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Simon Paynton posted an update 1 month, 1 week ago
Here is an example of being “spiritual without being religious”: the BBC Radio 4 Prayer for the Day with Dr Steve Taylor. If you don’t want to listen (2 minutes) you can just read the text. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0017clr He has done one every day this week. Today it’s about being grateful to be alive.
Simon, some of us are lucky. Billions of people are not. They live in abject poverty, abuse, oppressive circumstances, hunger, neglect, discrimination, pain, war, disease and for many…several of the above. There is very little relief. An astronaut has a lot to be happy about. A poor starving boy in a council flat being beaten by their parents…does not, let alone millions suffering in underdeveloped oppresive places. People like Steve act as though their experiences are representative of the many. They are not. So no… “how lucky we are to be on Earth” is NOT factual. How lucky SOME of us are is.
We do not become prone to anxiety and depression because we are not mindful of things we should be glad of. This is a GROSS overgeneralisation and a profound misunderstanding of even minor mental health issues. This is NOT factual
The value of precious life is an Abrahamic-Judeo-Christian concept. Life is hardly precious for the literally billions of suffering. It is awful and seemingly endless with few moments of temporary relief. The value of life again, applied to the privelaged.
People can have grattitude for the air (it is NOT a gift, it is a product of millions of years of photosynthesis…again nothing FACTUAL there), but they cannot when they live in a city heavily polluted with air polution
People can only have grattitude for food when they actually have sufficient nourishing food. Thousands of children in the UK alone do not, let alone billions in developed countries.
This person simply comes across as tone deaf. A person who didn’t have a judeo-Christian world view, could have said something motivational and inspirational by being more careful with their words and using the “gift” of actual psychology and knowledge of what motivates people to reflect on what they have, what they don’t have and how to actually help others have these “gifts”.