The Myths That Define Us...

Where Believing Your Leaders Will Get You….


I used to believe everything I read and swear by everything I saw.

Until I got a little older and found out that not everything I read was true; nor everything I saw quite the way I saw it.

This was a bitter pill to swallow; something like learning things are never quite the way they seem or that there’s no Santa Claus.

After that initiation, my list of favorites shrunk measurably and my personal icons for the most part came crashing down with a few exceptions that I now hold onto for dear life—even though I seem to be losing more and more each year.

If nothing else, life is the great teacher…or it should be.

The trouble is too many people still believe what they’ve been taught by their moral guides and their spiritual advisors..

There seems to be little questioning any more.

And the bigger issues of life can be divided into questions of a spiritual or a moral nature.

You take it from your spiritual adviser that Evolution is something dreamed up by intellectual snobs.

There are even those who suggest that the bible is less than literal—if you can believe that.

There are even those who think that the idea of Armageddon is something contrived and not part of the original bible…

Fortunately, for fifty percent of the population there is rock solid belief in morality and the spiritual life. This population believes that we should all believe their way to avoid being cast off into Purgatory===woops! I mean Hell….

In other words, these select authorities feel well qualified to advise us as to how to save our lives. Without doubt, without questioning.

About the same percentage of the population has rock solid ideas about what constitutes our personal lives and their own interpretation of the Constitution. And they are being represented by a growing number of conservative judges who feel precisely the same way about what constitutes personal freedoms.

In some states, it is no longer possible for someone who was raped to get an abortion.

We were reminded of that the other night when ten white blue-suited candidates professed their values and spirituality—even a few discounting Evolution—in order to win over the voters in anticipation of their run for the office of president.



One of these candidates was asked whether someone who was adverse to homosexuality would be within his rights to fire someone in his employ who was gay… And he thought it would be okay to violate the laws!....

The odd thing was that being tough on gays seemed more important than the crumbling school structure and deciding women’s options was more critical than the issue of jobs in America today. A very interesting juxtaposition one might think that forces one to think in even larger terms..

Among the things that come to mind, it occurs to me that while our technology advanced in quantum leaps, we are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to the rights of the individual in a free society and the authority of the Constitution over extreme minority positions on ethics and spirituality.

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon