The image was funny. A burning Marlboro at the smiling stone lips of a 700 year old priest was funny. But the question I posed was why. If humor is the human reaction to the uncomfortable, the awkward or the indecent, what about this image made my friend and I laugh. The answer lied in its comparison. It juxtaposed a devout spiritualism with commercialization and addiction.
Both things thought to be in stark contrast with the enlightenment that is supposed to be revealed to all sons and daughters of religion and especially the followers of Buddha. This image struck a chord with me, even though I am not religious, and have taken resentment to the current upswing in the inquisition like militancy that is now a part of the Christian faith in America, I have grown up in a religious society, a Christian society. My morals are based on Christian interpretations of right and wrong fore we both live in a country founded on such beliefs, and are now immersed in them. This image of comparison stuck with me because, our society is full of such paradoxical situations. Christian doctrine dictates the negative outcomes of addiction, and guffaws at commercialism as an offshoot of materialism and greed, which is a mortal sin. But despite these things the world and America in particular are in a struggle hold with people’s desire for material wealth on one side and the planet’s well being and the world’s religious quest for balance in all life on the other.
Here are two examples of modern life’s discrepancies between what is taught to the people of earth and what is wrought by the taught. First, the concept of good Samaritan altruism has been boasted by America’s Christian government officials but America’s philanthropy has been skewed and blemished with attempts at large commercial gains in the middle east. Our country invaded a nation, crashed its soverienty and imposed our values and goals for democracy and liberty for all on a peoples who may not want it. But underlying these philanthropically based objectives are thes Our global society is hypocritical; we seek perfection in the masses but allow the transgressions of the individual. We allow some addictions but shun others, our culture tries to shroud human sexuality in an imposed mask of indecency and ill-discretion but has created a system saturated with sex and that instead of promoting healthy images of sexual relations has bred a new level of perverseness with upshots in pornography and child molestation cases. And that picture is an abstract recreation of our world on a 3 foot scale. It shows the world, striving for betterment through the reform and curving of human action to good through organized religion and the imposition of modern materials and addictive substances the world over..
The Essay on Brave New World A Sterile Society
Cleanliness is next to Fordliness, was an attitude impressed upon the people of Aldous Huxleys, Brave New World. A society free of disease and suffering was achieved through a technique of conditioning called hynopaedia. Civilization is sterilization, was a hynopaedic slogan used to achieve the ideal society. This idea was manifested through the anesthetizing peoples emotions, the sterilization of ...
