Where do I get these thoughts of the day from? From life and places across the world. There are plenty of people with wisdom and feelings about how we may conduct ourselves.

When I was a kid, I would listen with curiosity to how we might live, from anyone and everyone who I felt had authority to speak. And as a kid that’s just about everyone taller than me.

Things in families, where with brothers and sisters, we might fight, Mum and Dad would have their say on how we all got on. Teachers and others as well. And of course these spiritual types, from Church they had their say at Sunday school and the like. I was not a God fearing type, my Dad saw to that. But I did pick up on things Godly, and I suspect had a problem reconciling God’s words being spoken by a man in a dress.

I don’t mean to put down priests and ministers when I say this, but they did seem different and I wondered why God would speak to them and not to me. What gave them the edge? Why of course nothing did except what we were told. And fortunately I had enough brain power to work out words spoken by mankind are mankind’s words and not really anything a God might have to offer.

In the muddle of life, we are pretty much on our own and any words we make and put together to create harmony are good enough for me. Words of wisdom are those we make from reality. We don’t need that to be God’s words, they are good enough from our collective wisdom of generations in my view. This does not undermine spiritual at all. For spiritual is of man, of our endeavour and our learning to live life as we have it.

We don’t need to be promised anything beyond the here and now by people who offer redemption in the after life, because its after this one. A mean trick of control of the masses maybe, I do believe we are here to make good through endeavour what we will. And beyond is beyond now. What follows is separate and nothing to do with our conduct now.

Now to speak with conscious control and only what is necessary and helpful offers up a bit of a problem for me. This is because it suggests to be harmonious there are things we don’t say and we don’t offer as our truth. And truthfully, the more we inhibit our thoughts and their airing to others, the more likely the harmony we create is real to an extent, but its premise is on falsehood. I have done the conscious control bit for harmony for many a year. To keep the peace and keep the good of something going. It is no real peaceful outcome if along this track we find we have not got our harmony in place and we feel pretty fucked up by being a blessed peacemaker.

Now it seems better to speak with even voice and with reasoned argument about what we are feeling. To offer persuasion in our expression of truth. And to honour our notion of fairness in life.

There is no virtue in being peaceful if we accept unreasonable harmony. And by that I mean an unfair and unjust outcome. We know in life we face great inequalities and we do well to realise that these states will not change to suit us. At the same time we can find our place in this world which is full of corruption and quite frankly greedy and malicious regimes, and still be harmonious in our ways of living.

We are but individuals and while we recognise our place as equals, that this world offers little in the way of fairness, we can move this world gently towards harmony. As has been observed, the world was built in seven days, what utter bollocks that is. And actually the world took quite a while. Mankind is emerging as dominant, and as we develop our philosophy as a world, we surely will be driven both by personal needs and wants, and by a conscience which reveals a desire for all to have equal opportunity.

Our world, the imperfect, perfect opportunity. Ourselves, imperfect and perfectly capable of moving humanity that little bit near to our ideals. We are young as a race, we are developing our world philosophy and we are learning from reality, that nothing comes quick or easy.

We don’t get good at virtue without being less than virtuous, we don’t get good at conscience without learning what it is to be bad. Our relative badness, this can lead to personal grief or public disgrace. And if our nature is so, we can face the punishments for crimes against society and our beliefs. Our price to pay is as heavy as mankind chooses to exact. And our consequences on the personal level of going against our conscience is our loss of spiritual connection to living life.

So we need be mindful, we are merely part of something so big, we will only ever be incremental in the big picture of human doings. Our voice is no louder, better or more effective in time than any other. Our contribution may never be attributable to us, other than we once existed and made a difference in our own backyard.

Our fundamental flaw if ever there is one, is to believe we are greater in value than any other. And as bad as that can be, is to believe that another human being is worth more or less than ourselves. This does not preclude heroism or sacrifice, for that is part of conscience and living.

So speak your mind, with calm if you can. Speak loudly if your world is disrupted with inequality, stay silent with peril for that peril will never leave you, find harmony in truth as reality offers opportunity. Walk away from conflicts beyond principles which place others below your worth. Never forget equality in relations and work with your values intact. Above all else recognise our world will not change to our vision, it will develop where it will and the will of the many lies.