Jane-Q wants to know "What got us here?"

[Jane-Q]

Hi, greeters.
I'm Jane.

poi dietro ai sensi
vedi che la ragione ha corte l'ali

--Dante Alighieri, Paradiso 2:56-57​

I look at the world analytically. But there are some things I cannot logically explain.

Mom wakes up.
Dad is asleep, beside her. But someone is in the bedroom.
It is Mom's father.
My grandpa. He calms Mom and says he loves her.
He had wanted to say goodbye, he tells her.
Then he is gone. Mom is shaking.
She bundles and goes upstairs, has a cup of tea.
Early next morning, we get a long-distance call. It is from Mom's sister, a doctor.
She tells Mom that their father passed away, sometime during the night.
Mom only says yes.​

Someday, such things may be rationally explainable. Just not yet.

Intellectually for the present, what I do believe-in are two things:

1. the scientific method.
1a. All things are relative.
1b. Nothing is eternal, nothing is infinite.
1c. All things are bound in temporary or evolving ecologies.
1d. This and this alone produces genuine philosophy.

2. dialectical theology.
2a. All beliefs, all scriptures, are devised as answers to previous or competing belief-structures and to their documentation.
2b. Nothing exists in pure form.
2c. Nothing exists in isolation.
2d. This and this alone constitutes actual monotheism.​

I tend to view all ideologies, secular and religious, as part-philosophy, part-monotheism. The twin engines, paired faiths, which invented the modern world.

What got us here? Here to the modern world?
This is the real question, for me.
What fueled these two engines?

The biggest problem underlying the ancient world was not superstition. (All ideologies are superstitious, by and large.) Nor was it a bad philosophy. Nor the wrong religion. Such things are just symptoms.
The underlying problem with ancient practices was emotional, was our thoroughgoing romanticism as a species. Our personal phantasmagoria. That is, our inability to pay-attention. Our lack of piety.

1. An unwillingness to genuinely take interest in things.
2. An unwillingness to actually suffer the pain which we feel.​

"Faith" may be instrumental in picturing and doggedly pursuing new realities. But it is piety, personal piety, which does the heavy lifting.

With a well-tempered piety, you can move mountains . . .


. . . Which is exactly what the modern world has done.
The precise road our species has been traveling to get here.

But where did this piety come from and how did it function?


Jane.

 

[stranger]

Jane, welcome as one newbie to another... I've read some of your posts and it is clear to me that you have so very much to offer. I look forward to learning from you. I hope also, along with your offerings here that you will find what you need to sustain you, personally, in your journey.

 

[radarmark]

Well, I believe it was the fact that we became emotionally caged into some small tent. As long as the emphasis is on family, the tribe suffers; the tribe, the nation suffers; the nation, the species suffers; the species, the world suffers. This is nothing new, both Kazantzakis and Rosenzweig both used almost the same words early last century.

The key is rising above the unit (be it self, family, tribe, nation, species). And I do not see any evidence of this attitude in the west until the age of enlightenment. I see some evidence in the east, but it was sacrificed on the alter of technical or financial power. JMHO, I have no real proof.

 

[wil]

I for one am tired to be so galactal centric...

and am totally enamored with Jane....sorry SG.