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Rapture

5/21/2011

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When I first heard about a fringe Christian radio host’s rapture prediction, which claimed that the end of the world was to come on May 21, 2011, my initial response was to laugh it off.  There have been numerous predicted doomsdays in my time, and this was just one more.  However, the more I thought about it, the more it upset me.  This was real to the people who believed it—and that was no laughing matter.  Good people with great faith, even faith misplaced, do not deserve our ridicule.  They deserve our compassion—and they deserve a society that would not take advantage of their willingness to believe.

People have given up their
life savings, their personal belongings, and their pride over this most recent religious debacle.  One must question not only the personal impact this is going to have on people, but the moral one.  One must question how much money Harold Camping was able to make off desperate, scared believers through his supposed doomsday awareness campaign.  According to CNN, he has received over eighty million dollars in “donations” since beginning the campaign.  One must consider what is going to become of all those who gave up all they had, only to learn that they had been misled.  I think of the people who will struggle financially now, while Camping is off living the good life with their money, and I shudder.

My upcoming release, Myths of Gods, takes a critical look at those who use religion as a means of controlling the masses or accruing wealth.  I respect people who practice religious beliefs, but I also think it is important for all religious people, no matter who they are or what they believe, to take a closer look at their dogma—and their leaders.  Faith is not a bad thing, but faith used as an excuse to commit wrongs against others is immoral on so many levels.  There are too many examples for me to choose one or two (and I don’t want this thread to turn into a religious bashing party), but they exist on every religious front.  No exceptions.

I know atheists who put down religious thought, saying that belief in anything so farfetched as any dogma warrants their scorn.  I say belief is personal, individual, and an aspect to being human.  I think it is something that should be respected—as long as no one is getting hurt.  Of course, that’s just my personal belief.
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Language

5/13/2011

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Having taken on the task of learning Italian over these past two years, I've found language has taken on even deeper meaning foo me.  For any writer, words are like air or water; they are a vital component to one's daily life.  Words represent communication, art, emotion, intelligence, and release.  Learning a new language adds a whole new set of words to one's palate, but it also adds a greater dimension to the way one thinks about coloquial speach, word choice, and even grammar.

Learning to speak a foreign language forces one to slow down and really think about what s/he wants to say--and why one chooses to say it one way, and not another.  As a writer, one with a whirlwind of words dancing around in my head at any given time, I think I took for granted the ease in which I could find just the right word.  I found that, when speaking in Italian, I had to search for that word a little longer.  I had to think about my use of tense.  It makes me think even more about the words I use more regularly.

Learning a foreign language has also offered some fun insight on the use of coloquial language and swear words.  One sees one'e coloquial language change over the years, with old words going obsolite and new words taking their place (when I was little, "totally," "rad," and "gag me" were common in coloquial speech in California, but more recently, words like "phat" and "dope" would be better received).  When I think about the language cautions I learned regarding Italian swear words, I couldn't help but think about what makes a swear word; I concluded that social acceptance of a word's symbolic value is all that makes any word what it is.  Strange, though, how we decide some words are dirty and others are sophisticated--and they are because we agree they are.

I wish the U.S. had more dual emersion gradeschools, as I consider how differently I would view words now, had I learned a second language back when I was a child.  I find it amazing that we don't teach our young multiple languages, as great as the benefits would be.

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