WarGlorial Day

Today I am reminded, not so much of people who died and all the horrific ways that can happen, as much as I'm reminded what a terrible holiday Memorial Day can be when you see the bones beneath the skin, and hear the pervasive divisive messages that it broadcasts.  It has an unctuous dark oily side that lubricates the great machine that many don't see.  

It has morphed innocuously into road trips, outings, picnics and barbecues with family and friends, sometimes after the Easter egg hunt for cemetery gravestones. But it was in purity intended to honor the men and women of the armed forces who have died during times of conflict and war.  In doing this, realizing the depth of sadness and loss, it becomes almost impossible not to slip into a mode of thinking which justifies and celebrates the cause which took them, in an unbalanced way.

I'm certainly for honoring the lives of people who have tried to make the world a better place and have given their lives for that goal.  But at the same time I seriously question that the end always justifies the means, and if those means really succeeded in making anything better (the end), or if they just furthered that ageless status quo of divisiveness and conflict which causes more war and more woe.  It's even under question if the end itself was a valid goal - was our vision for their home worth the cost of remodeling it for them? We were never hired as a contractor, decorator, or consultant. Each side in a conflict fights for their vision/version of "better". We are now a world more militant and divided, certainly more armed.  When all you have is a gun (rock, club, spear) everything looks like a target. Speaking of "armed" it's postulated that our ability to throw things as early hominids (starting with rocks) is what gave us advantage over both predators and prey.

There are certainly still "predators" in the world; unfortunately they are primarily other humans. I'd rather be honorably eaten by a lion, or mauled at the zoo by a gorilla than betrayed by a bullet.  I'd even rather be eaten to help keep another human alive, than be killed simply because they disagreed with me and mine, and my way of life. 

Looking at the machine of nature maybe it's this mechanism of infighting that keeps our population, the top predators who've established themselves soundly outside the food chain, in check. Besides the weather (unfavorable environmental events), accidents, and life threatening microbes, the only other element we need to fear is ourselves.  We are our own worst enemy ... and we celebrate this mindset, mostly subliminally, every year by glorifying and justifying war to feel better about its devastation.  It's all about US, killing THEM (the villainous deserving) and THEM killing US (the heroic undeserving), and each side is the us in their own minds.  How much do we consider the people who died fighting for their country and cause, and their families left behind?  Do we consider that they may have been  wonderful and worthwhile people too?   They led lives of love and left loved ones too, know this!  Seldom does empathy extend beyond our borders, especially if it invalidates our ideology, or makes our actions less defensible.

A kid, after hurting another kid, will often spout the defense, "he... started it, asked for it, made me do it, had it coming!"  This might be true in many cases, but what is also true in many is that the retaliation was way over the top when compared to the offense.  The first recourse usually sought is the one most violent (escalation is natural in ego).  As we mature we realize there are other ways and better ways to handle a problem, and solutions are situational, not universal. 

Is some fighting just?  Hell yes!  Acts of invasion and violent aggression must be stopped. But, learning the lesson of escalation, the counter-blow is perceived far worse from the receiving end than it is from the dealing end. When each side seeks retribution according to that basic perception = escalation. 

Will we ever fully escape conflict and fighting? Hell no! We are trapped in this hell of conflict wherever we go.  But we should strive to lessen it, seek the best solutions, and refrain from glorifying it. Obviously ... right?   We should also remember that justice has a strong tendency to mean "just us".  In this sense justice is truly blind. We are all just in our own minds.  Much like the cries of children, "That's not fair", when it is nothing but fair, we tend to see justice only when it serves us. Like perceiving the gifts we get as inferior to those received (held) by others.  This is striving.  This is one upmanship. This is ego.

Change is best achieved from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.  When we externalize and blame our surroundings and our enemies we take away our own power.

The modern memorial message is mostly that rather than look back, and inward, with regret and sadness, we do better looking on and outward with bravado, validation, and cheer.  This is how we ameliorate the tragedy of war - with sentiments of patriotism and nationalism that reinforce that we were engaged in a just cause.  When saying, "Long live the heroes of war!", if not careful we are also saying long live war and division. "We were awesome, they sucked!" This is the language of justification, fueled by fear.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering - Yoda

Our heroes of war may have certainly been doing something very good and noble in trying to stop horrific crimes against humanity, typically led by an ego-maniacal sociopath.  They did what they could, most valiantly, within a machine of war not designed for the best response, which would be the fewest casualties and collateral damages.

