Tag Archives: Dark Ages

The Road to Diamond, Day 119: Passages

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Historical, Inspiration, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 27, 2025- In a short letter, with two photos attached, I learned that the young adolescent girl from Mexico,whom I had been sponsoring for three years, has left the sponsoring agency’s wing. There is nothing further I can do for the child, save pray, as all contact with her is through the agency.

In her stead, I will sponsor and support a much younger child from a Caribbean nation. The differences between the two girls could not be more stark. The first was content to stay at home and tend her younger siblings, or so she said. The second is a self-starter, inquisitive and studious, with eyes full of sass. I look forward to seeing just how far she will go in life.

In my own space, I had a spot on my face treated with cold nitrogen, this afternoon. It will need to be evaluated in three months’ time. Another spot will be surgically removed, next Wednesday. I have borne a scar or two, previously, so I am not worried. It’s better to be rid of the spot, before it becomes cancerous.

The country is going through a passage or two. Indeed, the planet is experiencing changes not seen in over 80 years. Some events are actually more reminiscent of the so-called Dark Ages, when kings, lords and other nobles ran roughshod over the masses. Back then, however, those multitudes were uneducated. Nowadays, any chicanery or deception is occurring because the people are, by turns, tired, distracted or complacent. There has rarely been a time when so many are willing to accept whatever is told them. This, though, will not continue in perpetuity. Abraham Lincoln’s admonition, about not fooling all the people all the time, will be brought to bear-as it was after the Watergate scandal and hopefully in just as civilized a manner. We do not need either another Civil War or a mass uprising, as happened in 1968, after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. or in 2020, after the death of George Floyd. At some point, the seemingly defanged Congress will need to assert itself and prevent the “correction of overspending” from becoming an overreaction all its own. It will need the support of the judiciary, and of several other institutions.

The point should never be to excuse excess in one direction, but to ensure it is not replaced by excess in the opposite way.

The Content of Their Character

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Posted by on in collaborating, Historical, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Striving

January 18, 2021-

In the decades recently passed, we have seen the most consistently proven of truths and facts dissected, disputed and set on equal footing with the most outlandish and refutable of falsehoods, all in the name of false equivalency and moral relativism. Very often, this is done in the name of preserving a social system which itself depends on hierarchy.

So it is, that the importance placed by Martin Luther King, Jr, in his 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C., on “the content of their character”, with respect to the judgment people make of one another, has become the speech’s second centerpiece, after “I have a dream…” As important as character is, it is not grounds for ignoring all other aspects of a person’s being. Character, indeed, can change-and hopefully for the better, with edification and growing awareness.

Thomas Jefferson’s hidebound, fear-laden writings, which denied the ability of enslaved African-Americans to produce intellectual works, such as Phillis Wheatley’s volume of poetry, could be said to betray a lack of character on his part. The flaw, however, and other parts of his character, would later be balanced, however, by his producing the Declaration of Independence, and contributions towards the United States Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln’s anger towards Native Americans, a product of his coming of age, in a contested area of the Midwest and his assessment that enslaved people were 3/5 of a free citizen, would be challenged by Frederick Douglass, and others, leading to the Emancipation Proclamation, and a pardoning of Sioux warriors-the latter largely ignored by military officers on the ground, in the High Plains.

Character matters, yet it must be, as Lincoln also said, affected by “the better angels of our nature”. A rogue can be edified, tamed and redirected to be a person of willing service. A charlatan can be, albeit through consistent retribution for misdeeds, made to regard others in an honest and loving light. The great figures of the Twentieth Century-Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mandela, Churchill, and King himself, all had roguish tendencies, in their early years, negative qualities that were, to a greater or lesser extent, subsumed or overcome, by a draw towards advancing the common good.

So it is that, when individually assessing another person, in the age of instant judgement and cynicism, looking towards that person’s better angels becomes imperative, both for the mutual good of the judge and adjudicated and for the common weal.

There Was No Wolf Howling, or Was There?

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Historical, Personal Values, Social, Striving

September 12, 2019-

The nation, eighteen years ago, was both united and frightened.  This, of course, did not last much more than a fortnight, in terms of a unified populace.  The first questioning of the events came from abroad.  French and English gadflies were already asking difficult questions, which could not be answered with glib replies-as the questions themselves were rather detailed, and reached back to suspicion about secret societies.

