human stupidity- the curse of mankind

Its a good point Wil.

I believe by far the vast majority of people are good and peaceable and want only to do reasonably well in life for both themselves and their loved ones. The minority is still quite sizeable and revels in deception and greed and cruelty. But this minority could be drastically reduced if our societies were not infected by these deceptions, greeds and cruelties that have there roots deeply entwined in our theopolitical heritage. Modern Global politics is as riddled with power crazy religious nutters as it has ever been. These are our leaders, they give us leadership, they are responsible for such traits throughout our societies for it is in them they start.

It is a testament to our true natures that despite such depraved leadership we still have good in our hearts, or at least the majority do. Even culturally indoctrinated racists can usually name an exception that, because they have got to know them, defies the dehumanisation ingrained in their socio/cultural upbringing. They only meet one black or hispanic or Indian and they like them. Because the majority of people are likeable when you get to know them.

Religion above all else helps to enforce separation, segregation, distrust and hate/fear. Without it much of the matrix upon which the powerful build their empires would be missing. It would be far harder for the "taught" hate the divide and conquer sociopaths rely on to keep the masses blind to the lies the corruption and greed that is their only love. Without religion mankind would find an amazing outpouring of mutuality and love. The power hungry and greedy would have no smokescreen to hide behind.

We would have no need for Mother Theresa or Ghandi. I am sure both of them would sign up to that future if they could.

Regards

Tao
 
Tao_Equus said:
Religion above all else helps to enforce separation, segregation, distrust and hate/fear. Without it much of the matrix upon which the powerful build their empires would be missing. It would be far harder for the "taught" hate the divide and conquer sociopaths rely on to keep the masses blind to the lies the corruption and greed that is their only love. Without religion mankind would find an amazing outpouring of mutuality and love. The power hungry and greedy would have no smokescreen to hide behind.

We would have no need for Mother Theresa or Ghandi. I am sure both of them would sign up to that future if they could.

Regards

Tao
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Have to agree with you here. Organized religion has relied on the stupidity of the masses for ages in order to control and keep power.
Spirituality however is much different than belief in one religion over another.
 
Tao_Equus said:
Totalitarianism..

If you want more I will oblige :)
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oh I do, but we may should take it to another thread...

And get back to the joys and pitfalls of stupidity.

Stupid is as stupid does....I believe that was Forrest Gump.

I still say it is part of the process...

Yes we do stupid things...and oft times repeat them over and over. But like the stubborn tree that grows in the crevice on a cliff...it is our innate, not personal, drive to survive that keeps us there....awaiting the moment to see things another way.
 
Tao_Equus said:
Without religion mankind would find an amazing outpouring of mutuality and love.
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Are children born as angels, requiring no instruction?

Tao_Equus said:
The power hungry and greedy would have no smokescreen to hide behind.
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Does God not see the power hungry and greedy hiding behind smokescreens?
 
wil said:
oh I do, but we may should take it to another thread...

And get back to the joys and pitfalls of stupidity.

Stupid is as stupid does....I believe that was Forrest Gump.

I still say it is part of the process...

Yes we do stupid things...and oft times repeat them over and over. But like the stubborn tree that grows in the crevice on a cliff...it is our innate, not personal, drive to survive that keeps us there....awaiting the moment to see things another way.
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I never did like Forrest Gump, never had much time for holywood feel good movies. Contrived to the point of nausea is how I saw it. You want to see a "real" feel good movie try something directed by Jean-Jacque Benneix like the brilliant movie IP5.
IP5: L'île aux pachydermes (1992)

A tree does not choose its place of growth, so it is not stupid to grow in a crack high up some cliff...but tenacious. There is stupidity that you are correct to say teaches us valuable lessons, or is just plain good fun. But also there is dangerous stupidity. Blind faith in any dogma has that potential.

Tao
 
cyberpi said:
Are children born as angels, requiring no instruction?
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Kahlil Gibran Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.


Does God not see the power hungry and greedy hiding behind smokescreens?
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There is no uber-human such entity. And such a statement is precisely what is wrong with religion. I dont want your myth to judge psychopaths after the fact. I want them weeded out before they take root.

Tao
 
Tao...

Synchronicity is a wonderful thing. The Gibran passage you quoted from The Prophet is my all time favorite, although these days I might take issue with his assertion that we cannot visit our childrens' futures. My belief is that this is what is foundational to the culture wars of today.

