Monday, October 31, 2005

The Truth About Kashechewan

Things are looking mighty grim on the Kashechewan reserve on James Bay. I’ve seen pictures in the media of their streets and even the inside of their homes. The issue of clean water aside, garbage, trash and filth are everywhere in their environment. Their back yards resemble a war zone. One resident’s basement looked like an alley in Bangladesh. Or at least what I would imagine an alley in Bangladesh to look like. Litter and garbage littered the floor. Empty bottles, food wrapping and containers were everywhere.

And I asked myself, how can people live like this? Why would anyone allow the streets of their community, let alone the inside of their own homes, to deterriorate to such a horrific extent. What kind of people would live amongst trash and filth here in civilized Canada without cleaning it up and why would they have such little respect for themselves and their environment?

Is this a natural cultural phenomenon? Certainly not. To believe such a thing would be to believe that these people are somehow genetically inferior. So, if this disorder is not cultural, it must be due to their social condition. And what is their social condition? Easy. Their social condition is one of complete and total government dependency.

Therefore, the equation is evident. Total and complete government dependency equals total and complete social failure.

The people of Kashechewan are not an anomaly in Canadian culture. Rather, they exemplify the normal social outcome that people can expect when they give up their god given right to personal autonomy and allow government to take total control of their destiny. Look at any welfare housing complex anywhere. You’ll find similar evidence of squalor and failure.

The fate of the poor, unfortunate people of Kashechewan should be a warning to us all.

People who allow the almighty, omnipotent state to provide for them can expect to eventually be abandoned by the very state they depend upon. It is inevitable.

After all, the state doesn't even know your name. Neither does it know your children's name or your parent’s. It only cares about itself and its own perpetuation. It will support you only as long as it benefits itself. And, when you are totally and completely dependent and it somehow determines that it can abandon you with impunity, it will. After all, you are only as important to it as the outcome of the next election.

The lesson is thus: depend on government at your own peril. Unfortunately, the people of Kashechewan and every other native reserve and government welfare housing development should have already learned this lesson by now. But they have not. Their willing dependence on government continues and is supported and promoted in many media sources. In fact, anyone who speaks out against government dependency with the aim of reducing such dependency is often painted in the media as intolerant, insensitive and even racist.

Pity.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Trust the Village and It'll be all right

Do you have any young kids? I do - two daughters. One ten and one five.

My ten year old is a willowy brown haired beauty. She’s feisty, opinionated and, thankfully, not that into popular culture. My wife and I can take credit for that. After all, today’s culture is poisonous. There’s no rap music in our home, no music videos on TV and no teen magazines with half naked teenage sexpots strutting their stuff. We don’t allow it.

Our youngest is a bundle of energy. Flaming red hair and a temperament to match. If you never believed in stereotypes before, my obstinate, red headed beauty will give you pause. She is everything you have ever heard about red heads and then some.

Being a dad these days is a tough go. There is so much out there that is contrary to any reasonable parent’s sensibilities and moral beliefs. Magazine covers in every storefront with half naked girls and women strutting their sexuality as if all they are is dependent on how sexed up they can look. Music videos that make it clear that if you don’t got the booty, you just ain’t happenin’. Horrible ebonic slang that ensures the marginalization of anyone who speaks it. Kids on commercials and TV shows that get to mouth off to their parents and stay up ‘till all hours of the night.

I worry. I worry about the culture we have created. I worry about the messages that our media is sending our kids. I worry about all the tired, sensitive, overworked, gutless parents who capitulate to their children’s whining demands to appease their own guilt. I have to compete with these parents. Every night I hear how so and so gets to stay up late and eat at McDonalds five times a week.

I remember reading that Hillary Clinton once said that it takes a village to raise a child. I don’t give her credit for this profound little gem. I’m certain it was said by someone before her. In fact it’s more or less a philosophical social staple for many parents these days who have too much on their minds to raise their own kids. And don’t doubt it, when these parents say “Village” they really mean "society". Of course, they don’t really expect the village (or society in general) to raise their children. They just want society to take some of the pesky parental and financial responsibilities off their hands so they aren't unduly inconvenienced by parenthood.

Hey there. Reality check. Society cannot raise your children in the same way you can. If you let your children listen to 50 cent and your daughters dress like whores, society will not protect them. In fact, society will only encourage them. Or haven’t you noticed?

