It's just a choice, but I may insist on asserting in one way or another that I am right ... as if being right had anything to do with the price of eggs.
Is "choosing the best" really choosing the best or is it just choosing?
Today, a friend sent on an Internet link that reprinted an entire Time magazine cover article ("The Face of Buddhist Terror") about Buddhist and Muslim violence. Sri Lanka, a land of Buddhists and Muslims, banned the issue. (And then there's this from Myanmar.)
OK, the article inspires a sense of pedal-to-the-metal hypocrisy, perhaps, but aren't there smaller instances rampant in anyone's life? If I opt for Buddhism or Christianity or the Democrats or Republicans or my spouse and children ... isn't there the desire to speak well of what I have chosen? The logic seems to be: I have chosen it, therefore it is good ... and furthermore I will prove it to you. I need to be right and the only way I can know if I'm right is with your agreement.
Hawkers of prescription spiritual life or politics or profession do not make a habit of addressing what is wobbly and sometimes cruel within that prescription. The good stuff is good and I credit it as good and therefore the entire prescription is good ... good through and through. God is great! Allahu Akbar! Clarity and compassion or bust!
Of course there are always 'thoughtful' people who will concede that there are wobbly bits to a given prescription, but ... well, they do it from an overall perspective of their understanding and their goodness. Yes, they say as they enhance their own meaningful standing, there are bad parts and because I am so thoughtful, I can acknowledge them from a 'wider' or 'more adult' or more 'profound' perspective ... which leads inevitably back to the general goodness of the prescription, the choice I have chosen... you know, the good prescription. The overarching stamp of approval reserved for what is 'good' is seldom if ever applied to what is 'bad.'
But why not? A choice is just a choice. And there is nothing wrong with it ... except when the choice is somehow elevated beyond any concrete capacity it actually has.
I guess it's hard not to be important. But how well does the importance thing work as time passes?
To my mind, the unfathomable importance of any being is done a disservice by asserting its fathom-ability, its goodness, its prescriptive powers, or its wonders. Good and bad, right and wrong just make people edgy.
A choice is just a choice.
Fire when ready.
Enjoy it.
In the west, we went through a period commonly called the dark ages in which the church was an equal to dominant player among the kingships and empires of the time. It seems that any human organization that becomes somewhat dominant in power will take that responsibility for maintaining power as a prime motivator for their actions. No matter what their initial mission might have been.
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