Examination of Blessings

The Catholic Church has an important, though seemingly little-used technique called an Examination of Conscience. The booklet that I have dates from the 1950s, when religion was still a key component of everyday life. It is invaluable because it permits the reader to take a hard look at their behavior in an effort to understand what mistakes they have made, a bit like having someone else scrutizing their life. Thanksgiving is a time when we try to remember the myriad blessings, gifts, opportunities and privileges that have come to us, usually through no act of our own. Having an Examination of Blessings booklet would do wonders to help each of us appreciate what we have.

I can suggest two ways to examine the blessings in your life.

The first is to study history to learn what life was like for the generations that have come before us. Try century by century, working back in time. You know what life was like in 2000. One way to get a sense of life in the year 1900 is to watch the PBS show "1900 House", which lets a family live life in 1900 London. A way to get a sense of life in the year 1800 is to visit colonial Williamsburg or an equivalent restored site. Living historical museums exist around the country. Visit one. It's a great way to develop a sense of the blessings that you have.

The second way to examine blessings in your life is to review your personal life as it is today in terms of the PIES Relationship. That means considering your situation physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

Physically, are you healthy? Do you have use of all of your senses? Consider how amazing each sense is, and how much you'd be impacted by the loss of any of them. Or even being impaired in any of them. You can walk and talk. Many people cannot. Those are blessings that have been granted to you that you take for granted every day. How about breathing? You're alive; perhaps the most amazing gift of all.

Emotionally, you have moments of happiness and sadness, frustration and triumph, love and hate. These are affirmations of being alive, of having relationships with other people. You may not be absolutely in love with everyone you know, but imagine life without your emotions, and without your ability to be emotionally moved by others.

Intellectually, you can enjoy vast storehouses of wisdom and knowledge, not the least of which is the world wide web itself. You can access the information, add to it and appreciate it. You can hone your knowledge of the world around you and pursue ways to apply that knowledge for your betterment and the bettermend of others. Imagine a world without libraries, museums, teachers, schools and books.

Spiritually, you live in a society where the rule of law, ethical behavior and freedom of religion are guiding principles. Imagine living in a society where behavior that you know to be unethical is the established norm, where those who hold your beliefs are persecuted or where lawlessness reigns supreme.

That is a basic Examination of Blessings. Having discovered the remarkable ways in which modern Americans are blessed far more than most who have ever lived, think about how your actions, attitudes and choices constitute blessings for others. You are a powerful force, and a blessing in your own right. Each day you have the opportunity to give the gift of yourself to those around you, ensuring that you appear at the top of many other people's list of things that they are thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Anarchy is Best

Laws exist because the people who control the lawbooks see people doing something that they don't want happening. Blammo - new law. Throughout history the people who have controlled the lawbooks have ranged from theocrats to autocrats to democrats to dictators. Each is characterized by a particular modes of operation, politics and so on, but when the governing bodies have said "no" to a particular behavior, a law was created to declare that behavior as being out of bounds.

The first laws on the books are usually things like "Don't kill anyone." Most societies aren't interested in having a dwindling population. People are the most important component of a society. After all, no people, no society. And the law gets on the books right away because we all know that people commit murder for any of a number of reasons. Other laws address things like personal property, rights and obligations, etc. Pretty much all the stuff that ensures that a society doesn't collapse into anarchy.

Whoops. But anarchy is best! Anarchy is a society that has no government. That means no laws, no rules. Surely that equates to chaos and disorder. Unfortunately, it does. People remain people, all too often driven by animal passions that they simply cannot master. Those passions drive us to behaviors that are not helpful to the health of the society. As a result, the lawbooks get loaded up.

So how is anarchy best? Anarchy as a form of government can only be viable when all of the citizens of the society implicitly agree on behaviors that really are healthy for the society. If no citizen was ever tempted by their animal passions nor even reasoned desires to kill, then no law would be on the books about murder. Continue with that to cover every manner of behavior and you can eliminate all laws on the books. Everyone would instinctively behave in ways that reinforce the health of the society. That's why anarchy is a wonderful, though unachievable, goal.

In America, we're very keen on technological advances, yet those advances that give us such wonderful gains are also tempting us in new ways to do things that are unhealthy for our society. There are no laws on the books for painlessly desintigrating someone's skin. Yet if somebody comes up with a device that quickly and accurately removes the surface layer of any object (valuable in the world of materials processing), it could be misused for that very purpose. Is it an assault? Is it a theft? Nobody ever thought about the very notion of modifying someone else's body in such a way. Existing laws are going to have to be changed, or new ones will have to be formulated.

I wonder what could be done by starting from the base of anarchy (no laws), and then writing as few laws as possible that covers every possible temptation that a man can have that acts against the health of the society. Such an experiment would require that we understand two important things: what are the instincts of men, and what is a healthy society. When we focus on those two things and thoroughly understand them, we will have as few laws as possible. In time, we may be able to get down to one law: In all ways, act for the betterment of the society. It's not anarchy, but it's pretty close.