“Oh, You Should Live on Donation”
Universal Rights and Freedoms
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights comes to mind readily. The Internet brings this link into focus at the top of the search list, because I have posed a question. It is this, typed into the search window of my desktop:
“Why works on religion should be free".
Link, if you wish, to Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Some people believe that, even if a person has spent several years in university, that their discussion of religious concepts, or research into religion, archeological discovery, philosophy and discourse alike should be supported only by stipend or donations.
I am researching peoples' opinions because of the damp fatuosity of the greedy types who believe a poor person with hardly a bean should produce, publish and pay for thousands of texts for the people, all free of charge, because they are they are students of religion. Of course, it is an impossibility for most individuals to back the manufacture for, say, a million texts, and yet, not just Reverends, Rabbis or nuns have opinions or ideas about worship. These people, probably more often in the majority, would not enjoy the support of any religious organization, which would purchase the books through ongoing donations.
I decided to have a look at true public opinion and I will start with the obvious.
If you care to research our actually guaranteed human rights on earth, you could look at Articles 2 and 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published and maintained by the United Nations.
Religious Opinion and Civil Rights
A paragraph in Kerry L. Morgans’ "Unalienable Rights, Equality and the Free Exercise of Religion"
states that: “RELIGIOUS OPINION NEITHER EXPANDS OR DIMINISHES CIVIL RIGHTS OR CAPACITIES…
"Several state Declaration of Rights articulate the relationship between religious liberty and the rule of equality.120 Virginia stated the broadest rule of all, not limiting its application to those who acknowledged God or professed Christianity. It declared that "all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." In other words, religious opinions should not affect civil capacities, and by necessary implication non-religious opinions should not affect civil capacities either."
Link to Kerry L. Morgans’ "Unalienable Rights, Equality and the Free Exercise of Religion
In our rich western world, the idea that a person can study religions and religious philosophies for forty years or more, even to the point of taking university courses in Theology, only to be both used without concern for the civil liberties of their own lives, and also despised for their subsequent poverty or meagreness after having been so exploited under the supposition that a religious career must only be paid by donation is not just preposterous, in this day and age it borders on deviancy.
Morgans’ statement Number one goes on to say:
"The equality principle prevents state and Congressional infringement or adjustment of civil rights on account of one's belief or mode of worship. The principle is part and parcel of both the free exercise clause of the federal Constitution and to the extent the idea is reflected in state constitutions, it constitutes the law of that state as well. In a nutshell the law of equality declares that opinion or belief may in no way diminish, enlarge, or affect civil capacities."
Americas' Constitution poses the basic understanding:
"all persons have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the enjoyment of the gains of their own industry;"
If this particular aspect of that constitution were not repeatedly of note in every medium, the free TV shows, internet capabilities, email and telephone advantages that we so enjoy would never have gained the backing nor have attracted the diversity of cultural intent that everyone now takes for granted.
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Under Fundamental Freedoms, Canadas Charter declares:
"2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.”
Examine (b)
'the freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.'
Slavery
If a person is guaranteed the freedom of their own minds' perspective, philosophy, including religious choices plus freedom of the press and other media it stands to reason that no author, philosopher or publisher shall be made a slave (nor perceived of as one) by any other citizen or group of citizens.
There is no reason, (because religious leaders have presented teachings that have inspired any poetry, authorship of literature, film, art, etc.) for the original church or religious body to lay claims upon the cultural production as if an extension of that one body of faith!
Imagining that a human being should exist upon the whims of donors for their
earthly wages alone is naiive, and also deeply demanding.
The notion that only Gods work is done and therefore all revenues from the tasks should be given to "God" (that is, to serve the charitable extensions, executives and hierarchies) of any one faith can be seen as presumptuous if applied to any other career choices, like science or music; yet astronomers, physicists, composers, each one of these may be deeply inspired and educated by the same works of faith, the same leaders, and even some of the same university courses, in producing their own contributions to humankind.
The Disgust of Bloody Martyrdom
I notice personally that religious martyrdom is still expected of any moderate, civilized individual by those who are used to luxuries in life. Like the early Romans with their appalling arenas filled with bestial and indecent slaughter, they are looking for a sensationalistic show. Not just ill-mannered, but socially terribly lazy and conceited, they imagine that much of the world should be catering to their way of life, that it has always been so, and therefore there is no need for change.
I note that few news articles feature mega-rich, acheived and famous people who have viciously martyred themselves.
The last great person (almost) who deliberately martyred his person publicly was Mahatma Ghandi. Although he was a state leader, he deliberately went on a starvation diet to demonstrate the suffering of his people.
Perhaps people were too ignorant in the pre-global days to have understood the misery that Indias’ people lived with.
A few famous people have followed Ghandis' example, but martyrdom and its attendant fanaticism are frowned upon by those who are promoting wholesome, equalized and decent conditions for all sentient beings.
In this day and age, we are disgusted at the image of a young man bound to his fundamentalist issues to the point of taking his life with explosives in order to murder others. Murder and the creation of chaos is abhorrent.
