26 FEB 2015 :: Politics & Government, Life Issues, and Retirement

The title lists the tentative topics for Thursdays...

It's been a long day...I'm trying to get what I can done before going to bed for the night... which is a goal of 10pm these days.  I'm hoping it will help my health and my schedule.  I guess I'm kind of retired now... I received my first Social Security Early Retirement payment... not much, but I have nothing right now.  It seems like a million dollars. 

I was on Facebook tonight and discovered the Calendar in the Events section... so I added some major holidays for me to keep track of...Earth Day is coming up on 22 APR, and the National Day of Prayer is on 7 MAY this year (first Thursday in May).  I didn't get to Resurrection Sunday yet, but I noted my goal for the next Christmas selling season (1 SEP).  The 4th of July has been entered. And I even went to Valentine's Day 2016.   Who really retires?  We just change our activities... right?!

I discovered the most unusual post on Facebook yesterday, but I saw it again today.  It was a baby that was deliver still inside its sac. I assumed it was premature because of the size, but it looked fully formed.  We don't see things like that normally.  It is quite a different world with the internet, and smartphones.  (I want one!   :-)

It isn't too hard to see the future...just look at the headlines and expand the concepts.  Genetic engineering is leading to places we may regret we have gone.  I saw a headline somewhere about people living to the age of 142 or more.  It's not too big a leap because some people have made it to about 120 already... in our generations.  With increasing medical discoveries, the future is beginning to look too orchestrated.  Only the healthy might be allowed to exist... and people may be created in DNA labs even if they are incubated in a womb. I suppose the main reason will be the costs of illness.

When we force people to take vaccinations, against their personal values, we are heading our country into larger areas of forced compliance.  Freedom has risks, but it is still important to allow citizens to control as much of their lives as possible.  I'm not sure how to describe the boundaries because laws that limit regular choices like vaccinations and medical insurance and education and income and more do not fit the "within the boundaries of law" I would like to cite.

What is freedom, and how do you create a foundation of freedoms that can be applied across generations?  We don't have the Bible as our guide any longer...what does that do to all the other values that made America great?  When does one citizen's freedom trespass on another's freedom... and how do we create boundaries that reflect our national beliefs? 

It's not an easy problem...and I don't think we will find an easy solution.