Humans may be the worst thing that could happen to a planet. Life
forms considered to be not useful are routinely destroyed under the
guise of management or commerce. In fact humans are willing to
actively or passively cause the demise of any and all life forms on
the planet in order to secure what they believe is their right of
ownership.
If it tastes good
they will consume toxins, and hoard food while others starve.. And
they will participate in hostile military or legal actions that harm
or destroy innocents. Weapons have been created that could destroy
all life on earth. Howe did we get where we are? Looking at the trends and
biggest ideas of the past can help answer this
question. Ideas
can be powerful. If they are good, we all benefit; but bad ideas can
have disastrous effects when they are widely accepted. Cultural
trends come and go, even the biggest may eventually run out of steam
and fall from favor. A paradigm is an archetype that serves as a
pattern or model. There are
overlapping small paradigms and large paradigms. Paradigm thinking can sometimes give a sense of what might be next. By examining the foundations of
modern Western thought, we can discover a sequence ideas and beliefs
that is revealing.
For thousands of years the church needed to prevent people from
speculating about spiritual matters. "Tho shalt not" was at the core of
that institution. Violators faced threats of excommunication and burning
in an everlasting hellfire. Science and even literacy was discouraged in the name of denomination.
About
five hundred years ago early scientists began to present facts about
the natural world that were in conflict with scriptures. Also the
invention of the printing press allowed people to read about the history
of ancient civilizations and their ideas of philosophy and religion.
This encouraged science and reformation and revolutions.
Scientists
were emboldened to such an extent that anything that could not be
weighed or measured was suspect and avoided. This amounts to part 2 of
our present global systems crisis:
SCIENTISM. The human psyche was split
into a good and a worthless portion.
Also the industrial
revolution provided the means for a wealthy few to become increasingly
powerful. The result has been that wealth and power is now in the hands
of fewer and fewer who are becoming dangerously powerful. They hire many
advisors to increase profits at any cost to the rest of us and to the
environment. The crisis has reached the breaking point.
Some thinkers subscribe to the linear theory of social change.
According to them, society gradually moves to successive stages of
civilization and that it advances in a linear fashion and in the
direction of improvement. Such theories long dominated the sociological
scene. Yours may well be the generation to determine if the human species will survive.
However current technologies call this theory into question. There have
been many ancient discoveries around the world that make us question
the historical accuracy of our documented. Ancient Discoveries unearths
amazing technologies that we think of as
modern, but which actually have their origins in antiquity.
Many discoveries feature a very different story of what happened in reality. These artifacts or evidence are called "
out of place artifacts",
and most of them indicate the existence of ancient highly advanced
civilizations that preceded us.
Anthropomorphic discoveries have been
found in geological strata formed before humans are believed to have
existed. Anthropologists are finding evidence that humans have been
around much
longer than we thought. Repeated
extinction events caused by
meteor strikes, volcanism, and ice ages have
changed sea levels drastically which has apparently concealed many
ancient ruined civilizations.
The Eastern view of time is completely different to the Western view. An example of this is the Hindu time system called the
Yugas. The word yuga in Sanskrit means age, cycle, or world era. Each cycle lasts for 4,320,000 years and repeats four
yugas: Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga.
Recent archeological evidence reveals that there are ruins of cities
from more than
twelve thousand years ago that were quite advanced. The
implication is that there were survivors from
previous civilizations
unknown to us or that there was contact with some other advanced beings.
Some talk of
Ancient Aliens making genetic
changes to our DNA.
So, in
retrospect we can see wave after wave of tyranny and imperialism being
met by wave after wave of the struggle for freedom, democracy, and
human rights. The
dominant
ideas of the 20th Century came from men and women whose ideas set these
two
factions at seemingly hopeless odds against each other. Our minds seem
beclouded by an extraordinary, blind and unreasonable faith
in
a set of fantastic and life-destroying ideas.
We have been
immersed in a long paradigm where everything seems to be for sale to
highest
bidder, the only game is a strange dynamic; more and more -- to keep
the game going as long as possible, to keep exploiting until there is
nothing left, endless awful circus to keep peddling stuff. There are
countless amusements, entertainments and distractions, fads, celebrity
cults, and "can you top this" media acts of violence and sex. For some,
it may not seem to be so malevolent as just clueless
intellectual bankruptcy. While for others, the poverty and violence is devastating.
Technology seems to be changing us as a
species into a kind of aggregation of behaviors that are both wonderful
and terrible. The oppressors have more advanced weaponry, but the oppressed are far
more numerous and better educated. If seven billion people demand human
rights and democracy, or cleaner environment, it seems likely they can eventually prevail. The
fact that you are reading this page makes it less likely that thugs can
expect anonymity.
