All posts tagged: Society

Sex Positive: What is that?

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One of the most dangerous practices, in our modern culture, is giving names to things. Have you noticed, that we give a name to something and then everyone knows if that thing is good or bad? There is no need to think about it. I used to work as an English teacher, I taught language more than literature, and I notice this. We make the language do all the work, so we don’t have to think, or take responsibility. That is one of the drivers of “Cancel Culture.” The name “Cancel Culture” is one of those shorthand descriptions. If I use that name, you know that you are not supposed to like or approve of that thing. Can we agree, that we will not play the shorthand-blaming game? We are just using a name for something that people do. If we want to form an opinion, we should learn more. Here is one thing to know; we have a shallow and thoughtless way to approve or disapprove of things. We can easily communicate our opinion …

2021: The Year of Mistrust and Suspicion

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Although there are many things that characterize the year 2021, perhaps nothing is more conspicuous than the deep lack of trust that Americans currently have in their national leadership. From the president to the CDC, from Dr. Fauci to the media, almost everyone is viewed with suspicion and mistrust. Of course, it would be all too easy for those on the left to blame this on former president Trump. After all, wasn’t he the one driving the “stop the steal” movement? And didn’t he make clear that, not even the Supreme Court could be trusted? But to blame the current situation on Trump would be both shallow and naive. Plenty of clearheaded, fair-minded, thinking Americans have good reason to question what they are hearing and seeing and reading. Can anyone really be trusted? Both leftwing and rightwing media have become so politicized that much of the reporting is often more sensationalistic than sound. Endless internet headlines (which people often run with, at face value) are mere clickbait, with the article linked having nothing to do …

Forced Dysfunction

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For those who are parents or for those who grew up in some type of family, you know that a family needs certain things to survive. Daily routines require someone to take charge and in normal families the one in charge takes into account what is necessary for the entire family. For example, if one child likes donuts for supper, it is unlikely that every supper will consist of only donuts. Surrendering the entire family to the needs of one of the children makes no sense. Yet this happens often. I know a few families with several kids but the one that shows promise in sports or academics gets the bulk of if not all the attention. The other children feel less then when compared to that child. I have also seen cases in which the dad or the mom puts their career or their needs first and the rest of the family has to adjust to their schedule or their desires.   In these cases, families don’t work well. There is division and strife, …

A lesson to learn from pornography in video games: What do we really want?

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What does a rich man want after he has everything he needs? More. We humans need to know who we are, and pornography can teach us that. I learned a lesson recently, when I found a video on the Internet, about problems with video games. Apparently, there are censorship organizations that restrict excess behaviour in video games. READ: Video Game Censorship I don’t play video games, although there was a time when I enjoyed flinging Angry Birds across the computer screen at other little animals. It was addicting. I watched the information video, out of curiosity, and I learned something about us. We like to mix good and bad; we like to do the wrong thing to get us to the right place; and we lie to ourselves. Those are all different views of the same thing. I was surprised to learn one thing about video games. When we can do anything, when we can go bad without restraints, we like to kill each other. Sometimes we settle for injure and torture. I used to …

Mad Hater

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Remember the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland? He was intense and temperamental, disturbed and dramatic. He may have been a fictional character yet he and his friend, the March Hare, were both quite insane. Imagine if we had people that eccentric, that energetic, that intense, and that disturbed running around in today’s fictional-sounding reality? Wait. We do. The Mad Haters. The Mad Haters is a great name for a punk rock band or even maybe a sports team. The very name invokes images of something you don’t want to mess with. They could even be a gang of youthful thugs fighting turf wars against their counterparts, the Rock Bottoms, or the Laughing Fools. If only they were fictional characters in some drug-induced fantasy story. But alas, they are all too real. A mad hater is someone who hates without reason, unless that reason is that you disagree with their politics. Or that you don’t live on the same street. Or that you like your eggs fried and not poached. Which end of the egg …

Culture Relevance and Christianity

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There is so much confusion about truth these days. Our society is fighting among itself trying to convince the other side they are right and they are wrong. This feels and looks like war to me. Ideological and spiritual war. A well-known quote, many attribute to US Senator Hiram Johnson, claims that truth is the first casualty of war. Variations of this sentiment have been around for centuries and has its base in the notion that we vilify our enemies and romance our friends. The US and Canadian media do a great job of vilifying Conservative Christians and our beliefs in the Bible as the truth. The truth of God, even the inconvenient ones, are replaced with acquiesce to the cultural desires. Do what thou wilt has replaced the ten commandments. We see this shift taking place in many societies around the world. Here in Canada, our culture values sexual identity issues above religious freedom. Definitions change to exclude traditional families and Biblical values. The core of Christianity is being attacked as the Bible’s inspiration …

Boomer, Doomers, and Systemic Racism

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In history, when armies fought on a battlefield, each side had a flag. A flag is only a piece of cloth with colors, but it is a symbol of something one side loves, and the other side hates. We have flags today, made with words: Systemic Racism, Defund the Police, Black Lives Matter, Hey Boomer. These slogans are used to rally people on one side of a struggle, and to make the other side hostile and angry. There is not much analysis, mostly just angry emotions. In the demonstrations, the flag words are written on signs and shouted. The news is also full of stories about violent demonstrations and ruined careers, when famous and privileged people offend someone with their words. These are dangerous times and it is dangerous to have an opinion different from a flag. I often visit a town called Killam, and I have a standard bad joke, “On Friday I’m going to Killam.” It sounds funny to some people. I was not there on the day, but people in the area …