Some see the future for our children as a dark and forbidding place and wish us all to be fearful and transmit that to our children.. Others of us see it as a well-lit and possibly healthier future set of existences. So for about twenty years now we've been fighting these wars about what the future will become. Since Gibran had his visions in the 1920's in Lebanon, I believe that he, in some respects, would approve of what is transpiring today.

Thanks Bro.

flow....;)
 
Hi Flow and thx for your comments.

Time is in such short supply recently and I have not got round to discussing points you raised on post 16 yet, my apologies. I did mean to but.... well you know how it is.

The trouble is, humans are conditioned to believe in images and abstract representations to represent that which is ineffable, sublime , and unfathomable. It's difficult to overcome 100,000 years or so of conditioned habits.

All of these concepts are in the sacred histories of most cultures. And so I still believe that we need to go back to the past to get to our futures. You don't even begin to change thousands of years of fundamentalist and orthodox beliefs overnight, but IMHO they are, as you pointed out, very incompatible with the futures that we are already entering.
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I agree that we are 'conditioned' but it is not a genetic immutable inevitability that we grow up with any particular paradigm. Well adjusted, sane and rational people the world over can grow up dismissing religion as a load of baloney. Yet when they face a crisis they can turn to some degree to some notion of spirituality to help them cope. This is the true strength of religion, it is a mental safety net for the individual psyche. And this function is absolutely understood by the power hungry, and of course utilised ruthlessly.

Some people may only use it as required. Others cannot bare to walk life's tightrope without it. But in both cases it is a self imposed illusion without credible foundation. And there will be no net there when we do eventually fall. The manipulators of the masses, politicians, reverends and imams always insure there is enough fear to warrant the net and it is this need of theirs down the ages that have sustained the mass faiths. But in today's age of multi-media mass communication this has taken on a new and ever more scary dimension.

We now live in a mass culture of suspicion of all that do not follow our leaders. Like Bush said, [SIZE=-1]"You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror." A terror it seems abundantly clear to me his family/friends orchestrated. So I say mankind has to wake up an smell the coffee. There is no God that watches our actions, judges us, promises us salvation or damnation according to "essentially" where we are born. This is the new dark ages in some respects, critics like Dawkins constantly face the Inquisition, ( [/SIZE]YouTube - Spanish Inquisition III
sorry could not resist :p), for putting forward a position far more credible than any religion can offer. I think it is time the safety net was removed so that we might better face the facts that in as you say 100,000 years we have yet to produce one single testable evidence for the existence of any supreme entity. Then ask ourselves why we were so stupid for so long. Then we might begin to root out the evil manipulators that really drive all the fear, hate and warfare... and profit enormously on death and misery.

It is not like the truth is unbearable. All it says as we as individuals are not really very important and our lives are pretty short. Nothing we dont already know there. But so many waste their lives in a blind contemplation of the lie instead of truly enjoying every moment they can have for certain. Faith is blind and to willingly blind yourself is folly of the greatest magnitude. The universe is beautiful and wondrous and the average lifespan is long enough to revel in its splendour. Long enough to watch our children and our children's children grow. The two camps of the modern era are both drawn up increasingly with a crass "end of days" prophesy that I, as a father, do not want them self-fulfilling ..and to be honest I am scared they will try. For this alone religion should be banished to the wastebasket of history.

I think you know me well enough to know that I am not blind to mystery and the connections I feel people sometimes confuse for a sentient force. But a mystery is not any kind of proof of anything. Our ability to ponder these mysteries to any great depth would be greatly advantaged by casting off the yoke of archaic dogma. Even our greatest minds are but specks of foam floating on a vast ocean of potential knowledge. We will never know it all and we must accept and be happy with knowing just as much as we can... and always push to learn more. Religion is not about learning, it is about accepting and faith. The enemies of reason and a dangerous stupidity.

