“If there were a ‘second coming’, it will be through the birth of a conscious social change that is relevant to today’s world and our future, instead of a regressive guilt complex or worse, a self-fulfilling prophecy of nuclear genocide that is later quoted, as many other isolated examples are conveniently used, to reinforce the same obsolete theistic teachings of simplistic duality and some kind of supreme stasis” – Me
It is evident that both the material and the spiritual universes are emergent (constantly changing and evolving). So is our perception and understanding of both.
However dominant world views such as theistic religions that profess the concept of mutually exclusive duality operate within a social irrelevancy in today’s world.
They exist as inhibitors to ever-emergent and natural social and personal growth, for each group perpetuates a closed world view. And this finite understanding that they passionately defend is simply not possible in an ever-emergent material or spiritual universe. Yet religion has succeeded in insuring itself against the conscious awareness of this emergence by instilling the psychological distortion of faith upon its followers. Faith, a cyclical and anomalous loophole in our consciousness that can be used to both empower and to oppress/repress. Faith when used to retain following and power, creates a barrier to new knowledge or information in favor of traditionalized, outdated and obsolete beliefs.
The concept of god, and the stories woven around, to explain the nature of things that we did not understand at the time, was the single most effective traditional verbal knowledge logging and transfer system for science, social behavior and culture. But the stories had repercussions that the many visionary story tellers and inventors could not have foreseen. If they had, they may have desisted. Over time, the concept of a human god became a tool of control over resources and people, as well as tool for sociopolitical oppression and psychological distortion. A god, made in our own image, a guy who gets angry when people don’t behave right. A guy who gets jealous. And inspite of having all that power and knowledge, he would still need to use material nature to show his wrath, like floods and earthquakes, the stuff of mystery, awe and fear at the time. Stuff we call “act of god” till today despite the new knowledge we have about these phenomena. He could have just as well used Laser or Nuclear technology, or simply dematerialized entire populations, but the story tellers had yet to encounter Einstein or Asimov. However they did skillfully manage to combine the powers of temporary solace, fear and awe about the unknown and unexplained and psychological repression of natural instincts, as ways of maintaining social order and control at a time when these were in scarcity, while at the same time, and in most cases inadvertently, giving the established power structures of the age the perfect ruse, during a time when their hold over the masses and resources was weakening, to regain control and perpetuate their power seamlessly while transitioning from arrogant exhibitionism into opulent privacy, hidden in plain sight. A cursory glance at the suppressed history of religion reveals that even the foundational myths themselves are emergent culminations developed through influence over time. This is proven by the fact that some of the central and cardinal events said to have happened to one savior have also been said by other theistic doctrines to have happened to an enormous number of pre-christian saviors over a period of thousands of years, which puts those events in the realm of mythical events right away. Yet, those who subscribe to the psychological anomaly of faith will reject this piece of information or find an stupendous explanation to somehow irrationalize the phenomena so that it remains within the unexplainable which is where both their faith and their beliefs can continue to remain operational. And as a result of this willful ignorance, we have allowed ourselves to weakly accept the social values of our current society which has manifested in perpetual warfare, corruption, oppressive laws, social stratification, irrelevant superstitions, environmental destruction, and a despotic, socially indifferent, profit oriented ruling class; values are NOT unexplainable. These values are fundamentally the result of the collective ignorance of two of the most basic insights that humans can have about their reality, without the need of the tools of theism. The emergent and symbiotic aspects of natural existence.
The emergent nature of natural existence is that all systems whether it is knowledge, society, technology, philosophy or any other natural occurrence or creation, when uninhibited, will undergo fluid, perpetual change. What we consider commonplace today, such as modern communication and transportation, would have been unimaginable in ancient times without a frame of reference of their time on which to base probability-based predictions. Likewise the future will contain technologies, realizations and social structures that we cannot even fathom in the present without a frame of reference on which to base our probability-based predictions.
We have gone from alchemy to chemistry. From a geocentric universe to a heliocentric universe (with new hypotheses about a biocentirc one), from believing that demons were the cause of illness, to advancements in mechanistic and holistic medical care. This development shows no sign of ending and it is this awareness that reminds us and leads us on a continuous path to growth and progress. Static empirical knowledge does not exist. Rather it is the insight of the emergence of all systems that we must recognize.
This means we must be open to new information at all times, even if it threatens our current belief systems and hence identities. Sadly society today has failed to recognize this and the established institutions continue to paralyze growth by preserving outdated social structures. Simultaneously the society suffers from a fear of change for their condition assumes a static identity, and challenging one’s belief system usually results in insult and apprehension. Being wrong is erroneously associated with failure when in fact to be proven wrong should be celebrated for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding, furthering awareness.
The fact is there is no such thing as a smart human being for it is merely a matter of time before their ideas are updated, changed or eradicated.
And this tendency to blindly hold on to a belief system that is directly in the way of constructive progress, sheltering us from new and possibly transforming information, is nothing less than a form of intellectual materialism as codified and programmed into us by the power structures from the past; power structures that are still grappling to regain and maintain major control over the world’s resources for personal gain.
The monetary system perpetuates this materialism not only by its self-preserving structures but also through the countless number of people who have been conditioned by their societies into blindly and unconditionally upholding these structures, therefore becoming self-appointed guardians of the status quo. Sheep which no longer need a sheep dog to control them. For they control each other by ostracizing those who step out of the norm. This tendency to resist change in order to uphold existing institutions for the sake of identity, comfort, power and profit is completely unsustainable and will only cause further imbalance, fragmentation, distortion and invariably, destruction.
Its time to change.
From hunters-gatherers, to the agricultural revolution, to the industrial revolution, the pattern is clear. It is time for new social system that reflects the understanding we have today of the world and ourselves, and also prepares us to accept more years of new learning to come.
God and money are products of periods of time when ignorance and scarcity were realities. But now the dogma and oppression caused by the forced relevance of their existence in our day-to-day lives has to be phased out, and thus will be gone the aberrant behavior they manifest.
So what is god really? A specific description of god can be derived from the effect of the belief in god, often described as an indescribable feeling of joy, of comfort, of solace, of pleasure and delight. To explain this, we would have to observe the other important fact of nature. That all things are symbiotic. That we are not independent of our environments. Rather, we are directly dependent on our environment for life and growth. If we don’t have oxygen, we will die. If there are no plants, we will die. If there is no more sunlight, the plants will die and so will we, and so on… We know that our grandchildren will not inherit a peaceful, sustainable and socially just world unless every child in ethiopia, bolivia and palestine also has that same expectation. Simply put, if we don’t take care of the whole community, we’re going to have serious problems. And the time has come for the whole world to be that community. We must all take care of each other. And it is not just a community of human beings. It is a community of plants and animals and elements and resources. It is the whole ecosystem and we are a part of that ecosystem. We really need to understand that. And that’s what is going to bring us that joy, comfort, solace, pleasure and even delight. That’s what’s missing in our lives, fragmented by all kinds of obsolete beliefs. We can call it spirituality. We can call it god. But the fact of the matter is joy comes from that bliss of connectedness. That’s the side of ourselves that really feels it; that comfort that you can really feel deep inside of yourself; this amazing and wonderful feeling and you know it when you get it. You don’t get it for money or owning things. You get it from connectedness; and this time, it can be and truthful and natural. A healing and effortless feeling of connectedness; with each other in our community and the whole world…
…and with some more effortless time spent in peaceful bliss, the entire universe.
– Adapted largely from Peter Joseph‘s narrations in the Zeitgeist movies