Tag Archives: ideology

Keeping the faith

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Religions around the world are losing followers. But people are seekers, they want to believe in something. And while there are downsides to religion, including fanaticism and blind following of misguided faith leaders, there is also a warmth of community, a comfort of shared values, and a wonderful sense of belonging.

Atheism and often the path it can lead to nihilism don’t fill the voids a loss of religion can leave behind. And I think that’s why we see blind faith emerging that doesn’t seem to make sense to many.

Why on earth would someone in 2026 join a community of flat earthers who have to literally ignore volumes of data in order to believe what they believe? Maybe because the community is so inviting to anyone who believes?

Why would someone defend unnecessary violence, or even terrorism in the name of God or country? Maybe because they feel othered, or fear being othered. Maybe they feel hurt and seek vengeance? Maybe they feel the government is too heavy-handed or not heavy handed enough?

Why would someone follow a leader who does things they would previously have been upset about? Maybe there is one pillar that leader stands on that supports their beliefs more than any other transgression that leader might be accused of? Maybe they feel community, shared values, and a sense of belonging are all missing in their lives because their waning beliefs in a broken religion can no longer fulfill these needs.

When people can’t seem to hold onto their religious faith, where else do they put their faith?

It seems today that it goes to all the wrong places.

We need a new kind of religion, one that is inherent in most faiths already, but often masked by evangelical fervour, threats of secularism, misinterpreted scripture, literal interpretations of metaphors, among other reasons justifiable by the keepers of the faith. That inherent idea common to all faiths, the somehow lost idea, is that we are all the children of God, and that we should be kind, caring, and even loving to all God’s children.

If that was the underlying premise of ‘our belief systems’ (intentionally plural) then the best thing we could do is to keep the faith. But when religions and more specifically religious people, focus on differences, and when charismatic leaders decide that hate, separation, and false prophecies are the goal, well then our belief systems rise only to crumble.

This is the path we are on, not an increase in atheism, because atheism is not a belief system to swap another religion for. A thing to ‘not believing in’ is not a replacement for a faith. And so what we are seeing is a rise in people looking in all the wrong place to feel safe and then blindly, misguidedly keeping the faith.

Progress and stagnation

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The invention of wheels made the movement of objects and ourselves so much easier. And they also assisted us in moving tools of war.

Machinery of mass production made life easier. And we also produce an over abundance of weapons that we use on both foreign and domestic lands.

The scientific method has led to innovations in fields like medicine. And we also make tools of mass destruction, with the soul purpose of maiming and killing each other.

We are innovative, technological, and creatively brilliant. And yet we are divided and we concoct global issues created by old religions, tribal lines, and broken ideologies.

Humanity chooses to be inhumane, and to develop propaganda to justify our actions. We do it for country, for money, for power, and for ideologies be they economic, political, or theological.

We have innovated. We have modernized. We have claimed to be civilized… but in the matters of being human we have stagnated. We have not evolved, we have merely advanced and innovated ways of perpetuating our barbaric tendencies.

Technology progresses. Humanity stagnates. History repeats.

Everything is so political

I’ve got the song ‘Political‘ by Spirit of the West going through my head, even though this song is about a relationship breakup and not politics.

Chris Kennedy’s recent post, ‘My “Top 3” List for 2022‘ on his blog, Culture of Yes, got me thinking about being political. Here is the section that inspired my thoughts:

Top 3 Issues that I see in US media that I am keeping an eye on (and worried about):

  1. Book bans

  2. Limits on classroom discussions

  3.  ‘Parents Rights’ push

I know there are some, largely isolated for now, examples of these topics in Canada, but we see them regularly in our news feeds with the constant volume of US media.  The book banners are back, taking on many of the classics again.  There are many lists that circulate, including this one from CBS News of the 50 most banned books in the United States.  Also in the news a lot is discussion over what topics teachers can and can’t talk about.  Here is an article from earlier this year indicating 1/4 of all teachers were in positions where they were being asked to limit discussions on certain topics.  Finally, the parents rights push is one that gives parents greater control over what their children are taught.  It is actually related to the other two issues, as all three are coming out of a conservative legislators in the United States.  I am always hesitant to write about what is happening in the US, as I find some people are already believing we are in the same position.  We have very different systems, but it is regularly on our televisions and in our social media feeds so it is worth following.

I commented:

Season’s greetings Chris!

Like you I’m always hesitant to share US concerns, but there has been a definite creep of bad ideas into our country. Example: I’ve chosen every election since becoming an educator to be non-partisan and just promote voting, but this year I openly spoke out against a very conservative and dishonest group of candidates for Board of Education Trustees in our district. It seems we only have two choices these days, allow bad ideas to seep in, or be openly political and speak up before those ideas take hold. The coming year is not one to wait and watch what happens without participating in the conversations of ideas that concern us. We can not be a silent majority, we can not be apolitical. We must be active participants in a system that, while better than the one south of the border, is not immune to the influences of a very dichotomous and politically charged neighbouring country.

