Day: 2/21/08

Strange day today. I was busy, but not busy, at the same time. Of course, I think I mostly felt that way because work was interrupting my reading. My focus on my studies has increased as I have continued to navigate through the internet. For the past two, or so, days, I have been slowly advancing through a file regarding CyberCraft. I have been taking my time with this file as I hit a reference to another document, and in interest, I headed off to find the other document. Such are the ways of my wanderings of late.

The new document, the Humanist Manifesto II is an interesting document. It outlines the goals and thoughts of what the American Humanist Association is promoting. As the CyberCraft document referenced this manifesto as to be included in its scope, I figured it would be good to know what it was. Primarily, it is a call to all people to try sitting down and talking things out instead of killing each other in the name of religion, God, king, country, etc. etc. An end to poverty, hunger, government corruption, are all addressed (kind of vaguely sometimes in my opinion) as problems that need to be overcome. The website maintains that there are thousands of signatures, but only lists a few of those as signers of the manifesto. It was theorized that one of the reasons the manifesto has received so many signatures is due to a line in reference to that about signing that you basically agree with the intent of the document, even if you don't agree with every point.

While I think there are plenty of problems in the world. I am curious as to how we could attempt to solve them. Sure, we could take everyone's individual wealth, put it all in a big pool, and then give every person a percentage of that pool. Would this end poverty? No, it just gives everyone an equal footing for a second. I honestly believe that a lot of our poverty comes from governments and social issues. The government taxes or just takes what it wants in pretty much every country of the world. And social education teaches some people that it is ok to just sit at home eating bon bons on the couch and let someone else do all the work and then let the government cut this lazy arse a check each month because of their 'illness' of obesity or some other inane reason. We are a nation of welfare.

Now before I get misunderstood, I know that there are people out there that are unable to work at most things due to some limitation or impairment. I fully understand that if you had both arms chopped off in an accident at work, yeah, I have no problem with you having welfare. Certainly there are people that honestly deserve the help. If you were temporarily laid off or lost your job, honestly, then no, I have no problem trying to help out while you are trying to get a new job.

As you can see, I am just kind of bouncing around as the Chaos leads me. I never know what I will wind up looking into now, but at least I am learning and trying to expand my knowledge and wisdom. Chaos has brought me attempts to break out of the rut. For that, I am thankful, because I was getting bored.