I completely understand your feelings on this, Moonlight, and I agree with your sentiments that everyone's role is essential. However, I think what Quiznos is considering on this thread is what happens when the government DEEMS someone "non-essential." It usually follows that once something is deemed essential, there is usually something deemed "non-essential," and once that happens, there's usually someone to ask the question, "Then why do we have it/them?" Now that we have an idea of what roles the government considers essential in society, what actions might the government decide to take with those who have been identified as "non-essential?"
In the fiction world, dystopian future scenarios have examined this idea of everyone having their "niche" in society and what do we do with those that don't fit. The outcome is never pretty (e.g. Huxley's "Brave New World," Lowry's "The Giver," and Orwell's "1984").
It's one thing to talk about fiction, but we've already seen the result of some of this compartmentalizing of people as useful and "not" useful in surprisingly recent history. This was part of what the eugenics movement during the Progressive Era was all about. It was all about what to do with people the State considers "useless" or what to do to prevent them from being born. (Please note that I'm talking about what GOVERNMENTS might do with those they see no use for) Enter forced sterilizations in the US (e.g. Buck vs. Bell 1929), and the death camps in Germany, Japan, and the USSR. In Germany, the atrocious methods of extermination were used to "clean out" the mental institutions and other facilities designed to care for those who could no longer "contribute" to society before Hitler's Final Solution was ever put into action.
I am not saying we are on course for a repeat of these events. However, I expect this is something you and I can agree on, Quiznos: we should be vigilant. Not vigilante, but vigilant. The church should be the conscience of society, not its executioner. We should remember history and our places in it so we don't retrace the paths of evil that have been walked before us. We should remind our governments how precious every life is to us and to God so that no one is ever deemed "non-essential." Psalm 139:13-15 "For you created my inmost being' you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." If we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made, and if our lives have such a meaning as to be written out for us in God's book from the moment of conception, we cannot deem anyone a non-essential worker, and we have to keep watching and make sure that no government does so either.
I don’t often agree with Quiznos but this is an excellent thread.
Also appreciate RM’s post too, very insightful.
The big question: who gets to decide who’s “essential”?
We had a judge declare baby murders “essential”. That’s right—don’t ya know we need abortion chambers open so they can sadistically pull apart those little ones from the womb limb by limb. Yep, that’s really “essential”!!
Then there’s irrational fear and panic.
When people are crazy fearful, they make themselves vulnerable.
Look how people clamoring for corona protection ended up ruining their economy!! Not only did their I irrational fears ruin the economy but also escalated suicides and depressions—-among other things!!!
I’m sure all that didn’t go unnoticed by our enemies. They must be feeling pretty secure about the effectiveness of psychological warfare. Fear seems to work awesomely against a silly people in the habit of rejecting their heritage by making laws against God.
Since fools refuse to fear God, they end up fearing everything else.
If you want to defeat a country that works as hard rejecting God, just create fear and panic. They’ll defeat themselves without the enemy firing a shot.
Our enemies also include internal anti-constitutional politicians who owe their power to a credulous public school indoctrinated public that keeps voting them in!!
Such politicians rely of crisis’ as an excuse for crafting more freedom killing legislation.
Even Rohm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, said we “can’t let a crisis go to waste”.
Politicians are quite capable of utilizing a crisis’ because a crisis creates an awesome opportunity to pass subversive laws and regulations.
Don’t be surprised if the WHO (World Health Organization) or others who helped create the panic, come up with “solutions”. Of course the newly proposed “safety solutions” will cost some freedoms but hey, at least you’ll be “safe”. right???
Yeah sure, “safe” as a gullible public school pupil learning to surrender his “inalienable” rights and freedoms!
Have you been listening to the news the last few weeks about the corona vaccine, Remdesivir?
My husband remembers the movie 12 monkeys with Bruce Willis ...I watched it so long ago I don't remember ANYTHING...but since I met him I hear about movie plots and his favorite movies, etc..Well, we were watching Newsy on the Roku Tv and the lady newcaster was speaking about 12 monkeys exposed to the virus in hopes of a cure.
He took notice and said :"12 monkeys!!"
NOW all I can find on You tube is news stories about 13 monkeys and another one says 6 monkeys. HMMMMM... I think ALOT of people may be making a connection, so they quickly changed it is my opinion. I DID find one foreign news source that mentions 12 monkeys. Take a look.:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_BMIMGZomo
and here for the movie referencehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP2tkjlAuyo
Thru movies and the media the governments let the people know that they are either workimg on the imventions shown in movies, or they have completed them and will begin testing them.
Thank you for your comment, David. I've been quite busy lately, and I have sadly dropped the ball and not gotten around to thanking you properly for your comments to me in some of the recent discussion threads lately, so I hope you'll accept my belated thanks.
You also bring up a couple of very important points in this discussion, David. It's definitely a dangerous time to live in a world where the mass slaughter of unborn babies is deemed an essential service. The church has a long way to go to turn this around. I agree with you that fear and panic are tactics being used to make people more vulnerable. Generally speaking, fear makes people more easily distracted and leads to less thinking and more reacting. As Christians, we need to remember that fear is a lack of trust in God's covenant with us and that fearfulness means we are envisioning a future without God in it. If we remember God is already in tomorrow, we don't fear what is to come quite so much.
Quiznos, I've not heard many people point out the parallels between what appears in movies and what happens in real life. However, I've seen a few occasions where a tactic or ideology I've seen in real life was first portrayed in a TV show or movie. It's sad because Hollywood used to produce films with good morals. They may not have been practicing good morals when the cameras weren't rolling, but at one time they at least knew enough about what was moral to portray good morals in some of their movies.
Definitely; life often imitates art. Star Trek had communicators that flipped open. The inventor of the flip phone, as I recall, was indeed a Star Trek fan.
George Orwell's 1984 predicted telescreens that had cameras that collected information about your whereabouts and activities. Today, we carry smart phones that have two cameras, a microphone, and a GPS locator that frequently asks us how we liked the places we just visited, and there are concerns about their security and whether they are or could be used to spy on citizens. The movie "Enemy of the State" dealt with the government's ability to monitor the movements of citizens without even the need for smartphones.
From Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey we now have Alexa.
Film and TV have also shown how human nature can work and how dictators can rise to power:
The Star Trek Episode "Plato's Stepchildren" showed how extreme boredom often results in an increase in cruelty and a loss of humanity. Having the luxuries of life at our fingertips and the social media to consume entertainment at a rate never before conceived has led to boredom and there is still no end to the cruelty we see on social media.
The Star Wars prequel trilogy shows how a manufactured crisis and the deception of innocent people can lead to knee jerk reactions that make room for a dictator to rise to power, as Padme remarked, to the "thunderous applause" of the people about to be subjugated. This reflects much of how Hitler rose to power in Germany.
The Book of Eli shows us what a world who has completely forgotten God might look like. With no God to believe in, humanity is left with only its most base instincts to motivate it to any action. Society hasn't even completely forgotten God, but we already see the potential for humanity to sink to that level.
Like I said, sometimes Hollywood has known the truth, even if they don't always follow it.
Obviously this is a bit off topic, but I find that sci-fi and fantasy are often just places for people to express their dreams for the future as well as their fears: to show how atrocities have been done, and how they can come to haunt us again.
right???