The question becomes, must misdirected blanketed violence against a whole group of people always be answered with that same kind of violence?  We know that this response will only cohere the group, justify their hatred, and increase the divide.  The means to achieve the end of violence and aggression cannot be the very same violence and aggression.   You can fight fire with fire, but not with the same kind of fire.  Burning down someone's house because they burnt down yours is hypocritical.   It is the over reaction of children, "He did it first, so he deserved it."  No matter how justified, you are still guilty of the same crime, and nothing was made any better, it was made worse.  Typically too, the retribution was worse than the offense (not only did you burn down the house you killed their cow to teach them a lesson). Nothing was learned either, even with parity of actions, since each party seeks to justify their behavior first, with there likely being earlier offenses that caused the each party to light each match with justification.  Anything returned to us was undeserved, and anything given back was well deserved.

War and division may be an inseparable part of being human and forming groups.  If so, foolish would be the notion of it ever going away ... but maybe we humans can evolve.  I hear some people assert quite convincingly that we have already ... maybe we can keep doing it. At worst we can bomb ourselves back into caves, into underground bunkers, a kind of perverted modern day cavemen.

When I "celebrate" Memorial Day I remember the fallen with a heart full of regret and disappointment for humanity ... and with a hope that someday this day will be about remembering who and how we were back then, when we waged insanity against each other. A day to remember our mistakes, and the lessons that war taught us so many times and so many years ago - that all life has value and causes a great wake of sadness when lost, especially when betrayed by a bullet.  

... And that there really is no loss; when we stop clinging so hard to death, then we can truly live (and die) at will and in peace, happiness, and understanding.

A Return to Religion Redefined and Refined

By nature as we are religious animals.  Much of the mechanisms of religion are ingrained us,mechanisms which provide structure, hierarchy, cohesion, and cooperation of a group interactions are found in organized religions; therefore a critical analysis of religion can be seen as either an attack on humanity, or as reproof for the purpose of correction, toward our collective betterment. In all our discourse the latter should be our goal. If you feel attacked upon reading this, hopefully you can make the shift to feeling reproved with kindness, seeing ways that we can improve.  

As humans, and specifically religious ones, we seek to correct rather than seek correction.  Correction is a double edged sword, best wielded without absolutes and without fear or avoidance of self recrimination or injury.  Ironically the intransigent profession of possession of "absolute truth" unquestioned is a shield against obtaining actual truth.  To be cut by the truth that hurts, the truth you naturally shun, you must be willing to sacrifice yourself and lay down your shield, your foolish defensive pretenses. 

The definition of religion can be as broad as superstition, magical thinking, mysticism, astrology, transcendentalism, etc. These are all elements of hard wired faulty brain logic culminating from 200,000 plus years of adaptive evolution.  Consider the thinking flaw confirmation bias, just to name a prominent one of many.  Ideas which promote the individual and the group, regardless of accuracy, cause them to fight and push for survival and propagation.

It is incredible (not credible) that so many people today still hang on to ancient superstitious and magical ideas of primitive peoples.  Adopting the views of people and cultures 2000+ years ago, prior to, and thus uniformed by the age of reason and enlightenment, is frankly stupid. Naive is the notion that a god can deliver through human minds and hands infallible truth written whole cloth fashion, devoid of error, bias, or agenda.  This allegiance to a chosen person who speaks the mind of god, this blind clinging to authority, is another byproduct of our group-think evolution. Those who went against the direction and protection of the alpha and the group usually died.  They were certainly cast out, if not killed by their own.

To put it bluntly, much of religion and religious experience is an adaptive mental illness. It is imagining in a very real way things that aren't there. I say adaptive because it is a necessity for creatures intelligent enough to realize their own demise.  Its delusions give hope and meaning to an existence with many clues to the contrary.  Sadly, if untreated, our "religious" nature will likely be our undoing and the cause of our extinction, especially as it leads us to dismiss the importance and the portents of science and rational thought.  There are aspects of some very popular religions that put god squarely in charge of the planet and our future, or make the cosmos or future unresponsive to our actions, even imaginary.  Some even anticipate and predict various forms of destruction and disasters.  This thinking makes for very irresponsible and passive attitudes toward the environment.  God will take care of it/us.  It's all according to plan.

Many religions externalize responsibility via external unseen agents that can always be blamed or relied on.  Thus avoiding to a great degree personal accountability and internal ownership of thoughts and actions. Scapegoats. At a fundamental level religion is escapists in nature.  Some create a socially passive individual who "goes with the flow".  Some tap into our frustrations, our inability to act or feel powerful on a larger scale by teaching that detachment is a preferred state.  

