The world today bears no resemblance to the world of my childhood. Perhaps every generation feels something similar but while change – paradoxically – is the only constant in life, the rate and enormity of those changes has no parallel in history notwithstanding the rise and fall of empires.
Christmas became Xmas when I was still a child. I remember feeling puzzled, it’s not as though Christmas is difficult to spell so why change it to Xmas if not to diminish and blur the reason for the festival. I was too young to apply intelligence to the issue but later in life I think it through and realise that Santa Claus, Father Christmas is better for business so there’s good commercial reason for the change but that doesn’t make it right any more than changing the name of the Jewish festival of Passover to Xover makes sense and, in that case, there would be uproar if it were suggested.
Christianity comes under attack not by direct persecution but by stealth.
I was happy to see gay and lesbian people have the same legal rights as heterosexual people but stopped short of voting yes for ‘same sex marriage’ and, for this, I’m labelled as a bigot, as out of step with the rest of society. The reasons given for voting ‘yes’ are familiar to most – equality, in terms of human rights, and the getting rid of discrimination. So now, in Tasmania, a birth certificate no longer needs to have the gender - boy or girl - mentioned at all. Why? How is this a positive move?
I do discriminate. I discriminate between right and wrong, between good and evil and the basis of this discrimination isn’t arbitrary. Recently, while waiting in line early one morning at the supermarket where only one cashier was on duty and the ‘self serve’ section was closed, the person in front of me glanced at the closed ‘self serve’ section and remarked that Coles were losing millions of dollars a year because many using that facility were not being honest. He saw that dishonesty as ‘natural justice’ and I understand that perspective but, for me, honesty matters and just because I can get away with dishonesty doesn’t make it right and, more to the point, diminishes me. I’m not ‘for sale.’ It’s not that theft under all circumstance is wrong – someone starving is in different circumstance to me.
The couple were younger than me and we had a brief chat in which they also remarked about the changes seen within society and that these changes aren’t making society any better.
‘We’re all on a spectrum both sexually and mentally.’ Really? The last twenty years of my working life were spent in the disability section of the health service. All our clients had multiple diagnoses including autism. These aspects of their lives didn’t make them less or more human than I – we all know when we’re being treated badly and we all know what we like and dislike. I didn’t put myself on a spectrum although my desire to do a job well could be seen as obsessive/compulsive and probably was by those with whom I worked and who had an approach to the job which dismayed me in its casual disregard for doing the job properly.
‘Anything goes’ is a slippery slope and one that our political leaders embrace and that approach cascades down through society.
Ah well – not all is grim, love refuses to die and most of us have choice and free will still operates for those not bound by slavery.
The Antarctic has seen much ‘to and fro’ by the ‘powers that be’ recently and I place a video below this post which illustrates much which I found of interest.