Aa autumnal campus in the US

The tools we are given when we are children are few or many depending on who our parents are. If we are lucky, we are given great gifts for our lives to be built upon, but if we are not so lucky, we are given the basics and sometimes even less.

I see the times and people as being short on understanding and long on wanting for those who are lost to our society and its power. Consequently, we have to select those things that are best for us. Then we must determine whether they are worth our time to build upon. This will depend on what we think we must develop into in this life.

The young are trying to find their way in this world with the values their parents give them, but sometimes we are helpless to guide those who wish to find their own way. The lost are all around us and there is not much we can do to straighten their course before they flounder upon the rocks of their stormy lives. Tragedy will prevail no matter what we try to do for them.

The effects of our offspring's choices can be seen in their later years as we look upon their development with either amazement or horror. Moreover, sometimes when we try to look at their lives we see nothing but chaos, dissolution, and destruction, and wonder what we did to make their lives so miserable. In the course of a child's life, we as parents wonder what we could have done differently to make their way more productive and peaceful. However, as things go, we must accept the good with the bad and challenge their way with honor and dignity, for if we do not we will punish ourselves endlessly for not trying.

The crucial time in their lives to be taught the differences that are needed to bring them into the fold of society is with the first breath, and that must be followed with guidance every breath hence. We have not given them life as much as we must give them truth and understanding, because no matter what we do to rail them on the path to success they will find their own way in spite of our hand.

In this world today, we see a measure of goodness and a measure of that which we must hold aghast. The weapons of survival must be preparedness and education. Knowledge is surely power and strength. The full measure of understanding is beyond all that comes from education and learning. The smart survive while the foolish and stupid only have luck upon which they can prevail; mostly they perish. If education is good then stupidity and ignorance is more than bad; it is evil and disheartenly destructive to the soul and being. No philosopher has ever praised stupidity as a great virtue; in fact, I have never heard praise for that which was based in ignorance, never. From the seeds of ignorance, rise those weeds which guise themselves in bigotry, hatred, and intolerance. Nothing productive comes from a lack of knowledge and education. Those basic skills, like an understanding of language and communication, are what gives rise to civilizations and an understanding of the other necessities needed to create a livable world. The more you know the more successful life becomes. It has never been the obverse.

Our children have a great battle ahead of them and the tools of education quell those fights and help them choose the battles and win the wars.

This then brings this essay to another fact concerning truth; if education is the key to understanding, then it sits in the face of existence that those things needed to be understood as truth in a divine sense are to be taken on faith. Sometimes, we come up against faith-based knowledge that is based on deceit and the abuse of human dignity.

This, I am speaking of is religion. I know that mankind needs a place for its soul to reside; most assuredly, this must be so. Yet, throughout the course of history, much has been lost as we teach our children the difference between the apparent rights and wrongs that religion teaches from generation to generation. Those who postulate the truth from an apparent historical standpoint, most of which has been handed down by word of mouth from master to disciple, must understand the responsibility they have to their following. There are a myriad of teachings in religion that are worth passing on to the next generation. It is in each of these ways of seeing life and death in this world of spiritualism that the soul flourishes for the most part. On the other hand, many of these interpretations are not worth the effort because of the deliverance of some basic antisocial attitudes perpetrated, such as separatism, bigotry, and hatred preached by exclusivists aimed at those who do not see the world and the afterlife the same as they.

Some religions scream that the waging of war against their enemies (those who do not believe) is the only way in which the faithful must live their lives in order to find their way to a perfect eternity. Others say that a downright loss of personal freedom is necessary for all who are to receive the benefits of salvation and that those who do not believe (the infidels) must be either converted or die at the hands of those who must impose their will on the same.

Those who profess absolute knowledge of spiritual matters, the clerics, are in the greater sense the purveyors of this misinformation. They use the religious experience to control those who are in their charge. Granted, we must have good moral values to live by, but as history shows all religions are guilty of spiritual abuse to gain their desired ends. I see religious pontificators say one thing and in another breath contradict their good intentions with hatred and violence, thus bringing about confusion and suffering to the world.

Religions are solely designed to uplift the world and the spirit, not segment part of the human society by creating hatred and suffering to those who are unfaithful or to those who have a different way of seeing the philosophies given by the profits that they have chosen to follow. It doesn’t seem at all honest to interpret the good intentions of the spiritually enlightened few to an evil end. What's more, all things that create bigotry, hatred, loss of personal freedom, and violence are beyond a doubt evil. There is enough pain and suffering in the world created by those who are overtly evil; we don’t need the seemingly righteous telling our children that they must fight a holy war against those who are trying to find their own way in the world or against those who are of a different belief system all together.

The children of the world are in a sense vulnerable and completely impressionable when it comes to things of a spiritual nature. Here again we have to consider education as a blessing in its own right, we cannot fill their heads with hate and we cannot subvert their futures with lies dressed in the finery of truth.