Feel Bad About Yourself
You know why I like the concept of Original Sin, as I've said before? Because it reminds us that we shouldn't go around feeling good about ourselves. And why shouldn't we feel good about ourselves? Well, look at the world today. More specifically, look at what the United States has done in the past six or seven years. Most - if not all - of our policies have been based on the premise that we are a good people, that good people will do good things if given power, and we should feel even better about ourselves for it.
We see where this has gotten us. I say we need to stop feeling good about what we do. We need to stop promoting ourselves as virtuous, inherently good people who can do no wrong. This is called pride. Until we rid ourselves of these self-glorying conceptions (and their parallel delusion that only mysterious bad people who are not us are behind all villainy), our nation will only suffer. So stop feeling good about yourself.
posted by Joshua @ 4:52 PM
3 Comments:
"There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
hey, I wasn't the one who said it.
You call it Original Sin, I call it simply self-awareness. Nobody is perfect or right all the time. You don't need to buy into the concept of Original Sin to believe that. Which, no, I don't. I'm of the opinion that people are blank slates at birth, and the flaws don't come until we start acting on our own (by that I mean toddlerhood onwards). And it's our duty to continue to learn and grow until the day we die, and to realize that most of the time, we don't really know much at all.
I think that there is just a basic lack of humility in American policies, domestic and foreign, not to mention in its people (which you see in bumper stickers like "Make no Mistake - The Giant is Awake!" which makes me vomit in my mouth a little every time I see it). Yes, we're one of the most advanced countries on earth, and in history. But we've had a "White Man's Burden" attitude about the rest of the world for too long now, trying to make things better elsewhere when we really had no idea what we were doing - and it's time we started looking inward and seeing the follies and the good things that we've done, and get better about being America, whatever that might entail. We should feel good about ourselves, but only when it's warranted...and there is indeed much to feel bad about in America today.
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