Talking Lions 2

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wotsgowingon
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Joined: November 21st, 2008, 3:21 pm

Talking Lions 2

Post by wotsgowingon »

Social hierarchy depends on the incentive that if you are higher up you get more. If there were limitless resources then that incentive would disappear, or so supporters of capitalism would argue. In order to protect the incentive to excel, it then becomes imperative that resources be kept from the masses and directed to the few at the top of the tree. How? We currently live in what most publicly consider to be a free world (the western world, at least) so just taking the resources by force would no longer be tolerated meaning some other way has to be invented. Instead of "No, you can't have it!" the line becomes "No, you can't afford it!". The effect is very much the same but with an added bonus. If a ruler is openly robbing people of land and property then the people of a "free" society are likely to see this unjust and revolt With the capitalist system firstly, the people who end up at the top are rarely in the public eye and are generally revered as good business men who deserve the fruits of their labour. Secondly, people are of the opinion that they could elevate themselves to have the same privileges as the people at the top if only they could somehow get the money. The capitalist would take the opportunity to argue that this is incentive at work and that a person motivated by money would do their best to be highly paid and in doing so their contribution makes the world a better place, But is this the case? Look at the traditionally highest paid jobs, those which give someone the title, Professional:

* Finance
* Law and,
* Medicine



Those in finance only work on money, there is little to no thought given to any goal other than turning a profit. This is also true of the corporation which by definition of the corporate charter is concerned only with those goals that increase it's own profits. One could argue that by directing funds to a company that produces a worthwhile product or service that they end up helping improve the world in their own way, on top of which the company creates jobs again, enriching the lives of a certain amount of people but I would counter with the argument that the investors inevitably expect a good return for their investment thus limiting the amount of resources going back into what ever it was that made the improvement. Also, the people in professions like that are generally highly academic and motivated and would be able to make a better impact on society elsewhere. On top of this the company consumes a lot of resources of it's own.


Law is obviously important in society today. However by removing money from the equation there would be no need for the corporate, patent, matrimonial and compensation fields of law to name a few. Criminal law is the one that holds most inherent value but look at the motivations criminal activity:

* Anger
* Sex crimes
* Criminal insanity
* Money



Money is the motivation behind most crime and therefore uses up most of the resources. Why do people want money? does it hold any inherent value of it's own? other than burning or writing on ([sarcasm]a surprisingly uncommon activity[/sarcasm]) it clearly has little use of it's own. The reason then that people want it? As stated earlier people are of the opinion that they could elevate themselves to have the same privileges as the people at the top if only they could somehow get the money. Crime is for some an easy way or even the only way they know of achieve this goal. If all people had everything they needed then money would be useless, there would be no money related crime and the law profession would be condensed to dealing with crimes motivated by anger (which would probably be reduced as people would feel less injustice and inequality), sexual drives and criminal insanity. Again, this would free up a large amount of resources and highly academic people for other purposes which have a better impact on society.

This leaves us with medicine which obviously has a huge inherent value in that it makes comfortable and extends the life of us humans. This is one of the places that the extra human, material and energy resources could be re-directed to.

While on the subject, What professions, tasks, or pursuits do hold inherent value? To answer this one must decide what is inherently valuable.

Going back to my original post, my lions desire:

* Food
* Water
* An attractive mate and,
* Somewhere shady to lye in the day and warm to lie at night.



The only other things they directly fight for are territory, which is and extension of the food desire, and sometimes to attack other lions cubs in order to maintain their blood line which is an instinct inbred as an effect of the survival of the fittest element of evolution. I think it is safe to infer that these desires can be classified differently as the lions main desires being:

* Sustenance and nutrition
* The ability to pass on their seed and have good, strong, healthy offspring who will grow up and have good, strong, healthy offspring of their own otherwise worded as the continuation of the species and,
* Comfort



If we assume that animals are basically similar and our desires are also similar we must then infer that professions, tasks and pursuits with inherent value are those ones that are devoted to these desires:

Sustenance and nutrition:
The value of sustenance and nutrition is obvious so I will not spend time explaining it. I will however say this: All efforts should be made to ensure that all people all over the world are not simply fed but properly nourished. Basically the different tasks would be growing, gathering, producing, distributing.

