1375 Replies and 189 Flags, what was with the October threads, will we ever learn?, page 2

Why do some people slow down their cars to gawk at the scene of an accident? Why do some people still touch something when they are told not to because it’s hot? Why do some people go out of the house into the freezing cold without their jackets even though they have been told not too?

Here is the perhaps the underlying reality people have a dualistic nature. On one hand they have a driving need to know. On the other hand they have a driving need to deny what they know.

Some people will say the glass is half full, some people will say the glass is half empty.

Some people see something positive in doing negative things. Some people see something negative in doing positive things.

For most people reality is simply based upon their perception.

There is a better chance than not that any of us are even remotely correct in understanding our unique roles in the universe.

People have for a very long time needed to take many things on faith as a result of that. Faith in G-d, faith in the Government, faith that the sun will come up tomorrow, faith that pony for Christmas is still coming. I know I am a little too big for that pony now but hey it’s the thought that counts!

The opposite side of that coin is pessimism and fear. That dual belief that we hope for and want to have faith in might be for naught. That perhaps we have been naughty and not nice, that perhaps someone else has been naughty and not nice. That G-d will abandon or punish us, that the Government will fail us, that the sun won’t come up tomorrow and that not one rotten no good human being on this whole lousy stinking good for nothing planet loves me enough to get me one stinking little pony for Christmas that I promise to feed!

When times are good people’s faith and hope tends to run high. When times are bad people’s pessimism and fear tends to hold sway.

During those times when people’s pessimism and fear holds sway people often feel frustrated because they lack the personal skills, resources and logistical ability to physically accomplish or manifest those things that would constitute a return of hope and faith.

They surrender to that notion and assume because of that, that all is lost, that somewhere, someplace some evil insidious dark force is going to take advantage of their own vulnerability and helplessness. That they will swoop in and deliver the killing shot, and that it is better to prepare for ultimate surrender and accept that pitiful imagined fate.

This is human nature, but only too the extent both skeptics and conspiracists alike take things on faith.

In a faith based world with faith based religious and governmental institutions people are literally taught not to take action or responsibility but to simply have faith that someone more suitably empowered, presumably wiser, and ideally more capable will either make their hopes and dreams come true or in the opposite case bring them chaos, misery and death.

We live in a world where a large percentage of us don’t want to understand life and the universe’s mysteries or discover them but to instead take on faith varying explanations that inevitably leads people to argue and become divided in regards to these great mysteries. This of course leads to the chaos and stagnation and eventual regression that breed bad times. Trust in the Government, trust in God, it’s wrong for you to imagine you have some similar or equal or greater power than they to effect the world and make it a better place.

So people conditioned to just trust in faith are left to view circumstances and ponder them and react with either hope or fear, optimism or pessimism and to do nothing about it.

For those who didn’t buy into the October threads you are equally as guilty as what I have described as those who did buy into the October threads. In essence whether you created the arguments, or simply took part in them, took the doom and gloom stance, or the that’s just crazy talk stance, you entered a counter productive argument that accomplished nothing. Whether you imagine you won that argument or lost in that argument the reality is the world
is not any better off then it was in September and is likely worse off, because arguing is just not very productive.

Faith based systems have done this to us. Faith based systems have us enslaved to things we do not fully understand and are not going to until we move beyond faith alone and start examining things more intelligently and rationally in a way that is not an argument driven by ego, but is an active exploration driven by intellect to make the world a more peaceful, loving, productive, and friendly healthy place.

That sure isn’t going to happen arguing about when the world is going to end!

[edit on 29/10/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]