Friday, July 06, 2012

Australian Girl Guides adopt a new pledge

Australian Girl Guides used to make this promise:
I promise to do my best;
to do my duty to God, to serve the
Queen and my country;
to help other people; and
to keep the Guide Law.

But the promise has now been modernised to this:
I promise to do my best;
To be true to myself and develop my beliefs
To serve my community and Australia
And live by the Guide Law.

Much of it is the same, but look at the second line of the new promise. The guides now promise to be true to themselves. But in what sense? And they promise to develop their beliefs. But which beliefs?

Are all beliefs equally worthy of being developed? Does it not matter which beliefs we develop? Is the act of developing any kind of belief really more worthy than having and following good or true beliefs?

The message of the new pledge is that the beliefs themselves don't matter as long as you are developing some sort of belief. That comes across as a let down compared to the first pledge which more robustly asserts a set of meaningful relationships and commitments.

And if all beliefs are equally worthy of being developed, then why take the promise itself seriously? There's a contradiction here. The promise itself hints that beliefs are just beliefs, perhaps with a personal meaning, but nothing more. And yet the girls are expected to promise to follow a particular set of beliefs. But why do this if there is no truth or larger meaning underlying the particular set of beliefs the girls are promising to follow?

12 comments:

  1. "To be true to myself and develop my beliefs" is really just an invitation to further descend into narcissism, the official religion of liberalism.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agree completely. It's supposed to be more "inclusive", according to the spokeswoman doing the rounds today - but as you point out, this nothing-everything formulation includes people who think Hitler and Stalin are gods to be worshipped...

    ReplyDelete
  3. "nothing-everything formulation" is a good way to put it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't know about Girl Guides, but the 'liberals' certainly must have a worldwide guide - as nation after nation go through the same mechanical mincer.

    Removal of structure, tradition, history, any perceived "dominant" or "host" identity - through vague and generalities such as "develop my beliefs".....(no doubt the 'beliefs' imbibed into them through leftist doctrines in the education system and on TV!)....then there is being "inclusive"....(which means destroying your own identities and putting yourself out to suit others, but never the other way around).

    Although it can be easy to read too much into this, and it is a fairly small matter, I cannot help but get the idea from it that Australia is slipping down the same drain as Britain, only in some things, a decade or so behind.

    If there was a guide or modus operandi (which would no doubt be shared between various "Labour" parties, who are the ones that seem to create the most destruction in one sitting), I bet Australians could set their watch to what kinds of antics will come for them in the future by tuning into the British manual of selfdestruction.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I liked this part in the Daily Mail article:

    "God has been removed because, said Miss Allen, members did not feel ‘duty to God’ reflected all faiths and belief systems across the world."

    Tell me again why the Australian Girl Guides should care about the "faiths and belief systems across the world"??? They are not the World Girl Guides they are the Australian Girl Guides, and therefore they should only care about the faiths practiced in Australia.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anon,

    Sorry, I removed the last comment, as I've found from experience that it tends to derail discussions.

    Feh,

    Well observed. They want to reflect all peoples everywhere. That inevitably means emptying out their own particular tradition.

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's all right Mr. Richardson, I understand. It's too bad that modern people are so well conditioned that their probable reactions render this necessary (that is, the deletion of the other comment). Anyhow, avoiding that particular question, it seems that one of the best responses would be simple civil disobedience. All who oppose such things ought simply to refuse to go along with them. Those who have children must remove them from organizations which have been subverted, pray in the schools, wear crucifixes in public. The remnant of the faithful must have nothing but contempt for what infidels think of them. If a man is filled with terror at the thought of the possible consequences of adopting such a belligerent attitude, then how can he expect to have any hope of attaining the grace of Final Perseverance? Has he not rather turned from the way of salvation into the paths which lead to everlasting corruption by his refusal to show himself a faithful soldier of Christ? I'm sure that you are not guilty of such cowardice Mr. Richardson, but all too many are. This excessive love of wordly goods & pleasures is what brought about England's fall into heresy. If the mass of Englishmen had manifested the heroic spirit we see in the history of St. Thomas More, or St. John Fisher, then England would almost certainly have remained faithful. We need that spirit today, the willingness to die rather than burn incense to the idols of this vile modern world.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm reminded of the suggested 'new British anthem' you blogged about Mark.

    I am England
    England is inside of me


    etc.

    Naff - verging on the solipsistic, in both cases.

    ReplyDelete
  9. And let's not forget our own classic from Labor: "We are us". Stolen of course, but it SO suited Julia.

    (But I always worried: what about them that are they?)

    ReplyDelete
  10. "Being True to myself"

    Damn makes me want to troll them so bad.

    ReplyDelete
  11. What does "true to myself" mean? Were Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc, untrue to their own beliefs? It seems to me that they were very enthusiastic about developing their own beliefs.

    ReplyDelete
  12. "I am England
    England is inside of me"

    Is this the anthem of the modern English trollop? =)

    ReplyDelete