The continuation of the species:
As far as just having children, humans come to sexual maturity at around 13 years old. all we need then for one generation to spawn the next is to get males to around 13 and females to around 13 years and nine months. Of course infant mammals and especially humans are pretty much completely incapable to to fend for themselves so therefore we need the parents to be around long enough to get their offspring to physical maturity at around 18 – 21 meaning the life span of a human, in order to simply continue the species needs to be at least 34.

There is obviously a flaw in this logic in that it assumes that every human being will be reproducing as soon as they reach 13 which clearly doesn't happen, it is considered that although sexual intercourse may be physically possible and through hormones, desired, a girl is not physically developed and neither gender, emotionally developed enough to handle sex until later. The legal age in the U.K. for instance is 16 and even so the average age to start having sex is 17.3 this is where we come to an interesting anomaly in the human species.

The world wide average age to have children is 24.9 for women (wikianswers) suggesting that most people don't feel ready to have children until mid twenties. This then could be assumed to be be the age of full sexual, physical and mental maturity. The facts that we have sex so much earlier is testament to the fact that, just as domestic cats have separated the act of hunting and killing as an activity in itself as opposed to being simply a means to the end of eating, we have separated the act of sexual intercourse as an activity in itself as opposed to being simply a means to the end of procreation and an through the evolutionary enhancement of physical pleasure, an extremely desirable one to partake in. incidentally human females are the only creature is the only in nature to have an organ entirely dedicated to pleasure, the clitoris. (If you haven't yet read the book The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris, you should. If you have then I need not talk any more on the huge role sex has had to play in our evolution.)

Back on track then, we can imply that it is important to raise our young to a level where they are capable of doing the same then the human life span needs to be at least 50 which it already is. This is not to suggest that humans become useless in respect of the continuation of the species after this age. We have become separated from other species in the respect that mental and intellectual development are as, if not more important than physical development and we are capable of learning and more importantly teaching and generally being useful to society, well in advance of our parental life time.

With these points in mind, we can now infer that the next important tasks to befall us is that of mental and physical development to produce healthy and well adjusted people for generations to come and medicine to keep people alive and and healthy for as long as possible.

Once these needs (sustenance / nutrition and proper physical and mental development) are fulfilled we now have extra resources to use on our last desire, comfort:

Quite obviously humans have evolved way beyond the level of being content with just a cool spot in the day and a warm spot at night so I am going to re-word this desire as being one of a high quality of life.

What is it that gives a person a high quality of life?
To answer this I ask what it is that we want from the money that we so desire?

* Freedom from monotonous toiling
* Physical comfort
* Good health
* Culture e.g. art, music, religion
* Sociality
* Varied and exciting experience
* Relaxation
* Mental and physical stimulation / recreation
* A sense of moral and emotional well-being




So we can infer that pursuits that work to fulfil these desires can be added to medicine to create one of inherent value to our species.

The new list looks something like this.

* Growing and gathering, producing and distributing food and products that increase increase the quality of life
* Medicine
* Culture e.g. art, music and aspects of the psyche such as philosophy, sociology, and other aspects of mental development
* Education
* Technology, as this leads to developments that furthers all the other goals (including the one listed below)



All that is left is to ensure the world doesn't run out of the limitless resources and climate we have become accustomed to so it is vitally important that we look after our planet by only consuming clean and renewable resources.

So now I have demonstrated that in a world where resources are limitless we have the ability to give everyone everything they desire. You have suggested that in trying not to be held back by the ruling elite I would be holding back the ruling elite on the grounds that they will want compensating for their contribution. I absolutely agree and believe that those who are especially brilliant should indeed be compensated. This is where I see the huge flaw in society to be.

When we did have to fight for resources, that is to say, when the resources were scarce, it was natural for those who shone out in society to be rewarded with a large share of the resources. This is why I argue that the puzzle that fits together to make the current and historic social hierarchy has resource-scarcity as one of its pieces. If scarcity ceases to exist then so will the reward and with it, the incentive to work up the hierarchy. Having no incentive would obviously bring up the problem that people might not want to continue working and if that happened then the whole of society would break down. Obviously this is a very scary prospect so as asserted at the beginning of this post, when society lost the natural scarcity that created it's all important incentive, it was artificially re-created. First the resources were taken by force (“No, you can't have it!”) for instance in the old world of European monarchy where only royals, nobles and the church were allowed to own land and property. When the lower classes broke free of their suppression and became wise enough to realize that this was unjust and vocal enough to realize that they were not alone, the system evolved to keep resources from the masses through the monetary system (“No, you can't afford it!”).

