Chat Spot

[RonPrice]

For my annual email/update, Chat Spot, to family, friends and associations collected over nearly 70 years go to: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread ... ost3452639

[Steve Plonk]

Hope I read it right. Happy birthday, Ron, this July 23, 2012. Though, by the
time you read this, Ron, it will already be July 24th. We still have two hours
left of July 23rd here in Chattanooga, TN, USA. So happy belated birthday wishes. Many happy returns!

[RonPrice]

Thanks Steve. Due to the fact that I've registered at several 1000 internet sites, I get more than 1000 happy birthday greetings. You can go to my Facebook page at this link where I have tried to deal with them all in some summary fashion: http://www.facebook.com/ronprice9

[Steve Plonk]

Ron, et al, May the peace which passes all understanding continue to bless you
& keep you in the knowledge & love of G-d. For G-d is Great!

[RonPrice]

I'll respond more fully after breakfast---later in the day. Thanks, Chat Spot.-Ron

[RonPrice]

There, Chat Spot, breakfast is now under my belt, the dishes are done, my wife is off to do the weekly shopping, all my emails are taken-care of, I've done a little dusting to keep up my end of the domestic tasks.

You might like to have a gander at the religion sub-section of my website and its several divisions that deal with religion historically and in the contemporary world. This will give you a wider context for my own religious enthusiasms. The link to that section of my website is at: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/RELIGION.html ...Ron Price, Tasmania, Australia

[Steve Plonk]

Interesting website, Ron, plenty to read & digest... Thanks for that.

[RonPrice]

I get dozens of emails every day and, since I can't answer them all in detail, I wrote the following general response at my website "to cover them all" as best I could. Take care of yourself, Chat Spot. May you have lots of chats in this the evening of your life.-Ron
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http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/PSYCHOLOGY ... ships.html

[Steve Plonk]

Romney & Ryan, erstwhile republicans, remind me of the swiss ice skating comedy team, from the forties, known as Frick & Frack...
What say ye, am I "spot on" or what? All those two chuckleheads need
is some skates & funny hats or helmets... A rebirth of Wendell Wilkie & Co...singing "I'm Your Yankee Doodle Dandy" Hoo hah!

[RonPrice]

I have lots of thoughts on partisan politics, Chat Spot, both here in Australia, in Canada where I lived until I was 26 and in the USA. To save me reinventing my politico-historical wheel, so to speak, go to this link for some of my essential political perspectives: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/auto.html
To put these in an historical context go to: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/HISTORY.html For a very general context: http://www.bahai.org/misc/politics

Sorry to give you all this stuff to read, Chat Spot, but simple questions often require quite complex answers. Today is the first day of spring in the Antipodes. Australians don't wait for the equinox or the solstice for their seasonal shifts. They simplify it all and just make the change on the first of the month 4 times a year. "Simplify, simplify, simplify," is all the rage here. Of course, one can't generalize in such a way that it covers all 25 million Australians.

Thoreau would like this simplifying tendency in Australians since that was one of the aphorisms by which he lived. "Whom the gods would destroy they first make simple, then simpler and then simplest." I can't remember who said that; I'll google it after breakfast. Take care of your chatting, dear Spot, and may your metaphysico-religious system continue to help you get through these days of staggering complexity with the world's equilibrium deranged, the souls of its inhabitants harrowed-up, and its institutions being slowly uprooted from decade to decade as we all rush headlong into the future.-Ron Price, George Town, Tasmania, Australia

[Steve Plonk]

The Bahai belief in remaining neutral but voting with conscience seems like a contradiction in terms. To each his or her own...

I will champion the party, in our country, who champions the working people--the Democratic Party. If I was a Briton, I'd vote for the Labor Party.
I think that letting one's preference be known is better than complacency. However, we refrain from "rubbing a person's nose" in our preference...Or we try to... My way of dealing with preferences is to lampoon the other party...

At the moment, Democrats remain a minority in our state of Tennessee.
Hopefully, the rest of our country will vote in a Democratic majority. This election, seems to me, may be a determining factor as to which way, historically, our country's "ship of state" will head in. We do not have a parliamentary system like Canada nor the U. K. Third parties don't have much say, unless they eclipse a party in power. Third parties, here, usually get absorbed by one major party or the other...

[RonPrice]

I was innoculated against partisan politics back in the 1950s when my parents had political meetings in our home and I heard people argue all the time with all the venom that the partisan system creates in some of its members. Then, when I studied politics at university in the 1960s, I became even more dissillusioned with the polarities of labour and liberal, republican and democrat, inter alia. I wondered to myself by the time I was in my 20s, how anyone could take all the song-and-dance and posturing seriously. To become president one needs millions of dollars to even begin to put your head up; that always was a big problem for me coming from a working-class background.

You, Chat Spot, have to work out some combination of your Christianity and your partisan politics and that will keep you busy all your life, as it has been doing. I, on the other hand, opted fairly early in my life for a totally different system, the Baha'i Faith. With its non-partisan political position and its belief that Christ has returned and has established a new system for humanity, we come at all these issues on the planet and at our local and national levels within quite different historical, sociological, theological and philosophical orientations. These very different perspectives of mine have kept me as busy as you have been kept, I'm sure.

Still, there is plenty of work for both of us to work out and within our respective: modi operandi and opi vivendi (is that the plural? My Latin is a little rusty.) We can at least talk to each other without invoking the fire of heaven. We can at least have some of that civility that is born of our religious backgrounnds.-Ron

[Steve Plonk]

Ron, in an earlier post, you spoke of "derangement of world equilibrium"...Does this include worries about the degradation of the environment? Do Bahai's stand up for the environment & give money to support clean air, clean water, & support for endangered species? Do Bahai's stress humankind's benevolent stewardship over God's creation?

I understand from my readings that there are "fundamentalist" Bahai's & "liberal" Bahai's. That is similar to what is present in Christianity. Do the Bahai's edicts, in Haifa, effect every day life? The Council seems like the Cardinals & Pope in the Catholic Christian churches. Just wondering whether or not that is an accurate analogy...

[RonPrice]

Like most analogies, there is some truth in it, but the questions we are dealing with here, dear Chat Spot, can not be fully answered in little boxes. There are many challenges that the Baha'i Faith presents to people like yourself who follow one of the great religious traditions, and like everyone else are immersed in their cultural contexts. The same problem presented the early Christians vis-a-vis the Jewish community. When I say "Baha'u'llah is the Return of Christ," the Christian has dozens of lines to say "that can't be." The same was true when Christ spoke to the Jews. They said:" You can't be the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies" among dozens of other lines. And still they wait.

I'll get back to you, Chat Spot, on your other questions after my morning brunch.-Ron

[RonPrice]

Apologies, Chat Spot, for not getting back to you after breakfast as I indicated yesterday that I would, but some responsibilities came up in relation to my roles as: husband, father, grandfather, local Baha'i publicist and friend.-Ron
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For a useful statement on the Baha'i Faith and the environment go to: http://bahai-library.com/landau_bahai_faith_environment

A useful link on the so-called liberal-conservative dichotomy go to: http://bahaicoherence.blogspot.com.au/2 ... faith.html

A document by the Roman Catholic Church re the Baha'i Faith http://bahai.uga.edu/2002/021124-3.html