“‘Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them.”
-Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
No age or epoch of humanity has not eventually found itself the victim of its own base instincts.
Fear, greed, and panic spread through the body politic like a virus, with apparently little to stop them once again running their course.
This followed by talk of lessons learned – until the next time.
“There are two distinct species of popularity; the one excited by merit, the other by resentment.”
-Thomas Paine
Too often it seems as if our political leaders and those seeking power pander toward the worst in people – intolerance and resentment, fear and prejudice. Achieving popularity by inciting the darker passions in people may win elections, but it does not constitute merit.
“It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.”
-Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
To forego the use of reason is to reject that which God made Man in his own image. It is only through reason that can justify a divine life.
“Every lie is welcome that suits its purpose.”
-Thomas Paine
Nobody wishes to be called a liar, but many will believe in lies to reinforce a delusion.
To every lie, its purpose.
“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
-Thomas Paine
The justification to use what has heretofore been known as torture, in the name of the very same principles that prohibit such action as immoral, illegal, and inhumane, is to justify the nullification of those very same principles.
It cannot be explained away as a necessary evil. It is merely evil creeping into soul of a nation.
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly”
-Thomas Paine
True for any aspect of our lives, but particularly significant today with the rising cost of energy, in terms of dollars as well as the social and environmental consequences of our energy culture.
For decades we in the developed world have enjoyed an abundance that has been all too easy to take for granted; energy flowed into our homes, cars, and offices as if it would never run out.
Do we value our natural resources less and less as we use up more and more? At some point, will there by a much larger price to pay than we ever bargained for?
“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
To be ignorant is not bliss, to remain ignorant is not virtue. To be kept ignorant is cruel.
“I am apt to think that the wisest men dream the most inconsistently. For as the judgment has nothing or very little to do in regulating the circumstances of a dream, it necessarily follows that the more powerful and creative the imagination is, the wilder it runs in that state of unrestrained invention; while those who are unable to wander out of the track of common thinking when awake, never exceed the boundaries of common nature when asleep.”
-Thomas Paine
Some say that dreams or nothing more than the random firings of neurons of a brain in the depths of sleep; others map out exact interpretations of a dream as if it were a common thing.
Dreams are neither random or common; they are a storehouse of imagination, a story-teller that we hear only in the quiet of the night. The stories they tell open a whole world that may, if we are listening, bring our waking life into sharper focus.
“Why may we not suppose that the great Father of all is pleased with a variety of devotion? And that the greatest offence we can act is that by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable? …I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike, who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Did God. the great Father, create the vast universe, in all its splendor and diversity, only to have it reduced to the ravings of small men with closed minds, insisting their own limited vision and flawed belief is the only possible way that is pleasing to God? Is it His desire that in so doing we torture, abuse, and make less than human those who think or believe differently than we?
Can this possibly be what God intended?
It comes in all forms: Fundamentalist Christian, radical Islam, intolerant Secularism.
Faith is a vital component of human happiness, but that is often confused with a belief that one has knowledge of the “one true religion”. It does not exist as long as people are willing to disabuse others in the name of it.
God requires that we be humble. Any religion, or non-religion, is just a flawed worldview trying to make sense of what it ultimately cannot.
God belongs to no religion, sect, or creed. Any such thing is a contrivance of Man. If He is concerned with our petty ranting and raving, it is only to the degree that we would disabuse others in His name.
We have no idea.
It is easy to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the lie after it is told.
-Thomas Paine
How easy it is to be swept up in the moment and find yourself stepping over the line between fact and fiction. How hard it is to explain it after the moment has passed and hindsight casts its critical eye.