The resource-scarcity incentive systems have worked all very well in the past and have helped our species thrive through an extension of the survival of the fittest aspect of evolution. Now there is a missing piece to our sociological puzzle. Scarcity no longer exists and instead of finding a new puzzle we have reshaped the existing one to fit the missing piece! One of the probable causes of this farce is man's deposition to associate being proven wrong with failure and seeing this as shameful. As you insightfully wrote in your last post:
“It takes a lot of integrity and confidence to admit defeat, and a lot of wisdom to realize that a defeat does not mean failure.”


Another good quote comes from an historic speech given by JFK entitled The President and the Press:
“An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” (You can read and listen to this speech at the link above, it is a testament to what a brilliant man and leader JFK was.)


I see this fear of failure - i.e. being seen to have failed by one's peers, which is an extension of extrovert-ism as it is based on how others see you - as a fundamental flaw in what is know as human nature. The path of the introvert is one of judging one's self against one's self or, to put it another way - doing one's best rather than being seen to have done one's best. A position taken by Sir Terry Leahy, the renowned retail luminary and CEO of UK retail giant, Tesco. Anyway, I digress...

A quote from a collaborator of mine
“The pride survives because it is in balance, internally (between the members) and externally (with space and resources). When that balance is disrupted, the pride suffers hardship until a new equilibrium is reached.”

I couldn't agree more,.The concept of equilibrium is a quintessential to all life on the planet and as such can be considered to be 'natural'. The Talking Lions of my original post found their society in a state of unbalance, Thrust upon them externally through the world suddenly becoming plentiful. This naturally upset their internal equilibrium by removing their resource-scarcity incentive that was so instrumental in the development of their species. 'Naturally' they had to get back in balance in order to survive and as they knew that the old system was working it seemed 'natural' to restore it: We need incentives to keep people productive, the fear of having nothing to eat and desire for a comfortable life is a strong incentive, let's give our subjects more stuff for being more productive. Perfectly logical thinking by all respects.

So we can see that incentives are important and I hold no grudge towards those who started stock-piling resources in order to keep the resource-scarcity incentives in place. My point is this: There are other incentives!

“Economics is at root the study of incentives: how people get what they want or need especially when others want or need the same thing. A typical economist believes that the world hasn’t yet invented a problem he cannot solve given a free hand to design the proper incentive scheme. The solution may not always be pretty, but the original problem rest assured, will be fixed. An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation.”

“An incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing.”

“There are three basic flavours to an incentive: economic, social and moral...” - P20, Freakonomics


This last quote is the one is most important to my argument. We have become obsessed with the enforcement of the economic incentive, as this is the one that our species grew up with. While the economic incentive is an extremely strong one, it has resulted in massive inequality to the extent that 1% of the population control 40% of the planet's 'wealth' while almost half the world, over 3 billion people, live on less than $2.50 a day. While, and I'm sure you would agree, it would take a massive revolution of thinking, if we could change our incentive system so that it revolved around the other two 'flavours' of incentive, we could give the entire world's population an equal and extremely high quality of life and still keep people driven to achieve greatness.

The question that remains then is how? I think the answer is quite easy to come to and well in accordance with what is currently considered to be human nature. We only need to look at what, other than money, drives a person to work, contribute and excel. A high powered Lawyer, Banker, Businessman etc. who has a mansion, various, beach condos, a super yacht, a helicopter, a jet and the billions of dollars needed to keep them for a lifetime, clearly needs not continue their work so what drives them to do so?

* Respect and admiration
* The sense of achievement and 'thrill of the chase'
* The desire to have a large legacy to pass to their children so that they may enjoy the same quality of life (an extension of the 'continuation of the species' drive I outlined near the top of this post)
and finally, possibly the strongest amongst the more ruthless of the very elite,
* Power



So, now we have a list of goals that are inherently valuable to the species and a list of natural instincts and incentives (outside of economics) to play to in order to make them work. I will list them together, here:

Goals:

* Growing, gathering, producing and
distributing food and products that
increase the quality of life
* Continuation of the species
* Medicine
* Education
* Culture, e.g. art, music, religion
* Looking after the environment
* Technology, as this leads to developments that furthers all the other goals

Incentives
* The sense of achievement and love of competition
* Respect and admiration and the fear of shame / ridicule
* Morality.
* Power / Dominance
To this list I am going to add one more powerful drive, Sex. As I asserted earlier mankind's sex drive is an extremely powerful one which is deeply engrained in into our psychological make up




I now intend to show how each goal could be reached and what incentives and aspects of 'human nature' could be harnessed to make it happen and, in the attempt to keep this theory as sound as possible, I will try to cover all possible objections and all aspects of human nature which may possibly get in the way of these goals.

First of all we abolish all currency and redirect every resource, human, energy, technological and natural to the fulfilment of our goals.

The primary goal for society, as stated earlier, should be the first on the list; It is imperative that the raising of the standard of living is done first, through ensuring people are at least properly nourished and clothed with decent accommodation and medical care.

At the same time it would be plausible and make logistical sense to improve the undeveloped world to the highest possible level as simply bulldozing existing cities and starting again world be an unnecessary waste of energy and resources, meet massive opposition from current citizens of and void all the culture that exists in the those cities, towns and landscape. While doing this, the very latest eco-friendly measures should be implemented which would spark production and technical developments in the field leading to these measures not only becoming much more advanced but also much easier to implement in the already developed world all in all improving the life of those worst off, opening up opportunities to harvest extra resources and starting ourselves off on the road to being completely completely sustainable.

An obvious objection would be that while people living in abject poverty would benefit, people in the working, middle and especially, the upper-classes would take a hit. While it would obviously be easier and quicker to bring people to an equal level some where in the middle, I believe this approach would meet massive protest and rejection from those above that median standard of living and lead to a class battle ultimately leading to corruption and end up the same as every other attempt at -for lack of a better word - communism. To borrow words from Karl Marx: [I do*] not even conceder theoretical validity to communist idea in their present form let alone [desire*] their practical form.. Marx
went on to promise a fundamental criticism of such ideas but, given the lengths I went to describing the problems of previous and current systems I believe this statement will suffice:
*Marx was speaking on behalf of his publication the ''Rheinische Zeitung' So I have changed the narrative a little.

Communism takes a persons wealth by force and gives back their share.
Democracy just takes the excess straight of your bank account.

The Communist system of supporting resource scarcity, is maintained through physical / military power.
The Capitalist system, through intellectual, political and most of all, monetary.

That's it. They are all the same. They are all deeply flawed.

Communism in it's current form
“...cannot succeed as a committee. Too many factors cannot be decided by consensus. And some that can shouldn't or will take too long to decide. A single voice needs to dominate the lionesses' actions.”
It is a fairly common thought , one that I happen to share, that the people who would be best in positions of power are those who are least likely to seek it out. We can say that this statement rings true as dominance generally comes from aggression in one form or another and can only be achieved on a national and global scale through corruption - both economic and moral - and physical conflict.

What we need to do is separate a high position in social hierarchy from that of a high quality of life. To do this without conflict, it is important to ensure that no person, no matter how extravagant their lifestyle, experiences any drop in the resources currently available to them. The quality of life of all people should only go up . All the people who are at the top of the current hierarchy then have to loose would then be their position of power / dominance*. This will allow people in the upper-classes to maintain their enviable place in society and maintain and play to the incentive for people in the lower and middle classes to elevate themselves to the top and the inventive of respect and admiration, keeping people of all levels of society incentive-ised and motivated to work. To further enforce the respect-and-admiration incentive it is important to ensure that measures are taken to ensure people are properly respected in view of their achievements*.
*I will give more explanation of this problem and it's solution later as it is one of absolute pivotal importance to my argument.

The next goal to be tackled would be the development of technology as when this pursuit is properly applied it enhances all aspects of human life and particularly those pertaining to standards of living and the efficient and sustainable use of resources. This pursuit gives those who partake in it the incentives of a sense of achievement re-enforced by respect and admiration amongst peers and the public. Other aspects of human nature drawing people to the technological career would be our natural curiosity and craving to gain more understanding and the will to do good.

