Chris wrote:
Oh yeah. The exploiters will be
laughing all the way to the bank if the cannon fodder (corporate and military)
will "learn to smile" and accept every new stress, wage cut, layoff etc. with
a thank-you. Religion as the opium for the people... "NYT -- all
the news that fit the printers."
Chris, I think I
understand where you are coming from in deriding religion, but it is not just
the opiate of the (nonthinking) masses.
It is also a coping and order mechanism, and can be an inspiration that encourages
people to live at the best of their human potential, to care for one another,
to overcome human greed and
despair. Unfortunately, there are
enough examples of the opposite of that to assure that hypocrites and liars
are never on an endangered species list.
I will continue to make
myself highly unpopular with some of my relatives by pointing out hypocrisy
and lies that are generated by VRP (very religious people), who have quit
thinking about humanity and just got lazy, relying on memorized and
digested-whole mandates, which they largely do not understand or have
historical knowledge about, that have nothing to do with listening to the
universe, celebrating life, love and brotherhood and the best of what we can
give each other. Let us be less
than kind in exposing religiosity but patient and accepting that religions do
answer questions for many, and it is the practionner
often at fault, not entirely the belief system.
I tend to agree with Jung
that we have a "god gene" in us.
Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth and Man of a Thousand Faces contributed
to my personal appreciation of belief systems, and I tend to view most
religious sacred texts as literary attempts to explain the unknown and the
mysterious. Some do a better job
than others.
That reminds me, during a
channel change last weekend I saw Sean Haggerty or Hannity, the current
conservative trash mouth du jour, mock and deride and continually interrupt a
former Congressman, a Protestant minister wearing his collar, who was trying
to say that education was also a weapon in the war against terrorism. These people are "of the devil" as far
as I'm concerned, deliberately rude who must resort to shouting over others so
that the weakness of their argument and philosophy is hidden.
Maybe this is a good
point for me to post an OpEd by Robert Wright, the author of NonZero: the logic of human destiny, who
writes that humans will gravitate towards global governance out of mutual
self-preservation and because it is human
nature. He also makes
some points about evolutionary economics and that globalization is ancient and
leads us to greater morality with each other. Does this mean that globalization is a
secularist humanist religion?
It is long for reading on screen, so I
would normally attach it, but it exceeds the 40 KB that I have deduced will
successfully clear FW's filter. I
anyone wants a word copy, please contact me. Would love to have that information
confirmed about attachment size, by the way. Regards,
KWC
Two
Years Later, a Thousand Years Ago
By
Robert Wright, NYT OpEd, September 11, 2003
@
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/opinion/11WRIG.html
Among
the ideas that seemed to collapse along with the twin towers two years ago was
a view of globalization as a kind of manifest destiny. Unlike the 19th-century
version of manifest destiny, this vision didn't involve expanding America's
borders. Rather, America's values - notably economic and political liberty -
would spread beyond those borders, covering the planet. And this time around
America's mission didn't have the widely assumed blessing of God. But it had
the next best thing: the force of history. Globalization was seen by some as a
nearly inevitable climax of the human story - destiny of a secular
sort.
In
some versions of this scenario, like neoconservative ones, tough American
guidance might be needed - coercing China, say, toward democracy. In other
versions, international economic competition would do the coercing. After all,
microelectronics was making free markets a more essential ingredient in
prosperity, and free markets work best with free minds. As some libertarians
saw things, all you had to do was end trade barriers and then sit back and
enjoy the show.
Some
show. As commentators started noting around Sept. 12, 2001, the terrorists had
turned the tools of globalization - cellphones, e-mail, international banking
- against the system. What's more, their grievances had grown partly out of
globalization, with its jarringly modern values. It started to seem as if
globalization, far from being a benign culmination of history, had carried the
seeds of its own destruction all along.
Two
years later, that view is still defensible. Though the United States has been
free from serious terrorism, anti-American terrorist networks are intact - and
the war in Iraq has given them both a new rallying cry and conveniently
located targets. Further, Islamist terrorism is assuming more global form; one
can imagine a chain of attacks setting off a worldwide economic tailspin. With
biotechnology and nuclear materials emphatically not under control,
out-and-out collapse in some future decade is
possible.
Still,
viewed against the backdrop of history, the case for a kind of manifest
destiny is stronger than ever. In this version, America's mission is different
from the ones libertarians and neoconservatives have in mind - passive role
model or aggressive evangelizer, respectively. It is in some ways a grander
mission, carrying a deep and subtle moral challenge. Indeed, the challenge is
so deep, and so natural an outgrowth of history, that the idea of destiny in
some nonsecular sense isn't beyond the pale. In any event, Sept. 11, 2001,
illustrates the challenge in painfully vivid
form.
