I have thought about this sometimes: just the simple fact of having a reliable heated home and getting reliably fed is a blessing that we can hardly even begin to appreciate. Seriously, it is such a huge blessing.
And it pretty much underlies every other human joy and human progress.
Spiritual progress too. For a human who is cold all the time and who has to worry 24/7 about where his next meal will come from, any "spirituality" will pretty much amount to desperate prayers that things will get better.
The next time you are very cold and hungry, try to concentrate on such abstract concept such as Forgiveness, spirit, and the real origin of the universe... it just can't be done.
In other words, a civilization has to be created before much spiritual progress can be made.
I am of the belief that this universe/world, rather than being a trap, was made as a means to get home again, after the mistaken belief of Separation From Source had happened. Communication (in the broadest sense) has to happen for knowledge and forgiveness to happen. And this universe is a big Communication Machine. It puts people together in the same space whether they can stand each other or not, and it forces them to cooperate to beat the hostile forces in the environment to survive. That is the beginnings of Forgiveness, and thus the beginnings of togetherness and ultimately Oneness.
- Eolake
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Update:
Think of this: all countries I know has laws against murder. But no country I know of has laws against war. A man who kills his neighbor is the most despised man. But a man who kills dozens of foreigners in a war (even an undeclared one), no matter how many of them children or innocent, is a hero.
On the plus side, historically violence is downtrending! There is a book documenting this, called The Better Angels Of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker.
By the way, also think of this: morality is a completely human construct. Once you get outside what agreements humans have managed to cook up between themselves, it's completely non-existent. I guess we've been blinded to this obvious fact by almost all religions giving out moral codes "coming from God".
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Update:
Think of this: all countries I know has laws against murder. But no country I know of has laws against war. A man who kills his neighbor is the most despised man. But a man who kills dozens of foreigners in a war (even an undeclared one), no matter how many of them children or innocent, is a hero.
On the plus side, historically violence is downtrending! There is a book documenting this, called The Better Angels Of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker.
By the way, also think of this: morality is a completely human construct. Once you get outside what agreements humans have managed to cook up between themselves, it's completely non-existent. I guess we've been blinded to this obvious fact by almost all religions giving out moral codes "coming from God".
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2 comments:
Not wishing to tie you to heavyweight books, but Immanuel Kant had a lot of useful things to say on the subject of morality.
Supporting your earlier point, all the early civilisations developed in regions of plentiful food and warm climate.
I'm not sure. It seems to me that an area in this world is either too cold (Greenland) or too dry (Middle East), or everrun with predators and dangerous critters (any jungle).
Europe was tamed, but I bet that took a couple thousand years, before history.
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