A problem with the above argument would that the will to do good is not present in some people. Someone who commented on my original piece said this: “I would point out that your article seems to advance a tabula rasa notion...”
Tabula rasa - roughly translating into 'Clean slate' - is the theory that all are created equal and environmental conditions shape a person into what they become. The Steiner system of schooling, for instance, is based on the concept that a child's soul slowly trickles into them as they reach adulthood. While I subscribe to this theory to a fashion, It is bizarre to say that all people are created equal as this is clearly not the case. People are born tall or short, petite or stocky, pretty or, well, less then pretty, with or without varying levels of handicaps, with differently 'wired' brains and with I. Q.s that may be high or low or anywhere in between. The spectrum of starting points for humans is extremely broad, However I believe that the average person, free of any psychological defect, is born destined to me 'good' or 'bad' or to succeed or fail. This is where I start to agree with the Tabula rasa theory in that, to use a computer as an analogy, while we may be born with the 'hardware' the 'programming' and 'software' of our psyche is absorbed during the years before mental maturity when our brains are hard-wired to learn. In this time people develop, on top of academic knowledge and physical skills, The ideas of what and who they like and dislike, how to interact with other people and most importantly their moral values. This leads to the final and most fundamentally important part of the plan:

Culture and education should be tackled as a central and on going part of life for every single person.

Most importantly, people need to be educated to the fact that, while the government systems of the past and present may have been flawed may have caused massive hardships, the people running these systems are not bad people but merely inevitably symptomatic of the problems of concentrating on the resource-scarcity in that it promotes, develops and rewards parts of the human psyche petering being selfish, cut-throat, callous and stepping on anyone who stands in the way of the path to the top. Also, people in the high echelons of society need to see that the people that they may have looked down on are no different from them other than in respect of the social conditions that have befallen them and a possible lacking in 'hardware' which while not being ignored, should be worked around with accommodations made.

A possible problem that has arisen from earlier sections of this plan is that some people may not subscribe to the incentives that I am putting forward. One problem being that some people want to just laze about and productivity will cease. I argue that proper utilization of the work force, resources and technology will bring the amount of work for all people being exponentially reduced, leaving people more free to pursue those things that improve their quality of life and making them less inclined to drag their heels. People will also be affected naturally by the social and moral positive incentives of achievement, respect, a continually increasing quality of life for themselves and their families and a sense of well being coming from knowing they have gone good in the world. And the negative incentives of shame and rejection of one's peers if they don't pull their weight. This may be re-enforced with the incentive that if you are not in, you're out, but efforts should be made to concentrate on the others as they are still extremely powerful and would not result in people being sent back into abject poverty.

The next possible cause of continual conflict would come from mankind's sexual drives. As I asserted earlier, these drives are deeply engrained into our psyche and there should not be attempts to squash them. Instead we can embrace them as and control them through incentives.

Firstly, through the breakdown of social division, People will have access to a much greater pool of members of the opposite (or even the same) sex, meaning a much greater chance of fulfilling their sexual desires, whether they be simple gratification or the greater longing of forming a partnership. Is is obvious that people are capable of doing great things in the name of love so in the pursuit, it is plausible that people will better our society even further, putting love firmly in the realms of a positive social incentive. Conversely, fear of loneliness would be a negative incentive, both of which would work in favour of society.

As I suggested earlier, when discussing law, there will still be times when peoples sexual drives manifest in negative activities and although the negative social incentives that exist today will, if anything be even more profound in the new system, law will still have a role to play in this field, as well as those of socially unacceptable behaviour stemming from raw anger and criminal insanity as well as ensuring that the system is not being in any way abused.

The final over all worry would be that people will not be content in having everything they could possibly ask for if they don't still have the elevated position that comes with it. I have suggested that through ensuring that people at the top of organizations that are working well are properly revered and respected in light of their accomplishments people will retain the drive to elevate themselves to and keep themselves at the top of the hierarchy and be rewarded by the ego boost that goes with it. While in the transition period, these people will also keep the material advantage they enjoy at least until the rest of society catches up, at which point we would face the problem of disassociating the material superiority from the social which will be achieved through the continued education process. If we consider that there may still be people who have the desire to keep the resource-scarcity social system in place to maintain their material superiority for no other reason then having power for power's sake, one should look at the definition of a sociopath. Here are a few extract from a web page tackling the subject:

By definition these people [sociopaths] are at least temporarily very successful in society. They achieve their success by socially unacceptable means and at the expense of the community and its citizens. As Robertson et al pointed out in 1996 a number of entrepreneurs seem to have these characteristics.