Parents, if there’s a problem, it’s you. You have the power. Whatever your kids become is your responsibility. Sorry to have to break this to you, but society will always disappoint you. Especially today's valueless secular societal cesspool. Society isn’t equipped to care for your children or love your children or rescue your children from bad things. If anything, the opposite is true - we need to rescue our children from society.

Oh, and to all you socialists out there, please feel free to substitute the word "government" for the word "society" in any of the above text. Sorry.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Frooosh Goes The Magic Dust

Centuries ago, all scientists believed the earth was flat and that all heavenly bodies, including the sun, revolved around it. Oh, those whacky scientists.

Tell me, do you believe in reincarnation? I didn’t used to, but now I’m not so sure. After all, look at today’s batch of scientists. Don’t they remind you of the flat earth bunch of 500 years ago? Take their explanation of how human life came to be. Almost all, without exception, believe in evolution. Excuse me, I mean the “theory” of evolution. It is a “theory” after all and not a scientific law like the law of gravity or something.

The sun rotates around the earth. Einstein’s ancestors were plankton. Riiiiight. Good to see that scientists have remained consistent in their absurdities throughout the years. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Millions of years ago, or so the “theory” goes, a sun somewhere went supernova. The gasses and particles exuded from this explosion floated around for awhile, mixed, mingled and eventually, from this concoction, life emerged. Don’t worry that this part of the “theory” violates two fundamental scientific principles - the law of thermodynamics, which states that complex molecules cannot assemble spontaneously; and the law of biogenesis, which holds that life cannot emerge from non-living matter. These pesky details are not important. Just have faith in the professional guessers in white lab coats. After all, they’re smarter than you could ever be. If Copernicus were here, he’d tell you - the scientific community is always right.

And don’t even bother asking where the sun that started this momentous chain of events came from. It just existed. That’s all you need to know. Apparently there were suns and stuff out there forever and ever. There was no beginning. Kinda like eternity as mentioned in the bible.

Lets review. So far, we have this so called scientific “theory”, which apparently violates two scientific “laws”. Hmmmm, looks like we better change the laws eh. After all, the alternative would be to question the “theory” of evolution. And we all know what that would lead to – questions about creationism, God and stuff. And that subject matter is just too creepy for a good secular society to contemplate discussing.

So, as we are taught in school, it all started with a big bang. (I wonder: If a sun explodes in the cosmos and there’s no one there to hear it, does it really make a bang? Maybe it’s more like a “Kraaaack” or maybe a “Frooooosh”. I hope not. “The big Froooosh” doesn’t sound nearly as compelling as the “Big Bang”.)

In any event, the explosion and all that dust and stuff was just the beginning, What about what came after? That, of course, is the other big sloppy part of this so called “theory” – that all life on earth evolved from the microscopic life forms spawned from that magic dust. Never mind that there is no fossil evidence of transitional forms of life between single-celled organisms and complex invertebrates. Never mind that there is no evidence of transition between invertebrates and fish, or between any species of fish for that matter. Most tellingly, there is no real fossil evidence showing the so called "descent of man". In fact, there is such a dearth of evidence that you could actually take all the human-like skeletal imprints and structures that scientists use in support of the “theory” of evolution, and fit them all inside an average SUV.

It would appear that with evolutionism, we have to take a lot on faith. It’s a lot like a religion, really, with one big difference. Most religions require a belief in some sort of higher power(s), intelligent design or immortal soul. Evolutionists, however, have disgarded the idea of intelligent design, choosing instead to believe, on faith, that the emergence of life was just a marvelous spontaneous accident. You, me and Peter Pan are just cosmic anomalies created from magic dust. Here for a short time and then gone. Purposeless, souless, and futureless.

Honestly now, is it any wonder that popular culture today is so focused on sex, instant gratification, materialism and superficiality? After all, if this is the only turn you’ll ever have at the buffet table and no one is watching you or judging you, you’d be silly not to feed your face good. And fill your pockets too.

Whatever the case, it should be plain to everyone that scientists have latched onto this “theory” of evolution as a means to explain what is unexplainable. It’s a convenient crutch for them to lean on when challenged. A curtain behind which they can hide their ignorance and nurse their fragile egos when asked questions to which they do not have the answers. I suppose some would say they are just like priests. When challenged, they default to the standard platitudes: “Well, it’s a mystery”; or my personal favorite: “You just have to have faith, my child”.

And we do have faith, don’t we. We do believe. Some believe in God, some believe in science. However, whichever way you lean, you have to believe in the one common element that ties evolutionism and religion together – the belief in eternity.

