Friday, December 11, 2009

What Began all Else Follows



ISAACSON: The virtue of tolerance, which I think is the most important virtue we need in the 21st century. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, he had a great line, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." And Franklin crossed out "sacred and undeniable" and put, "We hold these truths to be self evident." [Franklin] said we need to be a very tolerant nation in which our rights are based on reason, not based on religion, and I think in this century, we have to be tolerant of all religions and all tribes, and that was the thing that Benjamin Franklin taught us.Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin book

Benjamin looked to the native population of the early Americas, and in the spirit of good science asked that this constitution remove religious dogma from it's inception. Native, and immigrant treated the same principled without due cosideration?

It is the belief then for me that inside we are all not so different.

The questions about democracy's seem to be precluded these days by the injustice that one might feel is taking place at the time. It orientates the mind to ask what use these democracies if they cannot protect the rights granted under these constitutions. Some might think that loosing sight of the message of what constitutes that democracy is to loose sight of it in the skirmishes all around it, in gay issues or gender inequalities. Racism.

I never did see these things as productive to the understanding of equalities( not that they did not exist or were necessary issues to try and understand),  that we administer with regard to respect and right to expression, but more the understanding that all three could be understood if we went further into our own makeup to understand that this effort is to find "a beginning within us" that is much purer and designed prior too, the time we may take to spend our lives here in this environ.

I have really tried to look past all this to get to the "heart of the matter."  Not to be drawn into those skirmishes( does not mean I do not care). It was better for me to understand what it is that applies to all people regardless of these differences of opinion about and what is felt as inhibiting the right of expression.

I mean being apart from the American dream and living in Canada, these principles did not escape myself as I look to my own founding fathers and the start of countries that became democratically based in principal.




Top 10 Most Interesting 4th of July Facts


9. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were given an offer to write the Declaration of Independence but refused.

Franklin and Adams’ reason for turning the offer down was because they believed that Americans would be prejudiced if they learned that they were the ones who wrote it. But that did not stop Franklin from putting in a good number of corrections before the declaration’s final draft was done. One of these was inserting the line “and the pursuit of happiness” to substitute for the version Thomas Jefferson wrote that only had “property” on it.


So this became more the effort to understand the historical to try and bring perspective to what all peoples have in common, that we do not see these differences "in the inequalities" but to grant the patience and foresight to see all humanity regardless of these things. (Not to practise escapism)

So there has to be something said about what and how you feel inside to administer perspective and time fought in those skirmishes, to see that one can be affected and feel that they are labelled and are fitting a certain profile according to the idea of what those skirmishes mean.

The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell
With Bill Moyers,

Myth and the Modern World, Pg 31,

"Campbell:Yes. This is the first Nation in the world that was ever established on the basis of reason instead of simply warfare. These were eighteen-century deists, these genetlemen. Over here we read, In God We Trust." But that is not the God of the Bible. These men did not believe in a Fall. They did not think the mind of man was cut off from God. The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God. Reason puts you in touch with God. Consequently, for these men, there is no special revelation anywhere, and none is needed, because the mind of man cleared of its fallibilities is sufficiently capable of the knowledge of God. All people in the world are capable of reason. All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy. Because everybody's mind is capable of true knowledge, you don't have to have special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

So yes I do not waste time being "in the conflict" but ponder more the facets of the equilibrates to see that the measure of politeness and respect, lies not only in the act of writing those constitutions, that by recognition then,  any business person inclined,  will recognize the company adventure,  to also know,  that the other side of this writing can be for non profit.

People who gather to form  based on the adoptions in principle will speak to goals,structure and etiquette of the organization.

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