"... On Aug 15, 7:14 am, RP Singh <[email protected]> wrote: ..."
> There are no gods but there is one being , you may call it Truth , Reality , > God , or Atman. And the fact is he doesn't require your worship and doesn't > care if you curse him as he is you , the witness in you and the doer in > you. You will not understand this Gruff as you are not used to thinking > along these lines. I appreciate your mis-assumptions about me but I understand your words perhaps better than you think I do. Actually I think we might possibly both see the same thing but pay it homage in different terms. You see, once I cast religion and god aside I spent a large part of my life looking for something real in which to believe. I even followed the teachings of Baha'u'llah for a time and think he was as wise (and sage) a man as was Christ and Mohammad. It impressed me that he taught that he was but the latest in a long line of prophets and brought the next step after Islam which had followed Christianity. He also very neatly laid out the major contribution each of the previous prophets had brought to humankind, noting that the greatest of Christ's teachings was about loving our fellow humans. However wise his words though, a religion was built on and around them and that was -- as it is with all religions -- it's downfall. Yet given that it is all -- all the religions and beliefs that humankind have ever had -- a creation of the human mind and psyche and thus subject to the same falliblities as every other human creation, it is understandable even if not acceptable. My belief is based on and has as its core the supremacy of the human species. There is not one shred of evidence or even basis for belief in any power higher than human beings. I'm not talking about the power inherent in the natural order of the universe which our sciences and arts define well. I'm talking about the power inherent in a unique ability of our species: We have mental and spiritual powers many orders of magnitude higher than any other living creature. We are so powerful that we create our own visions of worship. (I'm not counting alien species but that's just Hollywood anyway. [... another very human creation]). > As an expert only can understand the intricacies of > Economics only an expert who has spent a lifetime in such study and > deliberations can understand the logic behind God. That is why most people > go to a sage to see the way. I appreciate your own appreciation of your place in the scheme of things but think it is a bit self-aggrandizing. You seem to put aside that anyone can become an expert and it doesn't take a lifetime -- just a period of rather intense study. Economics is neither that mysterious nor that deep. It is young, not even a science. Still an art (but a beautiful one nonetheless). Only a hundred and sixty or so years old. We are just beginning to get a reasonable in-depth understanding of it and how it actually works -- or at least a beginning understanding and grasp of what different factors affect the marketplace and how. I am seeing a natural order in it which is no great shakes since Adam Smith saw the same thing a hundred and fifty years ago. We may have created economics but in doing so it seems to have tapped into a natural force in the universe that makes it adhere to certain rules -- one being that it cannot become so overextended that it crashes on empty. Which it just did a couple or three years ago. Smith called this the invisible hand of the marketplace. Yet one of it's more remarkable aspects is taking so long for us to realize, absorb and metamorphosis into knowledge and with it power to control the economy. It's so obvious but we turn all eyes blind to it. It's bantered about by everyone but no one seems to consider it an issue worth tackling. Greed. Plain old ordinary human greed, which each of us has indulged many times in our lives. It was greed that took down every system humans have ever created. And underlying greed on the ladder of responsibility for oneself is fear. If we are able to look deep and honestly into our own hearts and minds about how we really feel, it's fear. Going far and deep into our own psyches one eventually arrives at a bare base moment of pure absolute terror. I think we realize the power we have and it terrifies us. Terrifies us so much that we are motivated to create other things to fear even more -- zombies, ghouls, witches, demons, devils and the like. It takes our mind off deeper realities. It also allows us to live a lie. Deeper yet and one finds the transiency and fragility of life which generates even greater fear, For a consciousness as self-aware as ours life must surely be eternal and infinte. It cannot die, at least no so soon and so quick. That's unspeakable. Yet we die and it terrifies us needlessly. Every living thing has a spark of consciousness at its core. That's why it's alive. And that spark lives in absolute fear of dying until it learns otherwise. Even the simplest of organisms will shy away from toxic circumstances. Only humans have reached such a high level of awareness and we've mainly projected that greater fear onto the world we create, which explains about 99% of the violence we wreak on each other. It generally comes out in the form of hate. Currently it is hatred toward immigrants, hated toward Hispanics, hatred toward Muslims plus a generally heightened hatred of anything that is different from ourselves or our at times narrow-minded ways of thinking and perceiving. Even considering oneself on a higher plane than others is a defense against fear. None of us escape it. It's part of our nature. We are a highly xenophobic species exactly because we are a highly intelligent and self-aware species. We have actually recognized this terrible failing in our genetic character for a long time. Religions were first created to deal with human failings and over time countless of them have tried and failed. Religion and concomitantly a belief in a god has been charged with leading our species down the right path since before recorded time and it gets a big fat collective F. Of late we have delved into psychology in an attempt to understand and motivate people to behave better. Intellectually we realize that in order to live in relative safety in society, society needs rules that everyone is bound to obey. It is that knowledge and confidence that allows people to go out the front door every morning -- a belief and trust that the vast majority of us are going to obey the rules. And in many ways most do. But few realize what a great act of trust in each other this is. We are able to go about our daily business without much fear or threat from each other. Notwithstanding the occasional sociopath and even rarer psychopath, we can generally go about our dirunal trysts in a comfortable trust that none of us pose an immediate threat to each other. I think the science of psychology and it's sister ologies have pretty much determined that a lot of the things we fear such as anti-social, criminal and violent behavior, are born out of poverty and ignorance. I think we are finally beginning to realize that and the current efforts on behalf of education will produce some remarkable results within a generation or two. To highlight this deficit in at least American culture, this morning on This Week I heard some unemployment numbers that ought to be spread about widely. Unemployment among college graduates in this country is at 4%. Unemployment among high school graduates is near the current general level of 9%-10%. And unemployment among high school dropouts is greater than 16%. But it eventually come to our attention and we eventually begin to do something about it. Our species has some very outstanding traits. Tenacity is one of them and at times we wrongfully use it to cling to tired old worn out beliefs long past when they need to be replaced. Another of my favorites is more crass (though nonetheless valid). Humans generally have to have their asses backed into a tight corner before we get up off them and do something. But when we finally do, we do a pretty good job of solving the problem. To my thinking that we survived the Cold War, which was the first time in human history we really had the capability to annihilate ourselves, is a huge indicator that we're here to stay and to rule. No matter what one's view of our species and the world which we inhabit, at the bottom line it boils down to how well it works in actual practice over time. Test is always in the pudding. If it can't be boiled down to human day-to-day terms then it is just so many words regardless how profound they sound. /et
