There has been talk lately about making lives matter. Community members outside St. Louis rioted for more than four months when a young man was killed while attacking a police officer who had stopped him for committing a strong-arm robbery. The people were mad and showed their displeasure by looting and destroying local businesses. They began a campaign saying black lives matter.
So how do we make lives matter?
I think that it starts before the beginning - family planning. Today, half of all pregnancies in America are accidental and 40% of them are aborted. This is no way to make lives matter. Children should be planned by couples who are committed to each other and are willing and able to raise their children responsibly together.
Parents need to display positive role models for their children by living lives that reflect integrity and consideration - lives that matter. Parents are responsible for providing a clean, safe and nurturing environment ensuring that each child gets the best education at school and at home. Any health issues that arise should be dealt with immediately and not allowed to worsen.
Society is also responsible for ensuring that our children get the education they need and deserve. Teachers should know their students’ strengths and weaknesses and students should have the help they need to get the very most out of their educational experience which in turn will help them develop throughout their meaningful lives. Society is also needed to provide adequate and available medical coverage and facilities to prevent or deal with the onset of potentially serious conditions.
The idea introduced by the President to extend public education to community college, adding two years to the K-12 series, could be a great benefit. It would give students more applied knowledge and skills that could lead to meaningful careers for a comfortable life and help make life matter for the individual and for all those affected by the graduate’s work. This idea has been practiced in Europe for more than a century.
For those who want to go to a four year college, the extra two years of public school could also be used to take all the general education courses required by four year colleges. Students could then enter college as juniors with only two years until graduation, taking mainly courses for their major and minor plus courses they take as electives. This would greatly reduce college costs, enable students to graduate sooner, and would probably get more students to actually complete college.
Life matters when we know what our special talents are and can find ways to apply them for personal and public good. This will help us feel a part of our community, society, culture, and world, not apart from it. People who feel a part of their environment, don’t riot to destroy it. They work to improve it.
The Jewish belief is that we were created in an unfinished, seemingly imperfect, world so that we could live our lives to heal the world (tikkun olam). This pursuit gives our lives meaning.
The challenge according to Eastern religion is to overcome the negative effects of past karma, what we experience as entropy, without creating more. So destroying lives and property to protest loss of life or property is to only prolong and deepen the problem leading to the suffering by creating more disorder/ disorganization/ karma/ entropy. Rioting for months and destroying businesses does not make life matter. It makes life seem to have little or no meaning.
I believe that it also is important to raise our children with an accepted value system which would include being honest; considering the needs of others; being dependable; maintaining a clean and neat appearance; being non-violent; treating figures of authority with respect; and perhaps, most importantly - doing everything and treating everyone not only as a means, but also as an end.
Society has an obligation to provide a safe and just environment for all of its people. This includes ensuring that all police officers are well-trained in de-escalating potentially violent situations; that they refrain from targeting certain groups; and that they use deadly force rarely, and only as a last resort. A just environment includes efficiently and effectively enforcing laws and prosecuting violations fairly and without bias.
And, I think, that the news media have a significant role to play in making our lives meaningful. We need to be told the whole story as clearly and concisely as possible without editorializing it, embellishing it, sensationalizing it or leaving out important parts. Reports should be objective and be presented without emotion. This kind of coverage would not only provide us with needed information about what is happening around us but it also could show us a model for viewing, understanding and describing our environment - our context. This would help us make life matter.
As adults, we can make our lives matter by being more concerned about being able to take pride in our efforts, than in our ancestry, affiliation, or our preferences. What we do is a better reflection of who we are than are our names, group memberships or labels.
Society has a role to play to ensure that there are enough jobs for people who need them and that working people are paid a fair, living wage. Not earning enough to enjoy the fruits of our labor can make us question whether or how much our lives matter.
I think that life matters when we feel free to express ourselves and also free to keep certain information to ourselves. Our private lives should remain private and not be exposed to invasion or exploitation. When we choose to express ourselves, we can do so thoughtfully and with consideration for the audience. Why waste words on someone who clearly does not care? Why say things that would hurt the listeners by making them feel inadequate? Why bear false witness only to make truth and life have less meaning?
