PUBLIC SERVICE ESSAY
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY OR THEOCRACY, CHOOSE WISELY
“We all strongly disagree deeply over what we believe about human civil rights, freedom and justice.”
Joseph W. Ferrara, EdD
www.soundmentalhealth.com
Nowhere in today’s world is the homicidal, violent clash between sinister clerics with their evolving, life-threatening religions and ethical, representative American democracy any sharper than how the good life of equal human worth, civil rights, freedom, equal opportunity and justice is to be both attained and expressed. Evolved religions tell us to comply with the threatening edicts of its intimidating obsessive-compulsive, autocratic rules, rights and rituals while democracy tells us we have the liberty of equal civil rights, i.e. equal representation and protection in and under all laws. Life-threatening religion teaches to obtain life we must surrender, repress and subjugate our original innocent, unique, individual sense of self while representative American democracy teaches equal autonomy, freedom of expression and acceptance of individual differences.
The conflict is absolute and irrevocable, i.e., our beliefs, values and standards whether rational or pathological act as sacrosanct direction-setters for our moods, attitude and action. Life-threatening religion distorts human worth, dignity and promises of freedom, individualism, acceptance, tolerance, success/prosperity and happiness. Religion claims omnipotency, omniscience, and omnipresence, however, does not prevent but permits the unbearable and allows horrifying climate disasters, terrorizing diseases, repulsive heartbreaking physical deformities, tragic mental and emotional dysfunctioning, abject poverty and ravenous hunger to exist in suffering people’s lives as well as the world at large and dismisses these catastrophes as insignificant, expecting instead human beings to affirm and proclaim its “deity’s” grandiosity, at any cost, as this “deity” lacks a rational, healthy, mature and wholesome character, which has no need for infantile, constant admiration and ceaseless confirmation of its “superiority”. Why wouldn’t any rational, “omnipotent” loving, “protective deity” have the wisdom to communicate, preserve “life-saving” information and “inspired” knowledge timelessly, i.e., from the very beginning of human civilization, and audibolized to all without gender, ethnicity/race, geography or nationality preference, exclusivity in an understandable, direct universal language and in a non-tribal/elitist, non-hierarchal, non-politicized and non-orthodox/militarized manner?
Global society has meticulously set the stage for delusional, grandiose and hallucinatory clerics with their life-threatening religions to slander, threaten and extort us. The lack of equal, ethical representation and protection by civil governments in and under all laws, the harsh threatening moralizing of preceding generations, the pervasive mood of instability, impermanence and the desperate need for direction have contributed to the unfortunate appeal and growth of life-threatening ostentatious, slandering and extorting religion in our modern societies.
When one critically examines the monoamine delusions and hallucinatory origin, terrorizing and repressive doctrines and militant histories of life-threatening religions, their mandated practices expose the fallacies and inconsistencies in the spurious promises of their faith, integrity and credibility. Ethical, representative democracy offers a constructive, rational and authentic alternative, i.e., self-actualizing choices. When we, you or I, are given the privilege of free expression, a healthy society is constantly in the making. Genuine happiness, true freedom and rational, wholesome individualism come into being when there is a clear distinction between submission, repression and subjugation or servitude and when the emphasis is placed on the hope of mutual respect and consideration, the equal dignity of human worth, freedom of expression, security and safety of the individual in a just, pluralistic society. Most Americans share a central belief in law and justice, political and social freedom and religious tolerance. Remember: science is life-giving, life is good, we are good, you are good, don’t worry, be happy and live free for all of us and please past this on.