This blog is a bit of a free for all. I don’t have any real plan in mind of what to write about. It is just my mindful musings as I empty my brain onto the keyboard. A bit like the blog I wrote last September when I heard about Mindful Journals.
It is Father’s Day here in the UK, and I believe it was Father’s Day in America about two weeks ago. I am not sure why it is different, but it is and that makes things, in this virtual digital world, confusing. At least to me. I have never really understood Father’s Day and what it celebrates. The UK version, like many ‘days’ appears to be an adoption of the American tradition. I understand Mother’s Day has a something to do with the celebration of Mothers and the Mother Church in the Christian faith. I guess maybe Father’s Day was incorporated so that Dads didn’t feel left out. Equality and all that!
So what to write? My mind is now blank. It is wet and raining outside and the gardens are looking refreshed as as result. The greens are greener and the plants are standing taller. I can see the Robins on the bird feeders ewating the seed I put out for them. Perhaps that is a task for a little later on. Replenish the seed in the feeders.
I have come to realise that I am not as competent as I thought I was at writing these things. I need to add certain tags to ensure the relevant blogs appear in the correct place. By clicking on the column to the right of my screen I find I can give this a ‘category’. I have chosen two: ‘Just Thoughts’ adn ‘Mindfulness’. There is other stuff there regarding search engine optimisation. I am a bit vague on that stuff. Maybe that is something I should delve into and learn more about.
I mentioned ‘equality’ a couple of paragraphs ago. It is a subject that keeps coming into my head and I am reluctant to address it because of the controversy comments on equality can cause. In recent times society has been critical of itself because of the segregation of the genders. I am reminded that historically may societies have done thi. In the Jewish faith women and children worship separately from the men, as they do in Muslim and Islamic cultures. In the Christian faiths that is not the norm. It is unsurprising that in the world of business there has been a segregation and the idea that ‘woman’s work’ is different from ‘men’s work’ has prevailed. Much I guess stems from the differences between the genders. Females are a different build to males, as a result, I believe, of the males having higher testosterone levels and females having higher levels of other hormones. This is natural and as such is the way nature has designed us as human beings. Nature has designed other forms of animal life in a similar manner. Male lions are different to female lions, and not just through the presence of different sexual organs. So we are different.
That doesn’t mean that we should be different in other matters though. If a person of any gender is capable of doing something they should, if tey wish it, be given the opportunity to do it. So there is nothing wrong in female engineers, female bus drivers, female fireman or female board directors for this that have the ability and capability to undertake these roles. As such males and females are equal.
The inequality arises when society starts to insist that the split between males and females in certain jobs should reflect the split in society. So that there should be as many female hod carriers as there are male and as many females on boards of directors as there are male. Certainly the feminine side of peoples thoughts has a a place in these positions, but that doesn’t mean that only females can be caring and feeling. Because of this desire to be seen to be fare, society is creating positive discrimination. It is obvious that Fathers can’t be Mothers and give birth, although science and medicine is moving to assist in this happening, but it is not impossible for a male to take on the traditional roles of a mother or a female to be a father figure for the offspring.
There are parallels with respect to societies view on racism, too. We are all equal in the world and human beings were all generated, many thousands of years ago, from the same root. As such we are all cousins. Now fights between and within families are inevitable as disagreements arise but to regard a fellow human being as inferior or superior because of his more recent history is wrong and should be avoided. Unfortunately it is going to take time to undo a change some of the beliefs of all our ancestors, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore those things they did or said or believed as that is part of all our history and what shapes us into what we are today.