I’m going to whine. After the previous blog where I criticized whiners, I’m going to whine. I love words. I love to play Scrabulous and now Facebook put it down.
What am I going to do? I thought about creating my own word game to play with my friends. But that might take some effort. So all I can do is whine.
What if I started a petition to the makers of Scrabble to get over their fear of losing profits and accept that Scrabulous only motivates people to purchase their product? Appeal to their baser instincts of greed, anger and foolishness. For what else would motivate a giant corporation to sue another corporation?
Maybe I need to find other pursuits that don’t fill the pockets of greedy corporate giants.
Showing posts with label anger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anger. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Learning from History
What if someone told you that you had to change your religion? Would you do it?
For more than twenty years during the Middle Ages, a king in Europe battled a group of people to force them to become Christian. They resisted and he brought his armies back three times, killing, burning their places of worship, building his own churches, and replacing their priests with his.
Charlemagne (king Charles) thought that his religion was better than the religions people practiced during his reign so he tried to force them to become Christians. Not everyone thought this was a good idea, so they resisted even though it might cost them their lives. Some of those religions survived Charlemagne’s attacks, but many died out due to the pressure he put on them.
One of the ways people resisted was by building castles. Many of these castles in Europe and the Middle East were constructed to prevent Christians from invading their lands during the Crusades. Muslims, Pagans, Druids, and other religious people tried to protect their religions and their people from being forced to adopt Christianity.
After the Christian invaders defeated the castle owners, they still had to defend themselves from attack from other enemies who wanted their land. These enemies and their greed for more land, because it equaled more power, tried to defeat the Christians and take their castles. In some castles, we can find both churches and mosques because of the many times they changed hands. In Spain, many synagogues and mosques were converted into Christian churches when Queen Isabella ruled Spain and the Jewish and Muslim features of these buildings remain today.
When unbiased researchers look at history, many atrocities emerge that had their origins in human characteristics of greed, anger, and foolishness. As related above, greed makes people want to have things that other people own, just because they want more wealth, power, or food. In today’s events we can see the same force causing people to attack and subdue other people due to these goals.
Anger shows in history when one leader wants to take revenge on another for past offenses or simply to show that he’s stronger, or better than someone else. Anger comes from a desire to punish others, often due to a lack of understanding. In today’s world, the attack on September 11th stemmed from anger at the US. Then the US attacked Afghanistan and Iraq to retaliate for that attack. Then suicide bombers attack others to retaliate for these military actions. And the vicious cycle of anger continues unabated as we also see in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Foolishness results from a lack of good judgment. Charlemagne’s actions in the Middle Ages could be described as foolish as his ignorance of other religions made him believe that they were inferior to his. Whenever someone acts out of foolishness, it often stems from ignorance, fear of the unknown, or a lack of compassion.
Greed, anger, and foolishness lead to much suffering. Maybe our prayer should be to apologize for these actions, rather than to fulfill our selfish desires for our daily bread.
For more than twenty years during the Middle Ages, a king in Europe battled a group of people to force them to become Christian. They resisted and he brought his armies back three times, killing, burning their places of worship, building his own churches, and replacing their priests with his.
Charlemagne (king Charles) thought that his religion was better than the religions people practiced during his reign so he tried to force them to become Christians. Not everyone thought this was a good idea, so they resisted even though it might cost them their lives. Some of those religions survived Charlemagne’s attacks, but many died out due to the pressure he put on them.
One of the ways people resisted was by building castles. Many of these castles in Europe and the Middle East were constructed to prevent Christians from invading their lands during the Crusades. Muslims, Pagans, Druids, and other religious people tried to protect their religions and their people from being forced to adopt Christianity.
After the Christian invaders defeated the castle owners, they still had to defend themselves from attack from other enemies who wanted their land. These enemies and their greed for more land, because it equaled more power, tried to defeat the Christians and take their castles. In some castles, we can find both churches and mosques because of the many times they changed hands. In Spain, many synagogues and mosques were converted into Christian churches when Queen Isabella ruled Spain and the Jewish and Muslim features of these buildings remain today.
When unbiased researchers look at history, many atrocities emerge that had their origins in human characteristics of greed, anger, and foolishness. As related above, greed makes people want to have things that other people own, just because they want more wealth, power, or food. In today’s events we can see the same force causing people to attack and subdue other people due to these goals.
Anger shows in history when one leader wants to take revenge on another for past offenses or simply to show that he’s stronger, or better than someone else. Anger comes from a desire to punish others, often due to a lack of understanding. In today’s world, the attack on September 11th stemmed from anger at the US. Then the US attacked Afghanistan and Iraq to retaliate for that attack. Then suicide bombers attack others to retaliate for these military actions. And the vicious cycle of anger continues unabated as we also see in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Foolishness results from a lack of good judgment. Charlemagne’s actions in the Middle Ages could be described as foolish as his ignorance of other religions made him believe that they were inferior to his. Whenever someone acts out of foolishness, it often stems from ignorance, fear of the unknown, or a lack of compassion.
Greed, anger, and foolishness lead to much suffering. Maybe our prayer should be to apologize for these actions, rather than to fulfill our selfish desires for our daily bread.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Nonviolent solutions
I'm still thinking about China's treatment of the people in Tibet. How does a nonviolent response create a solution? How can unarmed or poorly armed people resist through nonviolence? By creating a counterforce to greed, anger and foolishness. By boycotting goods, stores, commodities produced by the invading force, greed can be swayed nonviolently. By responding with respect, seeing the Buddha nature in others, anger has nothing to retaliate against. By educating people and providing them with science, technology, food, medicine, and shelter - these actions cause the oppressor to appear foolish. What did the Dalai Lama do to earn a Nobel peace prize?
He offered a compromise by suggesting concessions to the Chinese and asking for some concessions for the Tibetans. Most importantly, rather than harboring feelings of animosity, he showed compassion toward the Chinese because of the causes they were making that would impact their lives for many lifetimes to come. Unfortunately the Chinese rejected the offer and no compromise was reached. Being a peace-loving people, the Tibetans have few resources to defend themselves except nonviolent solutions.
The key to nonviolent solutions is to replace anger with compassion, emphasize the reality of the situation to expose foolishness, and offer concessions to satisfy the hungry nature. “A Force More Powerful” a DVD on how nonviolent approaches to conflict result in peaceful solutions can be ordered online. In addition the video game, “A Force More Powerful” teaches players how to outsmart the opposition in ten real-life conflicts.
Nonviolence solutions require wisdom, creativity, and patience, but the outcome means less anger and resentment and a greater likelihood of the participants using nonviolent solutions in the future.
He offered a compromise by suggesting concessions to the Chinese and asking for some concessions for the Tibetans. Most importantly, rather than harboring feelings of animosity, he showed compassion toward the Chinese because of the causes they were making that would impact their lives for many lifetimes to come. Unfortunately the Chinese rejected the offer and no compromise was reached. Being a peace-loving people, the Tibetans have few resources to defend themselves except nonviolent solutions.
The key to nonviolent solutions is to replace anger with compassion, emphasize the reality of the situation to expose foolishness, and offer concessions to satisfy the hungry nature. “A Force More Powerful” a DVD on how nonviolent approaches to conflict result in peaceful solutions can be ordered online. In addition the video game, “A Force More Powerful” teaches players how to outsmart the opposition in ten real-life conflicts.
Nonviolence solutions require wisdom, creativity, and patience, but the outcome means less anger and resentment and a greater likelihood of the participants using nonviolent solutions in the future.
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