Does Letting Go Lead to Chaos or Peace?

The latest religious surveys about the habits of Americans continue to show the trends away from organized religions to more free form, unafiliated religions and spiritual practices. Letting go of those forms seems to suit more people every time one of these surveys is taken. People want to let go of the forms they find restrictive. They want the freedom to be creative. They want the freedom to believe or not believe, practice or not practice as they choose. Letting go brings less problems for those who want more peace in their lives, more personal power, control of their personal spiritual life without someone else telling them how it should be.

I generally do not talk about politics on my blog, but here is another simple example of letting go solving a problem. Right now the wars between gangs trying to control the drug traffic is causing the government to assign hundreds more cops to the border area with Mexico. One simple act could make all that unnecessary. If we simply legalized drugs, there would not be a need for gangs to control the traffic any more. Gangs fought for control of beer and whiskey distributorships when alcohol was illegal. Now people just go to stores and buy the stuff. Same would happen if drugs were legalized. People would simply go to stores and buy the stuff and the government would make money on taxes. So we keep wasting more money deploying police to stop something that cannot be stopped, and in the meantime, many people will be killed or seriously hurt in the drug wars. And all that could end with one act that would also turn it into a money maker for the government.

Another step toward letting go is easing the travel restrictions to Cuba. I have been of the opinion for a long time that the embargo has been ineffective. It did not cause the government of that country to change. Lifting the embargo would be a boon to their economy and also stimulate tourism and trade from people in the US who want to do business there and vacation there. Letting go of this failed idea can produce a good result.

And here is one more. I am no financial expert, but the more news stories I hear about the misdeeds of the financial firms, the more I wonder if letting them go into bankruptcy and letting the well run companies take over would not be the better choice. I have compassion for all those workers at the auto manufacturers, but if they cannot produce a product of quality equal to or better than what we get from other manufacturers, theen I guess we will just buy more from those other manufacturers and we will continue to see more Hondas, Hyundais, and Toyotas on the road than Chevys, Buicks and Pontiacs.

Sometimes we have to let go of what is not working in order to let other things work better.