We desperately need an elevated mode of thinking and being as humans wherein we grow up and realize that the future and the state of this planet and ourselves is completely up to us.  We cannot afford to rely on a god or a cosmic plan, a grand design or purpose.  This elevated mode of a collective mass with a rational and informed collective mind state is greatly needed to tackle the problems of our time, and divert dire events which, if unconfronted and unchecked, will lead to a human imposed imminent mass extinction event, taking upwards of 90% of all life on this planet, leaving mostly invertebrates, bacteria, and slime molds.  This is a prophetic prediction based on the prescience of solid science.  Unlike other forms of revelation, science has shown a pretty solid track record of accurate prediction.

The answer to our human thought malady is education, specifically in the sciences, and especially those that help correct our logic, and dis-inform and expose our thinking traps. As belief goes, an informed belief in possibilities is a valid mental endeavor, but a very different thing entirely to the belief in (certainty about) unknowable "realities", and uninformed ideas fueled by self favoring emotions, or the fear and loathing of indigestible facts. Much of the belief I have seen and experienced is merely this type of willful self deceit and delusion documented by cognitive science. 

It is a myth to assume that the absence of religion means the absence of love, morals, filial responsibility, altruism, or anything considered good or beneficial in human behavior. Core values and conscience do not rely on religious beliefs. The two are merely tangled. It's time to untangle.  

It would also be a benefit to take what we have learned from science and create a sort of "religion" which uses this knowledge to create a better individual and society.

As for promoting goodness and benefit, and the much lauded morality which many religions claim exclusively to confer, there are in actuality elements within many religions which in fact do just the opposite.  It is these elements we must strive to untangle and discard.

Deuteronomy 7:1-2, 5-6   1. When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations... 2. and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.  5. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.  6. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

This "chosen people" mentality (CP) is the bare faced ugly group-think of tribalism, which has been with us since before we even climbed down from the trees.  We are social animals who depend on "the group" for survival.  Just like ideas which promote an individual over other individuals, ideas that promote the group over other groups, over other animals, and even over other individuals within the same group ensure the survival and propagation of the group.  The superiority of ego is the prime psychological defense justifying harming or killing another human being, or another life.  Were we ultimately moral in our actions toward other life we would refuse to harm any other form of life.  Yet, before taking the sanctity of all life to the absolute and absurd, we are not plants who can live off the sun; we must live off other life, preferably the lowest forms of such.

Throughout all human history, CP is present in some form and degree within all the ills imposed by one group upon another - Dominion, oppression, slavery, genocide, Manifest Destiny, nationalism, the holocaust, trail of tears, war, etc.  It is even present today in irreligious form, seen within the great and growing divide between the deserving rich and the undeserving poor …  Deserving ego hoarding wealth and claiming superiority, a person made chosen by their own prowess and that of their privileged progenitors.

As demonstrated by the biblical quote above, this extreme egoistic idea of being chosen was made particularly pernicious within Judaism, and sadly it spread, bleeding over into Christianity (Judaism 2.0) and Islam (Judaism 3.0).   

It's interesting to note that the reference to Asherah and tearing down her pole was a call to destroy a rival Semitic religion which included the equal worship of both male and female deities.  This religion, based more on life, nature, and fertility, was a precursor to the Abrahamic religion which became Judaism, with the worship of their proto-god El and his consort Asherah.  El is the old god of the people who began the bible, first known as Elohim in the old testament, and appearing there years later stripped of any accompanying female deity.  It is also the reason Baal, or Ba-El, the primary god of the Phoenicians was turned from god to demon.

It is the trend for an evolving religion to seek to destroy its predecessor, thus doing away with the conflict of mutated and conflicting beliefs which spring from the same source. This phenomenon mimics biology, as advancing lifeforms typically absorb those which compete within the same niche.  Like any human and any life-form, any religion can trace its source to another.  Despite the popular claim of originality, being handed down whole from the heavens, religion is handed down from other hands (and heads).

