Today some person on another thread was on about their “God given rite” to carry a gun. Rite not right was part of what prodded me to respond. I don’t buy it. I am extremely fed up with the amount of civilian weaponry in this country. It stinks☹️👎🏽.
“Johnny”, I just don’t think God has anything to do with a man’s right to kill. Historically, if we look at the timing of the constitution. It reinforces a set of believes that man, specifically, the white, European man can overpower and conquer everything. The entire era was built on a set of assumptions that forcefulness prevails and dominance is a birthright.
We have amendments for a reason. Certainly, a wife is not property, nor is she to be beaten, and kept in order. But that is how men, especially white men thought. Theirs is the most documented journey of all of mankind. But, these men were always fearful. They declared all that they didn’t understand savage and they killed it, raped it, diseased it or enslaved it. Sometimes the it was another human, sometimes it was land, or an animal, or well anything. The era was about overpowering. And it worked. Of course it worked, as long as you have the upper hand. And white men knew it worked because in history the shoe had been on the opposite foot. These methods were effective on keeping Christianity at bay. Think Ottoman Empire.
But God wasn’t in those fights either.
This is a man versus man, environment, nature, women, sexual urges, internalized fear situation but please don’t mention God.
That’s naive and cheap. And, at this point we all should be more knowledgeable about ourselves, humanity, history, and well man hood than that.
White men feared being over powered. So, they wrote a constitution declaring themselves all equal to each other and protecting themselves from each other’s habitual response to overpower the other. Period.
The need for a gun was a necessity because as a habit and a way of life they didn’t respect each other’s belongings, way of beings, personal and professional relationships. If the impulse to take your neighbor’s anything overcame your thinking, you “prayed” on it and waited for signs and then you “preyed” on them.
I don’t think that sounds anything like God. Sounds more like the musings of crazy people trying to bully their way through the world.
If you want to defend an old way of being, go for it. Just don’t speak for a God that has been manipulated as an ideal to uphold tattered frameworks and ways of thinking that are defunct in every way. Except providing the final threads of violent dominance that the blood thirsty long for, but can’t face in themselves.
You do not require a gun to protect your stolen first nations property. We have laws that have ceded us their land and invoices that say we own our animals. And your wife is no longer your chattel. Nor am I, had I been American to begin with. So what in God’s name do you need a rifle for? Can’t be to hunt your processed food on aisle 6.
Give me a break. And leave your falsely defined selfish and wanton, god creation out of this.
just say you want guns for historical reasons because you have nostalgia for a time when white people were less impotent and more important.
Good grief. The truth is easier for everyone to digest.
Have your phallus. Just shoot among yourselves. I support you. I just want to work the legislation so that gun-bearers live quality lives with others like them. That’s something that we all deserve.
Updated: Aug 13, 2023
We visited the Experience Music Project in Seattle and here's what I learned about shadows and where you might see them at work:
1. Your shadows are with you. Better to shine the light on them then have them jump out and take over at any time. This mantra also works for company cultures. So many times, I am aware that the person I am talking to at work is not in the moment, at the meeting, or helping to move the business forward. It even feels as though you are talking to their shadow when they are not present.
2. Put yourself in the picture. A teen said "Why aren't you ever in the pictures Mom?" to her Mom who was taking the video of Daddy and daughters doing the shadow dance. "Because I am always the one taking the pictures," Mom said. The children adored their parents. We had run into several times in the museum. The kids were black, and their parents were white. But our shadows are not about color, knowing better, or age. Understanding our shadows is about presence and doing our work. You've got to get into the picture to see all of ourselves.
3. One of our biggest life projects is our shadow. I gently removed the phone from Mom's hands...without actually asking. She and her daughter both turned to me and said, "You will take the picture?" I nodded. The family of four danced and bobbled around.
I hope Mom gets it. There are about 13 years of photos where she is not a present as she could have been.
revised from 12.15.2014
I love meeting with kids of all ages to talk to them about my experiences growing up. I was always in the minority in my classes and activities, but I found that standing out in a crowd can actually translate into being "out-standing"!