Mindless activities numb the brain.
We get excited over things that aren't even real.
We get excited over things that aren't even real.
Marriage for example. Love is real. Marriage is a societal construction, followed by a legally binding contract. Once upon a time, if you were married then that was it. They told you that 'legally' you were not to break that contract, no matter what. In some places this is still true.
Until recently they even defined who could get married. Only after they'd defined what makes us different in this 'equal' society.
The family is one institution which has always been around, is completely natural and one of the only real institutions out there. Well that's what I believe.
It's natural for parents to pass on to their children what they already know, but we can learn so much from children who come into this world uninfluenced. It is us who should be learning from them. Children see the world as a good place, a free place. The way the world should be seen.
Then there's religion, one of the most powerful institutions of all, although not as relevant today as it once was.
What if religion was just a means of control? Set to influence the thinking and behaviour of the people? Functionalists believe that religious rituals exist to bring a group of people together, which evidently, they do. Rituals, and 'God', also take people into higher realms of experience. They persuade them to open up their spirituality. Because people are spiritual beings, and that's what makes them different from other animals. Not, in fact, their level of power. Somewhere in translation, power became more important, and man became selfish when the holy book told them that 'God' made them in his own image, and so was in fact, just like them.
If 'God' exists for all animals, all of nature, then why is he in the image of the most powerful, man? And who said that he was? Man. Because we are so self absorbed that we don't even stop to think for one minute that maybe 'God' is more holy ghost than he is Father and Son.
The image of 'God' seems to be different in different cultures. But then it would be. In the UK we see 'God' as white, Jesus as white, when in fact he was born in Bethlehem, and it is very unlikely that he was white. In Kenya they see 'God' and Jesus as black, just as themselves.
'I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.'
- John Lennon
It's natural for parents to pass on to their children what they already know, but we can learn so much from children who come into this world uninfluenced. It is us who should be learning from them. Children see the world as a good place, a free place. The way the world should be seen.
Then there's religion, one of the most powerful institutions of all, although not as relevant today as it once was.
What if religion was just a means of control? Set to influence the thinking and behaviour of the people? Functionalists believe that religious rituals exist to bring a group of people together, which evidently, they do. Rituals, and 'God', also take people into higher realms of experience. They persuade them to open up their spirituality. Because people are spiritual beings, and that's what makes them different from other animals. Not, in fact, their level of power. Somewhere in translation, power became more important, and man became selfish when the holy book told them that 'God' made them in his own image, and so was in fact, just like them.
If 'God' exists for all animals, all of nature, then why is he in the image of the most powerful, man? And who said that he was? Man. Because we are so self absorbed that we don't even stop to think for one minute that maybe 'God' is more holy ghost than he is Father and Son.
The image of 'God' seems to be different in different cultures. But then it would be. In the UK we see 'God' as white, Jesus as white, when in fact he was born in Bethlehem, and it is very unlikely that he was white. In Kenya they see 'God' and Jesus as black, just as themselves.
'I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.'
- John Lennon
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