From a breakdown of religions based on sheer biomass, Judaism has clearly passed the baton.  As such, most people on the planet today who practice a religion do so based on this "chosen people with a chosen person" ideology (Christianity & Islam).  It is the primary reason most religions are divisive.  Maybe its a chicken-egg relationship - we are extremely wired for group think and thus pushovers for insular and xenophobic behavior which promotes our group, ourselves and our identities within the group.  So maybe in blaming religion for all the atrocities foisted on humankind we are simply blaming our human nature and our long lineage of being group animals. Separating religious behavior from human behavior is misunderstanding the connected complexity, misunderstanding the human animal.  As such it appear hopeless that this survival mechanism which harms other life, especially its own, can ever be extracted from our nature.  It is a problem much more complex than simply blaming religion.  It is engraved, ingrained and embedded in our DNA, given voice and power by our religious expression of it.  Religion is simply put a structure of societal controls and cohesion, another form of politic along the lines of fascism or dictatorship.  Many early societies were theocratic centered around a leader who received divine instruction or status to lead.

Rather than simply viewing the Abrahamic people as the warmongers and aggressors of the Middle East it is fair to note that they were not the first and are not unique.  Also fair is to consider the reason they held these superiority ideas - necessity of circumstance.  From the Torah it appears this "chosen people-chosen person" idea was well in place prior to all the external pressures and persecutions the group would experience later on as it grew. Yet, maybe it was an outcropping of locale, with the perceived threat of other proximate cultures which cemented it so strongly.  Whatever its source of growth to giant proportions, it was the key to their survival as a group, and the reason they are still around as a group today.  A superiority narrative mixed with the threat of persecution and harm by outsiders does wonders for cohesion, which turns the group into a powerful multicellular organism, a powerful cooperative Borg, the sum being much greater than its parts.

Many cultures and peoples have been wiped from the Earth by others who had it better together.  Extreme pride and tribalism practiced within the boiling pressure pot of warring and disparate populations is a cohesive protection mechanism that promotes the group's survival. The idea is a self fulfilling prophecy. 

Being unfortunately positioned in the cross roads of many nations, hemmed in and threatened on all sides, this primal idea was necessarily distilled,refined, and perfected within the ideology of this Semitic group, to protect and defend the Abrahamic/Hebrew/Israelite people both culturally and geographically.

It is interesting to note that this CP ideology is more present within cultures which arose within and around the fertile crescent.  This band of land, which was very good at growing life and thus people while also being limited and hemmed in by desert, was a chosen land for a chosen people, an island of life which everyone clamored to board. "Deserving" was a defense for taking it and hoarding it fiercely from others who would do the same.  Like the deserved obscenity of mathematically incomprehensible monetary riches hoarded by the chosen people of our time - it is the same thing.  The limited supply of a golden goose hoarded and controlled toward extreme wealth makes for strife - revolution, revolt and conquest.  And the holders of such must esteem themselves as "better thans" or "chosens" in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance of their unfair circumstance.  Entitlement.

In cultures which develop in regions of vast geography with the ability to provide for the needs of life, or in locations which naturally limit or insulate population we find religious ideas and practices that are much more passive, kind, and peaceful in nature, much more tied to the sanctity of life and the Earth.  Consider many religions of the East, and those within the primitive American continent, the isolated islands of the sea, even the "island" of Australia.  Rather than fight, a group could more easily take flight.  On islands the population had to get along, and when they did not they either left to find another, or were reduced to a population that could.  Islands are very good at group cohesion, and their limited resources limit population growth, which growth causes pressure, which pressure causes strife. Just like animals "learn" to become smaller on islands, so do humans, they decrease their footprint.  

It is typically when disparate groups are pushed together, fighting for "choice" accessible land surrounded by open inhospitable terrain that this CP idea swells.  As we grow and swell on the planet conflict will be (and has been) unavoidable.   Maybe we are becoming an island, discovering the Earth's limited and diminishing resources, surrounded by the vast impassable ocean of the universe, where we must learn to adapt and behave in a fashion that is sustainable and healthy - that values life and does not harm it, hoard it, or waste it.

Consider the following Native American Wisdom:

What he describes here is common to all nomadic tribal peoples - 

"The strictures of Bedouin life naturally prevented the social and economic hierarchies that were so prevalent in sedentary societies like Mecca. The only way to survive in a community in which movement was the norm and material accumulation impractical was to maintain a strong sense of tribal solidarity by evenly sharing all available resources.  the tribal ethic was therefore founded on the principle that every member had an essential function in maintaining the stability of the tribe, which was only as strong as its weakest members.  this was not an ideal society: the notion that every member of the tribe was of equal worth,  Rather the tribal ethic was meant to maintain a semblance of social egalitarianism so that regardless of one's position, every member could share in the social and economic rights and privileges that preserved the unity of the tribe."  - Reza Aslan, No god But God

Although this way of life was good for creating healthy societies, it should be remembered that these peoples who had cohered around central points of agreement had no problem warring and pillaging neighboring tribes and cultures who had formed around another set of social agreements.  They were after all, tribes.

