2 . Mankind Controls Its Own Destiny
One
of the key concepts from this book should be the idea that mankind
controls its own destiny. In essence, this is mankind's "Declaration of
Independence" from the strictures of Faith. The moment that you assert
that God bears some responsibility for the key events of your life, you
remove responsibility from yourself for those events. It is true that
this may well be a necessary psychological exercise for the afflicted,
but it is most certainly no way to organize a society for rapid
progress in eliminating the many afflictions which we see on our news
programs each day.
Christianity is the basic
religion of Western Civilization. But so much of what we today call
Christianity is acknowledged to have been derived from sources other
than the teachings of Jesus Christ. If you carefully study the
Christian Bible, you should find that about all Jesus demanded of us
is: 1) a love of God; and 2) the Golden Rule.55
Since "a love of God" manifests itself primarily as a willingness to
follow God's rules, the Golden Rule ends up as the only significant
commandment of Christianity. Everything else in Christianity is the
product of some person writing about Christianity after the death of
Christ. What the various sects of Christianity have done, then, is to
turn their Faith over to one or the other of these writers, and thereby
enslave themselves to the selected writer.
This thought leads to one of my principal observations:
Mysticism is a form of slavery.
In any
mystical thought system, the believers, acting on Faith, turn over
control of some portion of their lives to the chief mystic which they
choose to follow. Those groups which we choose to call "cults" are
simply smaller groups exercising larger control over the lives of their
adherents. The concept is the same, no matter which religious group
happens to be involved. It is just as true for the largest of religious
groups as it is for any of the "cults" which our society decries.
The moment that you deny that
some other person has a mystic power over your life, you have freed
yourself from the chains of slavery.56 Mankind has not achieved whatever greatness you might attribute to our current state of affairs because of our Faith in God, but in spite of
that Faith. Mankind is nothing if not stubborn. We have kept up our
Faith, out of the force of long habit, and we have still managed to
strive forward up the great ladder of technical progress.
But all of the art works and
monuments located at various places around the world, all of the
writings which preserve the great vastness of our knowledge, and all of
the other attributes of our own actions and the actions of our
predecessors, are not achievements of God, but of mankind. Whatever may
be the ultimate Destiny of mankind, it is us who will decide that
destiny, not any God.
And I am most certainly not
the first to recognize this second ultimate Truth. Near the end of the
book containing their summation of the progress of mankind towards
wisdom, "The Lessons Of History" (1968), Will and Ariel Durant write:
". . . let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death."
That thought, and the recognition of it as part of the great Ultimate Truth, should be the motivation for us to develop our own Mission for mankind, the accomplishment of which yields "a significance that transcends death."
3 . Our Mission Is The "Three Tasks Of Mankind"
Any
one person can strive for wealth and power to last an individual
lifetime. Any really successful person can create enough wealth and
power to last a few generations. But the really BIG
accomplishments of mankind do not come to us except through continuous
striving over many generations. This is something that is basically
incomprehensible to most people of wealth and power, who are basically
selfish people motivated by selfish desires. The great achievements are
truly ubiquitous grants of knowledge and/or power to all of mankind.
No doubt all would agree that
one of mankind's fundamental longings is for some form of pleasure. But
we have also long known that mankind really needs to seek more than
simply pleasure alone. Many of the greatest accomplishments of mankind
will each involve an exercise of pure intellect alone, and passion will
be totally absent.
Earlier in this Section I
noted that the search for an increase in knowledge must be balanced in
the proper proportions with striving to increase the happiness and
pleasure of all mankind. From the combination of these concepts comes
the three-fold Mission for mankind:
a. The Apollonian Task Of Mankind
To increase knowledge of the truth for all mankind, in quantity, in quality, and in dissemination.
b. The Dionysian Task Of Mankind
To increase the happiness of all mankind, in quantity, in quality, and in dissemination.
c. The Task Of Balance
To balance the attainment of happiness and knowledge of the truth such that neither excludes the other but instead both are balanced in appropriate quantities, qualities, and dissemination for all mankind.
4 . Ethical And Moral Conduct Through The "Golden Rule"
I spent an entire Section of this book, Book V, Section E, discussing all of the attributes of the Golden Rule as the basis of moral and ethical behavior among ourselves. It would be quite repetitious for me to go through all of that reasoning again, here. Thus, to briefly summarize, great men down through history have each promoted, to one degree or another, the wisdom inherent in the "Golden Rule" as a basis for our ethical and moral conduct towards each other. Even a modern thought system, such as Utility, can be seen as essentially a restatement of the principles embodied within the "Golden Rule." There is simply no better choice as a basis for ethical and/or moral conduct, and it represents the distilled wisdom of the ages, so that is clearly what we should use for our future guidance.
