cobra2411 Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 There was once a time that I was very much brainwashed and would blindly parrot these golden nuggets... Well, they're probably more brown in color than gold... Things like the state, god, beating your kids... Yeah, I must admit I blindly agreed without much thought on the topic at one time or another. Not having children myself the beat your kids one was the last to go. Gotta thank Stefan for that one. I was heading that way anyway, but listening to one of Stefan's podcasts made me really think and examine the topic and I was left with no plausible explanation that makes beating your kid ok. None. Well anyway today I received a post via facebook about the pledge of allegiance to the US of A and how children don't say that anymore because they're worried they might offend someone. It was followed up with the ubiquitous "lets see how many Americans will repost this and not care about who gets offended..." My response... "I grew up pledging my allegiance of an imaginary benevolent land to an imaginary all powerful being... Now we don't talk about god because someone may use the power of the state to persecute us... Yeah, and it's due to the lack of god... Try giving your kids everything they want, telling them how much they need you to survive, then slap them around and lock them in a closet randomly for arbitrary reasons and ask yourself if their resulting behavior is because you raised them without god in their lives... People now think it's perfectly ok to control others as long as they have the government do it so they don't get their hands dirty. You don't like that someone is praying to god? Go somewhere else. The problem isn't that your delicate senses are being offended by someone praying, it's that you think you have ANY authority to control someone else. I'll end with a golden chestnut... Most of the people who see this won't even stop to think about it... Bleh!"
cynicist Posted March 22, 2014 Posted March 22, 2014 I'm glad to hear you changed your mind on that, but why respond? I do it sometimes as a knee-jerk reaction but I'm trying to refrain from it because the responses are so predictable (and it just ends up pushing my buttons). Even on these forums it's really difficult to communicate about many of these advanced topics, I just don't think it's possible to influence someone unless they are already open to new ideas or you can get them to question their existing ones in person through an argument or an in depth presentation on it like Stefan does. Like you said at the end, "Most of the people who see this won't even stop to think about it... ".
cobra2411 Posted March 22, 2014 Author Posted March 22, 2014 Why respond? Frustration I guess. There's also a part of me that wants to change the world. I realize that I can't smash people's long held beliefs, but if I can cause even the tiniest of cracks to form, over time they may see their false believe for what it is.
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