Musings of the Common Man – Part 1

You’ll have to excuse the corny title. I don’t know why I worded it that way. I haven’t listened to Copeland for weeks.

I often wonder about the way things are in the world. The things I wonder about are wide-ranging, including biology, physics, finance, society, religion, etc. Some of the questions are interesting enough that I make the time to research the issue and become informed on the subject. For most of my wonderings, however, I simply don’t have to time to become knowledgeable about all the things that I wonder about. Even if I made an extra effort to learn more things every day I couldn’t keep up because that process often leads me to new questions.
I think many of us are in the same boat. We live life with a sizeable portfolio of half-baked thoughts and misconceptions based on the holes in the information we have about the world. Eventually, we kind of get used to this idea and forget that the things we think are based on incomplete information; or maybe we just give up on the ideal of understanding the world.
An example of the frustration for me is that when the news has “experts” on whatever topic they are discussing I generally understand what they are saying but often I don’t understand why it is true. I wish I could call the show and ask the expert to justify his conclusions to a broader audience – perhaps to the level of a moderately-informed regular person. Hence the title of the post.
I don’t want to give up. I want to be a person who is continually learning about the world, even though I will never arrive at the point where I know it all.
With that said I want to bounce some of the things I’ve been thinking about off of you guys. Perhaps a little discussion on some of my musings (some of them rather old and dusty) will spur me to actually make the effort to answer my own questions. I apologize for the long post, but each subject didn’t merit its own post, you know, because my thoughts on them are so half-baked. Katie and I have already discussed many of these, but you know what they say: “Twelve heads are better than two.”*
Please feel free to challenge my logic, my assumptions, and my premises. In fact I encourage it. How else will I know if I’m wrong?

-On the stratospheric salaries of athletes and CEOs:
It seems like:
Athletes are not to blame. Don’t tell me any of you wouldn’t consider making a few million a year just for playing a game. People who are sports fans don’t have anyone to blame but themselves for high salaries of athletes. People who aren’t sports fans shouldn’t blame the athletes; they should blame the sports fans. Millions of people spend hundreds of dollars a year on tickets to professional sports games, apparel, and overpriced hot-dogs. That’s not even counting the time they spend in front of the TV subjecting themselves to advertisements where companies pay athletes to tell you to buy stuff. In short if you do any of the following things, you are contributing to the bank accounts of those athletes.
-Buy a ticket to a professional sporting event.
-Spend money at the concessions stand there.
-Buy sponsored apparel.
-Buy anything endorsed by athletes.
High executive pay happens for similar reasons. We shouldn’t wonder why the CEO of GE gets paid so much when we have a GE washer, dryer, dishwasher, and microwave. Every gallon of gas you pump from an Exxon station helps out Exxon-Mobil’s employees, including the CEO. Of course there are instances where the pay is too high, but that’s an issue for the owners (stockholders) of each company. The most effective way to complain is to speak the only language the shareholders understand: don’t buy their product.
Unanswered questions:
Why do people act like it's a mystery?
Why do people think it's unfair?

On the lack of interest in politics among our youth:
It seems like:
Similarly to the previous topic… I don’t think the youth are exclusively to blame. Politicians have a tendency to do the following things that contribute to the problem.
1. Be old.
2. Do unrespectable things.
3. Bring up lots of old dirt and try to pin it to their opponents.
4. Blather, blow hot-air, and use calculated rhetoric to distract from a lack of substance in their speeches.
5. Be boring.

Say what you will about Generation Y-ers, but one thing we can do is spot phonies. Maybe that is because we all had to read “Catcher in the Rye” in high school. I think that a lot of us see politics as a big game of Calvinball. The only thing keeping us from completely ignoring it is the fact that it actually has a real effect on us. I also think that a contributing factor is that our generation, now that many of us are living on our own and have to support ourselves, has a tendency toward disillusionment. We were told we should shoot for the stars, but we have had to find out that propelling projectiles heavenward doesn’t put food on the table or pay the electricity bill. Now we question we were taught, for better or for worse. (“Do what you love? Bah! Civic responsibility? Bah! Rotate your tires? Bah! Care about baseball? Bah!”)
Unanswered Questions:
Why do people act like it's a mystery?
Do people really act like it's a mystery, or is it just me?

On the council in heaven:
This is how I think it was. Tell me where I’m inconsistent with revealed doctrine.
God presented his plan. He asked for a sustaining vote. We were not required to sustain the plan right at that time, or perhaps time didn’t work the same way at um, that time.
Lucifer rebelled. His “plan” wasn’t really a viable plan - it would not have accomplished one of the purposes of sending us to earth, namely, to try us to see if we would obey God when given the choice and opportunity to disobey. Lucifer’s plan was really just a cover for his rebellion, or perhaps he was so in love with the potential for personal glory that he really did believe that he could convince Heavenly Father it was a good plan. The war in heaven ensued, where the rebels (comprised of the power hungry and fearful of the possibility of failure inherent in Heavenly Father’s Plan, I imagine) tried to recruit more spirits and the um, loyalists tried to convince rebels that the consequences of rebelling against God were bad. Perhaps some of the rebels were under the impression that Heavenly Father would change his mind if enough people spoke out against the Plan, as if it were a democratic process. (an erroneous understanding the principle of common-consent that is still made in the church in these latter days.) At some point the division bell rang, the final sustaining vote was recorded, and those that rebelled were cast out along with Lucifer.
Unanswered questions:
Did Lucifer realize he would be cast out in the end? If so, why did he rebel? Simple Megalomania?
Lucifer went on to play a role in the plan by tempting Adam and Eve. Was that part of the original Plan? How does that work? That would imply that part of the plan was that Lucifer would rebel.

Let me know what you guys think. If any of these turn out to be particularly interesting, maybe I’ll start a new post.

*See the post “Musings of the Common Man” on the web log “Salsa Night” www.salsanight.blogspot.com (I’ve always wanted to do a circular reference.)