There is this thing, shapeless, colourless, odourless and tasteless, that isn’t really there, at all.
At least, not for a great many people.
Those people don’t even know what it is, far less how much they are missing it.
Like Vitamin ‘D’, or sufficient Oxygen. Like adequate sleep, or a minimum intake of fat. Or salt…
One may live for a short while, or an even shorter while, without such things. But what sort of a life does one live, lacking such things, that, really, are essentials?
The sick man, habitually sick, never knowing what complete health is, makes do with what he has.
He has nothing to compare his health to.
He is as he is. He thinks it normal.
He does not understand the behaviour and the attitudes of someone in full health.
He scorns them as deluded.
The man who believes in nothing, has nothing to live for, but his own base desires.
Sex, pleasure, intoxication, social standing.
Money, trinkets and stuff.
What is the point of life, to one whose life has no point?
What is the point of anything?
There are many, many people, to whom some, or all of the above, applies.
And there are others, to whom little, or none of it applies.
What do these two basic types of human have in common?
Not a lot.
There is this thing, you see, that has a lot in common with the notion of ‘God’.
You can’t see it, you can’t prove it.
But millennia of religiously-motivated humanity shows the concept to be of rather notable importance.
There has always been a vital interest in ‘God’. Always. Until very recently.
We don’t need superstitions like that, any more, many of us claim.
In fact, it ought to be outlawed, and done away with, once and for all.
And strangely, although it goes unnoticed by most: it is only very recently that civilization, itself, has entered a terminal power-dive towards oblivion.
Coincidence? Inevitable? A random thing?
Maybe.
But maybe not.
Maybe there is a connection here, that people either can not, or simply do not want, to see.
Maybe the notion of ‘God’ has been around for as long as it has, because it is, in fact, of vital importance to the very survival of civilization. It must be there, because, perhaps, as that old song says: like love and marriage: you can’t have one without the other…
No civilization was ever built in the absence of divine reverence.
The few civilizations that started with it, then chose to abandon it, collapsed, shortly after.
And this, as they say, is not rocket-science.
Only a dolt could fail to notice.
So we have a failing civilization of dolts, and an extinct deity, that plays no further part.
And, astonishingly, nobody seems to know what is happening. Or even that it is happening.
Running around in various degrees of frenzy, being ‘progressive’, being ‘equal’, tearing down this and that, and getting ever deeper into an invisible quicksand that – for some reason – remains undetectable, even as it extinguishes the work of centuries of human toil and contribution.
Why do so few see where all this is heading?
Context.
That which provides a framework of reference, to make sense of what remains senseless, without context.
The canvas upon which the masterpiece is painted.
The ether that carries the carrier wave, that – in turn – carries the radio transmission.
The Rosetta stone that provides the key to gobbledygook.
Context.
The baseline from which healthy humans operate.
The matrix that contains everything that gives life to the living.
The sense behind the common.
You don’t get far without context, even if you started out light-years ahead of your ancestors.
They lived, and died, to provide you with this thing.
It is what all mankind has always striven for.
The invisible ingredient that provides meaning.
Don’t waste it!
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Lack of context is why it’s impossible to argue with people or even discuss things, when they are dedicated to rejecting it.
Back in the times before monotheism came about, people thought that nature operated through the opinions of the gods of wind, rain, earth, etc. And I suppose their context and their cosmology was quite different from that later established by the monotheists, who thought it was just one Jehovah whose opinions ran things, and who had a plan.
We’re right on the brink of overthrowing that, though I wish we wouldn’t because context is a framework. There are people who want no framework. I’m kind of restating what you already said. What I’d add is…
Without a framework we’ll either have to go about our lives using the scientific method and having to start over and over, and our lifetimes end before we can make all of the mistakes possible and realize that we aren’t capable of mentally distinguishing reality from falsehood all that well.
Jung said that in the story of Genesis, the tree of knowledge of good and evil was not good for people to taste, one reason being that it’s a waste of time trying to figure that out. A framework is provided so we can trust something to be worked out already.
What now, if so many people won’t listen to that? Maybe the only answer is that those who don’t want a framework are going to be insecure and neurotic. Living well is the best answer. People who are going to look for a context, will.
My wife had good things to say about you, just yesterday :)
That’s high praise: she generally doesn’t regard women very highly.
Which is something only another woman could get away with saying.
Genesis is my favorite place to hang out, biblically.
All you really need, to make sense of life, is right there.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil is the only thing off-limits, and you can see why. Munch on its fruit and you start judging, and once you start down that path, there’s almost no way back.
You made a profound remark, maybe without realizing, about people not wanting a framework. Which is amusingly ironic:
There is one. Wanting it, or not, is completely absurd.
