Archive
Destructive Nationalism in Support of Racism and Slavery (Nationalism Part 2)
I must confess that I calculated the headline to be provocative. I mean to provoke, but I also mean to clear my own thoughts a little.
I do not think that it is a far-fetched thought that Nationalist ideas have partly been constructed to support Racism and Slavery. From the multitudes of examples, I could bring up, e.g. Rudyard Kipling, and almost any book he wrote Read more…
Griping About Destructive Nationalism, Part 1
London has been on the news lately, with some good news for a change. Or at least feel-good, not rioting like last year. But let us not forget that the roots of the rioting are there, untouched, and with David Cameron publicly recounting his wet dream of more “welfare cuts” (i.e. cutting services that poor people need), and tax breaks for his rich friends. He is obviously already campaigning for the next General Election, and the Coalition does not figure in his plans. He wants a hard-core Tory government á la Mrs T.
That is naturally speculation on my part, but that is what it sounds like Read more…
Personhood, or Being a person
Some recent phenomena have prompted me to write this, in an attempt at a common sense-philosophical study of what the word person means, and how definitions of being a person–sometimes called personhood–have been expanded in recent centuries. I am doing it mostly for my own benefit, to organise my own thoughts, but in our time of sharing and over-sharing, why not share? 
To begin with, I suppose we must check what the word here means. Without going into more complex things Read more…
Nonviolence vs. Pacifism, or How to solve unsolveable problems?
How to countenance a situation that can’t be countenanced? I started thinking about that again as I was reading the updated biography of Nelson Mandela by Anthony Sampson (updated by John Battersby, pub. 2011). First of all, there is the kind of racism that, while stepping on your toes, isn’t about running you completely to the ground so as to avoid having to make concessions. Then there is the other kind that sees you as property and whipping you to work harder so as to squeeze every last bit out of you until you’re discarded as useless.
We are dealing with the latter kind here. When Mandela was born in Transkei, Eastern Cape in 1918 Read more…
Good and Evil — Thinking of Moral Philosophy
I must stress my disclaimers here, especially: These thoughts are my own, if by nothing else, my adopting them because they make sense and sound right. Also, I am by no means an official representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just a member with a few decades of experience on local/district (call it diocese or, stake, as we call it). Please feel free to comment, even if you haven’t read every single word here–this is, after all, 1,500 words. I love learning new stuff.
Also, if you run into any leftover spilling mistokes, please let me know and I’ll fix ‘em.
There are many, who struggle to understand good and evil from a post-modern perspective. Read more…
Celebrating King James Bible
Some others may have read the August Ensign, and noted the pages dedicated to celebrating 400 years of King James Bible. I was sort of inspired to put my 2 cents about the Bible in ordered bits as if someone else were interested in my thoughts. Feel free to criticise/correct me; but my hope is that people would study history, so we could learn from past mistakes. Read more…
Finding the historical “Truth”
It’s interesting to notice how easy it is to misunderstand/misinterpret history. Historical “facts” arise from different sources, and it is the historian’s job to sift the documentary evidence and see what kind of balance comes out in the end. And the balance doesn’t necessarily come from the volume of the documentation. Popular lies get reported much more–creating documentary evidence–than the uncomfortable truth. Read more…
Rachel vs. Leah
I’ve been reading the Old Testament, and one of the things that have caught my eye is the rivalry between Rachel and Leah.
The basic setting is, that Jacob is more fond of Rachel, but Leah is the one who bears children to Jacob, and in their nomadic society children were an asset, not a liability as they these days seem to be Read more…
Women in The Priesthood
Now and again I hear someone ask when women will receive the Priesthood, which I spell with a capital P to denote that I mean the Priesthood expounded in the D&C as a whole package, including all the covenants. The Priesthood is incomplete without the covenants.
It is true, that a woman does not receive ordination. On the other hand, even if a man has had hands laid upon his head, he has not received the Priesthood, or fullness of it, unless Read more…
Hierarchy
What is “hierarchy”? Let me answer in the words of etymology dictionary:
c.1343, from O.Fr. ierarchie, from M.L. hierarchia ”ranked division of angels” (in the system of Dionysius the Areopagite), from Gk. hierarchia ”rule of a high priest,” from hierarches ”high priest, leader of sacred rites,” from ta hiera ”the sacred rites” (neut. pl. of hieros ”sacred”) + archein ”to lead, rule.” Sense of “ranked organization of persons or things” first recorded 1619, initially of clergy, probably infl. by higher Read more…
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