Of course, the idea of eternity is originally a religious one and isn’t scientific at all. It’s a belief based on faith, not empirical evidence. And guess what? Faith is also a religious concept. Imagine that - scientists using religious concepts to convince people to believe in their “theory” of evolution. Now that’s ironic. Oh well, we could hardly expect people who believe that all things come from something else to have an original idea, now could we?

Monday, October 10, 2005

Soul Mate Mythology

I once had a friend who was a secular humanist, atheist, agnostic, Darwinist, non believer. During his journey through life, on his way to hell, he met a girl and fell in love. “She’s my soul mate” he told me. “How can you have a soul mate when you don’t believe you have a soul?” I asked him. I didn’t get invited to the wedding. They divorced two years later. ‘Soul mates’, it would seem, are not eternal.

I’ve been in love a few times. Had my heart broken. Broke a few myself. Then I met my wife. We’ve been together almost 18 years now with two beautiful daughters. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me and a gift that I will never fully deserve nor, probably, appreciate. I love her and would die for her.

But she’s not my soul mate. How could she be? After all, there’s no such thing. It’s a myth. A great big, sappy, mushy, unrealistic fabrication created by some two-bit hack romance novel writer to make the girls clutch their chests and sigh big wheezy sighs. Or, maybe some phony baloney Casanova came up with the idea when he realized that it could part a woman’s knees like Moses parted the red seas. Yep, it would appear that these days, the ‘soul’ has become just another guard rail keeping us on the road of carnal fulfillment and instant gratification.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we don’t have souls – that’s for far wiser people than me to debate - just that our souls don’t have a mate.

Here’s the rub: if you believe that people actually do have soul mates you have to believe that there is no one else in the world for them. Certainly, it renders the term “soul mate” relatively meaningless if everyone has a few thousand soul mates out there to choose from, or even a few hundred. Or even a dozen. If the term soul mate is to mean anything, there can only be one for everyone. Isn’t that the inference when people use the term "soul mate" - that there is no one else in the entire world for them?

And yet there are (how many?) around 6.5 billion people in the world? But, only one you. A wonderful, witty, interesting, intelligent, startlingly attractive and singularly unique person. (Keep reading, there’s lots more disingenuous, gratuitous flattery to come.).

So, first of all, how likely is it that your unique, one-of-a-kind soul could have a mate in the first place? Second, how many mates do you think are out there for it and how likely is it that you could find one among the 6.5 billion other unique one-of-a-kind souls in the world? After all, you come in personal contact with how many other people in your entire life where the chance arises for a intimate relationship – a few hundred maybe? Let's be generous and say a thousand. That’s 6.5 million to one odds that you'll actually encounter your very own soul mate among the 6.5 billion souls on earth. Ask any bookie, they’ll tell you, those are terrible odds to bet on.

And what about people who find their so called soul mate, are divorced or widowed, and then find another? How lucky is that eh? And what about those who have two or more souls mates on the go at any one time. Wow. Now that’s what I call beating the odds. Those folks should go live at the race track. They’d clean up.

And that’s just dealing with the present day. How many people, do you think, have lived in the last 50,000 years? A couple hundred billion. Half a trillion maybe? Did all their souls have potential mates too? I just had a terrible thought, what if the singular, unique soul that was a mate to yours lived 2000 years ago. That would be a drag.

And yet, in spite of the tremendous odds, coupled with the fact that soul mates are about as real as Santa Claus, there are still a lot of people out there who actually think they’ve found their ‘soul mate’ It just goes to show, insanity is not the sole domain of Islamic terrorists and members of the Michael Moore fan club. Many normal people apparently have their own personal delusions to deal with, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart.

Once upon a time, people were content to fall in love, get married and live their lives together. There seemed to be no need for such pie in the sky, golly gee, intangible concepts like ‘soul mates’. And even if there was, at least they believed they had a soul, unlike many people today who believe that souls are imaginary except, of course, when they can be exploited as romantic fodder to satisfy their selfish needs for sexual gratification and companionship.

Just remember, if you have a soul mate, or are looking for one, that means you believe you have a soul. And if you believe you have a soul, then you have to acknowledge the existence of a higher power. And if you believe in a higher power, you have to accept that he or she has some control over your destiny. And that should give you some comfort. Because anyone who believes that their soul has a mate shouldn’t be left in control of their own destiny. They’re just not mature enough.

Oh, and by the way, sorry that there was no more insincere gratuitous flattery. I just said that to get you to keep reading.