A particular rant on a popular social website lay claim to the \u201cascent of man\u201d while insulting and name calling a presidential candidate in the most profane and uncivilized manner. This seemed ironic, for in what way do we measure and lay claim to man\u2019s ascent? By bashing someone?<\/p>\n
I began to think about this a bit more and concluded that the ascent of man will never be measured in our species\u2019 artistic or technological achievements. If that were so, the nation of Israel would not have a problem staging the operas of Richard Wagner. But they do have a problem because, even though Wagner\u2019s music is lauded as a massive humanistic achievement, his anti-Semitic views expressed during his life cannot be overlooked by the Jewish state even though anti-Semitism is not readily apparent in his operas. And many times we are called to boycott someone who has expressed a certain viewpoint even though their talent or work seemingly contributes to our supposed \u201cascent\u201d. Why?<\/p>\n
Because the \u201cascent of man\u201d is not really expressed in what we do with physical mediums such as marble, wood, metal, sound, film, silicon, technology or physiology. It is advanced in how we treat other human beings when we are both powerless and<\/em> powerful. It is shown in how we treat others when we disagree politically, ideologically or demographically.<\/p>\n When I think of man\u2019s ascent, I don\u2019t think of marble statues, works of literature and massive operas. I think of the great manifestation of divine attributes like forgiveness, mercy, compassion, humility, sacrifice, honesty and things for which only a few people have been lauded but which each of us can exercise everyday\u2014despite our talents or resources. Do we?<\/p>\n Consider these individuals that have contributed to the ascent of man even though you may not find their work in a museum or cinema:<\/p>\n So next time you feel the need to rant about Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Atheist, Wall Street protesters, Tea partiers, Michelle Bachmann, Barack Obama or anyone else and drag them through the mud with a stream of spewing vitriol, please don\u2019t claim a role in man\u2019s ascent. You have forfeited that alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A particular rant on a popular social website lay claim to the \u201cascent of man\u201d while insulting and name calling a presidential candidate in the most profane and uncivilized manner. This seemed ironic, for in what way do we measure and lay claim to man\u2019s ascent? By bashing someone? I began to think about this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n