Passing Thoughts on Some “C” Topics
Camera - Tool for capturing the present by using in the past and viewing in the future.
Capitalism - Invention of the first human who figured out how to make a living letting someone else do the work.
Career - The course one follows in living life, whether by choice, chance or necessity.
Catholics - Followers of Saints Peter and Paul as guided by the Pope.
Celebrities - People who attract attention and then try to hide from a lot of it. Like non-celebrity, it has its pros and cons.
Charity - Giving in love and/or for a tax deduction and business promotion.
Cheney - Remember after the 2000 VP debate when many people asked why couldn’t those two be the ones running for President? I’ll save Lieberman for “L”. As for Cheney, those who have known him long say even they are surprised by what he has turned into.
Chores - Unwelcome burdens, until you are too unhealthy to do them.
Christianity - Catholics and their insurgents.
Citizen - In the US, a person entitled to vote in elections, unlike corporations, which cannot vote but can buy the votes of the people elected by the citizens.
Civil War - An uninformative oxymoron, intended to describe fighting between people of the same nation.
Clintons - An ex-President, a would be President and Chelsea.
Coffee - An addictive media used by Starbucks and other brewers to deliver high priced, unhealthy and almost irresistible concoctions.
College - A crash course exposure to higher level learning, unimpeded by common sense. Unfortunately, some college graduates still seem to be unimpeded.
Color - The fantastic light between no light and all light, varied by the physical makeup of the object from which the light is reflected.
Communication - Sending and receiving messages, with varying degrees of success.
Computers - Increasingly clever machines built on the simplest of principles. Long overdue for a more accurately descriptive name.
Consensus - An agreement with which everyone can live. Wars and elections supposedly can be won, but only consensus can win true peace.
Conservative - In the US now, a person with narrow views devaluing personal liberty except in financial matters. Classic conservatives are moribund if not already extinct.
Consumerism - Looking out for the rights and the pocketbooks of consumers, though sometimes forgetting that consumption is not always a necessity.
Copyright - Restricting the free flow of ideas, supposedly to encourage originators, as opposed to copyleft, which not only encourages originators but also the free flow of ideas.
Corporations - A Frankenstein assembled by Dr. Capitalist, way overdue for an extreme makeover.
Corrupt - Working wrong. When it is a computer file, it is accidental. When it is a person, it is on purpose.
Counseling - Objective guidance provided by a trained third party to help the recipient make wise decisions in a sane manner. The only candidate for President or Vice-President of the US ever to have received personal counseling and be certified as sane, Thomas Eagleton, was forced to withdraw his nomination in disgrace for having sought the help. We prefer to take our chances on the sanity of our elected executives.
Creation - God’s way to show forth his goodness and to have companionship for the rest of eternity. The Bible says God put this all together in 7 days, but I don’t remember if it said how many days of eternity had passed before God got bored being alone. I suppose if you are the only being that exists and you are eternal, you have no need for a concept of time. As for the Intelligence of the Design, I would recommend if He ever does it again, he leave the serpent and apple out of it. Being born and raised in the Garden of Eden seems like a better upbringing for an eternal companion than this earthly program [likely followed by an extensive stay in purgatory - hopefully nowhere worse].
Credentials - Proof of who one is and of what that person should be capable. However, while identity may be absolute, capability is often relative.
Crime - Something the majority doesn’t want the minority to do and is willing to punish them for doing. When a member of the majority commits the crime (Rush Limbaugh for example), they often develop a different perspective.
Criticism - Expressed disagreement with what another does, sometimes with suggestions on how it could have been done better and occasionally with the suggestion it should never have been done in the first place(for example trying to make a Bush a President).
Curriculum - What is to be studied, chosen by people other than the students.
Cynic - A snarly person [see Cheney above].
posted by Tom Blake | 8:08 AM
5 Comments:
Cash - a moribund medium of monetary exchange, not quite obsolete. Recently someone dropped off an envelope containing $720 in cash to pay some homeowners' association fees. I had to track that person down and return the cash asking for something that was more negotiable.
John from Phoenix
Tom,
How could you skip catechism? I still have a copy of the New Baltimore Catechism No. 3, copywright 1949. I assume you do too. I am reviewing the prayers at the beginning, and the ejaculations too. I remember having a hard time reconciling nocturnal ejaculations with phrases like: Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us." On page 5 we have the question, Who made us? A. God made us. Q. Who is God? A. God is the Supreme Being, infinitely perfect, who made all things and keeps them in existence. Q Why did God make us? A. God made us to show forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.
These teachings were a big part of my life, and probably yours. This catechism is 320 pages long of fairly fine print, and we studied the heck out of it.
Back in my early elementary years, I had a good memory and could answer almost any question about those 320 pages. It wasn't until I attended the Jesuit Seattle University that I began to think about what I had learned.
Shame on you for leaving it out of your C's.
John from Seattle
My alpha musings aren't meant to be all-inclusive, and any additions by comment are welcome.
Some of the large apartment complexes I used to represent had a written rule that they would not accept cash for rent payment, for reasons of security.
I do remember the Catechism, though I don't remember actually having my own copy for use outside school. I began to question it in my last year of high school. My posting on Creation started with a paraphrase of the Catechismal answer to the question of why God made us.
As I recall, the first question in the Catechism was, "Who made me?" In our Senior year at O'Dea, we had brother Olwell for religion and there was a discussion of the arguments proving the existence of God. The Catechism began with the assumption we were "made", so the prospect that it was arguable whether God actually existed was fascinating to me.
I discovered that all the arguments for the existence of God began with premises, which could just as easily be accepted as rejected. For example, the "first cause" argument that everything has a cause and therefore there must have been a first cause - God - can be dismissed by saying that if God always was then his creation - matter - could just as easily have always been, without God.
Theistic belief is just that - an act of faith, not of logic. I have no quarrel with people who have faith in God. But when their faith becomes institutional, catechismical and dogmatic and is the basis for their political action, then it affects me and I do have a problem with that.
The general concepts of all the great religions have many worthwhile values in common, such as love, tolerance, compassion and respect for others. Those values are proper also for the political sphere. But beyond the common core values, religion should stay out of politics.
The second comment to this post is signed "John from Seattle". If you moved back here, give me a call and we'll get together. Otherwise, without objection, I'll edit it to say Phoenix. If the comments came from two different Johns, let me know, and thanks both for the input.
Just a blip in defense of coffee/espresso: After hours of cafe-going, I am inclined to believe the true unhealthy addiction here is to sugar saturated milk-- most of what a starbuckser pays out for is the crushing of ice or the dousing of true Italian espresso "crema" (the quintessential flavor, found in the thin caramel-colored layer briefly topping a fresh-pulled shot) in obscene quantities of overheated, grotesque bubble-splattered (as opposed to elegantly frothed) milk, topped off with handfuls of prefab sweetener.
Easy for me to resist at least this version of the irresistible.
And anyway, after 5 years of Catholic education, why was I never catechised?
Anna intermittently VT, WA, CA
I think you are right Anna that the most addictive part of the drinks is the sweeteners. When I wrote "irresistible" I hedged with the modification "almost", specifically thinking of people like you and me.
After 1963, Catholic schools went away from the didactic Baltimore Catechism to a more holistic approach. I suspect the didactic indoctrination made it less likely the students would later "fall away" from the Church, or perhaps more likely they would feel guilty for falling. If you want to check it out now, here is a link to the online version 2 from 1941, which is probably the one John and I grew up with.
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