Love is License

The modern definition of "love" is letting children get away with every aberrant behavior and never applying any discipline in their lives. "Love" is coddling and protecting others from proper consequences as if this is some virtue. No lack of action is more deceptive to the meaning of mortal life than behavioral indulgence by parents or society than allowing childish selfish actions to go unpunished. Such "covering of sins" has become the universal attitude of supposedly enlightened "authority figures" to the detriment of all.

It begins with something like stealing cookies in the middle of the night. Children should not do this, but every parent in Western culture is expected to indulge such behavior and even feed it with a quiet resupply. "Children are our greatest treasure and we should never do anything but spoil them and provide them a life free of consequences." As a result, our children become "fat" adults, not only in calories, but in a lack of needed self-discipline. Letting a child take as many cookies as they like without REGULATION is the complete opposite of good parenting.

Parental "love" has become a license to misbehave and when parents attempt to eventually correct such misbehavior, the childish can use "love" as a bludgeon to extort: "if you really love me, you wouldn't punish me".  That is the promise of "unconditional love", a life free of punishment and responsibility. It is also a lie.

When punishment and discipline are defined as "abuse" by an indulgent society, we fail to prepare our children for the sorts of behavior and attitudes that they need to face life in a mature and successful way. We need to slap hands and warm bottoms in correcting every bad and destructive behavior. Parents will be held accountable before God for their failure to teach "right" living to their children.

Few attitudes are more deceptive than painting God himself as a modernly indulgent parent. Scripture is filled with God's anger at the disobedient children of Israel and the resultant punishments they earned. Yet, many "christians" portray Deity as a "merciful" and "loving" coddler who will shield everyone from the evils of "justice", not remembering that the authentic mercy and love offered by God in this case is a delayed judgment to give us time to change ourselves for the better and repent our sins before the reality of justice must be applied. Mercy never eliminates justice, it only delays for a time.

There is no decadent God or Christ who ignores our actions. "Sin no more" is still God's attitude and no amount of attempted "loving" shielding of this fact by indulgent parents or society will stop the coming of just punishment for disobedience. We must discipline and straighten ourselves and our children today "while the sun shines", for the "night" of punishment for our sins will surely come. 

The One-hundred Fifty Year Lens

If something didn't exist or was not very important one hundred and fifty years ago, it very likely isn't very important now.

My MediMania blog posts are about new fresh medical hysteria that swears common ailments with us for thousands of years are going to kill us all. Strangely, humanity survived in the past and we will likely survive now, in spite of expert medical opinion that nature has somehow changed.

Don't be fooled by hysterics who ignore the past. Humans can be quite resilient even if modern narcissists see society and people as incredibly frail.

Obesity is a Manifestation of Evil Efficiency

Viewed through the One Hundred Fifty Year Lens, a large problem over the centuries was the lack of enough food for any given population. Often enough, people "experiencing a lack of nobility" were both half-starved, if not more so, and emaciated (yes, those are different things).

Remove the lens, and one gets the obvious change:  (over)abundance of food. There is so much food produced today that much of the "imperfect" fruits, vegetables, and meats are simply thrown out, choking our sewage and refuse systems.  You may have contributed by sending a steak (noble grub) back for being overcooked, a truly royal act in the past, which goes straight to the garbage. Blame modern food regulations for that fact that most imperfect steaks don't make it down a soup line person's gullet, which any past royal would have figured how to do.

Now, in many developed countries, there is an obesity epidemic. Even I, who don't readily register as fat, am statistically obese by modern standards. While many people attribute this to eating too much or the wrong sorts of food (that rich, royal diet), I will add another aspect which better explains why people who eat about the same as I do fall into such different camps in the body shaming racket:  efficiency.

To my mind, some people are very efficient (fat) and others are not efficient (not fat).  My boss is constantly on about increasing our efficiency by planning ahead, which I don't put much effort into.  I walk between a set of buildings and don't give much thought to making sure I handle one building's work before I move onto another and send up walking randomly all over the place in a very inefficient way.  Is that why I don't look all that fat?

I once worked with a man who was likely far more efficient than I am. I say this because I wouldn't be surprised if he was over 600 pounds and had specialized equipment and assistants to get him through his workday. I couldn't afford such things and I doubt I would justify the company putting out like that for me, so I figure he had some amazing skill and efficiencies that made it all worthwhile in a business way.  He rarely moved from his desk, unlike me, so his measure of productivity must have been comparatively through the roof.  I was always going to and fro, talking with people that I needed something from or that needed something from me.  I could have made calls instead, but was usually too lazy to look up numbers. Thus my theory, efficiency breeds lack of unnecessary exercise.

I also have to say that there are any number of people, specifically employed by the government, that I wish were somewhat less efficient.  To my mind, a lot for Liberty in personal life is lost to busy government workers, whom I would just as soon stayed home and didn't attend so "efficiency" to separating people from their liberties in their things.