Excerpt #120 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Something must occur to us at the level that precedes the formation of institutions, i.e., at the personal level: transformation, evolvement, consciousness raising, maturity—take your pick.
We humans must immediately understand the reality in which we exist and the inviolable behavioral implications of that reality (more accurately, the demands of our reality).
It’s about peeling away the layers and getting to the essence of what we believe and why.
Many people are afraid to go there.
It involves discussing candidly the taboo belief-system subjects of politics and religion, among others all of which are interrelated.
These are very sensitive areas because at the bottom line, they are about survival and tribalism.
But we must go there if we want to survive, advance our civilization, and succeed as a species.
It’s a daunting task.
KNOWLEDGE LIBERATES; PLUCK ENABLES.
Our universe began with a violent Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
Since then, violence has continued uninterrupted.
Our planet, formed 4.56 billion years ago, is warmed by the violent nuclear explosions of hydrogen and helium gases that comprise the sun.
Everyday all life forms struggle, often violently, to survive and reproduce.
Day in and out, creatures exist, including us, by consuming other creatures.
Some 300,000 years ago, we Homo Sapiens (“sensible humans”) showed up in southeast Africa.
We evolved from our Stone Age origins into the Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age, and now our post-industrial high-tech Information and Communication Age.
The violence out of which we came remains everywhere present.
Violence is not the answer.
It is the problem.
At nearly eight billion of us, as of this writing, and an additional approximate1,538,000 each week, we are too many and growing too rapidly to continue to be violent.
Our weapons are too lethal, our ecological systems too fragile.
We have created a destructive and unsustainable momentum that must be arrested and reversed if we are going to
sustain humanity, advance our civilization, and succeed as a species.
A HUMANIST’S TRIBE IS HUMANITY, OR PERHAPS ALL LIFE FORMS.
A RELIGIONIST’S TRIBE IS THE RELIGION TO WHICH HE OR SHE BELONGS.
Change must occur with a coordinated urgency that characterized the atomic bomb program in the 1940s or the space program in the1960s.