There was a documentary on TV. In it, a film crew was given intimate access to a day in the life of twelve of the most influential religious leaders in the world.
It was a fascinating insight into the lives of these men and woman, and I appreciate the dedication they each exhibited. But the inevitable "however" comes not in what was said and not shown, but rather what was shown and not said.
Deliberate or not, two things stood out in the lives of these people. First was an inordinate amount of excess; second, closely intertwined with that, was an unrepenting dependence on ritual.
Let’s assume for a moment that the dialogue ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament is accurate, and holds some meaning for the mainstream Christian religions, and possibly religion as a whole. Surely, arguably, Jesus’ harshest condemnation was saved for those indulging in disproportionate excess, and for those addicted to the accolades of men and the flashy nature of meaningless ritual.
“They love the place of honour at banquets and the chief seats on the synagogues.”
It’s hard to tell in the documentary who is guilty of the most appalling excess, but my vote goes to the Pope, followed a close second by the Sikh guy.
It is obscene the amount of wealth and excess these guys have access to and are swamped in daily.
Religion is undoubtedly one of the most lucrative industries in the world, and has been thus throughout history, right up there with the porn industry, the war industry, and the drugs industry. Interesting comparisons.
The property alone owned collectively by religion must be valued in the quadri-gazillions of dollars. Not only is there a church on every corner in nearly every country in the world, there are manses, corporate headquarters, schools and universities, and many of these are situated in some of the most valuable zip codes in the world.
Imagine the property value alone of Grace Church, on Manhattan’s Broadway. Or St. Marks just down the road. Or the All Souls church on Lexington. These alone must be properties worth in the tens of millions of dollars each.
I understand the need for a place to worship, but I think that need has been over-shadowed by the human need to do it not only in comfort, but in opulence, disguising their greed and pretence under a shroud of praise and offering to god. I have seen relatively small groups of Christians erect multi-million dollar buildings, and then routinely use only a third of the building’s capacity for a fiftieth of the available time each week.
The Catholic Church owns its own country.
With the risk of a fatwa hanging over anybody who criticises Islam, I won’t discuss the possibility that this religion may not be immune to its own system of perks.
Every day, the Sikh leader carries a book – albeit a very special book – a gold encrusted book into an opulent palace where begins a lavish ceremony of praise and indulgence.
I wonder what is the value of the art and historical pieces in that paalace or the Vatican?
Religion is as much an industry as a system of faith. I understand the need for it to be situated and sustained, but the nature in which that has been done is pure, unadulterated greed, immoral to the core, the personification of hypocritical.
How can the Catholic Church sit on what must be trillions of dollars of property, artwork and income, and claim to be concerned about poverty? The Pope and his army of bishops and cardinals certainly don’t look like they’ve missed many meals.
The Sikh palace sits on an island – perhaps for security reasons – far removed from the disease and civil war raping its country a few miles down the road.
Another smartass reference to the second biggest mono-theistic religion deleted.to be continued . . .
A couple of years ago, when I was toying with the idea that I might actually try to be a writer, I had a brilliant idea. In my day job I encountered a constant stream on potentially interesting people.
I thought it would be a good idea to interview people with interesting jobs, and turn it into a regular column for one of the mainstream publications. A kind of "this is who I am and this is what I do" piece, a fly on the wall thing about whatever their job entailed on any given day, including the mundane details, which might actually be quite interesting. For example, while talking to an international commercial pilot one day, he was complaining about how much paperwork had to be done during the flight. And I thought: paperwork? What paperwork? Why would you need to do any paperwork? Don't you just turn up, fly the plane to Los Angeles, land it, and hit the bars downtown? Paperwork? Who knew?
So I thought, if I didn't know what a pilot actually does all day, maybe others don't. And perhaps those same people might actually like to know.
I also wondered about an escort/prostitute. We all "know" what they do, but do we really know what they do? What occupies their average day? I thought that would be interesting to find out about, and write a piece on.
As I do with so many things, I promptly dismissed the idea as untenable. Who would pay for such a thing? Who would publish it? It probably wouldn't be as interesting as it sounded. Maybe I was the only person in the whole world who wondered what a pilot or a hooker actually did in an average work day.
Well, apparently not. Because now, two years later, there's a new regular column in one of the leading weekly publications. Guess what the column is about. Go on. Guess.
Yep. Interesting people with interesting jobs and what those interesting jobs entail.
ARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!
It's bad enough when serious crime takes place in your home town (see previous post), but when it happens practically on your doorstep, it becomes even more relevant.
At least this cop seems to be taking it a little more seriously than Senior Sergeant John Robinson of the stupid comments brigade.