Many of us see that the action of the Romans against Christ Jesus were abhorrent; they tortured the great leader of the Jews, and expected to be able to murder him slowly on the cross.
In that primitive age, Rabbis were expected, traditionally, to take turns martyring themselves for their people.
Destroying our religious leaders is almost unthinkable today. When we pray (or lobby) for results, we are intending to offer some actions or energies of our own as well as to wait for the One to answer all aspects of the need.
My philosophy is humanistic. I do not believe in self-torture, I think of it as not just masochistic or machisma, but sometimes a type of deviant flashing, meant to enhance the self-view of spiritual determinism, or to encourage others to heroize one’s person.
Pass the Tools for Production (but hold it on Marxism)
I don't believe that people who endeavour to share their religious education should indulge in that type of glittering, hyper-emotional self abuse either. Any persons functionality demands some means for shelter, food, clothing, health care, travel costs, educational and work tools.
When fundamentalists not only fail to provide these, while insisting that an author/teacher (whatever) is performing a religious service, therefore this service should be freely “given”, they are expecting work of a spiritual nature to be created only by the mega rich, or those who have access to funds from religious bodies of faith.
This means anyone with diverse education, leaning or a new perspective upon spiritual philosophy (whether demonstrated in literary or other creative modes like art or music) will be no more than a slave to be used by those entrenched in fundamentalist sects of any one religious body. They are used to patriarchal organizations.
Western religion has sought to rectify the hateful tendency to enslave, and has insisted upon teachings that have unfolded toward democratic equalization.
We can see how democratic thinking supports the health and well being of religious celibates in the West (even though they may have taken vows of poverty) in that they are clean, usually well fed and housed with respect to their right to cleanliness, rest and other types of decency. One may perceive that their intellectualism and steadfastness rides upon not starvation or deprivation, but on some mode of payment.
On the other hand, many of us are exasperated by media Ministering that openly solicits the public, presenting products and asking for enormous costing or donations.
We feel, perhaps, that the showman is more of a con artist than a religious leader, but it is because many of us are leary of media process and ownership. Indeed, Mass Communication educators express just that; that the ownership of most periodicals, news syndicates and programs is in the hands of a very few. It is only in the last twenty years or so, for example, that employing Afro-American or East Indian actors or news anchors became normative for television news presentations. Even that was a struggle.
The tenor and tenets of western media had been formed through the twentieth century for commercial purpose, to satisfy and attract a largely white immigrant populus.
Much work had to be done to equalize opportunity, even in an industry that had pioneered in helping an ignorant populus form a more respectable opinion of the worlds' cultures, peoples and of human rights globally.
Life, Liberty and Security of the Person
In Canada, Under Legal Rights, Life, Liberty and Security of the Person, #7:
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice."
No-one need be deprived of their living and their right to gain from employment, or self-employment.
There is truly a lot to say about the demands of people who feel, for some reason that they are so Godly that they should just be served. Their spiritual poverty comes either from the ignorance of the very rich or of the terribly poor and disadvantaged, but it is not convenient for our democratic nations to support religious people as if perennial students.
Religious researchers/writers/painters may be highly motivated and intense, but their high energy or attention to human morality or toward spiritual acheivements should not be conceived to be either a disability or a useless occupation - people should pay for these services just as they do for any other. Why is peace work despicable, compared to the manufacture of Coca Cola, Tampax or Antihistamines?
Professionals in religion work toward peace and equanimity, health and fruitfulness, much the same as those adhering to political or health doctrines.
What I am beginning to hear is that the attitude that has callously made of the actor a whore (circa 1204) or of the artist a toy (circa 1980) and of the religious teacher a stone or a freak sex trip (circa 1965 and on via drug daytrippers) seems to have extended its viciousness and greed toward web designers, doctors, nurses, soldiers and all kinds of educated people whose application is for the benefit of a worlds' peace.
People like geophysicists, mineralogists, police officers, industrial nurses and others whose professions take them into the worlds' dangerous badlands seem to be constantly not just put down or hated, but tortured, martyred, typecast into roles that are unconfortable, underpaid, disrespected and even thought of as spare parts that just should be there to serve, but who will pay?
These fatuous airheads won't. Their whine and demand noises barely cover up for their ratty covetousness, graft and outright extortion of funds into such important pursuits as cocaine dealership, guns running and the purchase of tender but tabu flesh.
I see the increasingly rude mistreatment of educated people as symptomatic of this malaise. Greed from right wing narrowness, bigotry of all kinds, and self serving from the antique traditions of apartheid, whether racial or social amount to what intellectual diseases create the grounds for warfare and eventually chaotic, destructive forces on the earth.
Social Disorder
Through neo-puritanism, we are establishing social disorder.
If we listen to those who scream the loudest that their needs should be served, free of charge, and buy their extraordinary disparity within our own belief structures, we are aiding and abetting fascism and the eventual breakdown of civilization through violence and slavery. So, caveat emptor- if a group of people demands that any given target be forced to work for free- you're joining the Nazis or the Mafia for flagrant ignorance and criminality if you agree with them.
People need to be practical and kind in their relationships with others, even if these comprise the dialectic of commerce.
