I was moved by a photo of an undocumented single mother being torn apart from her three American-born children, in order to be deported after living in the U.S. for 25 years. Whether or not the law is religious or politically based -- government and religions are hell-bent on setting the barometer for society to live by and establishing what others' morals should be. Coupled with our mob mentality to assimilate and go along with the crowd, this creates a false sense that their values are also our own.
Because government and religion have set the moral expectations for us to live by, these protocols have not always been in the best interest of mankind. Consider this: at one time, only rich whites could vote -- blacks and poor whites were not allowed to vote. As time went on, laws were changed so that white males could vote, yet blacks and women were not afforded the same right. Eventually, everyone was granted the right to vote. But still, interracial marriages were prohibited. Eventually, interracial couples were allowed to marry each other, but only if they were heterosexual. Today, gays can marry in some states still many others prevent them from doing so. History shows that this too will change.
It is important to note that hypocritical and biased politicians led these battles, often proclaiming their taught religion as the moral compass other should aspire. Our government and religion established each of these turpitudes, and the masses blindly followed, only adjusting their moral compass once religion and the government adjusted theirs. In each instance, love ultimately prevailed. These long arduous battles for all humans to be treated equally, happen only because we unwittingly accept the exclusionary rules and superiority complexes of others as our own. If love and acceptance had been the societal rule, none of these morality battles would have ever needed to take place.Yet today, these fights for love and acceptance wage on.
Our moral assumptions: what we accept as being right or wrong has usually been determined by others. Given that man only learned to write some five thousand years ago -- and hasn't always told the truth -- exactly how our moral assumptions came about remains shrouded in mystery since we were born without knowledge, and even our core values and morals is learned behavior. Subsequently, we had to make sense of the gibberish we heard and learned to string words together in a way that made sense as a language. Somewhere along the way, our language was used to manipulate and to impose biased morals and values upon the naive and unenlightened.
These learned behaviors and beliefs, arbitrary but strong, make us contradict our own natural impulses. We can desire peace, but easily be provoked to fight; we can say that we love, but then justify our hate and hostility. We encourage fidelity and honesty in others, but fornicate and cheat on our taxes. We deny marriage rights to all, yet abuse that right if we're entitled. Sadly, hypocrites often speak for government and religion today. Most disturbing, is our continuing to accept both as the supreme authority to direct our own moral compass. The allowable hypocrisy permeates the laws adjudicating marriage, abortion, the environment, deportation, stem cell research and so on.
I suggest we individually do a thorough examination of why we accept the moral beliefs of others as our own, and why we expect others to espouse a morality just like our own. When conflicting opinions are at stake, love is the absolutely only way to resolve them. It is the only proven result as we've already learned from past moral battles. The insistence that others wholly accept views that do not espouse love, exudes an egotistical arrogance that some are inferiors to others. We are a nation of laws and we should acknowledge them, however acknowledging or obeying them does not mean you should necessarily agree with them. It's important to examine all our moral beliefs to see if they are our own, or were handed to us by others. You will probably discover that racism, sexism and discrimination against others is not an inherent part of who we really are. From this perspective, we can see the connection we all share as one -- and that we have only been brainwashed into believing we are separate from, or superior to others.