“These people tend to embrace a particular and often limited belief system to the exclusion of others. They have no doubts. Typically these belief systems have an internal logic. Actions based on the belief system often produces the desired and predicted outcomes. Their views do not stand up to criticism when alternative understandings are used. Views applicable to some activities in society may be given universal relevance and applied to activities where they are clearly inappropriate. These views or their application should not be acceptable to society but society frequently identifies uncritically with their logic and fails to challenge them.

My description may suggest that these people are different to the rest of us, are evil and a threat to society. This is not what I want to convey. I argue that very many of us have some of these characteristics. This charisma, the ability to persuade and lead, the ability to focus and not be distracted are all valuable assets for society. These are people who can accomplish great things for society. They often have a vision but are blinded by it. People like this have made some of the greatest advances in science and medicine. The critical issue is not so much their personality structure but the context in which they find themselves and the measure of social control in that context.
Problems arise when the patterns of understanding used in a particular situation are in conflict with the desired service - when status and rewards are based on success using those understanding rather than the actual success of the service provided. In this situation people are likely to identify with the understandings and the defined measures of personal success rather than the desired outcomes of the service. They will behave in a dysfunctional way.
Situations like this bring out the sociopathic tendencies many of us have and when our efforts are rewarded with success all our doubts disappear. Those who have these characteristics succeed and become leaders.
Power is also important. Most people can be controlled by those around them. If they are not given too much power sociopathic behaviour can be tempered. They may still provide a valuable service. When people with these sociopathic characteristics have too much power and are uncontrolled then we have a recipe for disaster.” www.uow.edu.au


Through social control and education, it should be possible for people with these characteristics to have their intensely strong drive and energy harnessed for the better. Any who persist in their self-serving pursuits should not be acceptable to society and be treated appropriately. I don't, however think that this will be a problem.

The main obstacle relates to this line in the description:
“These people tend to embrace a particular and often limited belief system to the exclusion of others.”

And now we go full circle to the point I tackled at the start of my original post. If one closes one's mind to newly emerging information then that person, or even an entire society, becomes stuck in a system of thought and being that is out of sync with the ever changing puzzle that is the human condition. This is where the idea of 'establishment' has to be thrown out, for no system, whether natural, social, political, psychological, or conceptual, is ever established due to our continued deepening in understanding, technological developments and changing environmental conditions. When mankind faced the crisis of imbalance in society, we had already become fixated on the idea of the resource-scarcity as the incentive that drives society and while it may have been true that the conditions did not exist to enact any other incentive system before, they do now.

This brings me to the uneasy task of tackling religion and religious objection to these proceedings. I intent to use the Judaeo-Christian faith as an example to show how religion can be integrated into a society of social unity and more importantly, what obstacles are in place to prevent this from happening.

When Moses was originally given the commandments by God, they were given to him directly on two stone tablets inscribed upon by God himself. These commandments were the exact word of God and the true divine will. Moses then came down Mount Sinai to find that his subjects had created the idol of the golden bull calf and were worshipping it. This outraged Moses as he saw that these people had absolutely no comprehension of what divinity was or of the divine will and in frustration of knowing that the subjects would have no way of understanding the word of God, Moses threw down and smashed the tablets and headed back up Mount Sinai to talk with god further. God shared Moses' belief that man was not capable of understanding the divine path and so instructed Moses to write down a code of conduct by which to live that no person could possibly misapprehend and twist into more sinister meanings; the Ten Commandments.

Over a millennia later, another prophet came into the world. It is plausible to suggest that, in the intervening time, mankind had managed, through the following of the ten commandments, to gain a greater conciousness of the divine will and what constitutes a divine life.

A conversation between Jesus and a Jewish scholar of the time:
Scholar: Teacher [Jesus], which is the great commandment in the Law?”

Jesus: “'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.'
This is the great and foremost commandment.
The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’
On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

An extract now from a website putting this quote into context:
“Because Jesus had just been answering questions in such a way as to put the religious leaders to shame. The Jewish scholars believed that the commandments of Moses numbered in the hundreds, some saying that there were over 600 commandments. In asking this question they were hoping to get an answer that would discredit Jesus and make themselves look good.”


Now I must make one thing perfectly clear. I am looking on a religion from a completely neutral and subjective standpoint. I have absolutely no desire to promote one religion or negate another nor can any attempt to change society attempt to do the same as this will inevitably lead to conflict and end in the absolute dissolution of the whole movement. I am discussing Judeau-Christian religion because it is the one I most understand.

