Abandoning reality, worshiping illusion. why?
 

Hello all.

Proposing that somewhere, sometime, along our path, a large number of our human species have chosern to pursue and worship an illusion of power and control.

---and in doing so have abandoned the reality of the need for care, dependence and interdependence.

Why?

x.

There is nothing logical in your reasoning. Some people choose power over love, that is their way of taking care of themselves. If they knew how mistaken they are, if they knew the pain and suffering they are calling for, they wouldn't do it.

hello SilentDrum.

thanks for sharing your thoughts and opinion.

It seems to me that when we consider the use of logic, we may be lead to question if it is logical to behave in a manner which acts in opposition to the behaviour required to protect and nurture the very environment and social fabric upon which we depend.

This is a question which we can ask of ourselves if we choose to do so--regardless of whatever reasons we may have which leads us to personally behave as we may currently behave.

Questioning ourselves in such a manner is an act of courage.

Good wishes.

:biggrin: Sorry, but I thought that already happened for real (politics, leaders, herd behavior, useless technologies, etc etc).

A few years ago I made a very disturbing discovery: throughout known written history (dating back over 2,500 years), it can be observed that many people literally do not possess the mental potential to care, nor to express qualities like virtue. It simply does not exist within their structure of mind and body. As an analogy, it is not in the nature of a violin to sound like a horn, and likewise, it is not in the nature of the general public for the people to apply the reasoning to care.

The problem of people not caring is not new; apparently it's always been here. I will avoid the lengthy details, but the evidence is extensive, and applies to all nations of all eras.

The number of people who truly do know and practise "the need for care, dependence and interdependence" are relatively few, are very beautiful souls, and are treasures.

Offhand, the only author that I can remember to have usefully touched on the topic was Xunzi (about 300 B.C.), who spoke of how people influence their environment, and the environment in turn influences the people (a whole of maybe two sentences maybe). The logic is extraordinarily simple, but, as we can all see, mankind abandoned logic a very long time ago. :/

i noticed the same thing in current times. From what i'm seeing in the world around me, many love to pick a fight so they can try to win at any cost. They especially don't care what the cost of the victory they so crave is to others.

what they often choose to fight for is their own way of life... they don't care about anyone else outside their group, they just want their own way of life to be considered the 'norm'. So much so they will gladly sanction anyone who wants to do it differently from them...

Another good topic to fight over is who can collect the most money.

some others are at least likely to give lip service to the idea that those in need should be helped. Many go far beyond that... unfortunately a lot of them have allowed themselves to be dragged into the fighting as well.

Somehow, it always seems wiser to do the thing you don't want to do than face whatever consequences you think will come from not doing so...

It is hard to tell what is really going on here. There has been a lot of conjecture about that over the centuries but I don't find any of it conclusive. personally, I don't anymore think it nearly as simple as naively stating the equations nurturing=good, not caring=bad. I think it has a lot more nuance than that. Sigh.

But all I've been able to figure out for sure is I don't personally like joining the fray.

really, the main reason for so much rampant delusion is that we chose to trade out our natural habitat so we could safely interact with each other. Hard to see the reality of things, if you choose not to associate with it.

Hello Falling Leaves and all.

The choices we make/have made seem imo similar in some respects to the choices portrayed in the biblical story of the Garden of Eden.

Shall we choose/have we chosen, to be mindful respectful partners in the process of existence--or consider ourselves to be somehow separate users of the results of the process of existence ?

Different consequences follow different choices.

from my POV we never stopped doing the same thing they did, calling one thing good and anohter thing bad, running toward one part of reality and away from another, accepting more and more limitations on ourselves and each other and boxing ourselves into a corner. If there weren't a fragile and somewhat unlikeable balance made by the powers that be, we would have long since boxed ourselves into such small boxes we would essentially be dead...

if left to our own devices we would never get past this. Fortunately, we weren't left to our own devices. But we don't much like the solution that has been imposed on us... there are a lot of complaints. But what noone seems to grasp, is, that not everything can always be likeable just because we want it to be that way. We seemingly can't get beyond the idea that if we want something, we therefore have a 'right' to have it.