As changing
paradigms create a vacuum, some turn to institutions for
guidance, direction, a plan, an ideology, only to eventually come to
see institutions as another hierarchy of control. Although some memberships may be
necessary, it is the business of any "ism" to eat you. So there is a
fear of being swallowed up, annihilated, and there is a longing to be
free and minimize social organization. Some even try to find a way not
to
individuate by immersion into a tribe, a religion, or going into the
army, or becoming a socialist or a recluse.
Culture an language can become traps, though they they are the
platforms for individuation. We appear to be separate and unique
individuals, but it turns out that finding acceptance often compels us
as much as finding food and shelter. So it is a serpentine path between
individuation and a kind of collective organism and the hope is to
learn to combine these two modes of existence.
Industrialization
and urbanization have gone
hand in hand with commercialization and
commodification. It seems clear that this big paradigm of exploitation has become unsustainable. The
modern age of industrialization has seen many innovations in energy,
communications, transportation, medicine and various other sectors that
make life much easier than that of even a couple of generations ago.
But in some arenas innovation has outstripped sustainability to such an
extent that almost everyone has uneasy feelings about the future.
Survival
in this capitalist environment has been about predictably, on profitability,
the goal of maximum profit has been setting aside in the interests of
“protection of nature,” and the betterment of humankind.
Only a few
generations ago most people lived rurally and actually participated in
growing overproducing their own food. There was a general feeling of
being part of nature, or at least close to the land and the ongoing
cycles of nature. The passing seasons and even our own coming into being
and passing away had a much more organic significance in the face of
all creation.
People who used to identify themselves a a
part of a community or neighborhood are facing issues of anonymity. Mechanization,
pollution, depletion, alienation and violence have been steadily diminish
the quality of life for some to such an extent that many are suffering.
In fact most people have a nagging feeling that something is broken. Also, it
seems that the next generation will have to make do with less than
their parents had.
Sadly, most people seem to get their beliefs
from the media, which is a colossal mess. Higher education has become a "conveyor belt of alienation from
Western
civilization." The cost of sanity in this society seems to be a certain level of
alienation as
education and welfare are being gutted.
Ideas and
beliefs can unite us but can also be divisive and make us cynical. For a long time a very wealthy
aristocracy joined with the church to maintain absolute control of just
about everything. The suffocating atmosphere created by
the rise of religious dogma and orthodoxy and intolerance of any
thought that went contrary to it, was undoubtedly halting progress.
Until the invention of the
printing press, most people were illiterate and virtually helpless and
miserable. When books became available, within a few decades people
re-discovered Greek democracy and idealism. The Renaissance spanned the
period roughly from the 14th to the 17th century, was marked by a
humanistic revival of classical influence expressed in a flowering of
the arts and literature and by the beginnings of modern science which led to a growing desire
among free thinkers to be rid of the shackles of religion and
charter an independent course. A very old paradigm seemed to be ending -- about supernatural
entities creating and ruling everything.
Unrest
had been
festering for a long time. And the
schism between science and religion, in the 17th century, was a
necessary step in the advancement of human knowledge. But resistance by
the church to the whole idea of science backfired, fostering ideas that
set science and religion at seemingly hopeless odds against each other,
and planted seeds of doubt that faith and reason coexist. This led to
the
rejection by science of the metaphysical, which tended to remove God
from His role as Creator, and the end of God’s role in human life,
which placed science and scientists as the ultimate arbiters of true
knowledge.
An
analysis of the important ideas that have shaped the modern world
suggests that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive but have
several things in common. When the conscious mind is overwhelmed, we
fall back on the subconscious and on instinct and beliefs.
Darwin,
Marx, and Freud
began by theorizing. Then they looked for evidence to support their
theories and thought they had found persuasive evidence, only
to have their “findings” called into question by later scientists and
thinkers. Science proceeds by a series of discoveries that usually
invalidate earlier theories. Science suffers from a fatal flaw
--scientists repeatedly assume they have all the cards in the deck. But
the map is not the territory, and in fact, the territory may ultimately
be unknowable in its entirety by humans. Dissecting life does not
completely explain it.
Both science and war
have concentrated political power into the hands of a few - and
diminished the liberty of all to some extent. This power shift fosters dictatorships and
fascism and
profiteers
who sell weapons to both sides in the wars. The military industrial
complex and the banking system have combined with government and science to become very dangerous.
Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his
Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:
"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment.
Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential
aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is new in the American experience.
The total influence —
economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every
statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the
imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood
are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the
councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists, and will persist.
We must
never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or
democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert
and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge
industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods
and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."
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