We drive through the white trash neighbourhood of Addington a lot, and to be fair I wouldn't walk there during the day let alone walking through it at 2am on a Saturday.
Two of the little miscreants have been charged. Excuse me? Two? There were about ten of them. The cops are seeking witnesses and, presumably, the other eight?
Well, hello! I'm willing to bet the two mongrels they have in custody already know who the other eight are. Why not hang them upside down, naked, and stick little pins in their privates until they give up the names of the others? Jeez it's not rocket science.
". . . it's just a bunch of hooded up young people doing something dumb."
That's how Senior Sergeant John Robinson describes (Christchurch Star) how six hooded punks terrorised a young couple driving home form a party at 2am one morning. First they threw a brick at the car, narrowly missing the driver's window. When the car stopped, six of the mongrels surrounded the car, intimidating the young couple. They were armed with wooden garden stakes and wine bottles. The young woman in the car feared they were "going to be beaten up."
I suspect she feared worse than that. Who wouldn't in such a situation?
The thing that gets me here is the cop's reaction. Just kids doing dumb stuff.
Can you believe that? That's the reaction of the agency charged with the protection of society. That's what the cops really think about youth crime. Kids doing something dumb. WAY to minimise it, copper!
My son and some friends were parked at Burger King in town late one night, and their car was suddenly surrounded by a bunch of about twenty skinheads who started thumping the car. They broke off a mirror and a wiper blade and made a few dents in the panelling.
Senior Sergeant John Robinson would probably snicker and say "Ahh . . boys will be boys, eh?" LOL
Is it any wonder Christchurch was recently labelled the city residents MOST feel unsafe in?
Apparently, according to Robinson, "youth crime has reduced slightly in the last five years."
It's HEAD IN THE SAND IGNORANCE like this idiot has that enables him to stupidly regurgitate politicians' wishful thinking that youth crime is down.
NEWSFLASH: it's not down, it's just not being reported!
It's not being reported because society now realises THE POLICE ARE USELESS! There's no POINT reporting most criminal behaviour because even if the cops show up, which isn't a guarantee, there's nothing they can do. And if the perpetrators walk into the police station and hand themselves in for being naughty - which is the only way they'll ever be apprehended - the limp wristed pathetic court system can't do anything with them either.
It's not down, it's in the too hard basket.
The young man in the car tried to reverse but the mongrels behind him didn't flinch, and he didn't want to hit them with the car.
Well, I have to disagree there. I think he should have floored it and taken out as many of the little shits as he possibly could. Then gunned it forward to take out a few more. Oops, maybe I'm committing a crime by saying that. Or even thinking it.
The cops can't find the six punks who terrorised the couple, but they'll track me down and prosecute me for espousing an anti-social attitude. Thought-crime.
I can't even really begin to explain how angry and cynical I am about this sort of stuff. But I think so are a lot of people. Which simply feeds a sense of powerlessness, which in turns feeds the egos of idiots like Robinson and those morons further up the chain, right to the Minister. They want us to be terrified. They need us to be powerless. God forbid the "powerless" masses decide NO MORE and start taking matters into their own hands.
Dealing with youth crime and boy racers? Easy when you step outside the stifling boundaries of laws designed to protect criminals. A bit of money and organisation, I can see youth gangs and boy racers gone from Christchurch streets.
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? - Ivan Karamazov
I was reading the story of little Hana. It was Child Cancer collection day and I donated ten bucks for the cute little bracelet with two colourful beads on it.
Little Hana is unfortunately, cruelly, representative of many many New Zealand children whose wee bodies and families are wracked by the cancer that is cancer. Her story, like the others, was truly heartbreaking, so much so that I couldn't’t finish reading it, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Not a good look for one trying to maintain such a staunch macho image.
I got to thinking later on about how I was once called upon to defend the indefensible. As part of an oral exam, my professor, playing Devil’s advocate, demanded I explain to him why God ordered the wholesale slaughter of the Midianites. Not just the men, but the women and children. The women. The children! Why?
What could I say? God has a purpose? A greater purpose, plan, than anyone can begin to understand?
That’s the standard line. That and the whole free-will thing. God made us with free will and because we chose to exercise it, the consequences are the horrific sufferings we see around us each day.
The consequence is that little Hana has to suffer and die from a debilitating destructive disease.
There are always two sides to every argument. One side, for example, is absolutely convinced Princess Diana was killed in an MI5 assassination plot. The other side thinks it was a terrible accident. And there is inevitably a lost and ambivalent minority who don’t know or don’t care. But by and large there are two camps.