A bit like saying: “I don’t want the sun to rise in the east”.
“The man who believes in nothing, has nothing to live for, but his own base desires.
Sex, pleasure, intoxication, social standing.
Money, trinkets and stuff. ”
In fact religious people indulge in this more than those who do not believe in God (nonsense). Probably the reason is because they are unintelligent.
A belief in God is more about what you have to die for rather than live for – and spend eternity doing God knows what and for no purpose at all. Not that there is the slightest chance of this un-clarified scatter delusion anyway.
People who can’t take the truth will understandably make up a more comfortable myth.
Can you picture a framework without Old Man God?
I took a few weeks replacing God in my thinking with Creator, Creating. The creator and the act of creating were more of the same entity, depending on how I wanted to look at it.
So I figured, you can ask for anything you want in this world. Just call out for it. It’s your right. I did that for a couple of weeks and it had an interesting effect on me. I called out thanks for this and that, or I called out for help or comfort. It was pretty good.
However, when I went out on a walk and lost my wallet, I reverted back to God my dear Father. Then I remembered my experiment and I alternated between the two. I found my wallet after a lot of looking and retracing my steps. Maybe calling out to the creator/creating or God made me have faith and be more persistent, I don’t know. But I did call out grateful when I found it!
Yes, easily, all that is needed is something bigger than one self which also symbolizes all of creation.
God is just a symbol, like nature. It’s what that symbol stands for that we can’t live without, which is reverence for our amazing universe.
It also makes us see humans in the right perspective, which is small and weak with lot’s of grandiose ideas that don’t work out in reality.
Nice one, Jane.
Let us all know how your attitude works out for you, as your life unfolds.
This is probably – at least partly – why my wife feels the way she does about many women:
Pronouncing from a position of ignorance, while denigrating anyone who actually knows anything.
Not to worry: it’s all quite normal.
Not exactly unique to women; her position is similar to many atheists’
And feminized men.
And metrosexual robots.
If you took the people in this thread, put them on a planet where they were immortal and had everything they needed, “for no purpose at all,” they’d invent a purpose and then find out that all along that was the point to the universe. To pour out life and see what it discovered, because the logic of the universe makes any thing become a more evolved version of itself until it is a God-like consciousness.
There was a book about this, from Riverworld:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/books/27farmer.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www
“Imagination,” he said, “is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.”
It put plain in an older post on here. Something like; ‘People want freedom’. but freedom from what? Freedom from obligation.’ You can’t have that unless you die, which kind of defeats the object of life. Find the natural forfilling obligations. Most just seem to be man made in order to manipulate and are not true obligations.
Well said: “Find the natural forfilling (fulfilling, I assume) obligations. Most just seem to be man made in order to manipulate and are not true obligations.”
The words go all wrong with “freedom from,” because a state of freedom is about your mind, it refers to what controls your thinking because you are afraid of it. The only freedom a human can have is clarity of purpose and knowing what you’re ready to die for.
I have this friend with whom we have(or had, i should say) these really long and stressful debates about religion and God. There is this thing about atheists that has always bothered me – the people who believe in God or a similar entity or what ever you choose to name it (it’s name is irrelevant if you ask me) are, according to them, almost idiots. But if they are leading this fulfilling, illuminated, interesting life why do they experience the need to always and incessantly come to you and say: “Not only am I(and there is always this huge I) living a better life , but your life is based on a lie”. Since childhood i have always thought that the wise men and women should be content with their realizations and not have the need to push them on others. Just my thoughts.
Interesting distinction: pushing and sharing.
When one makes a quantum leap in awareness, one is very likely to want to share that insight. Pushing it is something else again, and probably the one is easily mistaken for the other.
Sharing: “I made a pie, have some if you want.”
Pushing: “I made a pie, I’m going to demand you tell me what you think of it and judge you in response.”
I think most people are made for being pushed, not shared, and so I support authoritarian controls. It’s like livestock, they can’t manage their own affairs.
We’re having an Esotericist storm :)
Go man, go!
I witnessed the spontaneity of life that birthed this vigorous world. A great many snails were spawned seemingly from nothing just yesterday outside my front door in the tiny enclosure of a walled-in tree. Perhaps with the coming rain shower they felt the opportune moment to migrate. Once they used to feed an entire field’s worth of flowers and small mammals. Now these snails’ lives seem completely worthless as they will not feed many animals and will not give back anything meaningful to the cemented plant enclosures. It is amazing that such an occurrence continues.
Most people are living in an entirely artificially produced environment and they seem to have completely forgotten why they were allowed to exist in the first place to be here at this point.
Give them a TV and welfare, they’ll vote for you.