A NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION FOR CHANGE?
History has conditioned and shaped humanity to the powerful habit of idealizing certain ethics and values while engaging in patterns of behavior diametrically opposed to those strictures.
The vast majority of human beings engage in the most monstrous, immoral and reprehensible behavior completely secure in the knowledge that they will never be held responsible for their actions.
This modus operandi was deeply embedded in human culture when the vast majority of human beings lived in a ‘state of nature.’ It was institutionalized in human societies when Absolutist regimes formalized the relations that had existed in the ‘state of nature.’
Under Absolutist regimes those who were super ordinate, had absolute power over those around them. They had the power of life and death over those whom they ruled, or those whom they employed, or those in their immediate family who were subordinate to them.
The grip on the hearts and minds of human beings of this world view was strengthened and consolidated, perhaps immutably, by the irreducible fact that to survive the brutality that pervaded this primitive and wholly uncivilized matrix, both predator and prey had to develop, to remain sane; a mindset that permitted them to be blissfully unaware of the unrelieved cruelty and brutality; and its alter ego, intense suffering, that was the basis for function.
The situation became more resistant to positive change because human beings had the capacity to develop powerful habits. Moreover, this social scheme was very functional, founded as it was on fear and its enabling appendage, coercion, undoubtedly the most powerful stimuli that can be applied to human beings.
Another factor that creates powerful resistance to change is that those with power, are for the most part not only the beneficiaries of the economic wealth and social status generated in such a social system, they also are heir to the best educations and have the means to deny these advantages to those subordinated to them. They also control the distribution of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and can embed, and have embedded in every social system, rewarding what they are best at, predation.
So we confront a social system in which good guys come last, like the man called Jesus, and, more recently, the New York policeman Frank Serpico.
The dilemma of my race, the urgent potentially most destructive conundrum that confronts humanity, is that the mindset embedded in the social system, is one diametrically opposed to that applied by the Scientific Establishment, where facts rule.
Humanity has created an empirical science and technology that has produced weapons of such destructive potential that unless the governmental bureaucracies that can access and unleash that power become rational, making decisions based on the facts, as opposed to being irrational making decisions based on interests, these weapons will destroy human civilizations.
The other powerful argument for breaking with the past is that the Scientific Establishment has created the productive capacity that it is permissive of creating a minimum standard of life for every human being. A development, if realized, that would reduce completion and conflict for scarce resources and create the possibility of happiness for every human being on Planet Earth.
The real issue is, can we change? More specifically can a bare majority in every nation attain rationality, can they adopt the discipline of truth and becoming capable of applying their higher mental processes to the problems of everyday existence? Can they gain competence in motivating the other with positive reinforcements and break their habits of relying on coercion?
In the final analysis this is an individual choice, and more than in any other situation, the verdict is ultimately yours? As you make this choice you are deciding if humanity shall continue to languish on a treadmill of conflict, war, poverty, despair and violence, without a future - with the past happening over and over again; or, can we find the will, courage and endurance to break with the primitive past, with the attitudes, delusions and myths embedded in our bloody, murderous, predatory culture, and, create a new beginning for humanity?
The vast majority of human beings engage in the most monstrous, immoral and reprehensible behavior completely secure in the knowledge that they will never be held responsible for their actions.
This modus operandi was deeply embedded in human culture when the vast majority of human beings lived in a ‘state of nature.’ It was institutionalized in human societies when Absolutist regimes formalized the relations that had existed in the ‘state of nature.’
Under Absolutist regimes those who were super ordinate, had absolute power over those around them. They had the power of life and death over those whom they ruled, or those whom they employed, or those in their immediate family who were subordinate to them.
The grip on the hearts and minds of human beings of this world view was strengthened and consolidated, perhaps immutably, by the irreducible fact that to survive the brutality that pervaded this primitive and wholly uncivilized matrix, both predator and prey had to develop, to remain sane; a mindset that permitted them to be blissfully unaware of the unrelieved cruelty and brutality; and its alter ego, intense suffering, that was the basis for function.
The situation became more resistant to positive change because human beings had the capacity to develop powerful habits. Moreover, this social scheme was very functional, founded as it was on fear and its enabling appendage, coercion, undoubtedly the most powerful stimuli that can be applied to human beings.
Another factor that creates powerful resistance to change is that those with power, are for the most part not only the beneficiaries of the economic wealth and social status generated in such a social system, they also are heir to the best educations and have the means to deny these advantages to those subordinated to them. They also control the distribution of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and can embed, and have embedded in every social system, rewarding what they are best at, predation.
So we confront a social system in which good guys come last, like the man called Jesus, and, more recently, the New York policeman Frank Serpico.
The dilemma of my race, the urgent potentially most destructive conundrum that confronts humanity, is that the mindset embedded in the social system, is one diametrically opposed to that applied by the Scientific Establishment, where facts rule.
Humanity has created an empirical science and technology that has produced weapons of such destructive potential that unless the governmental bureaucracies that can access and unleash that power become rational, making decisions based on the facts, as opposed to being irrational making decisions based on interests, these weapons will destroy human civilizations.
The other powerful argument for breaking with the past is that the Scientific Establishment has created the productive capacity that it is permissive of creating a minimum standard of life for every human being. A development, if realized, that would reduce completion and conflict for scarce resources and create the possibility of happiness for every human being on Planet Earth.
The real issue is, can we change? More specifically can a bare majority in every nation attain rationality, can they adopt the discipline of truth and becoming capable of applying their higher mental processes to the problems of everyday existence? Can they gain competence in motivating the other with positive reinforcements and break their habits of relying on coercion?
In the final analysis this is an individual choice, and more than in any other situation, the verdict is ultimately yours? As you make this choice you are deciding if humanity shall continue to languish on a treadmill of conflict, war, poverty, despair and violence, without a future - with the past happening over and over again; or, can we find the will, courage and endurance to break with the primitive past, with the attitudes, delusions and myths embedded in our bloody, murderous, predatory culture, and, create a new beginning for humanity?
posted by voiceofpeace at 5:30 PM
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