Since the age of religion ended - at least in the West - we have lived in the so-called age of reason.
This does not mean that we are clever than our ancestors: it just means we value reason and materialism more than they did. Any objective assessment would conclude that we overvalue the human mind, and that most of our problem spring from this.
What? You may say. Wasn't it religion that brought us wars and persecutions based on beliefs; wasn't it science that freed us from this? Well no. It was the thinking, the reasoning that religious people did, that led them to conclude that they had to destroy or convert people with different beliefs.
In our globalised world, we see infinitely many challenges. But the more we try to think our way through them - by tinkering with political systems, economic interventions, military action - the worse we make things.
Politics and economics have become pseudo-religions - there is absolutely no reason to believe in capitalism, or Marxism, or any other 'ism', but the experts that run our nations usually have such beliefs which are far stranger and less reasonable than any religious system our so-called primitive ancestors once had.
Ideology can never save the world. And there is a subtle reason for this: the spiritual realisation that underlies any valid ideology, from mysticism to material science, is a personal affair. I cannot know for you, understand for you. My certainty is not yours, and I have no right to assume that it is.
So what will unite us?
Only grassroots, sustainable and self-governing community
JN 2014
This does not mean that we are clever than our ancestors: it just means we value reason and materialism more than they did. Any objective assessment would conclude that we overvalue the human mind, and that most of our problem spring from this.
What? You may say. Wasn't it religion that brought us wars and persecutions based on beliefs; wasn't it science that freed us from this? Well no. It was the thinking, the reasoning that religious people did, that led them to conclude that they had to destroy or convert people with different beliefs.
In our globalised world, we see infinitely many challenges. But the more we try to think our way through them - by tinkering with political systems, economic interventions, military action - the worse we make things.
Politics and economics have become pseudo-religions - there is absolutely no reason to believe in capitalism, or Marxism, or any other 'ism', but the experts that run our nations usually have such beliefs which are far stranger and less reasonable than any religious system our so-called primitive ancestors once had.
Ideology can never save the world. And there is a subtle reason for this: the spiritual realisation that underlies any valid ideology, from mysticism to material science, is a personal affair. I cannot know for you, understand for you. My certainty is not yours, and I have no right to assume that it is.
So what will unite us?
Only grassroots, sustainable and self-governing community
JN 2014