Is the hope that we will ever overcome this affliction a short lived fantasy, a far off dream, or even an impossible one?  Maybe so, as our massive mass makes for a great inertia … definitely so, as long as we cling to our individual groups and ignore the shared commonality with every other human, both that valuable and that despicable.  Whatever you hate or love in another human being is by default and degree also in you.  Enmity is the enemy, empathy is the glue.

The internet, by linking together the human family across the entire surface of this sphere, as we share polite discourse and discovery of our common cultural values, devoid of an attitude soaked in the division of superiority, may be our messiah, our savior from ourselves, becoming the holy text of our communion, with its diversity of information becoming the purifier of our souls, of our very nature.  

Sadly, rather than developing a profound appreciation for differences and diversity, the answer to getting along may be a world where we are all becoming more basically the same.  Hopefully the negative aspects of this internet interchange, notably mass marketing, will not succeed in forming us in their image - shapeless yet defined consumers of their offerings who in foisting such choices seek to excel their "brand" over others.  Like groomed and domesticated cattle, they want us converted, captured, corralled and branded, placed neatly in sterile stereotypical categories.  Yet this drive to differentiate ourselves from the masses is divisive as well.  We have a strong urge toward individualism, being unique, or somehow special.

The internet is akin to a hive of jiggling bees, each vibrating and dancing their information to be heard and followed - yet devoid of the altruistic drive within the participants which truly seeks to promote the best information for the best outcome of the hive.  Rather, much in our interchange is fueled by the selfishness of ego, which seeks to promote avaricious acquisition, by an individual, a group, or corporation (they're people you know).  Maybe I'm just another bee in the hive, wiggling my ass among the din and distraction, thinking I've found a better home, a sweeter field.

Cash in your club card. Throw off the cloister of your clique, the prescribed and proscribed predictability of your priorities and purchases.  Abandon your puny insular group which pushes to confine and define you against others.  Purge the exclusionary and divisive ideas from your ideology. Your god, if it is what it is, and am what it ams, does not love you more. Try to imagine how ridiculous that sounds within your mind divorced of ego.   Short of abandonment of the entire group and culture, simply abandon that found caustic.  Yet this may mean transcending the intransigent group.  Strive to mend the message toward a reverence and appreciation for the diversity of other peoples, other forms of life and all ways of living.  Join the larger group of the living, the group of life.  

Revere the providence of the Earth and Sun - We know they exists and "care" for us in quiet beneficent benediction.  If you believe that god made them for us, so be it, but do not in deserving disrespect neglect and trash the gift.  We will not get another, especially with that attitude of ingratitude.  The way to know if a child really loves a gift is how they care for it, and maturity brings a depth of appreciation for how fragile the things we love can be.

It's ironic that primitive cultures who revered the earth and the sun for their life giving properties, who revered foremost of all, life in all forms, basically had it right.  The profound perspective of these "pagan" pragmatists produces perpetuity - sustainability.  But this lofty thought reverencing people of lore must be mitigated by the acknowledgement that these passive and friendly cultures, if they ever existed, by necessity must have lived and grew in an insulated bubble.  The likely truth is that most early peoples were nomadic, occasionally bumping into other peoples, who while sharing the same flawed brains, did not likely share the same social rules and morals, or ideological ideas.  These differences created instant "others".  In this situation survival favored "fier(ce)-some" and competitive cultures over those who valued peace and egalitarian ideals.  Thus most human groups and cultures became inwardly egalitarian, and outwardly fierce.

The blending of an inclusive ideology within our burgeoning population on the planet is our new challenge … one that requires a new religion, informed by facts, intelligence, rational thought, science, and our greatest human attribute - Love.  This is a call for a new religion without faith.  A religion that centers on truth and what we actually know, and includes the possibilities of things we do not know always being open to questioning.  

This is the challenge of science, to provide hope, meaning, and value to life. I think it does, even if it cannot reassure us against of our demise being permanent, and our lives being temporary.  This mutation of a cherry picked return to pagan values mixed with the intelligence and information of our time, ends us in a mutilated yet evolved manner of living, back where we came in, but informed by where we came out.   All departure is a return.  ;)