I got a request from The Night Wind to hear my thoughts getting inflation under control. I consider inflation primarily as the manifestation of a moral problem. We like to blame the big banks, financial cartels, and politicians. We like to blame some enemy, but the real problem is us. We don’t care enough about each other to work together and get the problem under control. Instead, we stovepipe ourselves, each into our own special interest groups.
The purpose of a stovepipe is to vent all those toxic combustion gases from the fire chamber of a stove. However, the word “stovepiped” also means something that many may find an unexpected surprise.
Definition of stovepiped
:…isolated in a way that hinders communication and cooperation with others…
//the Patriot Act is an important change in the law that will allow the FBI and the CIA to better share information together. We were kind of stovepiped, I guess is a way to describe it. — George W. Bush
Continued => https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stovepiped
Why do agencies isolate themselves? The FBI and the CIA have security reasons, but the main problem is often just organizational pride. Working with others requires giving up some control and adopting different procedures.
Each of us in some way chooses to stovepipe ourselves from others. Instead of trying to connect with everyone, we try to connect with people who think like “me.” Why? It is pretty good bet that most of us think ourselves better than everyone else, and people like “me” tell us what we want to hear.
Stovepiping is something that is fairly easily observed even on the Internet.
- If you like to debate, it is easy to find blogs that discuss politics or religion, and some blog masters will spam your comments if you disagree with them. To be one of the smart people, we must agree with them.
- Some people routinely denigrate the masses. These people view others as generally stupid. Their cynicism apparently ranks them as among the wise.
- Entire ideologies, Communism and Nazism, in particular, require the leadership of a vanguard or a race of supermen. The people who most readily adopt such ideologies, of course, see themselves as part of the vanguard or as supermen. The ideology of these people sorts who is elite and who is not.
- Certain religious beliefs require special knowledge that only spiritual people have. The most spiritual we sometimes call gurus. The gurus identify the spiritual people.
- We split ourselves into all kinds of identity groups based upon our race, our sex, our creed, our ethnic origin, our sexual preference, our job, our union, our political party, our disabilities, our…, and so forth. Then we demonize who don’t belong. Identity characteristics sort who is deserving from who are not.
- When we sort ourselves into the fans of various personalities and sports teams, we can carry what should be mere entertainment to an absurd extreme. Then who we adore or what team we adore identifies who is one of “us” and who is not.
- We all have our favorite news and information sources. Unfortunately, getting all our information from the same places all the time is the definition of stovepiping. Of course, since “we” have the best sources, “we” tend to think of those who don’t know what “we” know and believe what “we” believe about current events as ignorant.
You don’t think you are guilty of stovepiping yourself? Well, I am not anyone’s judge, but I would be surprised if the One who is agrees. Stovepiping and other sins of pride are something we all need to pray about.
It is worthwhile to remember the truths upon which this nation was founded.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
Everything we are is a gift of God. He gives us the gifts we need, not the ones we want. Be it seemingly large or small, what matters is whether we fulfill the purpose He has given us, not how important we each think we are.
1 John 4:19-21 New American Standard Bible
19 We love, because He first loved us. 20 If someone says, “I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.
If we hate those God has created and what He has created, we won’t choose to fulfill God’s purpose. So, I suppose we also need to pray about that. We each need to pray that God will help us to love each other as we love our self.
The success as a nation is largely a matter of divine providence. We live in an extremely unusual nation founded upon the idea that God loves us, and He wants us to love each other. Unfortunately, not enough of us believe that anymore, and that should be a lesson to us.
What can we do? We can fulfill the Great Commission. We need to remind our neighbors that God loves them. We need to love our neighbors, and we need to set an example. We need to live as if we believe that the treasures we build up in Heaven will matter more than he ones we collect here.
Will that fix inflation? Will that save our republic? I don’t know, but it may save our own soul and a few others.
Citizen Tom 
Reblogged this on boudica.us.
Thanks for the reblog!
Tom,
More often than not, stovepipers seem to stovepipe themselves from listening to good constructive advice, in my opinion.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
The Bible says as much. See Romans 3:10-18.
Tom
Romans 3:10-18 still applies now same as in past generations….which is another example of “nothing new under the sun:””
Regards and goodwill blogging.
Hmmm, well now I’m all stovepiped, Tom. Inflation is not a moral problem or at least my morals didn’t cause it. I do blame politicians, financial institutions, and the federal reserve, all things I’ve had no hand in. Absolutely nobody ever consults with me before conducting their corrupt affairs.
I agree with you however, about the need to spread the good news and to try to stop the divisions going on. Corruption thrives when people are too busy fighting among themselves to pay attention to what our leaders are up to. Our motto for this country is actually not “in God we trust,” it is E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
Were you consulted? Yes. We elected the leaders of our country. Are our elections becoming more corrupt? Did you vote for the people who won and created the mess in the 9th Circle of Hell? Probably not, but someone did, and that is a moral problem.
It is a truism. Most people vote their pocketbooks. To most parents, the public education system has looked like a good deal for decades, but the public education system has steadily become more corrupt. We have similar problems with Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve, so-called freeways, and so forth. Nothing is free, but we have been voting for politicians to give us stuff, and that is why Congress spends and spends and spends.