Next wave of societal evolution?

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Something I've been thinking about today, it started by me kind of talking to someone and tracing my own sort of evolution of belief. I was mentioning that I'd been raised catholic, the strange thing was - maybe it was the way my parents raised me, maybe it was part PDD, I don't know, but it was always interesting to me as a kid how people seemed to over complicate things. Back then, could have been my concrete operational mode as well, but when I was taught what I was - I didn't get why it was so hard for the people around me to get it; get the fact that people are supposed to treat other people well, supposed to do the right thing, supposed to do unto others as they would wish done unto them. The thing I figured out later in life, maybe in my early 20's (took me a long time I know) that underpinning it all - we're animals.

It seems like when religion was instituted, the very first thing and one of the sharpest cuts we made was this division between ourselves and animals. In a way, yes, it forced people to hold themselves to higher standards. On the other hand though, as time went on, it divorced us from knowledge of self.

Back to even 300 years ago - Christians, in a small town called Salem Massachusettes - even 300 years ago, people were still practicing their own version of star chamber court (ie. if you drowned you were innocent, if you survived you were a witch - either way you probably had something that someone wanted). We have come a long way since then, pretty amazingly, in the span of even 300 years, for all of our troubles we even have today. We're finally at a point where its accepted at the bottom line of science that we are what we are - animals.

Right now we've gotten to a point where we've managed to get society to a very secular state in many places and on many plains. To a degree that has been a good thing but also to an extent we're making all the mistakes we possibly can in the absence of it - just because this is brand new ground we're walking on, ground that really didn't exist much earlier than the early 20th century. I think that as an overall race we can come around. However, I have a feeling that what we're really seeing right now are some of the last out holds against that self knowledge really blazing it out between each other and within themselves.

What do you all think? My thought is that admitting to what we are doesn't necessarily preclude a higher power - its just admitting to a half of our reality that's strangely dominated our culture behind the scenes just because, you can only suppress reality so much and when its for the sake of preserving some dogmatic right or some impractical edge of organized religion itself it just needs to be amended. Pretty much, once society - as a whole, can square with that, square with free will being limited to the economics of our own environments as well as our innate drives, we'll be able to have a much more humane world just in the sense that we'll have a real grip on what's going on as a whole. To me it just seems logical that when we can see our actions as they stand we may really have some hope of reversing the tides here. True, we've had enough arms in this world to blow it up many times over for the better part of the last century, proliferation of those arms has made things a lot trickier, but it seems that the last vestiges of the battles we're really seeing between ideals are ultimately leading to the same spot - ie. globally 'getting it', and that we're really just stuck holding out for the slow learners. It sucks but our race, in general, has to practically fry its hand on the stove and get very vivid and impressing images to actually have things like this stick - especially when people devote their entire lives to one thing or another, very difficult for them in their 40's or 50's to say "You know what, I've been snowed this whole time and snowing other people as well".

Just an observation though, do with it what you like.

I wrote this last week and it parallels what you are talking about.

"I've came to realize
that heaven and earth are One.

And also after further retrospection
came to conclude
that the deterioration
of what Man's separation
of the two could do."

I don't believe that we are evolving as a society rather we are devolving. I would look seriously into the enlightenment and look at the fruits that it produced. and I'm not talking about the sciences either look at the cruelty and the lack of any morals whatever. Look also at what happened in the soviet run countries where atheism was mandatory and brutally indoctrinated into the populace. look at the evils that were done in the name of the idea that we are all just animals and that science and logic trumps all. once humans are reduced to the level of cattle it is easy to do anything you wish to those that you deem inferior in some way. True throwing off the "restraints" of God's law will allow you to satisfy all of your urges but at a terrible cost to others in the end.

The end result of secularism is total Chaos.

Wow... attributing to atrocities of soviet Russia to atheism... lol

Ever thought it might be because they were Communists?

OK, that's a valid point, Izaak. How about taking a further step in that direction: ever thought that the Communists of the Soviet Union might have been a little nicer if they hadn't been attacked with military action, sabotage and hostile propogande by so many other countries for 70 years, with one four-year inteurruption so that 20 million of them could die helping those same countries beat the Nazis?

The denigration and dehumanizing of Russian citizens was endemic to that region for life times previous to the rise of the Soviets. It is hard to eliminate stuff like that from a culture.

Not that i am defending the soviets; they just didnt start the whole process. they simply refined it and super charged it.

I've noticed a backlash in some circles, especially in narrative theology, against everything metaphysical. Perhaps they are just trying to avoid the gnostic heresy, but I think it is more likely that they are trying to come to grips with the reality of our humanity, that we are animals, that we die.

As for me, I've always had a difficult time understanding why it was so obvious to everyone that we have souls. I used to think about that a lot. I have come to the conclusion that "soul" is a word highly misused to describe the second part of a dual human nature. This probably came about with the integration of Platonic forms into Christian theology, big mistake.

