My views. I’m open to alternate perspectives and welcome being challenged. My goal isn’t to sell my perspective to anyone but rather share how I see things.
Religion
There’s a Transcendence at the core of existence. Whether we call this God, Source, Truth, Dharma, Consciousness or Law of Nature, doesn’t matter. Each religion, spiritual, philosophical, and scientific practice is an attempt to realize this. Each system has its own particulars. And each system different from our own we can learn something unique and valuable. Yet, whatever our belief system, there’s Common Ground in our understanding. This is what’s most essential to tune into.
War
We do need to realize that engaging in armed conflict means that we failed. There are no winners in war. The pain we inflict on our enemies is the pain we inflict on ourselves. We share the same Consciousness. And we do need to love our enemies while we are killing/bombing them. That said, we might resort to war but it should be done ensuring that we are feeling the human costs on all sides as we engage in conflict. And if we inflict harm on collaterals or enemies, we need to do so with a full desire to reconcile and heal together.
Relationships
The purpose of relationships with others in our life is to realize our Spirit more deeply. Society’s relationship ladder and notions/categories of what is, and isn’t, a ‘relationship’ never have made sense to me. Each person we relate to we can connect with on a different emotional, physical, and spiritual wavelength. Each and every relationship in our life is unique, and special, and precious. Progress in a relationship is not that we are more close to each other, but to the Higher Truth we all share.
Non-Victim Crimes
Consensual drug-use and sex work should divorced from legality. Whether right or wrong, it’s not the governments role to legislate or regulate individual human choices. The government is not the authority over society, but rather its servant. Other organizations, such as churches or counselling houses, should be providing support and counsel and help people make informed, compassionate, and reflective choices. But the government should be out of it.
Abortion
Killing an embryo or fetus is never desirable. However, we have different perspectives on when human life starts, which determines our position. My perspective is that human life precedes conception. Some err on the side of life at birth, others err on the side of choice until birth. I don’t have a position on this. That said, the work and thrust should be on how can we minimize or eliminate the possibility of this issue from being an issue, through better education and better, diverse prevention techniques.
Climate Change
Humans are polluting the environment in many, many ways. Some ways are trivial and others are more significant. The point is to evolve society to the point where we can use cleaner sources of energy and living without disrupting our progress as a human species. I do believe the planet serves us (not we serve the planet). This is controversial, but what I currently believe nonetheless. That said, even if nature is our dominion, it’s our imperative to be as good custodian.
Economic System
The beauty of capitalism is freedom. The ugliness of capitalism is freedom to exploit. Work is servitude if one doesn’t have the choice to leave a job for economic reasons. That’s de-facto economic slavery to an authoritarian organization, which is prevalent through the world. Can we take the best and leave the best? What can we do to encourage freedom and options for all of us to create and innovate, while at the same time ensuring that we never have to be victim to economic coercion or oppression in the process.
Education
Ranks, scores, grades, and any public metrics should be completely removed from the education system on all levels. What do we do instead? We’ll figure it out. Doesn’t matter. These destroy real education. Students might privately use their own metrics, or have metrics that are just for themselves and tracking their own growth — that is fine if they find them helpful. But a system that pits one learner against another, and tries to validate how good we learned, rather than encourage everyone to grow, discover, and explore in a way aligned with the Spirit within them, is evil and devastating to our mind.