While I greatly respect and admire our law enforcement for the difficult jobs that they have, police brutality and racism is not something that can be tolerated.
Our law enforcement is better than that!
Hold the responsible officers accountable, but also bring peace and civility back to our cities and streets. 😉
Unfortunately, we are living in a time when many people are “destroyed” from various forms of abuse: physical, verbal, and emotional. This frequently occurs to those that are more vulnerable in society (e.g. exploited children). It is especially tragic that children–those that are still innocent and defenseless–are made to suffer at the hands of those that are bigger, stronger, and authority figures in their lives (teachers, clergy, etc.).
At the most basic level, we need to:
Listen (carefully), empathize, and be supportive.
Don’t be dismissive, make assumptions, or jump to conclusions.
Yes, everyone deserves a fair hearing and for the facts to be known.
No, we can’t as a community run from this uncomfortable issue any longer!
I watch with terror the rockets fly.
The plumes of white smoke in the sky.
Randomly, randomly where will they fall.
A car, a home, a factory, a kindergarten.
The shrapnel penetrating the flesh of its victims.
The rockets do not know the difference,
Between military and civilian, men and women, children and old.
Please pray for the peace and security for Israel. 😉
(Source Photo: Reposted here in video by Israel Foreign Affairs Ministry)
So the plight of the homeless in Washington, DC and other large cities like NY and LA is despicable.
This photo is taken not far from the Capitol building in DC.
The homeless are not living in tents in the dead of Winter.
As the people pass by, under this particular overpass were no less than 4 tents.
While millionaires and billionaires splurge on themselves, so many people continue to go without adequate food, shelter, clothing, plumbing, healthcare, education, and jobs in America.
When G-d looks down and see the unsympathetic wealthy next to the downtrodden poor–and many of the wealthy act like insatiable pigs, while the poor go hungry and cold–shall the L-rd that judges all the earth not do justly?
Yes, there should be incentives for people to work hard and contribute, but when the wealth is skewed so that more than 50% of all the wealth is owned by just the top 1% of people and the top 1% own more than the bottom 90% of the population–we have a system that is not just broken, but grossly unjust and inhumane.
Corruption is alive and well, and who is there among our leaders to stand up and say and do what is right by G-d children?
China scores individuals based on public data (social media, financial, insurance, health, shopping, dating, and more), and they have people that act as “information collectors” (i.e. neighborhood watchers) who record what their neighbors are doing–good and bad.
Each individual starts with a 1,000 points.
If you do good things in Chinese society–helping people, cleaning up, being honest–you get points added.
If you do bad things in China–fight with people, make a mess, be dishonest–you get points deducted.
Fail below 1,000 points and you are in trouble–and can get blacklisted!
A good score is something to be proud of and a bad score is something that shames people to hopefully change for the better.
But more than that, your social score has tangible social impacts–it can determine your ability to get into certain schools, obtain better jobs, homes, loans/mortgages, high-speed internet, and even high-speed train tickets/airplane flights.
While maybe well intentioned, certainly, this has the very real potential to become a surveillance state and the embodiment of “Big Brother”!
On one hand, it seems like a great thing to drive people and society to be better. Isn’t that what we do with recognizing and rewarding good behavior and with our laws and justice system in punishing bad behavior?
Yet, to me this type of all-encompassing social credit system risks too much from a freedom and privacy perspective. Should the government and all your neighbors be privy to your most intimate doings and dealings? And should people be controlled to such an extent that literally everything you do is monitored and measured and counted for/against you?
It seems to me that the price of sacrificing your very personal liberty is too high to make in order to push people towards positive social goals.
Guiding people is one thing, and rewarding outstanding acts and punishing horrific ones is understandable, but getting into people’s knickers is another.
This type of social credit system really borders on social control and moves us towards a very disturbing, dystopian future. 😉
We are not just what nature and nurture make us–but rather, there is a third leg of this triad of factors that make us who we are, and that third and most important element is that we each have a soul. The soul of each person guides us to choose between right and wrong, good and evil, and sacred and impure, and to not just give in to our weaknesses, which each person has.