Loading ...Here’s a post from the comments on the “Hey Delusion” post below. Its better than anything that any of the Neocrats have posted in a long time, so I thought it deserved a wider readership. Neocrats 2.0 is coming (right PhilBY?) and will allow us to do this more elegantly, but until then, enjoy Misagh.
This phenomenon of delusional faith in one’s own grey matter is something that i have pondered on since being a wee lad. Why, I’d ask myself whilst musing over Roald Dahl or body slamming one G.I. Joe into another, is it that everyone believes in whatever it is that they think?
The world was flat, definitely flat. And no doubt of its physical centrality in the scheme of all created and no-created things, for why else would Christ grace it with His presence? Those with a hint of melanin in their skin were savages, primitives, sure they were and no buts about it. A woman with a stance was a witch and fit for naught but the infinite abyss of hell (which of course, was and is, a very very hot place), for why else would she display intellect or an opinion? It’s a war we had to have, for sure. And no, no way is poison bad for the earth or for our children. Of course it isn’t. Computers are for NASA, no one will find a use for one nor fit one in a normally proportioned house. And this internet mumbo jumbo will never come to any use.
And yet, with a whole history of ludicrous “definites� behind us, we persist: My god is better than yours, and when he comes back it will be in a pyramid led by white horses on the backdrop of a melting sun, and then you’ll be sorry. This molecule is what causes disease, and that’s that. And I’m sad and that’s why God doesn’t exist, for why would a white man live in a cloud anyhow? Objects travel in straight lines, and why would you be stupid enough to challenge that?
This is why my virtue of patience is challenged when someone says “I don’t believe in that, fullstop.� “If everyone just thought as I do there would be no wars.� Or “I believe in science.� As if I don’t - Science believes in its expanding frontiers, not only in its current self.
Friends and fellow humans, let’s learn from history and hold our horses on closed conclusions. Let’s admit that the 10% of a brain that we might use, with our own limited experience and sub-universal perception, cannot know all. This is why I agree with Mogogo, that a common code beyond our own selves gives us something to work towards.
But on the question of whether we all act according to what our conscience dictates as good, I’m not so sure about that. Sometimes grave evils and injustices are committed by minds that either pretend that it’s good, or get a kick out of harming others, feeding their own insecurity. In the corporate world it’s a daily occurence for people to deceive to get ahead of others. Competition driven by jealousy or want cannot be driven by conscience, rather desire.
Hurting others inadverdently whilst we mean to do good is another matter. It is not just that one person commits the act, but that another finds offence. Life is too short and our taking offence a waste of precious time. As it has been said, “Life is a dwarf, don’t be offended.� Okay, so nobody said that.
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“What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.”
Gustave Flaubert