09 July 2009

the downfall of humanity

I lost my wallet yesterday. Dumb. My fault. The only thing I can think of is that I pulled my keys out of my pocket and it pulled my wallet out, which consequently fell to the ground. This must have happened at the gas station yesterday morning. Yes, I should keep better control of my personal effects, but the fact remains that someone else found my wallet.


What would you do if you found a wallet with $6 and three credit cards and a debit card inside? Would you try to contact the person? They had my address. It was on my license. Recently I found a purse in the middle of the street. I returned it. As you can see from the title of this post, that was not the case with my wallet. They took the wallet, proceeded to a convenience store about 3 miles away and charged $100 worth of who-knows-what. This is extremely aggravating to me. Fortunately, I won't have to pay for the charges because I promptly reported the card lost which became stolen status thereafter.


Here are my questions. Feel free to comment. Why could the person or persons finding my personal stuff not return it? Why do you have to take something that doesn't belong to you at the expense of other's misfortune?


Now a tie in to science...I recently finished reading "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown. Great book, very interesting, I highly recommend it, especially if you liked "The DaVinci Code". In "Angels and Demons", the question of whether science is too far ahead of morality is raised. In other words, can technology, as a result of science, police itself? Does it need the church to "help out" in that area? I guess I have to say "Yes!" Based on the events of the last day or so, people are basically not honest. Not good citizens. I know, I am generalizing here, but I am simply analyzing the evidence as it is presented to me. Give me more evidence to disprove my hypothesis. In case I haven't stated it, my hypothesis is this: people are bad and science is too far ahead of humanity for its own good. How can science be expected to "take care of itself" when people are at the root dishonest? I know this is a stretch, but how many of you have ever done something dishonest at someone else's expense? (I am point the finger at myself and will gladly admit I have been dishonest before.) If science is a human endeavor, which is one of it's basic tenets, how can it be expected to do the right thing when new technology is produced? Who even decides what is right? If we can create anti-matter (we can just not in the amounts in the fictional "Angels and Demons"), should we? If we can clone species (we can just not humans) should we? I posit that there is an argument for both sides. I could argue either question from either point of view and be reasonable.


Solution? I don't know. Maybe the church needs to do a better job of being relevant? I'm talking about the  church as a whole, I feel the church I attend IS relevant, otherwise I would look elsewhere. Maybe science needs to do a better job of policing itself? Maybe people need to put the needs of others before themselves? Maybe I need to maintain control of my stuff? Of course these are all good answers, but none will be the end-all solution (except maybe the last one for my immediate problems). I guess what I really needed here was a rant. Mission accomplished.


thanks for reading


jb

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