If life is to matter, we need the individual, the family and the community to take responsibility for its maintenance and refinement.
All lives matter as long as we each behave as though they do.
So how do we make lives matter?
I think that it starts before the beginning - family planning. Today, half of all pregnancies in America are accidental and 40% of them are aborted. This is no way to make lives matter. Children should be planned by couples who are committed to each other and are willing and able to raise their children responsibly together.
Parents need to display positive role models for their children by living lives that reflect integrity and consideration - lives that matter. Parents are responsible for providing a clean, safe and nurturing environment ensuring that each child gets the best education at school and at home. Any health issues that arise should be dealt with immediately and not allowed to worsen.
Society is also responsible for ensuring that our children get the education they need and deserve. Teachers should know their students’ strengths and weaknesses and students should have the help they need to get the very most out of their educational experience which in turn will help them develop throughout their meaningful lives. Society is also needed to provide adequate and available medical coverage and facilities to prevent or deal with the onset of potentially serious conditions.
The idea introduced by the President to extend public education to community college, adding two years to the K-12 series, could be a great benefit. It would give students more applied knowledge and skills that could lead to meaningful careers for a comfortable life and help make life matter for the individual and for all those affected by the graduate’s work. This idea has been practiced in Europe for more than a century.
For those who want to go to a four year college, the extra two years of public school could also be used to take all the general education courses required by four year colleges. Students could then enter college as juniors with only two years until graduation, taking mainly courses for their major and minor plus courses they take as electives. This would greatly reduce college costs, enable students to graduate sooner, and would probably get more students to actually complete college.
Life matters when we know what our special talents are and can find ways to apply them for personal and public good. This will help us feel a part of our community, society, culture, and world, not apart from it. People who feel a part of their environment, don’t riot to destroy it. They work to improve it.
The Jewish belief is that we were created in an unfinished, seemingly imperfect, world so that we could live our lives to heal the world (tikkun olam). This pursuit gives our lives meaning.
The challenge according to Eastern religion is to overcome the negative effects of past karma, what we experience as entropy, without creating more. So destroying lives and property to protest loss of life or property is to only prolong and deepen the problem leading to the suffering by creating more disorder/ disorganization/ karma/ entropy. Rioting for months and destroying businesses does not make life matter. It makes life seem to have little or no meaning.
I believe that it also is important to raise our children with an accepted value system which would include being honest; considering the needs of others; being dependable; maintaining a clean and neat appearance; being non-violent; treating figures of authority with respect; and perhaps, most importantly - doing everything and treating everyone not only as a means, but also as an end.
Society has an obligation to provide a safe and just environment for all of its people. This includes ensuring that all police officers are well-trained in de-escalating potentially violent situations; that they refrain from targeting certain groups; and that they use deadly force rarely, and only as a last resort. A just environment includes efficiently and effectively enforcing laws and prosecuting violations fairly and without bias.
And, I think, that the news media have a significant role to play in making our lives meaningful. We need to be told the whole story as clearly and concisely as possible without editorializing it, embellishing it, sensationalizing it or leaving out important parts. Reports should be objective and be presented without emotion. This kind of coverage would not only provide us with needed information about what is happening around us but it also could show us a model for viewing, understanding and describing our environment - our context. This would help us make life matter.
As adults, we can make our lives matter by being more concerned about being able to take pride in our efforts, than in our ancestry, affiliation, or our preferences. What we do is a better reflection of who we are than are our names, group memberships or labels.
Society has a role to play to ensure that there are enough jobs for people who need them and that working people are paid a fair, living wage. Not earning enough to enjoy the fruits of our labor can make us question whether or how much our lives matter.
I think that life matters when we feel free to express ourselves and also free to keep certain information to ourselves. Our private lives should remain private and not be exposed to invasion or exploitation. When we choose to express ourselves, we can do so thoughtfully and with consideration for the audience. Why waste words on someone who clearly does not care? Why say things that would hurt the listeners by making them feel inadequate? Why bear false witness only to make truth and life have less meaning?
If life is to matter, we need the individual, the family and the community to take responsibility for its maintenance and refinement.
All lives matter as long as we each behave as though they do.
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