Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Pro-Death

No, this is not about the Death Penalty but is a play on words.
Abortion is closer to what I am thinking about.
We have our Pro-Life people and we have our Pro-Choice people. Whose side you might be on is not of my interest. Nor am I thinking about assisted suicide, although that is closer to what I would like to write about here.
I suppose under normal circumstances on a day to day basis we all like to live and wish to continue to do so. But have you ever thought about how death is an important component of life, how for there to be life there must also be death?
A simple example of what I mean is food. You need to eat in order to live. Everything you eat is something that once lived. This includes plants as well as animals.
If no one died, how long would it be before the planet was overcrowded to the point where there was no room for plants and other animals to feed us? How long would it be before the planet was so trashed that we decided life wasn't worth living?
Life is valuable only because of death. Death clears out the old to make way for the new. Without death, we would need to stop procreating. Without death, everything would become older and older and older.
Yes, do live. But do understand death is not the enemy of life. It is but life's partner in the creation of new life.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Ten years after

I know it's not quite 10 years after 9/11 but it is beginning to seem longer than that.
Terrorism and terrorists seem so yesterday and I think this is true also for most Muslims.
Things are rapidly changing throughout the World, including in the Muslim countries. With little or no help from us, unless you include Social Networks and the Internet, Muslims are tired of the same old same old and are demanding more freedom.
For far too long the only requirement the US government demanded for a Muslim country to be our "Friend" was that they talked tough on terrorism. It didn't matter if they were dictators who oppressed their people. All that mattered was that they say that they stood with us on the War on Terrorism.
This approach needs to stop.
Yes, I fully realize that our ideas of freedom and Muslim ideas on freedom are not exactly the same. But stop and think for a moment how even in this country, the USA, ideas on freedom are often hotly debated. Think of abortion and gay marriage as just two of the many freedom issues we fight about. Disagreeing is just part of being free.
Radical nuts and religious extremests are in our own country and in every part of the world. The time to recognize this and act accordingly has come.
We need to support people throughout the World who rise up against dictators, be those dictators or friend or foe.
We should never have crawled into bed with these dictators, sending them military goodies to suppress there people.