What Matters Most: May 2011

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Worldview

What Matters Most……Commentary by Jim High

What is your current worldview? Do you even realize that you have a worldview, and that it affects the way you see the world, what you think and how you act? Does your worldview change with new information and new knowledge? Should it?

These are all valid questions for discussion. Let’s start with Nicholas Copernicus, who was a German astronomer, and the first person to formulate a comprehensive view of cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the Universe. This occurred a little less than 500 years ago, Copernicus died in 1543, and the worldview of the human race changed, maybe for the first time. And it has been rapidly changing ever since.

By worldview I mean the way you see your world. Not just the Earth or the Universe, but the way you see you neighborhood, city, state, nation and all the people of the world. From the problems we experience in relations between people, governments, corporations and the world community of nations, it is obvious that all of us are not on the same page when it comes to how we view the world.

You develop your worldview through study, knowledge of history, and your own personal observations. In 1975 I had a chance to confirm with my own eyes that the Earth is not flat as everyone thought before Copernicus’ monumental discovery. I was on a trip organized by our state insurance association to visit Lloyd’s of London, and on the way home our group of about 40 people on the 747 airplane were all getting VIP treatment from the flight attendants.

In twos and threes we were allowed to go up to the cockpit of the 747 for a visit. This meant climbing the stairs to the upper level of the plane that contained the First Class lounge and the cockpit with the pilot, the co-pilot and the navigator. They showed us the various instruments and let us ask all the questions we wanted. This was, of course, way before the events of 9/11 that have made this kind of thing impossible. But what interested me most was the view out the front window of the cockpit. We were flying at about 38,000 feet, over seven miles high, and you could actually see the curvature of the earth out in front of you. I didn’t have to see this with my own eyes to believe the truth of what Copernicus had revealed to mankind, but it was beautiful to see. I can close my eyes and see it still.

Another worldview changing even occurred on July 20, 1969, when Neal Armstrong first set foot on the moon. I watched this event on TV, as anyone alive at the time did. We don’t have video of Christopher Columbus setting foot on what was for him a new world, but we all know about it never the less. And now anyone who goes out most any night can track the progress of satellites across the night sky.

Your worldview must keep changing in light of all the progress and the discoveries we are making about our world. And yes, your worldview does affect the way you think and the actions you take. Consider this, every word written in the Bible was written by people who had the worldview that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and that it was flat. Would you consider using a medical doctor who only had the training and education of a physician from ancient times? Yet we have let our religions, developed in ancient times, influence our worldview for today’s times. To say nothing of Charles Darwin’s discovery of evolution that he presented to the world in 1859. Another worldview changing event, I might add.

What Matters Most…….If you really want to expand your worldview, consider this fact. In only a little more than a 100 years every person alive today on the face of the Earth will be dead and gone. Oh, there will still be people, billions and billions of them, but it won’t be any of us that are here now. That one thought should change your worldview. It has changed mine.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

What's Going On?

What Matters Most…….….Commentary by Jim High

Sunday is my favorite TV day of the week. It starts at 8 AM with Sunday Morning on CBS. For over 25 years it has provided TV’s best and most interesting coverage of events, the arts, entertainment, fashion and personalities. It’s like a wonderful magazine come to life. Then Global Public Square at noon on CNN with its lineup of informative guests that you don’t see on the other talk and opinion shows, and I finish up with 60 Minutes on CBS at 6 PM with their stories that get to the truth behind the news.

Recently on the Global Public Square, Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday program on CNN, one of his guests said that he couldn’t understand why the people are not marching in the streets upset with the Wall Street financial institutions that are stronger, more powerful, and richer than before the economic meltdown caused by the recent recession that these very banks and financial institutions caused by manipulating home mortgages.

I don't know what will be the spark that will shift the coming change in the consciousness of the American middle class, but it is bound to come. When the top 5 to 10% of the people in this country control 80% of the wealth, when a few people on one side of town earn tens of millions of dollars and many thousands on the other side of town live from minimum wage or slightly higher paycheck to paycheck, something has to give. It always does, history proves it over and over.

But, I think, there are two powerful things going on not just one, and neither of them is good. One is of course money, the battle between the very rich and the vast majority of American who are the working middle class. The rich are winning right now. For almost 40 years the laws have been changing in their favor. We were sold a bill of goods that if the rich did well and were given favors, the money they made would trickle down to the rest of society lifting everyone up. But it has not happened. They got richer and richer, while the rest of us got poorer and poorer.

When people want food and can't afford it, when gasoline goes above $5 a gallon people can’t afford to drive to work, and when many have lost their jobs entirely as corporations moved those jobs to cheap labor elsewhere, they will begin to march in the streets and in other more unpleasant ways begin to fight the rich, the powerful and the huge corporations who have unjustly gained way more than their share of the American dream. We see it happening in the streets of the Middle East right now.

But the other force that is out there is the "take our country back" group. These white Americans think this is their country and they don’t like seeing Blacks, Mexicans, Asians and other foreigners in growing numbers here in what was “White America.” This war has already started in the State Legislatures as they pass new and much more restrictive immigration laws designed to favor white Americans over everyone else.

Religion is also certainly a factor in both of these problem areas and in the end may be the only real solution. It is a fact of history that empires, corporations, businesses, families, and all kinds of entities have to crash and burn before they start to get better.

What Matters Most………It is the getting better that we need to think about. And that is where religion comes in. We can no longer afford for all Christian religions to claim to be in the same boat. We must call out the wrong thinking, the ancient thinking, for what it is. WRONG AND ANCIENT. We need new language about our beliefs that recognizes a 21st Century world. We need to accept that we live in a different world connected at every level, and that all the people of the world are in the same boat. A boat named Earth. We need to acknowledge that all religions have value if they encourage love, care, compassion and justice. And the enlightened among us and among the many religions need to speak up and speak out about right living, about justice, about balance and about love, care, and concern for all people everywhere. Only this will save us from new wars in the streets, not just in the Middle East, but right here in America. The clock is ticking.