Politics, religion and ideology, nothing but personal predilections.

Brian37
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Politics, religion and ideology, nothing but personal predilections.

After all my years of debate in the past 11 years I see the same thing, the thing that is obvious beyond labels and rooted in our evolutionary survival. We did luck out with our brains in the fact that we can think and create, and have improved in short time relative to other species, in mastering not only our environments, but our ability to invent and look forward.

However, when one takes this blip in our history in evolutionary context, it is nothing short of an illusion. We still fight each other over resources like rival ant colonies or cockroach colonies or bee colonies. We still put consuming in tribal self interest above any long term damage it may do to the ecology of humans and the life we depend on to survive.

In short our species still fails to accept that our strive for resources has never, like any species in evolution, involved a majority of that species that is long term thinking. Life is all generational and evolution  has never involved any long term thinking.

It has only been recently in our species history because of our evolved self awareness, that we do think beyond making a baby and what life will look like 1,000 years from now. Unfortunately for our species, while we have thought about the future, the same tribalism prior to our modern science, in which Christians and Muslims and Chinese and Hindus, use the same computers and cell phones and go to doctors, we still look at that future, not as a neutral venture, but as something we tribally exploit to our own self interest.

I would be lying to say I don't have my own ideas of how humanity could do better. But where we fail constantly is the same thing that drives us, both as clubs and individuals, we as a species fail to see that we have never ceased to be the same species. We have never ceased to want the same things. Our divided nature is no different than rival ant colonies fighting.

Our problem is not what divides us, our problem has always been that evolution drives us to self interest and self survival. It isn't that doing that is bad, otherwise no human, no matter what country they live in, would not look both ways before crossing the street. Our problem is that we falsely think because we hold a label, that by proxy our label constituted the invention of ours species.

 

Our problem solving as a species has never been about banning bitching or demanding silence, our problem solving has always been about our common condition.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


Cpt_pineapple
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I agree. I hate labels, and

I agree. I hate labels, and it's one of the reasons I can't get behind the atheist movement. It's too focused on labels and "us vs them" to actually make a significant contribution to society.

 

 

 

 


iwbiek
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Cpt_pineapple wrote:It's too

Cpt_pineapple wrote:

It's too focused on labels and "us vs them" to actually make a significant contribution to society. 

yeah, but still...i fuckin' hate them so MUCH...

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


Brian37
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Cpt_pineapple wrote:I agree.

Cpt_pineapple wrote:

I agree. I hate labels, and it's one of the reasons I can't get behind the atheist movement. It's too focused on labels and "us vs them" to actually make a significant contribution to society.

 

 

 

 

Thats just it. I don't think humans can give up labels. And I also don't think that by using them we have to make them divisive. I see nothing wrong with saying "I don't believe in a god" which is labeled with the word and rightfully so "atheist".

Our evolution in mass is mostly dependent on safety in numbers, even when that which makes a given group successful based on a false premiss. I don't hate labels as much as I hate labels being the priority.

I do not believe in a god, and as long as there are theists there will be atheists. I think the more important issue is HOW humanity gets along, allows bitching, but puts the priority on our common condition.

I am an atheist but if I use a cell phone or a computer and a theist does, our common ground isn't our labels, but the fact that we use the same media and technology. If we are going to argue the value of rationality, reason and science, it cant be about ignoring labels, or trying to dominate by proxy of label, but to put scrutiny in a neutral place. We know this works because when we get beyond labels we see that a jet airliner is not label based, it can be produced in any nation with the means. We see that nukes can be produced both by Muslims and Christians and Jews. We can all sit side by side in universities and public schools in Japan or Turkey or Canada, and regardless of our politics or boarders, a working calculator will still add up 1+1.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


Atheistextremist
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Agree with you

 

 

Brian. I think the moment of truth might come when we all face the meltdown of some fundamental planetary system which has a deleterious impact on all of us. Ocean acidification is good example. 

I think Gaia is facing death by 1000 cuts. Not that we can destroy all life but we have the ability through misuse and overuse of resources, to unbalance the status quo and to lose vast numbers of species whose importance to myriad ecosystems is unknown.

Will we wake up in time? Maybe and only when the shit really, truly and unequivocally hits the fan. Maybe at that moment we start seeing Earth as a vast biodome will we put all these trivial differences of opinion aside and embrace mutual life support.

But the humans are relentlessly stupid. Many religious nutters welcome the destruction of life on Earth and are somehow able to excuse their own contribution to it. Still others see saving the planet as an affront to redundant 17th-20th century concepts of

'progress' for short term profit. 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck