In Quest of Wisdom Book Three of Seafoam on the Sand
Fourteen Treatises on Controversial Topics Offering Some Unconventional Thoughts to Challenge Your Convictions or Reinforce Them
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ยท How about drugs? Should our "Big Brother" governments, national, or state, or local, be given the responsibility and authority to dictate whether we should use drugs or not? If so, which drugs? Tobacco, Caffeine, Alcoholic beverages, Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin,---the list is long; just look at a medical handbook. Most of us recognize that some of these drugs are not only dangerously addictive, but are mind-altering and physically debilitating. So we do wish to find a way to reduce their usage, and especially to somehow prevent our children and our other loved-ones from being caught up in the culture that finds them to be attractive, for whatever silly and tragic reasons. Thus the Federal $40 billion-per-year "war on drugs". Is our censorship of these drugs productive and useful?
Censorship runs against the grain of our National Heritage. We are a "free" people, free to pick our own personal pursuits, our careers, our friendships, our choices for reading, our choices for entertainment, our travels, our personal habits---everything we think or do. Few of our citizens in this gloriously vibrant community of peoples wants it any other way. Our freedom is our life. We can not imagine living under any other conditions.
Yet it is painfully evident that our very freedoms, in addition to the fresh and robust breath of vigor they inject into our national pulse, result in people making poor choices which cause them to become slaves, as surely as if we had allowed slave traders to roam our streets and clamp them in shackles to be sold at a slave bazaar in some remote land. So we have the spectacle of our citizens, adults and children, freely choosing to become slaves in a land of blessed freedom! What can we do to prevent this condition, and eliminate it from our National scene?
Some of our citizens are gravitating toward Religion as the key to solving all of these problems. And in many cases, Religion does help. The question I suggest you must ask, though, is: does the particular Religion chosen lead to a mechanistic recital of words without internal significance? If that is the condition, it is unlikely to lead to supportive guidance. Many of us, and certainly I for one, would be tempted to censor religion itself for its worst features, e.g.: that God would "curse" the entire human species for Adam''s SINS; that we are all born in SIN; and that God forgave us all for our SINS because Christ was willing to "sacrifice" his own life--He died on the cross, crucified for our salvation. Also, the thought that God is on your side in a Holy War, or the Muslim Jihad, or that God has any tolerance for war in any form or for any reason, is an insanity of the worse kind. All of these obscene concepts and many more, in the Christian religion, as well as a host of others in the many organized religions that have been concocted by frenzied imaginations through the past centuries, present a portrait of a God that not only is powerful but also is Himself depraved. I sincerely hope that none of my children or grandchildren are exposed to this drivel at a time in their lives before they can think their way beyond it all to concentrate on Christ''s uplifting messages, or the uplifting messages from any of the Religious founders. I wouldn''t really wish to censor those misguiding thoughts or prevent them from being presented, since I have confidence in human intelligence to detect the fallacies in perverted thought; but I emphatically do hope that most people will find their way to more enlightened passages of the Bible and other "Holy Books", and that we will find ways to keep this sort of nonsense from being inflicted on our impressionable young people. (Please see my Treatise I, Religion).
I prefer a quiet, thoughtful cross-educational process. If we will carefully think about each of these areas for possible censorship, I think we will be able to come to some useful course of action, to be pursued gently and compassionately, not as a directive from some "God on High" but simply as an intelligent set of actions that respond to the basic elements of the problems:
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About the Book
Have you ever sat back and wondered what in the world the people in this world are trying to accomplish? Our leaders espouse a "Religious" personal life-style, but lead us into actions that the "Prince of Peace" would surely not approve of. Our schools are often so poorly managed that the parents have to join together to by-pass the public system, even though the teachers generally are skilled, dedicated and professionally qualified. We have had 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, although almost everyone thinks that abortion should be legal and safe, but rare. Large percentages of our citizens embrace alcoholic beverages as a normal and pleasant ingredient in civilized living, yet we have daily revelation that "drunk driving" and "drunken domestic violence" and "drunken irresponsibility" are severe problems in our society. The Political Scene is so partisan that as each candidate is presenting his or her qualifications, the main emphasis is always on how terrible the other guy or gal is, so you have to conclude, when they all are done, that there is nobody to vote for. We will be in deep trouble if anyone wins, and you wind up just voting against the one that sounds the worst. All of these enigmas, and more, piled up in the author''s mind until he just had to put his thoughts before all of you. As the title suggests, these are the author''s "best shot" at wisdom. He hopes that you will recognize that no one has "all the answers", including him. But you will find that he brings a refreshing "breath of fresh and unconventional thinking" to each of these somewhat controversial topics. Enjoy!
About the Author
In writing this book, Lee Inscho has drawn upon the diverse experiences he has enjoyed in a long, vigorous, and varied life: the challenges of a professional engineering career; skilled flutist in two symphony orchestras; composer of piano compositions; husband/ father/ grandfather/ great-grandfather--to one wife (for 57 years), six children, ten grand children, and seven great-grand children (and still counting); spent two and one-half years in the army, seeing action in WWII in Holland; captured, he spent six months starving as a prisoner-of-war in Germany; and then he escaped and found his way back to U.S. forces. At the end of the war, he returned home, married, and finished college with a B.S.M.E. And all that was just for starters. He and his wife, and the children as they have come along, have roamed this country, camping in many, many campgrounds, and living (for varying stretches of time) in Wyoming, Indiana, West Virginia, Delaware, New York, Connecticut, and finally in Colorado (since 1960). And they weren''t even being chased by the sheriffs! His first book, "In Quest of Manhood" is a graphic account of his life as he prepared for military action, and then went to war in W.W.II , including many elements of youthful foibles, but emphasizing his personal growth and that of his comrades as they were subjected to the stresses of killing and being killed on those battlefields. His second book, "In Quest of Parenthood" reveals the vigorous enthusiasm he and his wife brought to their marriage and to the raising of their children. They were energetic, but careful and compassionate in every aspect of those fifty-seven years they were fortunate to share together. And in the midst of that Lee entered into and pursued a very demanding and rewarding professional engineering career, first at General Electric, then at Pratt and Whitney Machine Tool Company, and finally at the Gates Corporation, in Denver, Colorado. All of those experiences serve as a solid platform from which Lee has been able to offer these unusual insights for living our daily lives in what he calls "this complex and magnificent world".