So to review this passage on religion:

God gave Moses the key to a divine life.
Moses saw that the people were not ready to receive these instructions and destroyed them.
God instructed Moses to write a clearer outline of rules that would give the idea of what the divine life was and the out come was the Ten commandments.
In the intervening years between Moses and Jesus, Scholars had managed to warp and corrupt the understanding of the divine life to a level where they had concocted up to 590 additional Commandments.
Finally, Jesus comes, preaching that all that the most important thing to do to live a divine life is to “...LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND” and to “... “LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”

It is clear, purely from the volume of scripture in the bible that since the time of Jesus, scholars have again been busy re-defining and putting stricter parameters on the commandment that Jesus taught and in doing so, the point as become lost, people have argued and secularised themselves allowing the more sociopathic elements in society to twist peoples allegiance to their belief in order to perpetuate their own goals of dominance. One only need look at the Crusades to see evidence of how attempted world dominance can be performed in the name of a particular belief.

The greatest flaw in organized religion is the dogmatic approach that it takes in light of other beliefs and new evidence and this again comes from the idea of 'establishment', for once a religious sect sees itself as being 'established', it then throws out any ideas that work against it even in light of overwhelming evidence. An obvious example of this process in action is the battle between those who believe in creation and those who believe in evolution. This is a very touchy subject within the dogmatic religious world as the two are seen to be mutually exclusive and to accept the idea of evolution is to reject the idea that God made everything the way it is and so, even in the light of overwhelming physical evidence, creationists must reject the idea of evolution completely or their 'established' beliefs will fall apart.
It may seem that this approach would promote atheism, the atheists however seem to have a similar dogmatic problem. The atheist by definition reject the prospect of a divine presence and any evidence supporting it claiming a position of superior 'logic' over religious faith. This logic is flawed for this reason: Logical and scientific law is by definition based on empirical evidence, if the evidence only theoretically exists then you are dealing with a scientific theory which gives an element of doubt on which no dogmatic theological belief system can exist, for even atheism is a form of theism. So on this premise an atheist must assert that his beliefs are sound and concrete on the grounds of being able to give empirical evidence in response to every possible theological argument or at least show that their argument cannot be empirically proven. If atheism cannot do this then it too relies on an element of faith. One of the main theme of theism is that in one way or another, a God or Gods, created the universe. The atheist has the empirical evidence of evolution to counter the traditional Judaeo-Christian theory of creation but science cannot make the claim to have empirical proof against the presence of a divine power in the universe.

There are many scientific theories as to the origins of the universe revolving around the Big Bang principle I will now briefly explain a few and note the limits of the empirical evidence. At the very beginning of this exercise I wrote on the Standard Model of Particle Physics which hangs on the concept of the Higgs bosun. I also spoke of the experiment being conducted in order to discover this pivotal part of the theory. If this experiment is successful the theory will become complete but it will still hinge on the theoretical existence of neutrinos, particles that have come into conceptual existence entirely to make the maths of particle physics work out.

Another theory gaining popularity is that black holes, through sucking in not just matter and energy but also time itself, transport the matter and energy back to the start point (Big Bang) and thus the universe is in a constant cycle going on and on for eternity. Another version of this is that just as our universe is currently expanding, once the energy driving this expansion is spent it will start to contract back to a critical mass and trigger the next Big Bang.

The problem with using the Big Bang to disprove any form of creation is that one of the most fundamental principles in science is that although mass and matter may be interchangeable and in essence, the same thing, they cannot be destroyed or more to the point, created. So If the big bang came from a collision between to great bodies of matter or energy of any kind, including 'anti-matter', These bodies must have come from somewhere and their motion must have been started by something. within the limits of the universe this could not have just 'happened' and somewhere down the line this chain of events had to be set off. As an analogy, think of the universe as a circle of dominoes where each domino represents the matter and energy of the universe and it's position in the circle as it's position in time. Even if after a domino is knocked over it has a system in place to reset it, thus causing the cycle to continue forever, the first domino needs to be knocked over by some outside force and I argue that this 'force' that is without the limits of our universe is what men have call the Divine Presence, the Creator, God or my personal favourite label, first coined by Aristotle; the unmoved mover

While none of the above scientific and theological theories are not proven due to lack of empirical evidence they are popularly considered to be credible and just as scientific study in particle physics has been based on the theory of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, scientific study in the field of the origins of the universe can be based on these theories to find out if they have validity. If they do great! If not, then we can pursue other paths of enquiry but it is vital to our development that we do not let dogmatic stubbornness get in the way of ones understanding of the universe. Now my final and most pivotal point.

