I went back & added "generally" to my statement: "wealth turns the heart cold and blinds the eyes."
My sister & her husband sent me an email about domestic animals that challenged my thinking. Yes, domestic animals exist, therefore aren't they natural? They live in symbiosis with us. The human urge to domesticate them seems to be natural instinct, too. Even the most primitive cultures domesticate animals of some kind. On the other hand, my instinctual conscience cannot accept locking up fellow creatures in jails and on chains! Does crying exist in vain? If we can figure out how to keep our relationship with domesticated animals without possessing them, without chaining or caging them, without punishing them for being who they are, then my instinctual conscience would rest free. Though I can only speak for myself, in my bones I feel that every creature shares this instinctual conscience.
I myself would rather die of cold & starvation, or be hunted down, free in the wild, than waste away on a chain or in a jail. To deny that all life has feelings & emotions is to deny our own feelings & emotions. Hurt to others is hurt to ourselves. Hurt to ourselves is hurt to others. Loving my neighbor, loving myself, and loving God (loving the Whole) are one inseparable thing, one trinity. This is common sense.
It's silly we have to convince ourselves with scripture what we already know by common conscience, but we get stone-hearted; if you are a conventional Christian who believes that the Golden Rule does not apply to animals and the environment, why, then, does Jesus implore you to "preach the gospel to every creature"? (This biblical word "creature", ktisis, literally means "every created thing"). The Golden Rule is the very Gospel according to Jesus, whether you read the truth you know in your conscience or are blind and have to prove it by written scripture.
Ever notice how the Law of Nature abhores prolonged suffering, but has no problem with death? Then notice how our present civilization has a problem with individual death yet promotes prolonged suffering, keeping it going day after day, year after year, passing it down through generations, and calling it "compassion"? (Though, paradoxically, present civilization has no problem with mass death through war & poverty). Ever notice how present civilization thinks "compassion" is keeping individuals from experiencing natural dangers, risks, and death?
Why do we think death, risks, and danger (things that cannot be avoided) are so horrifying, and yet we think prolonged suffering, which can be avoided, is an inevitable and necessary fact of life? So how do we avoid prolongued suffering? By accepting what cannot be avoided: death, risk, and danger.
Death, risk, and danger can be denied or postponed, but never avoided. The essence of present civilization is about denying or postponing death, risk, danger. Postponing death, risk, & danger is called debt, which only makes death, risk, & danger even bigger when they do happen!
Freedom comes with death, risk, and danger, without fail. Bondage postpones death, risk, and danger. Bondage is debt. Bondage is prolonged suffering. Yes, the basis of present civilization is delusion, our attempt to deny or avoid Natural Selection, which is bondage, which is debt, which is prolonged suffering!
