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The State of our Civilization …
After spending many years studying and researching information about history, religious/spiritual beliefs, cultures and civilizations that stretch even beyond known and accepted history…I couldn’t help but to notice one important part of all these things…the state and humanity of these civilizations. After all the constant talk about how advanced and more civilized we are in these times, as intelligence is at a supposed all time high…I can’t help but to reflect and compare this to our predecessors from around the world. Now, not being the kind of person to just take someone’s word for it…I compared many different facets of this idea, and what have I come up with…well, let’s just say that deodorant only masks the odor, not eliminate it. With that, my results: Take, for instance, something basic and fundamental…the environment. Mother nature, as it is known, is the reason why we’re all alive in the first place…but yet in the name of the almighty dollar…what’s the first thing to be razed, leveled or polluted? You guessed it, the environment. There is absolutely no reason why that should, or even has to happen. The people of the old world worked much more in tune with their environment so as to ensure not to disrupt it any more than need by. And why was that? So they would still be alive in a few generations and not dead from disease or starvation. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Maybe we should send a memo to some of the political and business decision makers and notify them about this revolutionary idea… Another set of principles would involve social morality, like the expected moral standing of individuals based on the general consensus of the social majority. In the old world, there was no tolerance for things like theft, rape, laziness and dishonesty. Those actions. in any given society back then. would have been met with imprisonment and or death. Today, lawyers have made sure that many of these crimes go unpunished, and even if they don’t…parole and overcrowding of jails lets them off early…and unchanged. And although laziness and dishonesty is not technically a crime, depending on the instance…it is revered and hailed as being smart enough to screw over someone else. Have we gotten to the advancements of our society part of this article yet? From movies to television and magazines to newspapers, if one’s morale isn’t crushed by the barrage of constant doom in the world…whatever is left is steered towards acting and being as useless as possible. What kind of lessons are we teaching the new generations with all this? Where is the glory in being a voracious, wasteful, rude society and then rubbing it into everyone else’s face because we think we can do it? When did what you want out of life go from earning it to being owed it, just because you showed up to work just do as little as humanly possible? Does anyone else see the grave issues at hand, or has this world completely succumbed to apathy as well? Another, and my personal favorite, would be the personal morals that people uphold. First off, I would like to distinguish that what people ‘wish and mean’ are completely different from what they say and what they do. In the old world, there was respect and reverence for moral/political leaders, philosophy, beliefs/religious institutions, other members of the society and their property, friendship, business and marriage, all because of the sacred nature of the principle or because it was honestly earned. But, how about today? Where is the respect and reverence for anything except money? We have leaders with the ability to start and run wars that have never been in combat, business people who haven’t worked their way to anything, just had a better college degree than the ‘other guy’, judges who have never been lawyers or cops, therapists and psychiatrists who have never been far from the suburbs or luxury cars. What about religious institutions? Have they earned the respect of their followers by living lavishly, abusing their ‘flock’, or even telling them to go into battle and die based on obscure translations or based on a conversation that their god had with only one person? What about peers, friends or marriage…is their much respect and reverence going on with any of those? The simple answer is, no…because of there was, the world wouldn’t be as greedy as it is. If you don’t believe that, just look at statistics for crimes and divorce…you’d be surprised at how many crimes are committed by friends/family and how high the divorce rate really is. So how did everything end up this way? The most likely reason that these problems are getting out of control is because starting around twenty to twenty-five years ago, there became a ‘clinical reason’, (affectionately called excuses…), behind the choices people made. For instance, at that time, a small percent of children were having an honest biological problem that produced the clinical diagnosis called Attention Deficit Disorder…today, there’s a small percent of children that don’t have this problem…the rest, all of a sudden, do. It has gotten so bad that now even adults have it too…it’s called Adult Attention Deficit Disorder…what’s next, Elderly Attention Deficit Disorder? Yeah, it’s called Alzheimer’s disease, except for now the elderly would have to buy two medications instead of one to treat the same problem! If your leg falls asleep because you sit around all the time, you’re not lazy, you have Restless Leg Disorder! If you have heart problems from clogged arteries because sixty percent or more of your meals are greasy or fast food, you’re not an irresponsible eater…it was inherited, so it was your ancestor’s fault…not yours! Do we get the picture yet? I will be willing to bet that if the honest truth was presented…we would find that a large percentage of these conditions are not genuine…but how then would the pharmaceutical industry retain it’s large and ever growing profit margins each year? Probably the same way the oil companies do! Can someone please explain how we, as a society, can split atoms, send crafts and people into space, and produce nano-technology…but still can’t run cars or furnaces on anything other than crude, polluting fossil fuels…after one-hundred plus years of engineering? I know why…money…greed…power…all the things that are held with the highest esteem in this day and age. No longer is it a privilege or revered, nor even desired to be honest, respectful, trustworthy, loyal, kind, compassionate, considerate or even chivalrous…those qualities are nearly spat upon in this day and age. But in the old world, it was the other way around…thus the obvious landmark advancements that history shows from them. The purpose of civilizations was to refine and then build upon, not change and make up the rules as one goes simply to make it look good on paper or be able to twist the truth into whatever answer is needed at that time. Thankfully, the whole world has not turned to this ridiculous behavior…merely enough of it to cause problems and command our attention. There are many in this world that are like those from the old world, and for that I am glad. The time will come when the self-destructive nature of this culture will do exactly that…self-destruct, and then it will be up to the responsible to rebuild from there. I, for one, pride myself on my integrity, word, morals, and codes of honor…as far as I’m concerned, it’s the least I can do in order to consider myself part of the ‘top of the food chain’. I carry on these principles because they are necessary, right and most importantly…because I want to. Although I have sustained many setbacks and losses throughout my life because of my personality, and will suffer many more to come…they were, and will be, all worth it…why is that? Because I can sleep with confidence at night, because I can trust myself, because I am part of the cure and not part of the problem…and most of all…I am still who I am, an example of a twenty-first century knight, philosopher and mystic…and my name is Hieros.
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