We Baha’is are prohibited from belonging to such secret societies, for the simple reasons that they are exclusive, promote anti-social agendas and seek power through unscrupulous means.  We are inclusive, pro-social and only accept authority that is earned through service.

Let’s look, though, at what produces conspiracy theories, in the first place:  Greed, lust for power and lack of transparency have combined, over the centuries, to fuel fear, suspicion and lack of trust.  There is, in reality, no good reason for greed, lust for power or hidden agendas, save hatred and loathing of others, either one’s own immediate kin or neighbours, or those further afield, who may or may not be different.

So, power grabs, in the aftermath of the Dark Ages, set high-ranking clergy on a path away from the Love preached by Christ and on the path of seeking more power and wealth.  The quest for dominance led European monarchs to send merchant ships to Africa, where the captains fell into the midst of tribal conflicts and used those troubles to enslave large numbers of people and encumber African leaders in their wider economic servitude, in the form of colonial dominance.

Many seemingly wild, imaginative stories have arisen, regarding just about every prominent historical figure, from the days of ancient Egypt, until the present day. However,  I just have to remind myself:  Just because the wide-eyed boy is sounding an alarm, doesn’t mean there is no wolf at the door.  Statements and evidence need to be weighed carefully, by anyone of sound mind.

Functional

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Posted by on in collaborating, Historical, Poetry

November 15, 2016, Prescott-

The longest week of November is nearly halfway gone.

I take one day at a time, on this gig,

so it does not phase me,

that this is the most quotidian segment

of a season that features a plethora

of holidays.

A colleague was unaware of some functional facts,

regarding our planet’s geography.

She is no longer so much in the dark.

It seems, in this day and age,

that some would prefer

the Dark Ages.

Thinking, and being functional,

were so much easier then,

or so they suppose.

 

The Road to 65, Mile 145: Gaia

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Posted by on in Social

April 22, 2015, Prescott-  A good man posed the question today:  Does picking up other people’s trash change anything?  I think it makes the place cleaner, and sends the message that at least some of us are unwilling to live a disordered life.  As for huge, earth-saving acts, these are awesome and wondrous.  They need to be well-planned, like the Rio or Paris summits.  Question:  Do these change anything?

Mother Earth has been ravaged by mankind before.  The Dark Ages and the Industrial Revolution certainly didn’t affect the planet on the scale that the current Globo-Industrial brood is so affecting it.  We are experimenting with a worldwide American lifestyle. Many want a piece of the Good Pie, understandably. It just can’t continue in the manner with which it is now being attempted.

Roundup is a serious poison.  It saves time; after all, who wants to get down on their hands and knees, and pull weeds out by the roots?  Well, I did, for the sake of healing the soil, and letting ants and worms do what they do best- work the dirt.

Tweaking genes will give well-meaning, educated people the illusion that they are producing sufficient food to satiate the multitudes.  Question :  How will the monocultural crops feed anyone when a) the soil is depleted of nutrients, from not having fallow time and b) the people eating these crops are unable to digest them?

Mass, net-based or dynamite/cyanide based fishing brings in lots of meat for the hipster sushi bars, and other eateries.  Question:  What will such people eat, once the oceans are empty and the fish farms collapse in their own filth?

Wealthy people in east Asia revel in the horn, ivory and body parts of animals whose numbers are shrinking.  They dangle huge sums of money at poverty-stricken people in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Arctic, for the sake of keeping the trade flowing.  Question:  What will happen when animals large and small (think elephants, tigers, walruses and pangolins) are hunted to extinction?  Item:  The lowland black rhinoceros already has been rendered extinct, this year.

Mining firms and agribusinesses, across the globe, buy up huge tracts of land, get governments to enact laws that gran them protection, carry out policies which deplete land and water resources, and use large teams of attorneys to try and intimidate the Great Unwashed.  We even have provisions in free trade proposals, now being considered, which would force governments and people to acquiesce to the demands of international corporations, or risk being bankrupted by a blizzard of lawsuits.  Question:  When everyone is forced to use toxic chemicals, eat genetically-modified foods, even to smoke cigarettes- then where will be, as a species?  Will we be so wealthy that we don’t care?  I wonder- Steven Jobs, Nelson Rockefeller, J. Paul Getty were wealthy men.  Did they die happy, with their financial wealth and their incurable illnesses?

Gaia, our Home Base, is watching, knowing she may always exercise the option of ridding herself of the errant stewards.  I am overstating things, somewhat.  Question:  Are those with overblown, simplistic solutions to the great issues likewise overstating matters?