Political Polarization

Has anyone noticed the huge amount of fly-by-night businesses as well as establish and legitimate companies attempting to vend or sell happiness to the world? Watch this yoga video to find inner peace and happiness, play this meditation game to follow the path to happiness, or start this business in order to make lots of money and be happy. People are so lost in this world that they are willing to spend all of their money on fruitless searching for happiness. Lots of people have complained for years about different religions doing this, and I think that there are a lot of examples out there, but what about everybody else? What about the “Center For Integral Life” that supposedly helps you find balance and peace, but spends all their time complaining about Christianity? What about the meditation computer game that is so complicated that you can’t even calm down to meditate out of frustration? And what about the get rich program that tells you that a big house and fancy cars will make you happy, while they just take your money? These companies all promise happiness as part of their sales pitch. If they really could provide happiness then why hasn’t one become insanely successful and made everyone happy? Because they don’t work! You can’t buy happiness just like you can’t buy love (as The Beatles said).

Junk Food

Happiness is a lot like food. Just like there are certain foods that provide sustenance, give us energy, and help us live and grow; there are specific things that make us happy. There are also many happiness equivalents to junk food that appear to provide what we need, but leave us wanting more or feeling unfulfilled. These include stimulants, fame, or success in a career. Many of the equivalents are not the extremes of junk food or healthy food. Many are like good foods that need to be part of a balanced diet. But, if you make your diet consist of only one type of food, it will taste good and sustain you for a while until your body begins to suffer because it is not getting all the nutrients that it needs. A good example of this is music. Music is a wonderful form of happiness. It provides joy to the listener and expression for the player, but it is not an end all provider of happiness. Food-wise music is similar to bread. It provides important nutrition giving us energy through carbohydrates, but if we only ate bread we would be very malnourished. Sex, physical exercise, enjoying nature, and monetary comforts all have food equivalents like meat, nuts, and dairy. All of these, just like the music and bread example, can provide some happiness when consumed in moderation, but will cause malnutrition when overindulged.

Fruits and Vegetables

There are a few examples that provide true happiness and these are equivalent to fruits and vegetables. If you do not have these aspects in your life, it is impossible to find happiness, just as it is impossible to survive without the nutrition that is received from fruits and vegetables. In addition, you can almost survive on just fruits and vegetables alone, but you still need some balance of the good foods like grain, meats, and dairy. The fruits and vegetables of happiness are children and family, love in these relationships, and unselfish kindness and love towards others. If you live a life devoid of these aspects, just like fruits and vegetables, you will find yourself supplementing your happiness with more meats, breads, and dairy (i.e. music, sex, exercise, nature, and monetary comforts) and never quite being nourished or happy.

I find it interesting that there is often large uproar about a specific issue before it goes to ballot. You see multiple television commercials every night, you hear about it everywhere, and it sounds like everybody feels the same way. Then the votes come in. You are incredibly surprised at the outcome. The issue that seemed to have wide support failed. And it didn’t just not pass, it failed miserably. You are completely surprised. Didn’t it seem like everybody supported it? Wasn’t there a huge amount of support for the cause? This is a case of the vocal minority (and this has nothing to do with race). The vocal minority describes the group of people on the losing side of an issue who are so vocal and loud about their position that it appears that there is much more support for their perspective than there really is.

I had a very interesting experience in a Biology 100 course in college. There were about 800 students in this huge class held in a large auditorium. There were two lectures, a smaller lab, and a quiz each week. The quiz was administered away from class in a separate dedicated exam facility. At the beginning of the semester a vote was taken of the 800 students of what day the quiz should be available. An overwhelming majority voted for Thursdays. So the semester began, and after a few weeks passed the teachers mentioned that there were various complaints from students saying that they were not able to take the quiz on Thursday because of scheduling conflicts. The issue was brought to the class to decide if they should change the day, but once again the overwhelming majority voted to keep the quiz on Thursday.

A few weeks later the teachers brought up the issue again. They were now convinced, based on the number of complaints, that there was a sufficient amount of the 800 students that were having conflicts to change the day. They took another vote, and once again an overwhelming majority voted to keep it on Thursday. The professors look shocked and confused. They were about to over rule the vote and change the quiz day until at the last second they decided to ask for those who had complained or had conflicts to raise their hand. 14 hands went into the air. Now the professors were shocked in a different way. They first verified that everyone who complained was raising their hand, then they counted the 14, and finally they said, “You 14 are real loud complainers”. They continued, “We thought that there were around 200 to 300 students having conflicts based on the amount of complaints”. And then they made their verdict, “you 14 need to stop complaining, deal with the situation, and cater to the majority”.

A vocal minority generated all of the complaints. 14 out of 800 students, not even 2%, almost swayed the decision of the professors, and overruled the majority; because of their incessant complaining. How many times do laws or legislation get passed because of the continuous badgering of the vocal minority? I thought that our government was built on catering to the voice of the majority, not the loud screaming of a vocal minority. We see this in many ways from judges legislating from the bench to Congress and committees going to extreme measures to avoid letting issues go to a public vote. I thought that our country was built on the fundamentals of democracy that the majority will most often choose what is best for the whole, instead of the vocal minority choosing what is best for them?

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil-hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars-must be broken, or we will be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

One thing that confuses me is the intolerance that is shown for those who are intolerant and the hatred shown for those who hate. As seen above, Martin Luther King Jr. among many others have said that you can’t fight hate with hate or intolerance with intolerance. Then why is it so common and accepted that people do this? I know that in many circumstances, those showing hate and intolerance aim it towards good things or wonderful groups of people. Many times their hatred hurts others, but it mainly hurts them. In other examples what one group perceives as intolerance is simply a difference in opinion, or intolerance to one person is sticking to one’s values to another person. Even if that group is truly hateful and intolerant towards good people and things, don’t they have the right to their opinion?

Klu Klux Klan (KKK)

Let’s use the KKK for an example. Most everybody agrees that the KKK has done horrible things to a specific race of people only because of the difference in the color of their skin. Most also agree that this group breeds hatred that only causes pain to the victims and the haters themselves. Well, if that is the case, then why don’t we go out of our way to lynch KKK members? We have the government resources to find out who sympathizes with them. So let’s find them and get rid of them so they don’t spread any more hate or cause any more pain. No Way! That sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? It sounds like something you would see in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia not Free America.

Carrie Prejean-2009 Miss California

Then why doesn’t it seem ridiculous when Miss California shares her opinion about how she believes that marriage is between a man and a woman and consequently looses her crown? Her opinion is seen by some as intolerance, and therefore she cannot be tolerated. Sounds kind of funny doesn’t it? What about the people who murder the abortion clinic doctor for performing abortions? What ever happened to letting people have their opinion? What about passing laws that punish them if they maliciously act on those opinions? So let’s take it back to the KKK example. Let them meet, let them talk, but if they hurt someone or break laws, punish them.

Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses

Isn’t this the premise of what our nation was built on? Europeans facing religious intolerance moved to the new world in order to have the freedom to have their own opinions and practice their religion the way they wanted to. I bet that Martin Luther was seen as being intolerant by the Catholic Church. They wouldn’t tolerate his intolerance and so what did they do? They killed him.

I find it interesting that the professors of peace often show an incredible amount of hatred towards those who support war. Have we not learned anything from Ghandi and Nelson Mandela who maintained the same standpoint as stated above by Martin Luther King Jr. that we can’t fight hate with hate?