July 1, 2024: Decisions, Decisions

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. Thomas Sowell

It is not the giver who makes it a gift, it is what the recipient does that determines whether it is a gift or not. Hoo-nōs

Too often we put saddlebags on Jesus and let the donkey run loose in the pasture. Rumi

As always, what follows is written humbly and for good reason—my voice is but one and I certainly can miss stuff.

Making a decision to give another all the weight to carry is to disuse one’s own agency.  We all know what happens to things we do not use.

Basing a decision on someone’s appearance is to shut down further information.  It’s a knee jerk reaction to dismiss another because of a faltering voice or body. It is like dismissing someone because of their hair.  The voice may not be as strong, the hair may be weird, but if a weak voice or one with weird hair is speaking the vast majority of truth, then neither faltering voice nor weird hair is where we want to land.  We might be uncomfortable for someone who appears to be physically odd and/or mentally incompetent in the moment, but are we at least as uncomfortable about someone who fabricates “reality” as an MO?

Voting is a decision.  It is a power given to all citizens to have a voice, whether their voice is strong or not, whether their hair is weird or not. People who do not vote because they think it’s useless, is them voting for useless.  Yes, it’s unnerving to decide between two things we don’t like. But not doing anything is to pretend one is doing nothing.  And voting for a third choice that has zero chance is like voting to dilute one’s agency.

Sometimes, people who destroy property and hurt others while shouting about freedom, are exercising their narcissism, not their freedom.  Ah, some reply, but what about the American Revolution?  Let’s see, that was between countries, not within a country.  And the “Civil” War?  Yep, and it was within a country that supposedly espoused freedom for all.  So, on one side, that war was about freedom for some?

Deciding that freedom means a free ride and that any consequences are because of a “deep state conspiracy” to remove our freedoms, is a decision that stuff does not apply to some.  That’s crazy.  And if you hang with similar types who push such notions, that’s a conspiracy of crazy.

Choosing conspiracy as a problem-solved default is like taking heroin to make better choices. There are conspiracies, but one needs to do the work to find the supporting evidence.  That’s a very different approach than working to find a lot of supporters.

Avoidance can be a pretty good short-term strategy.  But it’s a terrible long-term strategy.  Want things to change or is it really about collecting some change?  Coin of the realm doesn’t make decisions—they’re coins.  If coin buys your decision, your decision is about coin.  What could possibly go wrong chasing that tall-tale?  Ahh, it’s about power, eh?  If one doesn’t have power, one is powerless.  And we know the powerless are useless, the Constitution and Bill of Rights aside. C’mon—the “it takes power and coin” to get things done is like the notion that only those wearing the proper robes can speak to God. Yeah, and magic umbrellas will protect us from a meteor shower. Who was that being standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square?  Think about it, the most powerful person on the planet or even a group of ‘em, cannot get shit done without the masses.  Why do the powerful or wanna-be powerful appeal to the masses so much?  Yep, a recognition of the power of them absent position or coin. Imagine what King Louis XVI thought about his power and coin when the people decided enough was enough.  I’m not saying the mob had good intentions, I’m saying they rose up.

Those folk being disingenuous or outright egregious, are not in the majority.  They’re not even close to a majority.  The majority voice is who are supposed to rule in our country.  Sometimes they do and are wrong.  Sometimes the minority rule and they’re right.  A healthy voice is better defined as someone who does the best at describing reality and what needs doing for the majority of the time. The point is not strictly about doing things right or wrong, it’s about correction—sometimes even what seemed right turns out wrong.  How will we wield the gift of having a voice is up to each of us, that adds up to a we.

We are not about one thing.  We are diverse—not self-replicating amoebas. We can come together and accomplish great things without giving up our individuality.  Think how many times we have risen to the task.  We’re not hiring leaders so we can sit about scratching ourselves and others, we’re hiring managers to help us be more cooperative and better individuals. Not the perfectly clear-cut choice?  That means we still have to work in crafting a good selection process.  But it also means if we’re left with a choice, we will all choose to do something.  Perhaps it would help the process of mattering if we kept in mind it is not freedom alone we desire nor is it a homogenous citizenry—it is to become better than we are, however good we might be, and that means individually and as citizens.  Raise the IQ (intelligent and individual quotient), EQ (emotional quotient), SQ (social and spiritual quotient), and our CQ (citizen quotient).  Each of us has to make it matter or it might not become manifest.

Giving our voice—our gift—to a façade is like turning a gift into a turd. It is to forget our calling and instead go with the donkey (no offense to donkeys).  Democracy is about all having a voice.  It is the amazing idea to be inclusive. It is amazingly scary. But it would be even scarier to not have our authority, to have given it up because we like the surface of another and/or we are too lazy to care about listening and getting it right.

Synonymous statements vs. lies:  Synonymous: adjective: 1. (of a word or phrase) having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or phrase in the same language: “aggression is often taken as synonymous with violence.”  2. closely associated with or suggestive of something: “his deeds had made his name synonymous with victory.”

Telling a lie: 1. to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive. She was lying when she said she didn’t break the vase. He lied about his past experience. 2. to create a false or misleading impression.

A note about Spiritual Quotient:  If a prospective leader/manager is not really into religion, but is all about letting a group dictate a particular religious teaching in public schools because it will help the candidate gain power, that group may need to check their hypocrisy meter.  For instance, changing the language from a Bible class to a “Bible as history class” because “we citizens have a Christian background” may not be disingenuous, but certainly has potholes in the reasoning.

We’re a much more diverse citizenry than yesteryear. But even if we wanted to explore just the European folks back then, we’d be looking only at those who were practicing or ostensibly practicing particular forms of Christianity. And that was not a singular practice by any stretch of the imagination, even if they used the same version of the Bible. Biblical “teachings” are incredibly diverse in interpretation.  Many folks, including Christians, have died in the “name of Christianity.”  Think Catholics and protestant battles or the hunt for witches or any others not deemed righteous. Will that be part of a Bible as history class?  Do not misunderstand, I’m not against religious practice as a whole—in fact I generally hold that practice as a good thing for all. I simply do not hold with the self-righteous proclamations that allows the strident to impose particular belief onto others and/or to ostracize others because “they are not true believers.”  Somehow I doubt there is only one way to believe in the good that religions can relay.

Perhaps teaching the Bible belongs in Bible school? Teaching the Bible as history in K-12 could get very embarrassing. But I think such a teaching/learning could be well-founded and appropriate if it is honest and not just a class about Christian morals.  However, at this point the notion of the “Bible as history” looks like a masquerade for teaching morality as one strident notion. That’s not my definition of a high “spiritual quotient.”