As to little Hana, there is a camp that fully believes in the standard line, that any amount of suffering here and now is but a headache compared to the eternity of comfort coming (if you toe the party line, but that’s another debate).
The other camp, angry, bitter, narrow-minded infidels, cannot possibly understand why an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God could do such a thing.
HOW. DARE. HE.
I must confess to never having set up tent in the former camp, despite my conservative raisings. Even before I understood it fully, my unexplored theodicy baulked at the naïveté of such a weak argument.
This is the best he could do? The creator of the Universe, who spoke galaxies into existence, who breathed life into every animated thing in the cosmos, who transcends time and space and knowledge – this is the best he could do? This is the best of all possible worlds?
I don’t think so.
I can imagine a better world. I can imagine a couple, actually. Am I therefore smarter than God? Apparently.
If I were responsible for creating a fabric of human destiny – ifyou were – could I found that edifice on the unavenged tears of little Hana? Could you?
If the only possible world to create was predicated on the necessity of making little Hana’s five short years a living, incontrovertibly painful nightmare of vomiting convulsions, energy-sapping blood transfusions, tears and screams of anguish and a better than average chance of an intolerably lingering death leaving behind a wake of misfortune and tragedy for generations, would I do it? Would you?
Of course not. Of course you wouldn’t. Why would you?
Look into little Hana’s teary eyes and claim God is good. Watch her family disintegrate with grief and say that God is all powerful. Stand at her grave and praise God for his all seeing eyes. I dare you.
The logic is sound. God cannot have all those attributes. If he lacks one he ceases to be.
The common sense is even more sound. It is, as Dostovsky wrote, “beyond all comprehension why they (the children) should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony.”
I really struggle with this one. On the one hand, somewhere in my psyche I can really understand where the detractors are coming from. In these PC times, not only are you not allowed to make fun of any "minority", you're not even allowed to let slip anything that remotely sounds like mirth about said minorities. Especially if you're the President of the United States.
But on the other hand, I think this is an example of how dangerously sensitive everyone has become. It is now only permissible to make fun of middle-class, employed, white males. Anybody outside of that demographic is out of bounds.
Minority groups have labels, often derogatory, for those who are not of their own persuasion. Gays can knock straights until the cows come home, but god forbid somebody straight says - or even thinks - anything remotely homophobic. The thought police are on their doorstep quick smart. Ethnic minorities can say whatever they like about whites, no matter how defamatory, and can discuss openly and hatefully their history. But woe betide paleskins who remind Maoris or Asians, or African Americans of their own unsavoury history.
There was a Maori woman, an academic I want to say was Margaret Mutu, on TV ages ago, and I was stunned at her unrestrained re-definition of the word racism. She said it was discrimination based on race by those with enough authority to enforce it. And I thought OMG! She was on Eye to Eye so of course she went unchallenged. How pointless would it be to ever challenge a Maori woman on anything anyway? The race card would be out only slightly quicker than the gender card and then all discussion would halt.
So apparently it is not possible for Maoris to be racist. I wish I had known that when I was growing up in The Block (note the house in this article, number 36, is THE house I used to live in!). I would have felt much better about the daily - hourly - taunts and threats I received simply because I was pakeha. If I had known I was the one with all the authority I'm sure my childhood would have been much less terrifying and dangerous.
And I would have felt much less sensitive about the derogatory remarks I had thrown at me from the State houses as I walked to school or the dairy or my milk run.
Obama has been accused of being out of touch, because of his "special olympics" remark. I think it lets us know how NORMAL he is. He let slip that his thought processes are just like 99% of us who have not been corrupted by the PC virus. I have heard downs syndrome people make fun of "normal" people. But if Mutu's definition can cross demographic boundaries, it's perfectly okay.
Another example. It seems quite legitimate that Christians can be the targets of derision and hate, but don't dare make fun of Muslims.
Poor Obama had to call the Special Olympics guy from Air Force One, even before the Leno show aired. Give him credit for being pro-active on that, I guess.
If only we could invent a way, if only this were a world when unmet people could say you charm me and I’d like to know who you are. With a code: ‘No thanks,’ if the charm might not be mutual. - Richard Bach
I don’t encounter too many people by whom I am charmed. That is either an indictment on society, or on me.
It seems people are not very connected anymore, or if they ever were they are now not as so. Which is a shame. It seems our default setting is suspicion, or contempt, or cynicism, or anger. We are polite to a point, amicable to a point, connected to a point. Beyond that the claws come out.
We are, by and large, intolerant. We care little for the expressions of others, unless there is some gain for us. We are increasingly aware of the importance of privacy – perhaps, unfortunately, for good reason – and obsessively protective of it. We are increasingly sensitive to the advances of others.
