Stephen Roney's Blog, page 173

Is Preferring White Meat Prejudiced?

 

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“Friend Xerxes writes”—this has become the usual start to my Sunday sermons.

This week, friend Xerxes writes that “prejudice – racial or otherwise – can be defined only those on the receiving end.”

And he cites as example an incident that proves the opposite. He had three Jamaican guests to Christmas dinner, and asked if they wanted white or dark meat. They all chose dark meat, thinking he was referring to their skin colour.

In fact, prejudice can never be reliably defined by those on the “receiving” end; because prejudice speaks to motive, and none of us can read minds.

Only the person accused of prejudice knows for certain whether the charge is true. 

Xerxes goes on to say “I can never know if I’m expressing unrecognized prejudices unless someone points them out to me.”

Yet I do think we all must know when we are being prejudiced. Prejudice violates the essence of morality, which is the awareness of human equality (“do unto others”); we are all capable of understanding this simple principle, and we all have a conscience. 

It is close to a perfect contradiction to suggest we can be unaware of our own prejudices—that we can think a thought without knowing we are thinking it.

Of course, there is real prejudice in the world—lots of it. One good example is the claim that only “white” people can be prejudiced. Another is that certain groups are “indigenous.” Or that only “black lives matter.” Or that “men” cause violence. Or that this ethnic group owes reparations to that ethnic group. Or that fetuses are not human.

And so it goes, generation to generation.

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Shepherds, Why This Jubilee?

 

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Advent Music

 

One of my favourites.

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For Advent

 

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The Mandate of Heaven

 

Abortion laws by country. Red = fully illegal. Blue = legal. 

To an atheist, the thought that heaven is intervening in world affairs is no doubt fanciful. But once you accept the existence of God, or even, as with the ancient Greeks or Chinese or Hindus, of cosmic justice, the assumption that God is directing history is inevitable. Miscreant societies may do mysteriously well for a time—the Devil has his powers too—but heaven will in due time strike down a Carthage or a Nazi Germany or a USSR in dramatic fashion.

Over time, the good guys usually win. One may protest that this is only because the history is written by the winners. This is not true. Losers usually survive to write their own histories, and history is based on documentary evidence by which one can arrive at the truth of things. In most wars, there is a good side and a bad side, and the good side wins. Is there any obvious counter-example?

That being so, the wholesale acceptance of abortion, by America and by most other developed countries, is the surest possible indication that they have lost the moral high ground, and so are due for decline or sudden collapse. It is the same sin that finished Carthage, or Canaan.

The puzzle is who might rise to replace them? Ibn Khaldun had a useful theory, that a decadent civilization would inevitably and rather suddenly be replaced by “barbarians” from the fringes, just beyond their direct control. They would be a group disciplined by adversity, not some established rival power.

The regime that is set to replace the USA as world leader will not, if Ibn Khaldun is right, be China. China shows at least the same level of moral depravity—as demonstrated by legal abortion—as the US. It will not be Russia. It will not be Japan. It will not be Europe, East or West.

If we use where abortion is and is not legal as a guide to moral health and strength, the best candidates for new leadership seem to be Subsaharan Africa, the Muslim world, Latin America, and the Philippines.

In that group, I would put my money on Latin America and the Philippines. They combine this ethical core with a form of the philosophy of liberal democracy which made Britain, France, and America seeming favourites in God’s eyes over the past few centuries. They seem to fit Ibn Khaldun’s description best as the barbarians just beyond the gates. The Africans and the Muslims seem more peripheral to America; and less united among themselves.

You might scoff that they are poor and disorganized. But the ascension of a new power can happen suddenly. Spain launched her world empire in 1492, the very year she finally drove the Moors out of the homeland. The Dutch began their world empire even as they were fighting a war of independence from Spain. Such current adversity can build solidarity and social cohesion.

Together, the Philippines and Latin America have the demographic weight. The Philippines alone has a larger population than Britain or France.

The transition will need to be sparked by some new ideology, I imagine—something not apparent now. Liberation Theology and Friere’s critical pedagogy look like attempts at this, but duds. Marxism is not a viable platform; it is unethical. And the US might recover, if, as anticipated, the Supreme Court dismantles Roe v. Wade.

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A Journal of the Plague Decade

 

The amount of empty shelving at the local supermarket has become alarming. Picking up weekly needs has become hit and miss. For a time I was trying to make up the difference by visiting two or three supermarkets a week. But with Omicron raging, and of uncertain potency, I’m not sure it is worth it any longer. My estimate is that the weekly food bill has gone up 30%.

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For Christmas

 

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A Depressed World

 

The problem faced by governments now is a good model of what depression is all about. Not a “mental illness,” but a rational reaction to there being no good options available.

The Covid lockdowns are causing increasing economic devastation. The attempt to keep everyone afloat financially through them is causing increasing inflation. Government debt has piled up to the point that governments cannot afford measures to fight inflation. And yet, just as the end seemed again in sight, here we have another wave of the virus, more virulent and, as far as we can tell so far, as deadly. And resistant to the vaccines. If we do nothing, many may die, and we will have just the sort of chaos in the health system we wanted to avoid all along. As if all our effort until now was for nothing—we might as well have gone ahead and let the original virus spread. 

And whatever the governments do, they are going to get blamed for the situation. They will be told they should have done the opposite.

And we have seen hopes dashed repeatedly. We thought we could end it all with the vaccines. Just as we seemed poised to have the virus under control, the Alpha variant popped up; and then the Delta variant. After Omicron, there may be yet another variant, and another wave.

This is just how depression develops—false dawns, hopes repeatedly dashed, and in the end, no good options. Blamed for whatever you do.

This most naturally comes about in a family situation in which a parent has made one or more child the scapegoat.

But here we see it happening naturally. My wife suggested, “It is as if God hates us.” And that is just what it looks like: like the situation of the hated child.

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Christmas Music

 

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Advent music

 

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