How Do Oathes and Creeds Make a Society Strong?
Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, November 28, 2005 at about 11pm CST
All right, I have told you where I stand on issues of the past. Let us now move into the present and onward to the future.
I started here at KEOS in November, 2004. I moved through the training as fast as I could, given the constraints as to when each training module was offered. I took up the 2-4pm Monday music slot in February of this year. Plus I had agreed to do a Friday slot.
I made my presentation for this program in late February. It got shot down because the Management Team wanted to have a better idea of what the program would do. In short, they wanted a pilot. It has taken me this long to figure out how to do the pilot. What I had expected to do was start the show, fail and stumble about and then get it to work. To organically work on it until it felt correct. To a master craftsman, failure is acceptable, because it is a learning experience. There can be no shame, no guilt associated with failure, if you learn from each failure as you keep pursuing your goal.
To me that is the creed of the master craftsman of any field. The concept of radical egalitarianism is insanity to me. If we as a society wipe out all competition and demand that everyone be average, then sooner or later our tech base fails and our society collapses. Every organism on this planet competes. Even trees compete... violently. The Founding Fathers of the United States knew this Truth. Their position was that we should channel competition into productive areas, not just outlaw every destructive behavior. Too many laws, too many regulations, too many senseless constraints cause master craftsmen to give up, because they can no longer exercise creativity in their chosen field.
If you take the oath of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, then sooner or later the oath becomes just a pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure as a goal leaves you incapable of forming bonds with other people. I mean, if your pleasure is the center of your life, then everyone else in the world is there to make sure you are happy. Other people then are just props in your pursuit of pleasing yourself. Your life becomes one long piece of performance art where others are required to applaud your efforts at pleasing yourself.
To me the oath civilized people should take is:
But... what is the nature of Honor? How can you discern Justice? When does Mercy become a suicide pact? And finally what is Civilization?
It is also my goal to examine each of these concepts as we strive to make society better. Simply fixing the physical condition of someone in need is stupid if the society is so screwed up that all your efforts will be destroyed by riots or social unrest.
A creed is what you live by. It is internal. An oath is what you give to others in your community. It deals with the outside world. If you have both a creed and have given an oath, then others can judge whether you are true to yourself. They can also judge whether you are true to the community. If you live by no creed and have given no oath to the community, then how can people trust you? The default position of all citizens of a polity then becomes that no one can be trusted. Instead of the English Common Law position, ‘Innocent until proven guilty', you have to adopt the French Napoleonic Code's position where you are guilty until proven innocent. I don't like that idea.
Please comment on the creed and the oath above.
Have you thought about this at all? I mean, if the government is the repository of all of our needs and wants, then we cannot trust anyone else. Only the government can be trusted in that situation. We would live lives without caring much of anything about each other because it was not our responsibility to care much of anything about each other. I draw your attention to the ghettos in the US and the ghettos in France. Do the people in the ghettos live good lives? Is it then just racism that causes them to have rotten lives? Or is it a lack of being responsible for themselves and their neighbors? Get back to me with your thoughts.
If you wish to learn more about Jesse Owens, please see his spititual autobiography. Jesse Owens wasn't just a great African-American. He wasn't a great Black American. He was a great American... for reasons that are not apparent to you at this moment. It looks like on the surface that he went to Berlin Olympics in 1936 and defeated Hitler. End of story... Not so fast! What came after Berlin impresses me more than what came before. We shall get into that into another program. One more thing... Jesse Owens competed against himself before he competed against others, because he WAS the best... and again, not just as a great athlete, but as a great American. I am not sure what order he would put the sentences in the creed above. What do you think?
And, no, I do not think Jesse Owens said the above creed. I just think he lived it.
All right, I have told you where I stand on issues of the past. Let us now move into the present and onward to the future.
I started here at KEOS in November, 2004. I moved through the training as fast as I could, given the constraints as to when each training module was offered. I took up the 2-4pm Monday music slot in February of this year. Plus I had agreed to do a Friday slot.
I made my presentation for this program in late February. It got shot down because the Management Team wanted to have a better idea of what the program would do. In short, they wanted a pilot. It has taken me this long to figure out how to do the pilot. What I had expected to do was start the show, fail and stumble about and then get it to work. To organically work on it until it felt correct. To a master craftsman, failure is acceptable, because it is a learning experience. There can be no shame, no guilt associated with failure, if you learn from each failure as you keep pursuing your goal.
To be the best, you must run with the best
You must compete with the best
You must commit yourself to BEING the best
AND... you must fail as many times as is necessary to STAY the best
--- Jesse Owens 1936
To me that is the creed of the master craftsman of any field. The concept of radical egalitarianism is insanity to me. If we as a society wipe out all competition and demand that everyone be average, then sooner or later our tech base fails and our society collapses. Every organism on this planet competes. Even trees compete... violently. The Founding Fathers of the United States knew this Truth. Their position was that we should channel competition into productive areas, not just outlaw every destructive behavior. Too many laws, too many regulations, too many senseless constraints cause master craftsmen to give up, because they can no longer exercise creativity in their chosen field.
If you take the oath of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, then sooner or later the oath becomes just a pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure as a goal leaves you incapable of forming bonds with other people. I mean, if your pleasure is the center of your life, then everyone else in the world is there to make sure you are happy. Other people then are just props in your pursuit of pleasing yourself. Your life becomes one long piece of performance art where others are required to applaud your efforts at pleasing yourself.
To me the oath civilized people should take is:
I shall walk the Line of Honor.
I shall dispense Justice with Balance.
I shall give Mercy, when I can.
And I shall... serve Civilization without reservation.
But... what is the nature of Honor? How can you discern Justice? When does Mercy become a suicide pact? And finally what is Civilization?
It is also my goal to examine each of these concepts as we strive to make society better. Simply fixing the physical condition of someone in need is stupid if the society is so screwed up that all your efforts will be destroyed by riots or social unrest.
A creed is what you live by. It is internal. An oath is what you give to others in your community. It deals with the outside world. If you have both a creed and have given an oath, then others can judge whether you are true to yourself. They can also judge whether you are true to the community. If you live by no creed and have given no oath to the community, then how can people trust you? The default position of all citizens of a polity then becomes that no one can be trusted. Instead of the English Common Law position, ‘Innocent until proven guilty', you have to adopt the French Napoleonic Code's position where you are guilty until proven innocent. I don't like that idea.
Please comment on the creed and the oath above.
Have you thought about this at all? I mean, if the government is the repository of all of our needs and wants, then we cannot trust anyone else. Only the government can be trusted in that situation. We would live lives without caring much of anything about each other because it was not our responsibility to care much of anything about each other. I draw your attention to the ghettos in the US and the ghettos in France. Do the people in the ghettos live good lives? Is it then just racism that causes them to have rotten lives? Or is it a lack of being responsible for themselves and their neighbors? Get back to me with your thoughts.
If you wish to learn more about Jesse Owens, please see his spititual autobiography. Jesse Owens wasn't just a great African-American. He wasn't a great Black American. He was a great American... for reasons that are not apparent to you at this moment. It looks like on the surface that he went to Berlin Olympics in 1936 and defeated Hitler. End of story... Not so fast! What came after Berlin impresses me more than what came before. We shall get into that into another program. One more thing... Jesse Owens competed against himself before he competed against others, because he WAS the best... and again, not just as a great athlete, but as a great American. I am not sure what order he would put the sentences in the creed above. What do you think?
And, no, I do not think Jesse Owens said the above creed. I just think he lived it.
posted by aRandomTexan at
10:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home