and then our exile

words mean little these days. but it seems two points below were unclear.

- by saying the idea of possession is 'fallacial', i was not attacking private property. i meant that, as human beings, we are placed on earth among the haves or the have nots, and have little say in where we are set. social mobility is not an adequate solution to this determinism, as there is disparity in the /means/ to this mobility. we are given these means, which for a theist become 'trusts', not resources we 'have' by any virtue of our own. as trusts, they are responsibilities we are accountable for - not 'possessions' we can dispose of without fear of consequence.

- by saying God alone would have absolute legislative power, i did not mean we should extrapolate traffic laws from scripture. i meant that, given the existence of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator, it would only stand to reason that He is the only being with full knowledge of the parameters within which human beings best function, and so it is not logical for believers in traditions which have revealed scripture to urge separation of church and state. it grows murky where human interpretation enters the equation, the fine line between close-minded literalism and too-liberal over-glossing, but the principle stands.

on the same note, however: over the years i have pushed the idea nationalism is untenable: 1) no one chooses where they are born. 2) nationalism holds our allegience is to our country (mainly, given limited mobility, where we are born). 3) = it is thus an arbitrary designation, does not take the individual into consideration, and when categorizing people we should avoid arbitrary separations.
a few days ago i laid out the above steps to my little sister, and she was the first person, of the multitude who has heard this, to put up a substantial counter-argument. i was making the individual an abstract entity existing in a vacuum, she pointed out, and ignoring that what i call arbitrary designations actually define the individual to large extent. if the country were to change, so too would the factors / individual, but the individual would still be largely made up of the influence of same.
my argument still has some weight, i think, but not nearly so much as i tried to impress.
she did agree though that this was a good argument for using belief-system as a defining feature rather than nation-state, given that human beings generally at some point in their lives make a conscious choice for some form of this - difficult to do for one's heritage-nation-state.

--

i am quite comfortable making small-scale decisions which would never in a gazillion years pass the categorical imperative. honesty is such a virtuous trait.