The concept of failure has to be completely removed and, in fact, reversed in regards of being proven wrong. People should be allowed to follow any and every path of enquiry at their disposal and if proven wrong, instead of ridicule, be met with a feeling of being welcomed into the field of greater understanding, this achievement should be properly respected and carry with it the incentive of pride of the highest level. This is the most important and difficult part of the entire concept and one that can only be achieved through the education of the people. I would suggest that the first step to instilling the newly desired mentality would be to target people who are of an agnostic or loosely held religious / political belief. It is imperative that these people do not attempt to push their beliefs on any others as this will cause anyone with deep-seeded beliefs to push back and thus, lead to conflict. And as I have asserted and as history shows, attempts of political re-alignment that seek to complete their goals through conflict are doomed from the start. After this people with deeply seeded religious beliefs need to be offered education on the new society, and particular attention paid to washing away the tendencies to take a dogmatic and secularizing 'us and them' mentality towards other beliefs and the people who hold them. When doing this it is important to realise that while all the dogmatic rules and scripture my not be a hundred percent correct, the central message of (at least the major) religion is one of love and respect of one's fellow man as well as love of 'God' and the pursuit of a divine life. The teachings of holy prophets - and they can still be seen as prophets - can still hold an intrinsic value without a dogmatic following of scripture. Preachers of the positive aspects of all religion would play an important role in the guiding of the people towards what people have come to call the divine life.

I believe I have now shown how all objections to the new system of society can be overcome in the period of transition.


Once this plan comes to maturity, Mankind can continue as one race, constantly learning, developing and growing under these universal goals:

To keep the entire population properly nourished with the highest possible standard of living.
To further our understanding of our position in the universe and further our relationship with any divine powers it may have to offer.
And to look after our natural resources and more efficiently use them through developments in technology so that we may ensure the standards of living and continuation of or species for as long as possible.

Never afraid to admit we are wrong and always seeking the true answer and not merely the most convenient one. Always guided by this one, immutable, empirical truth:
The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing. - Socrates
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wanabe
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Post by wanabe »

I wrote an article in my high school paper in 2003 on eliminating money.

its as simple as this no one moves up no one moves down, everyone keeps what they have. anyone who works ie contributes to society gets what they NEED food shelter etc all the things the lions need. if people want comfort there going to have to make it ie start new jobs centered to making these new things and then go back to their old jobs when they complete its invention but I think we have plenty of creature comforts already that this wont be a problem.

basically the whole problem with this is that no one believes its that simple, and all the people on wall street will realize that their lives are pointless an jump out their penthouse windows. But for those who aren't fools, realize that nothing actually changed except we took off the training wheels that were running on the plastic rims anyways.

The only way we could prove this is to try it in some small country

and if you come to me with what about retards, and people who cant work...how did we deal with them when we had money, do the same thing its only going to be easier because we have eliminated the money which is what made it a problem I the first place

We all need to realize that we are on borrowed time

incentives...actually being able to produce something of value, rather than working for an artificial security blanket

social hierarchy...at this point do you really think bill gates is better than you? that is in a world without money. no he is savy with computers but i'm sure you could beat him arm wrestling or what ever YOU are good at.

Lastly don't think this is going to even the playing field at all, the point is not to equalize, we will never be equal, equal is an illusion. The point is to remove that which is holding us back from progress. There will still be plenty of stupid people, and peoples looks to covet. Don't worry

sorry your newer work was so long and had so many digressions that I couldn't read it all, take some more time on it smooth it out. I'm sure it will be great...just expect criticism, and lots of counter arguments arguments filled fallacy that may through you off of your convictions. but don't ignore them completely, I'm sure this isn't foolproof, nothing is.
Secret To Eternal Life: Live Life To The Fullest, Help All Others To Do So.Meaning of Life Is Choice. Increase choice through direct perception. Golden rule+universality principal+Promote benefits-harm+logical consistency=morality.BeTheChange.
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