May 17, 2009 |
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Women’s rights are
human rights?
Stephen Henry Lewis,
United Nations’ envoy for HIV AIDS in Africa, 2006, said:
“[Women’s rights have] never been made real, and so long as men control the levers and bastions of power… it never will be real. The demeaning diminution of women is everywhere evident… where freedom from sexual violence, the right to sexual autonomy, to sexual and reproductive health, social and economic independence, and even the whiff of gender equality are barely approximated. It’s a ghastly, deadly business, this untrammeled oppression of women in so many countries on the planet.”
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Bogus Bonds of Brotherhood
Mother’s Day has come and gone, graduates will soon be loosed upon the world, brides and grooms are preparing to say they do but they won’t, and the war machine keeps gobbling the offspring of such pairings manifested in the now as women, children, and men around the globe.
Intentional Cycles
This endless (so far) cycle of life and death unfolds before our very eyes, yet we’re oblivious to most of the pain vested in the cogs of the giant wheel of misfortune as we revel in our bitter-sweet celebrations of life.
So why do we celebrate motherhood? Do we mothers really deserve to be patted on the back? Have we done a good job rearing our children to be good citizens of Earth? If the answer is yes, why is our precious world in such a mess? If the answer is no, can the world ever be repaired without the committed cooperation of women, men and their children?
Women continue to birth more humans while men continue to destroy them. Does it not make sense that one or the other of these activities should be stopped? Birthing can be halted by tiny little pills, but unfortunately, there’s no known solution for stopping the lop-sided masculine lust for killing. Ironically, either activity will eventually lead to extinction albeit not at the same rate.
Isn’t this intentional cycle of birth and kill insane? What possible reason can there be to accept the pathological repetitiveness of females conceiving and males destroying? Don’t we have better things to do before our planet and species disappear?
The only worthwhile activity is saving humanity from man.
~ Lynne Sims
Calamity at the Door
Have we handicapped our children by making their lives too easy? If so, how can we undo what we did wrong or how can we now do what we should’ve done earlier? Or did someone else spoil our child’s capacity for integrity, caring, sharing? If so, who, when, and why? How can we identify and stop the unknown culprit(s)?
Are males destructive due to testosterone or from lack of proper parenting or simply by nature? If excessive male hormones are the problem, isn’t it time for a prescription? If faulty parenting is the problem, which parent is most to blame? Father or mother? If by nature, does that mean their senseless destruction can never be stopped? (Some will claim that females are to blame for the fighting and killing because too many people have been birthed and therefore must fight over resources to survive.)
If calamity shows up on our doorstep, we do our utmost to rid it from our midst. Yet the same calamity (or worse) can happen to strangers but their grief fails to register on our internal pain meters. Is this an evolutionary insurance clause that allows us to keep going, regardless of what’s happened in our wake? Wasn’t there a time when compassion made us turn back and rescue others at all costs? How can we be so merry when so many others are in misery beyond comprehension?
Bleats of Hypocrisy
Many religions teach the oneness of the human family, yet few practice the brotherly/ sisterly love they preach. It becomes more apparent every day that there are far too few practitioners to keep humanity from self-destructing through wars, pollution, greed, and indulgences that are unhealthy to our fragile bodies and psyches.
It may soon be a fact that allegiance to religions is one of the greatest threats to the longevity of our species. The wolves in sheep’s clothing bare their teeth and bleat their bogus message of “love one another” while millions die in the name of God and unfathomable agony.
At some age we realize that life leads to death, yet we spend most of our lives pretending we won’t ever have to take the path to its door. Sadly, we seem unable to appreciate life until we accept its reality. Along the way, many of us ask what life is all about—why we are here, what our purpose may be, when and how we will know we’ve achieved our destiny.
Since there seems to be no unanimous answers, we tend to make up our own as we go along. Somehow in this pretense, we justify our existence to ourselves and to others in relation to the imagined grand scheme of individual and collective being. Let us not yet rule out the concept of all for one and one for all. It may be our final and only salvation.
#0058 Albeit Rantler |