Or has it always been that way?
Perhaps in the “good old days” we were just as sensitive, but more adept at suppressing it because of social conventions no longer in play.
People wear their hearts on their sleeves less now. While honesty used to be the theatre of the discreet, it is now the hostage of the politically correct.
Apparently even in the 70s when Bach wrote A Bridge Across Forever, a confession of charm was not a simple thing. Even now it can be translated a myriad of ways.
I like that skirt.
You have a lovely smile.
Your perfume smells wonderful.
I think you’re beautiful.
I love you.
I think we should be afforded five minutes of confession - isn’t it good for the soul? - at random times during the day. Five minutes of honesty without agenda, and without consequence. An opportunity to bear your soul without fear of rejection and without damaging your future interactions.
I’d love that.
Hasn't the Labour Party shown its true colours. I seem to remember strong denials from the Labour spin doctors, and even Clark herself, about a possible cushy number with the UN. Now? Clark's in New York for a job interview - a cushy position with the UN. Not only did she run the country into the ground in her 9 years as PM, but she certainly managed to feather her nest for her retirement, didn't she.
And now her sycophant 2IC is leaving politics. Building a house in the Bay of Plenty. Nice for some. Glad our tax dollars have set him up well.
And the political leftovers, Phil Goff and the only other Labour MP to be heard lately, Clayton Cosgrove, are showing themselves to be truly ignorant and out of touch indeed. Goff is criticising the national government for stuff now that is so clearly the detritus of their pathetic attempt at leadership over the last 9 years.
I used to like Phil Goff. Not now. He has taken over the contempt Clark and Cullen had for regular Kiwis. Does he think we are so stupid that we've already forgotten that it was them that got us into a lot of the crap New Zealand is in now? I know some of it is global, but what did they do to protect us from what a lot of New Zealanders KNEW was coming?
They just make themselves look pathetic when they criticise the present government for stuff they got us into. But I'm sure his retirement is secure. His property is secure. His job will continue, probably with a pay rise. His family will have food, and the power bill will be paid.
Why should he give a shit about any of us?
Ever wondered what spoilt little white kids get up to on the weekends? On your tax dollars? Isn't it great to see what the future looks like?
What is truly disturbing is that this lovely little flower will probably see this photo in the newspaper and be proud of it. Think it's cool. Her mates will praise her.
I wonder who she is? Remember that Chinese woman, or maybe she was Japanese, who was mercilessly hounded by photo-vigilantes and paparazzi because she had committed some social faux pas? I can't even remember what it was, but she was followed and photographed and humiliated for . . well, at least a week.
Anyway, I think it would be great if this little angel became the poster girl for everything that's wrong in the world. Find her. Identify her. Out her. Blitz her Facebook page. Hound her. Humiliate her. SHAME her. And then send her a bill for every cent of our tax money she's drank and then puked.
And then go after her mates.
. . . I'm getting a bit sick of some of these companies pleading hard times. Fisher and Paykel is just the latest, but a very clear example of the current environment, a la GM and the big three (or is it five?) flying in their corporate jets to talk to George W about a handout.
It seems to me that these companies (is DB going to be next ?) are not sacking hard-working employees to stay afloat. They are out-sourcing and down-sizing so that the profits can remain level. And so that the executives can maintain their current salaries (or there abouts).
Jeez life must be tough for John Bongard. His 7.5% salary cut will still leave him with something like a cool million a year. He's overseen massive job cuts at his company. Those minimum wage (or not much more I'm sure) jobs were outsourced to slave labour in Thailand and Mexico where they probably pay the workers 8 cents per hour, and he's sanctimoniously offering to drop his salary by the price of a new Mercedes. Damn! He might just have to drive last years model.
And he's gone cap in hand to the New Zealand taxpayer (so to speak) for a hand-out. He wants MY tax dollars so he can keep his wife in Gucci shoes and his mistresses in pretty lingerie.
So this year they're only going to make 30 million profit. I'm sure the ripple effect is going to mean little old mums and dads relying on their F&P dividend are going to have to turn the heater down this winter, but that's better than being one of the now unemployed F&P factory workers who won't have any heat at all.
I'd be willing to bet Bongard has a lovely palatial house somewhere on Paratai Drive. Maybe his ex-employees could front up there for soup and accommodation in the gardener's quarters.
The property alone owned collectively by religion must be valued in the quadri-gazillions of dollars. Not only is there a church on every corner in nearly every country in the world, there are manses, corporate headquarters, schools and universities, and many of these are situated in some of the most valuable zip codes in the world.