Tao
 
wil said:
Stupid is as stupid does....I believe that was Forrest Gump.
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Yep! somebody also asked Gump if he has found Jesus, and he replied, "I did not know we were supposed to be looking for Him." I lyke dat wun! Depending on the situation, sometimes stupidity can be a good thing, I think. :D
 
fourgrtkidos said:
Spirituality however is much different than belief in one religion over another.
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Hi there and welcome to CR :)

Yes it is and it is statement deserving of its own thread to define. I think the essence of spirituality is not the same for everybody. And I would go as far to say that religion deliberately hinders its pure development. For many, IMHO, spirituality is poorly developed and the "brainspace" is instead infected with psychological irrationality's masquerading as spirituality.

Tao
 
Tao_Equus said:
Religion is not about learning, it is about accepting and faith. The enemies of reason and a dangerous stupidity.
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There are two kinds of faith in the bible.

1. Experential faith
2. Blind faith

You are talking about blind faith.
 
It is interesting Flew, Ostling, seems we get lifelong atheists changing their minds...very public, published philosophers all of a sudden gaining faith.

Those anti-creationists finding solace in a religion or at minimum a creator.

I could be brainwashed...comfortably numb. I was raised in Christianity, I lost interest, traveled around, and then got back into it. I love it, I'm comfortable with my beliefs, my faith. Stupidity....maybe, not learning or growing or thinking....I don't think so.

I love the contemplations and discussions, debating the intricacies and nuance...no I'm not a dogmatic literal believer....my beliefs piss off both the atheist and the literalist...both say I can't have it my way....both like to claim I'm not a Christian, neither are in my shoes.

And if this is stupidity, I'll happily go on. It works, I see my struggles as opportunities, my pitfalls as lessons, my life as a metaphor....car wrecks, forclosure, divorce, injuries, stupidity....all part and parcel of this wonderful world...and the only time...the only time...I get upset at any of it is when I lose the knowledge that G!d is involved and it is all good....once that memory returns...it is right back to, it is what it is, it is in the past, let us move on...

Thank G!d for stupidity...if I knew what I don't know my head would explode!
 
Tao, you said:

Religion above all else helps to enforce separation, segregation, distrust and hate/fear. Without it much of the matrix upon which the powerful build their empires would be missing. It would be far harder for the "taught" hate the divide and conquer sociopaths rely on to keep the masses blind to the lies the corruption and greed that is their only love. Without religion mankind would find an amazing outpouring of mutuality and love. The power hungry and greedy would have no smokescreen to hide behind.
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Well, I am not as smart as you, but I disagree that religion is stupidity. Its as if you are saying that religion is for the retarded.

". . .Religion deals with both Heaven and earth, time and eternity, seeking not only to integrate both man with God but man with man."
-Martin Luther King jr.

Any religion teaching something contrary to that can go straight to hell! But I do agree with you that all too often religion is used for terrible purposes. That is simply all I am trying to say, peace.
 
I am not unsympathetic to the values you both, and of course millions of others, find in faith. But I see no good reason that had you been brought up in a world without religion you would lose that deep inner sense of belonging. These are aspects of the human condition that stem from us being social mammals and are transposed into religion. There is a psycho/evolutionary explanation for every religious experience. Religious people tend to find that insulting and if you both think so then I hope you realise my purpose here at CR is honest discussion. L Ron Hubbard studied theopolitics and a central part of his cynical effort to create his own religion is to rubbish psychology. He did so because he knew full well that psychological manipulation had to remain the property of the religion and that the growing science of genuine psychology could easily expose him for the charlatan that he was. It is good to remember that a short time ago in the history of our species men were excommunicated for suggesting the world was not flat. Similar myths survive to this day. I do not think religious people retarded in any way. But deluded is another question altogether.

Tao
 
I dunno Tao. Nowadays, at least in the civilized world, religion works as a valuable counterbalance to government. I have a greater fear of government absorbing the role of religion than I do of religion usurping the role of government. I'm glad people are stupid. I'm glad most people are born followers. It makes life easier for me...except when I'm impatient and pissy and projecting my own feelings of inadequacy onto others. When that happens everyone starts to look stupid to me as I give myself an injection of derision and disdain projection to compensate for feeling crappy.

Chris
 
I hope you realise my purpose here at CR is honest discussion
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Yes.

I am not excommunicating you. It is a fact that you have not said one good thing about religion in this thread, not even one single good example, when there are many to mention!

For those of you that know me well enough to know of my love of Gaia Theory let me make it clear that I have not thrown out the baby with the bathwater
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This was interesting. . .I have never heard of it. If you wish, you can fill me in:)
 
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