Something that gets on my nerves...

I love my dogs very much, but my mother can't stand the way I treat them. I treat them as companions, separate selves. I don't see a hard line between the way they exist and the way I exist. My mother is constantly saying things that make me cringe about how humans are so superior to dogs and that dogs are essentially disposable commodities. Her theological understanding of human nature makes her very callous towards anything not human.

Sure, life was so great as an ignorant, superstitious medieval peasant.

IMO if the only thing keeping a person from going on a killing spree is fear of eternal damnation that person isn't moral, he is a selfish egoist. I act in an ethical manner because I think it is the right thing to do, I don't need a belief in some imaginary supernatural being.

The atrocities that occurred in the USSR had nothing to do with secularism, it had to do with dogmatic ideology, which is pretty much the same thing as a religion.

It is typical for anti-atheist bigots to claim that the atrocities committed by Stalin were the result of atheism

This is a big issue I have with the Abrahamic religions, the notion that us Humans are the "center of creation" and are superior to all other organisms is so arrogant that it is pathetic.

I wasn't making a statement against Abrahamic religions. In fact, I was trying to point out that many Christian circles are beginning to view humanity naturally.

Possibly a little nicer, but really, his position was that communism is inherently flawed and will inherently lead to tragedy as he placed the blame for the tragedies on the ideology. The Nazis may have been nicer people if Germany had not suffered so much at the end of WW1 but few people would deny the dark nature of Naziism, so the issue would then fall down to determining whether or not the problems with the USSR are due to the ideology and ideology based structures of the nation, or caused by other factors.

I really just think that the wrongs and atrocities done to people before this point were just less documented and fit less of our modern scope - that and of course our history books tend to give us a wonderfully euphemised sense of the past. Truthfully I don't think things were that much better or worse under the yoke of full on religion - it was more politicized than ever at those points though and noble families, when they had sons who weren't first born, usually just sent them off to become priests, abbots, or particularly tried to have them be something higher up in the papacy that they could call in favors and sway the Vatican.

BTW, I'm not trying to paint a black stain on religion, I know that many of the greatest atrocities that happened in the last century involved that sense of human life having little value. Its part of why its something more like a learning process - ie. learning to cope and have a dignified sense of these facts, it usually takes people burning their hand on the stove and either causing something really terrible to happen or letting it happen before they really understand the power of certain dynamics and actually deal with them. The idea that this really cheapens life, just like the urge for many to take evolution as absolute disproof of a higher entity - things like this, to me, seems like a lot of the more rigid counter factions to any sort of spirituality are really trying to put a counterbend on things and part of the distortions I think come from just abuse that they may have suffered from other people (people tend to have a skewed outlook when they've been through such experiences).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say...but I will say, to the other posters, that if religion kept people "in-line," how do you explain the fact that about 0.2% of prisoners are atheists?

I think its been harder for me the other way - more in the sense that I think if anything my own identity has been too far out there to that end, incorrigibly so. Also, when I look at things as if we were living life just as animals and it was sheer Machievellian might-makes-right; people who are inclined toward spirituality, art, music, people who have a natural urge to be more pragmatic than confrontational as well; it seems like these are all very direct damage on one's genetic viability - yet most people have a very difficult time completely separating themselves from these things and many people have this higher desire to really be something greater and better (in terms of peace, love, etc.) than just tribal warfare and taking the next competitor down a peg. In that sense things like depth or intelligence are absolute poisons.

Limitations of free will just make me think that we're all just thrown in to learn and that what we're given we have to deal with - as a character building experience. Overall it seems like so many of our problems relate to evolutionary psychology issues that have long been regarded as taboo that it really seems like it needs to be dealt with.

BTW, with the idea of gnostic heresy as something that abounds these days - I'm still not sure I've really come to grips with the idea that Irenaeus, back in 180 AD, had purely 'this is fact this is fiction' on his mind as much as political solidarity for the church; much like its highly doubtful that he could have done a deep enough investigation of all accounts to really discredit them on their merits.

Well, I pointed out some other factors which definitely did not help matters in the case of the Soviets.

I feel that the anti-Soviet, anti-Communist bias is so all-pervasive and deeply entrenched that many if not most people rarely take the time to question the conventional wisdom, which seems to come down very often to a position that the Soviets were as bad, or worse, than the Nazis, which I think is just plain crazy. I don't think you have to be a Communist to conclude that the Nazis were much worse than the Soviets in just about every way. I'd like to recommend Ian Deutscher's biography of Stalin, 1st edition 1949, 2nd edition 1966. This book was condemned both by Soviet officials and by mainstream politicians in the West. If you take on a controversial topic and end up being attacked from people on both sides of the issue, it may mean you're doing something exceptionally right.

My main point here is: please, investigate things, question your sources, keep an open mind, because, whoever you are and whatever your political beliefs, it's possible that you have been handed a line of biased ideology without recognizing it as such.