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?
0 comments:
Post a Comment