It’s not fair to say that this is just a US issue. Italy has a new far-right government, and nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment can be felt in many other countries. The reality is that there is a very vocal minority who seem to garner too much attention and interest because the counter opinion is either silent, or an equally small opposing minority that are extreme in their opposing views. In fact some of the views coming from the far left are actually more fascist than the views on the right. For example, choosing violence to combat opposing views to a point where free speech is no longer truly free. 

2023 will be a year to speak up and speak out. You don’t have to support a political party, but if you think you can be vocal and not also be political, you are probably mistaken. Your politics will permeate your point of view, and choosing to be silent is no longer just non-partisan or apolitical; it’s choosing to allow lesser, more biased people to share their minority points of view as if they are the majority. The silent majority can be silent no more.

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If you are interested in education, it’s worth taking the time to read Chris’ post, ‘My “Top 3” List for 2022‘, especially these three sections, ‘Top 3 Shifts in BC Education in 2022’, ‘Top 3 Education Topics We Should Talk More about in 2023’, and ‘Top 3 Education Topics from 2022 that need long-term fixes’. And while you are at it, subscribe to his blog.

Know your audience

Social media is filled with people who are ‘preaching to the converted’. There is nowhere that this is more evident than in politics and religion. I’m amazed at the blindness with which people spew their ideology.

Basically, what I (mostly) see are two ignorant camps:

1. I don’t care what you think.

2. You don’t think like me, so you are an idiot.

Neither of these deliver a message that comes remotely close to convincing anyone of anything. Neither of these pander to an audience beyond those that already agree with the perspective being shared. Neither of these promote thought or dialogue.

Sure it might feel good. Yes, it’s nice to be in the company of others that completely agree with you. But social media shouldn’t just be about screaming into an echo chamber, and there should be opportunities for dialogue that goes beyond winning a point against a foe whom doesn’t even acknowledge your point.

I keep coming back to the realization that ideas lie on a spectrum, and the reason I keep coming back to this is because most of us don’t sit on the extremes, even if that’s where we argue our points from. We don’t really wish ill of those that oppose our view, we don’t really believe that our neighbours are unneighbourly because they view things differently than us, politically, religiously, or ideologically. Yet that’s what it looks like on social media.

Are you trying to share your view only with people that already agree with you? Or are you trying to share your view with others who think differently? If your answer is the latter, then think about your audience, and share a message they can actually hear.

Rose coloured glasses

We’ve all heard the term, “It’s like seeing the world through rose coloured glasses”, but what does that mean? What is it like to see the world through a biased viewpoint that ‘clouds’ other views? Rose coloured glasses suggests a positive outlook, what happens when our ‘glasses’, our viewpoint, is biased in a negative way? What if our view prevents us from seeing things that can benefit us?

This is too hard!

I can’t.

Why do things like this always happen to me?

There is no way out.

These are gloomy statements that can sour our world view and limit our ability to see good possibilities… to view the world through rose coloured glasses, or for that matter, clear glasses.

What lenses do we choose to look through? For most of us the lenses aren’t clear, they don’t bring reality into focus. We carry biases that cloud our vision, our perspective. But we don’t walk around wearing those biases like a pair of coloured glasses on our faces.

Despite the fact that most ideas lie on a spectrum, most viewpoints seem to swing away from central perspectives to polarized views with thick coloured lenses to peer through.

What does this mean? It means that not only do we not share the same viewpoint as others, sometimes we don’t share the same world as others. We literally exist in world so different than someone with an opposing view, that we can’t see the same things.

Imagine a world where everything is either red or green, and you had to choose red or green coloured sunglasses. To the person wearing green glasses there would only be green items and dark/black objects. To the person wearing red glasses there would only be red items and dark/black objects. None of the items seen by these two people would look remotely the same to both of these people. None.

I fear that few people these days are seeing the world through rose coloured glasses, and that whatever the colour being chosen, it is too dark, there is less light coming through, less opportunity to see the world others different than you are seeing. Maybe my inability to see this is an issue of my own lenses being clouded… but I fear that we are building a world that pushes us towards darkened glasses and away from natural light that lets us see things as they really are.

This is my life

I was dreaming. In the dream there were a group of kids lost in play, and nearby a young boy was sleeping. His mom gently woke him up. The boy, as it turned out in the dream, had Aspergers. I don’t know why that was relevant? He lay there, newly awake, saying a few incoherent things, and then he said, “This is my life.”

Suddenly my entire dream was about this statement. In my dream, I actually planned out writing this down. A young boy wakes up and is disoriented, then he comes to a realization that ‘oh, I have woken up, and this is my life’. How seldom are we ‘awake’ enough to truly understand this profound statement?

Recently I listened to the audio book ‘In Love With The World – A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardot of Living and Dying‘ by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. In it he spoke of the idea that we die every night and are reborn each morning. We completely lose our consciousness, our identity of who we are, when we fall asleep. And we wake up anew. With waking comes the realization of who we are, and our consciousness returns to us, ‘this is my life’.

Do we take the time to truly appreciate the wonder of waking each day? Of being reborn to who we are and who we can be? Each day is a new day, each breath a first breath, each moment a moment to be fully present… Like kids, fully immersed in play.

This is my life. This is your life. How will we choose to live it ‘now’?

Wake up.