Issues that need changing in politics.

[filkinberry]

Hello, the names Filkinberry.

Now before I start, I am Canadian, so some of this may not be relevant to some of you, and that's ok, I have a few points I would like to bring up with all of you.

Point 1. Are we really secular?

My answer? No. To clarify, when I say secular I mean secular as in state and religion. Sure we have come a long way, but the issue i would like to bring up affects all of us in some form or another.

Holidays.

Now holidays are great don't get me wrong, and I am a christian so this isn't much of an issue for me, but I look at things from an impartial unbiased perspective, and are our holidays really fair? Take Easter for example. An atheist friend of mine asked why we get Easter off, and I told him its because these are the days where Jesus was crucified and then resurrected, and i proceded to explain to him that having this off as a holiday is wrong, for this reason exactly. We aren't all Christians, so as a "secular state" why do we get all the big Christian days off? It isn't coincidence my winter break falls over Christmas, even though winter really occurs 2 months later where I live.

I think as a group effort we should ask for equality and accommodation for all of the people in our nation, not just the Christians.

Point 2. Whats up with all this racism in our media?

Especially in my area, the First Nations people seem to be the "bad guys" in our media. For example, a lease agreement issue in my area forced a Caucasian man, leasing land from FNs people, to be kicked off the land. He went straight to the press, and the press published an extremely bias story favoring the man getting the boot, and blaming the FNs people for not giving him proper time to pay the lease. After no more than ten minutes of research, I discovered in no way, shape, or form was the local FNs band guilty of a thing. Why is our media so quick to jump the gun?

Action must be taken.

I hope to make the majority aware of what is happening, and I hope to bring a stop to the racism plaguing our media. I hope we as a community can bring awareness to the public eye!


Now I am just throwing my thoughts out here, but I would love to take some action and make the world contain less suck. So any feedback would be greatly greatly appreciated, and if you think you can add to, or improve on my ideas, please do so!!!!

So again, I believe action is needed! If you feel the same, let me know, and maybe we can get something going to make our world more awesome (in a good way )

Thanks for reading! regards,

Filkinberry

[mashuga31]

Why do you want people to be more fair to religious holidays? say you're not christian. You still get a whole bunch of holidays off. If every holiday is reserved theres less time to do work, like eliminate worldsuck.

As for the racism i'm totally with you! What should we do? We could make a video and submit it to news networks worldwide... or we could all write a bunch of letters or something!

[Deleted]

Point 1.
In Belgium it's exactly the same. Schools have all the Christian holidays, but we have a lot of Muslims living here, and that often creates a problem when for example a Muslim holiday doesn't go together with a Christian holiday. When that happens, a lot of Muslim kids don't go to school for a week or so while schools are open..

So yeah, either there have to be holidays based on neither of the religions, or each religion should have its own holidays, but that would be crazy.


Point 2:
Sensation sells.
And racism is more sensation than no racism, the media use this grotesque. It really has to change indeed, as the media have way to much power to be abusing it stereotypes like that.

[filkinberry]

Hey guys, just to clarify mashuga, Im not anti holiday, by any means But living in a place with so many diverse cultures, where Christianity isn't the only prominent religion anymore, it seems like the government still has some religious ties.

And regarding the racism, I am good to do whatever! I wrote a letter to that newspaper regarding the issue, but they didn't publish it ( I kind of trashed them and their use of stereotypes... ) go figure

A video is a very intriguing idea, we will need some ideas! what do you think would work best? Grab the media's and the public's attention the most? We could get a great colab together of the pogo tribes thoughts on the matter perhaps?

[mashuga31]

I never suggested that you were anti holiday lol =P

However, if 'Everyone' got off 'every' holiday than there wouldn't be enough time tom get anything done. Or it would have to cut into summer

Rather than do that, why not just make a new holiday. How about "World Community Day" It would b a day dedicated to strangers becoming friends and just overall being a nice person. Contributing your time to a better cause or for those 'less inclined' they could just have the day off. A gesture of niceness from the entire world to them. I think it'd be inspiring.

[filkinberry]

That, my friend, sounds like a fantastic idea!!! who do we need to talk too to make an official holiday?

[bunnyfulwanderer]

as far as Christmas is concerned, there is a reason we've started saying "happy holidays" sure it doesn't help all religions. but there is the Christmas, Kwanzaa (that's just an African American thing though isn't it?) Hanukkah, and of course the solstice with many I probably have forgotten.

sure that doesn't help atheists. but lots of atheists celebrate Christmas too.

this doesn't explain Easter however, my suspicion is as Christianity is the majority religion worldwide and possibly in these countries they are being favored unfairly, but the logic is probably why not convenience the majority group rather then inconvenience everyone?

[mashuga31]

My opinion is that Easter isn't a christian holiday anymore. It's about a bunny rabbit that for som reason lays chocolate eggs.

That, unfortunately has nothing to do with Jesus. While Christians can still celebrate the resurrection of Christ, most people eat chocolate and get new toys for their kids.

[filkinberry]

True, our holidays have been very commercialized, but that still does not explain why we have to have good Friday as a holiday to all. Good Friday is the day He was crucified, and no other groups recognize that ( as far as I know ) I am not against this long weekend at all! I'm just concerned our ever growing community may feel like they have to conform to our previously set standards.

[speedyreedy]

Easter was celebrated before Jesus' time. It wasn't called Easter, but the rabbit and egg are symbols of fertility in Pagan tradition. Actually, quite a lot of what we know as Christianity was taken from Pagan ideas. The church needed a way to gain a following, and Paganism had good things going for it. Jesus' birthday (and birth) are based on other cultures' stories too.

And as for those being taken as holidays, the western world (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) have been Christian for hundreds of years. It's been less than 50 years that places have started becoming more diverse and people don't adapt to changes very quickly...

[rcn927]

Holidays-
I agree that many religious holidays should not be recognized as national holidays, because that's favoring a religion just because it's popular. However, since so many people recognize them, we need to take them off, because people wouldn't attend school/work anyway. My ideas, which are only ideas at the moment, and therefore are flawed, are:

Allow people to take their own holidays
Only have secular holidays, like Memorial Day, Colombus Day, etc.

It's definitely an interesting issue.