Emile, I am sure I said this before, and don't want to be redundant, but it is really nice when you think out what you are going to say and just post it, without so many Bible quotes.
I totally agree with you that there is dignity in manual labor, and everything else you said about respecting everyone's contribution considering the tools they bring to the task.
However, I absolutely disagree with your analysis that it was paganism which destroyed this value system. First of all, most Christian societies have had an entrenched class system, where the poorest people are the most religious, and the ruling classes, which have tended to be more skeptical, are not really believers. Statistically, the more educated people do not tend to be as religious, so the causes are complex, but really religion has been the opiate of the masses, who have little hope in this life and therefore need faith that there is still something to come.
I am a pagan, and all the pagans I know honor the simple values of loving the earth and all its creatures. Worldwide, most pagans are primitive peoples who still worship the planets and the mysteries of nature, but the more educated pagans have a simple value system which respects manual labor and is not status driven. Most modern pagans are more concerned with the environment than with materialism. They recycle, try to live lives of simplicity, and are bound to consume as little as possible of the earth's resources. Honor, integrity, and the dignity of man living in a natural state are the basic tenets of this value system, so I really am not sure what you are talking about here.
Have you seen the PBS Frontline special, called Affluenza? It is all about the simplicity movement followed by environmentalists. It is really interesting. |
