It is quite strange what otherwise sensible people will believe, especially if they are forced to by circumstances. I spoke to someone yesterday, who told me that they know that the environment is being damaged irreparably, that the consequences of climate change threatens human beings and their habitat, and that natural resources are being used up at an alarming rate. I asked what he thought was the perspective for the future and he said, “We’ll find other means!”
I think that this belief is at least as irrational as the beliefs in cosmic daddies who will protect you if you are good, or believe in the right things or recite the right scripture. The question is not whether to believe or not believe, but whether belief has anything at all to do with religion. Evidence suggests, that religion has to do with behaviour in harmony with reality, as well as relying on substantial wisdom based on long experience.
Of course we have history showing us how humankind developed its outlook and gradually turned to the fact that our minds react to information given by our senses, making our perception as much something internal as based on external experience. It seems that it wasn’t as simplistic as some militant religionists or atheists would have us believe, but that isn’t the big discovery. The biggest discovery seems to be that the modern age is only re-inventing what has been known for approximately 2500 years – re-discovering is more correct. However, we have more to put right and less time to do it in.
The big question is what this all has to do with practical issues, like survival of the species? As long as beliefs such as the types I mention in the beginning rule our behaviour, along with numerous other strange ideas, we seem to be advised to just get comfortable and watch the show – the fireworks should be huge.
Is there a perspective for humanity? What do you see as the road ahead, which will provide hope for following generations?
Like the dinosaurs the human species well become extinct. And like better came after the dinosaurs something better will come along after humans. Let’s hope.
“[…] it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.”
What do YOU consider “better”?
What makes you think that what followed the dinosaurs were ‘better’ than them?
It seem to me that it is a general misconception to characterise ‘evolution’ as progress to better things.
Let’s face it evolution is about nothing more than fitness, and it is bacteria that will survive us and have a 'better" chance of adapting to new and changing environments, as they have for billions of years.
What is poor thinking is lumping together Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein, and attributing to them the same platitudinous poetic meaningless nonsense ;“ll things are one thing and that one thing is all things.”
I challenge you to support, with citation, that any of them held such a empty thought! Or that if they did, they thought it in a comparable way.
It’s just a bit of poetic film-flam.
All of these thinkers developed their points of view by drawing strict distinction between things, not by confusing all as one.
Steinbeck was a bit of a poetic flim-flam artist. I emphasize that last word - artist. Some people look to what we have in common and inspire others to reconceptualize what they thought they already knew.
Despite all the doom and gloom, all the chaos, I’m starting to see a glimmer of something hopeful. The young are waking up. It is the sleepy old men who are the roadblock. The merely religious and “traditionalists” are being challenged everywhere. We watched a new term being coined called the “Arab Spring” thinking it was a localized phenomenom, but it isn’t. You see it everywhere. The old ways of thinking and doing, the tired and outmoded memes of the last 100 years are being challenged in practically every society. The young are seeking new answers to all the old questions. The old answers that may have worked in the past, no longer find resonance among the young. There is an almost global restlessness. Part of this is the exponential growth of information dissemination vis-a-vis the explosion of communication technologies, but the larger issue is the inability of societies to meet even reasonable expectations.
I can’t say where this will lead us, but the pot is simmering and will come to a boil much sooner than any of us expect. Can religion survive this movement? Possibly. I doubt it, or if it does, it won’t be recognizable to those clinging to their blanky. The specie will survive, although the definition of what it means to be human will undoubtably change drastically.
Thanks for the question,
I am coming to terms with the fact that I was born in a time and place in which other people and countries have been massively exploited and manipulated, and I have been born and live in countries, which profited on that whilst causing untold tragedies in the world. I have been getting used to the fact that many processes are irreversible and try to live a life which I can at least say, I have done my best to not just run with the crowd. I know that my fellow countrymen are not all individually responsible (although, if the truth be known, we are more responsible than we think), but we are collectively responsible for all things which we hate. It is probably karma.
I try to go through life mindfully and do my best, but I have noticed that friends thin out when you do that, and those who have influence are not interested - but if you push it, they get (negatively) interested in you - but people who have no influence and are not well situated seem to react to me with affection. In my position and at my age, it is a question of how long you can survive before someone pushes you out, and then I’ll be tested as to whether I’m clinging to my status, or whether I can let go. I have actually started thinking that I could probably do more substantially at that level than my present level, but I suppose I am clinging to the idea that what I’m doing is worthwhile.
In fact, that seems to be the point at present: Do the good things you can for the sake of it and don’t put your hopes up too high. You can’t change anybody else but yourself - but that is quite a lot!
I don’t need absolution and, “sounds like” isn’t the same as “is”.
The point of this thread is that, just like the fundamentalists and militants of the world are relying on their beliefs, so are a great deal of other people when they try to find some perspective for the future - including rampant atheists who charge religion with the greatest harm done. You don’t have to believe in the flying spaghetti monster, if you believe that “somehow” things will go alright, if you go out on a mission without a withdrawal plan, if you go to war without a peace plan, you are blatantly ignoring the fact that things can go wrong (don’t forget Murphy’s law) and it is a belief that sustains you.
Up until now, religions have done a lot of horrific things, but it seems the irrational belief that it will be alright in the end will have far wider effects.
I agree that there are good signs here and there, and I support them, but the western society seems so bland and laid back, waiting for the storm.
I agree with HC about the bacteria. They were on earth two billion years before humans came along. They can survive extreme environments of heat and cold. Some can survive a nuclear winter. The downfall of the human race is hubris. We are not the “crown of creation”. Most humans cannot even understand the importance of belonging to ecosystems.
Baloney. Bacteria don’t have smart phones or computers. They don’t have electric cars. We ARE the crown of creation. It’s just that the crown is tilted and a bit wobbly. Besides, we don’t have a few more million years to wait. We need new answers NOW.
My source on bacteria is from Stephen J. Gould. What’s your source? It is because we believe we are the crown of creation that we trash the very environment we need for survival.
What’s the use of having all the playthings technology can produce if the human race is suicidal?
“Where there is hubris there is nemesis.”–Aldous Huxley