5 . Avoid Acting According To The "Law Of The Jungle"
All
living things are pre-programmed by Nature to act in accordance with
the "Law of the Jungle." That, of course, includes mankind.
Virtually all of our history
to date has been characterized by a dichotomy between close adherence
to the "Law of the Jungle" as the rule for external affairs and various
attempts to achieve something higher and greater for the internal
affairs of each given society. In other words, each Culture evolves a
moral code for internal affairs which moves away from the dictates of
the "Law of the Jungle," but that moral code is rarely followed
strictly by the affected citizens, and the moral code goes almost
totally "out the window" when it comes to relations with people outside
of some given society.
As I have pointed out several
times during this book, the concept that I can survive only at your
expense comes from the idea that life is a zero-sum game. However, long
experience through several millennia clearly shows that mankind can
produce something which is of lasting value without having to destroy
something of equal value. The basic premise that "life is a zero-sum
game" is WRONG! All of human history teaches us that
mankind produces our greatest achievements of a permanent or
long-lasting nature when we agree to cooperate with each other for our
mutual benefit rather than fight over who gets to keep the limited
possessions each of us may now have.
The difficulty arises from who
we perceive to be "friendly" towards ourselves, our families, our
governments, and so forth. Scientists know that all mankind is related
to each other to some degree; all men truly are brothers. But just as
brothers might fight for control of a family or a family business, so
too our various nations fight for control of our family planet. But
most insidiously, we have allowed our inner cities to devolve into a
war zone, with ethnic gangs fighting for turf in virtually every block.
These squabbles eat away at our essential feelings of security in our
homes and neighborhoods and drive us each back into our animal origins
for our own protection.
The essential lesson of the
"Golden Rule" is that kindness begets kindness, while jungle behavior
begets jungle behavior. The commandment of Jesus to "love your neighbor
as yourself" is a commandment designed to suppress jungle behavior, at
least among the people in any given community. The wider application we
give to this rule of conduct, the better will be the state of mankind
as a whole.
So, in any situation where we
are presuming to act upon the basis of reason, and where we have a
choice between two or more possible courses of conduct, we ought to ask
ourselves someplace during our decision-making process which of the
courses of conduct are most like the "Law of the Jungle" and which are
least like that rule.
In general, unless there is no
alternative course of conduct from the course of conduct closest to the
rule of the "Law of the Jungle," that course of conduct which is
furthest from the rule of the "Law of the Jungle" is the course of
conduct which we will feel best about choosing when we reflect upon our
actions after the fact.
6 . Strive For Harmonious Natural Living
One
principal criticism of the United States in general is that our people
are to "here and now" oriented. Our business leaders strive to improve
the bottom line for the next reporting quarter, without regard to what
long term consequences such shortsighted commands might yield.
Much of what lies beneath the
environmental movement is a reaction to this narrow view of the task of
mankind. We have failed to protect our own environment, and the
consequences of that will affect all mankind for generations. Not even
a lowly beast would foul its own nest. Mankind must now see the entire
planet as "our nest," and stop fouling our environment.
But I would caution you that
this is by no means a call to the barricades for us to defend
<insert here the latest endangered species>. It is instead a call
for us to begin to develop an ethical approach to business and industry
which takes into account the possible negative consequences of any
policy implemented by any organization.
The early years of the
Industrial Revolution have left their scars upon the face of our Mother
Earth. If we are to continue up the ever rising curve of "progress," we
must stop defacing our own planet, for the simple end of ensuring the
survival of our species; not for a day, or a week or a year, but for
centuries and millennia.
Astrophysicists tell us that
mankind now lives in approximately the middle years of our own solar
system: five billion years down, five billion years to go. All progress
of mankind from just another beast to our present state of affairs was
accomplished in just a few handfuls of millennia. On a scale of ten
billion years, 20 to 30 millennia is less than a drop in the bucket.
And even more disturbing, virtually all of the environmental damage
done by mankind has occurred within the last century or two. This is a
mere blink of an eye when compared against the time waiting to happen
in the future.
If our descendants are to have
anything at all of happiness, they must have our planet free of the
most egregious forms of pollution we have inflicted upon it. Mankind
must strive to live harmoniously with Nature rather than acting like an
enemy of nature. We see recent progress in the right direction. But we
must keep it up, and never forget the consequences of departing from
that goal may well be the death of our species.
55 See Book V, Section E, where I explain all of the various attributes of the Golden Rule, including "do as you would be done by" and "love your neighbor as yourself."
56 The practice of Voodoo is also based upon the Faith of its believers. The moment that a person can honestly state that he or she no longer believes, then Voodoo loses all power over that person.
