Prayer for the 21st century

For those tired of millennia old prayer methods, here are three easy steps to bring your prayer life into the 21st century:

1. Before praying, make sure you deck out your surrounds with lots of candles. Now, this little secret was discovered years ago, but has been lost amongst a maze of Bibles in in many of our 'contemporary' churches, just as the New Agers rediscover the aromatherapeutic power of the scented candle.

2. It can be hard to find the words to pray, so what you need to do is visit EXAMEN.me, which will do all that for you. And with the internet on your mobile phone, prayer can now be done on the train, at work, anywhere you want!

3. Now you have the prayers, get yourself a Prayer Answer-er.

This snazzy little gizmo will sort out those issues with lack of assurance. Its size may be a little inconvenient, but in a year or two it will have been adjusted so as to be a regular feature of all mobile phones - but don't wait 'til then to get in on the action.

Bollywood Blurb

It really bugs me when I hear about these cases where consumers sue companies for what was essentially the consumer's own choice (supposedly influenced unfairly by the company). I mean, if your primary source for information on the impact of cigarettes or junk food on your health is the people trying to sell this stuff to you, then you probably deserve whatever you got coming to you.

But then, I guess we need some way to ensure that the corporate world is fair in how they manipulate the public. In order to encourage truth in this area I think I ought to give recognition where it is due. Generally advertisements grossly exaggerate the value of a product and surprisingly never provide a summary of its faults. Yet yesterday i cam across a remarkable counter-example to this trend. The following is the blurb from a DVD I bought of Asoka:

"A trashy movie that is not only boring, but extremely misleading. This is a film that is supposed to be happening in 2-3rd century BC, and at least be sketching the life of King Ashoka the Great. The film fails miserably to do any justification to its title, which unfortunately has been used shamelessly as a gimmick to sell the trash mainly to Indian cosmopolitan and western audiences. The film in the beginning claims not to be accurate, but it is no excuse for abandoning truth altogether. The film is boring and has copied some of the ideas from Gladiator and Braveheart. The war scenes are ridiculous. From the typical Bollywood formula movie angle, it is an average movie. Cinematography and songs are good."

Wow, some big praise there at the end which balances out the bias. Effective marketing anyhow, cause I paid for the product. If only all marketers were as honest/illiterate, then maybe we would spend less time wasting away in front of the idiot box.

'Change'

So, that is why Obama's slogan drew such big crowds. Well, he did do particularly well in the states with high unemployment.

But he isn't the first to run a campaign with such a slogan. Which I find rather surprising. Okay, perhaps not so surprising this time, since the last president led the nation into two as yet unsuccessful wars, the worst financial crisis in a century and managed to turn basically the whole world against the US. But really, the slogan 'Change' says very little - only that we won't be like the other guys.

I think one reason that it is an effective message is because we tend to be very critical of our leaders largely due to the impact of the media which constantly reminds us of their falls and places the blame in the government's lap. Since our focus is on the negatives, our impression come election time will also be that there is need for change. As the old actor Will Rogers said, "The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best."

I may be reading too much into it, but I also see this as coming from a particular Western mindset. Our attitude towards the past is quite unique. We look back on our ancestors as barbaric and ignorant, we shuns tradition. Our culture is individualistic and entrepreneurial; we are encouraged to challenge existing structures and be elements of change. In the East, by contrast, ancestors are worshiped and tradition is held in esteem. Social structures are more stable and people are, perhaps, viewed more collectively in family or social groups. I think this prevents many positive developments like those experienced in the West, which is why many societies in the East are comparatively patriarchal and autocratic. But in some ways this can be better, certainly it is necessary to have this kind of stability in impoverished nations. Certainly those in the East see that their system has retained conceptions of 'honour' and family that are disappearing in the West.

But, for this election at least, I have no complaints about a campaign that promotes doing things very differently.