You 2.0

Granny

Situation Monday

Have you ever had to make a really hard decision?  I hope so because today’s question is a tough one.

You, your grandmother, and your son are walking downtown on a quiet Saturday afternoon.  You are really enjoying this day as you rarely get the chance to bring granny and You2.0 together for quality time.  During your stroll your phone goes off.  You look down at it for what seems like a split second.  When you look up granny and You2.0 are nowhere to be found.

Frantically you look around for them.  You run into the closest shop and scream their names out.  No response.  Your pulse is pounding.  You randomly ask strangers on the street for their whereabouts.  No one has seen your family.

After 10 minutes of searching you finally spot them crossing a busy intersection.  Granny drops her purse and You2.0 bends over to pick it up.  As You2.0 bends over to pick up the purse you notice a car heading for them full speed.  The driver is too deep into her Crackberry to notice.  You realize that you have time to sprint out into the road and save one family member.

Which one do you save?

Forced public prayer in school is always a hot topic.  In ye olden days it was commonplace to force kids to participate in Christian prayers at school.  In more progressive times schools have begun to remove prayer for a myriad of reasons:

• Separation of Church and State
• Embarrassment
• Impropriety
• Debate from other religious groups

Do you think forced prayer has a place in school?

When a person is born into a religion their life is altered.  From the day they are born the ideas, prejudices, positives, and negatives of that particular religion are drilled into their heads. In effect the religion shapes their lives and the way they view the world.

Religions provides many things.  Chief among them are:

• Structure
• Hope
• Camaraderie
• Guidance

The question is this.  Do these things make a person better or worse off?

The following information is credited to Damian Thompson at Telegraph.co.uk.

The percentage of Americans who call themselves Christian has dropped 11 per cent in a generation. And I think this is the beginning of a very long slide.

More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are,” says Barry Kosmin, co-author of the survey. “They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself.’

The new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) is based on 54,000 interviews carried out last year, updating a database of 113,000 interviews carried out in 1990. The new figures show that the percentage of non-believers has nearly doubled from 8 to 15 per cent in the past 18 years.

Non-believers now outnumber every religious group in America except Catholics and Baptists. This is not a surprise to me – though it may surprise British people who are regularly fed garbage by our media, who insist on portraying Americans as people of simple and sunny faith, whatever form it takes.

What do you think about this movement?  Are there good reasons for people to become less religious.

God goes by many names: God, Allah, Jehovah, and YHWH are just a few.  For centuries people have used the Holy Bible, Quran, and other Biblical texts to guide their lives.  People who follow these doctrines readily admit that they are doing so based more on faith and scientific evidence.

That sentence alone leads to much debate about the existence or non-existence of an omnipotent god.  Do you think god exists?  If so, why?  If not, why not?

Situation Monday

Let’s face it.  Most people will never put the time, energy, and dedication into making real money.  When I say real money I don’t mean $125k while working 99 hours a week.  I mean the type of money that people enjoy when they’ve created their own thriving business system ($300k plus).

The idea is glamorous but the work to get there is often less than desirable.

For arguments sake lets say that a close family friend has established his own successful line of companies.  He has carefully created a multi-million dollar enterprise from the ground up.  During a casual conversation he pulls you to the side and says something that changes your life.

“I’ve been watching you for a while and I need to tell you this.  You can continue to go into that office every day and never really live the life you deserve.  Sure, in 15-20 years you’ll likely rise to making >$100k doing something you hate and spending all your time doing it.  I’ve known you for a while and I think you have what it takes to succeed on your own.  If you walk away from the security of your job I’ll personally guide you on your quest to be a millionaire.”

What would you do?

Situation Monday

I’m sure you’ve had a dream before about something.  That something could have been something that occurred in the past or it could have been something that seemed to fall in line with your current real life situations.

Any who….Suppose a friend of yours called in a frantic fit in the middle of the night.  You’re disturbed out of your sleep for this friend to merely tell you that they had a bad dream.  In the dream you and another friend were hurt badly in two separate car wrecks.  Your friend begs of you not to drive in the following days and to hitch a ride or take public transportation to work and abroad.  You’re upset about the phone call and notion and hang up and go back to sleep.

You get up in the morning and and proceed to work as normal.  Just before lunch, you get a phone call telling you that your friend has been in an awful car wreck.  Suddenly, that late night phone call has become reality.

What now?!  Your friend is hurt in ICU.  You are at work and you’ve driven today.  And you keep getting hysterical phone calls from your friend who had the dream begging you not to drive home.  What do you do…..

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The corporate office for my company is huge.  We have well over 6000 people in one building and every day presents a new face.  I get breakfast down in the cafeteria at least 3 times a week and that’s where I met a good friend of mine.  Never had a meeting with him, but we always had good spirited conversation while waiting on our pancakes.

Election time rolled around, but I never expressed views with my breakfast buddy, nor did he.  Election day arrived.  I voted early that morning and came in to work.  I proceeded down to breakfast and saw my breakfast buddy.  But today was different.  When I gave the usual “Good Morning”, he glanced at me, dropped his head and walked off.  I was befuddled!  What did I do?  What did I say?!!!

Then it dawned on me.  I looked down and on my shirt was my “Obama ‘08″ sticker.  The softer side of me said No, it couldn’t be.  But in actuality it was.  My breakfast buddy was a die hard republican and he was 100% against Barack Obama in the presidency.  My wearing of a sticker had ruined months of a growing friendship and networked associate.

Was my case just something out of the blue?  Are people really so hard up on their political affiliation that they will break ties with you to support their own political cause?

Senator John Ensign was one of the fastest up and coming politicians in the U.S. government.  He had become somewhat of a religious ambassador for righteousness from his very own Senate seat.

John Ensign was the same Nevada Republican who protested Bill Clinton’s actions.  He was also highly critical of Senator Larry Craig and his bathroom advances at an undercover during the bathroom sex sting operation in the Twin Cities airport.  However, John Ensign joined the ranks and followed suit as he stood before the crowd at the podium in June 2009 to confess of his extramarital affair.

This was the same man that organized and pushed for prayer breakfasts and bible study with fellow congressmen.  He was adamantly against abortion and gay marriage.  And in June 2009 John had the same attempt to do what he criticized Pres. Clinton for not doing – apologizing to the public.

And now….today’s question….Are you concerned about the actions of your public office officials.  Do you care if your married mayor is running girls through the local Motel 6?  Is there cause for concern over a little “stick-your-hand-under-the-bathroom-stall-in-search-of-a-man-to-sit-on-your-lap” mishap?  Or do you need a good clean politician governing your life?

“Say No to Drugs”.  We start teaching it as early as 3 to the youngsters.  We don’t want society to falter at the use of such evil things as drugs.  This is life and how we raise our youth.

But for the millions that never got the message and unfortunately went toward the light, how do we assess these people.  It is against man’s law to use drugs (that you don’t pay for) so does that make it a crime?  Or could it possibly just be a disease that some just happen to get.

Thousands are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Heart disease daily.  These all have terrible effects on the body’s mind, nervous system, and life force.  Could Drug abuse be something as simple where it forces the body to need each drug’s use.

Or is it simply just society punishing those who could not withstand the urge.  Unable to fight off their spirits and demons, or just all about doing what they want – which is not what your government wants you doing…