Don't get it twisted, the government brings it here in large quantities. Do you really think Rico from downtown has the cash to fund a large carrier from Mexcio or Columbia, have it hidden from the U.S. military and get it to you for the price that we get it? NO! But I digress...

My disclaimer: I love this country! I love the people in it (for the most part). I just have a problem with the way we let someone else control us, and do whatever they want around the world, when we wouldn't let a friend do anything close to that! So why should we let our government? Especially since we pay them to do their jobs right and with integrity. It's not as simple as that, but I think we could easily take everything back if we just stop feeding into it. Cut off your cable. Get rid of your T.V.! You don't need it! Talk to your family! Read a book. Catch some rays. Grow a garden! Anything but wasting your life watching a tube and working like a drone! Maybe I just have more of a zest for life than most, but I think it may be contagious...

Catch the FEVER! LOL

Anyway... This is more of a rant than a writing of purpose. But like I said. I was angry. Happy Cinco De Mayo! (don't get me started on the irony of us celebrating that one! lol)

Comment if you get the notion!