The problem of disconnect between what we know is the right thing to do, and actually doing the right thing and living a life that reflects that knowledge, is a perennial one. We all struggle with it, down from the trivia minutiae such as having that sausage roll for breakfast instead of my oat and muesli cereal, to living our lives in acknowledgment of the true boss – God himself.
For too long, we have allowed the otherwise (often) neutral nature of the finer things in life, to sprout red horns, grow a red tail and reach out for that long fork. Look at the below article – Dominique Strauss-Kahn knew what was right and was in a position to influence the world to push his very just cause. Perhaps in his case it was immoral and illegal response to his lust which triggered his downfall, and not his love for money or what it can bring.
With the other examples of this article however, the finger can rest easily on the mod-com’s of this life as the cause of their betrayal. If we focus on and extol the virtues of finer things in life and the way it makes our life easier, richer and more comfortable we can lose sense of what is right in the wider perspective of things. Why drive a small cheap Korean import when you can drive a huge, expensive and luxurious German machine? Never mind that all the extra resources expended to produce and own this luxury are actually wasted in the sense that it is hard to see how they advance the cause of humanity – it exudes beauty, elegance and harmony… and all that.
It is true of course that beauty and pleasures are good things and they can give us glimpses of heaven but to what extent do we pursue them? At what cost?
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(from Herald Sun site, Andrew Bolt’s blog pages)
THERE are great moral causes, and then there are the men who rush to lead them. Take Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
He is a socialist. In fact, he’s such a socialist that he was tipped only a fortnight ago to become France’s next president, as the Socialist Party’s candidate.
Socialism, I’m told, is the cause you sign up for if you want to take from the rich and give and give again to the poor. If you want to stop the workers from being exploited by the powerful. If you hate racists and really worry about asylum seekers.
So how does Strauss-Kahn end up being charged in New York with the rape of a maid who’d come to the US as an asylum seeker?
And while he pleads not guilty to the rape, how does this prominent socialist explain the scene of the alleged crime in his room at a $3000-a-night hotel?
Still, at least he believes now in giving away his tax-free salary of $420,000, since he this week resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund.
That a socialist could find himself on this salary, in that room, charged with the rape of such a woman will surprise no one, in a way. We’ve lost that moral sense or expectation of having actions matched to words, lifestyle to cause.
Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the global warming crusade — the first religious movement led entirely by shameless hypocrites.
Only this week came yet another example, with the Herald Sun reporting that just two of the Gillard Government‘s Cabinet ministers drive fuel-efficient hybrid cars, despite wanting to foist on the rest of us a ruinous plan to cut our emissions.
Even Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet prefer gas guzzlers.
But so habituated are we now to sanctimonious spin that I doubt this shocked a single Australian.
We’re forced to swallow far worse almost daily. There’s Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery, boasting he’d written his latest book almost entirely on gassy aeroplanes.
There’s global warming alarmist Al Gore crying shame at mankind’s terrible environmental footprint from a desk in one of his five homes.
There’s actor Jeremy Irons announcing he’s become a green campaigner who wants us to live less decadently, although he himself owns seven houses and a castle painted pink.
It’s such a bizarre disconnect. True, the popes of the 15th and 16th centuries could be scandalously corrupt, with a mistress in every Vatican bed. But at least most tried to hide it, demonstrating that hypocrisy is indeed the homage vice pays to virtue.
Now we rarely demand even a pretence.
Take Sir Richard Brazen, the Virgin entrepreneur, who preached global warming to students at Gold Coast’s Bond University — and then choppered out in his private helicopter.
Or take Strauss-Kahn, the socialist. Please.
Ante 