On Man and Reality
Part 7 - The Human Dream
The Place of Myths and Religions
Religions emerged during a past in which Man felt totally vulnerable to an unknowable Reality. Myths, which claimed the existence of powerful Supernatural Beings and described how individuals could earn their blessing and protection, emerged to satisfy the human yearning for security. Such myths were eagerly adopted, many soon gaining the status of a religion. The gods of some of these religions promised to reward those who earnestly attempted to base their behaviour on love, kindness, compassion, honesty and fair play while punishing those who placed the gratification of their instinct-based desires above the common good. Because such religions provided their followers with a powerful survival advantage in a world, which was becoming increasingly dependent on complex social and cultural relationships, they became powerful. Some retained their power for millennia.
Although their power is in decline, today, they still exert a profound influence on behaviour – particularly amongst primitive and less well-educated peoples.
Why is their authority declining? The reality, to which Man is exposed today, is largely of his own making and as a consequence, the powerfully-felt need for supernatural protection from the unknown is dissipating.
The Human Yearning for a Sense of Spiritual Fulfilment
Although substantial release from fear of the unknown has diminished the yearning for religious faith, people still yearn to believe that Reality has a divine purpose and that they are important to its achievement. Because of the power of this yearning, many people suffer from spiritual emptiness in today’s world.
Can a rational view of Reality be found, which can satisfy this need in modern times?
By orders of magnitude, today’s knowledge of Reality exceeds that, which sponsored the mechanistic view of the Universe favoured by intellectuals in the nineteenth century. It suggests that a Universe capable of hosting life evolved because immutable natural laws, which have governed Reality since the beginning of time, constrained it to do so. It further suggests that life evolution has led to the emergence of Human Being capable of wilful evolutionary impact, for the same reason. In other words, Man-like Beings, with the power to wilfully affect local evolutionary change at high speed, are a natural product of Reality and should exist in the Universe, wherever an environment conducive to the evolution of life has existed for a long enough period of time. While Humans are the only such Beings of which we are aware at the moment, our knowledge of the Cosmos suggests that similar Beings could be evolving in appropriate living environments at billions of locations in the Universe.
Whilst it remains unprovable and therefore unscientific to postulate that human history records the antics of Beings that are at the early stages of evolving into mirror-images of their Creator, such a contention is no longer scientifically implausible. Humans, alive today, belong to the earliest generations that have achieved the knowledge and ability to evolve a mini-reality of their own choosing. Their forebears had to evolve through countless generations of slowly diminishing ignorance and superstition to deliver them to that point.
Because present culture encourages humans to allow selfish instincts to dominate their behaviour in an age littered by nuclear ICBM’s, it is possible that, before too long, a relatively few survivors will be staring, across an intellectual and emotionally traumatic abyss, at a world of radio-active rubble. Those, who would cross the abyss, will take with them little more than knowledge, sorrow and dreams. With the aid of those spiritual supports, they must find the courage, the stimulation, the principles and the ideas upon which to build a new future. As in the past, shared dreams will provide their main hope of success.
A Writer’s Dream
As I put myself in the position of those facing such an abyss, I must dream. I dream that we, the remnants of Humankind, resolve to create a milieu in which every person enjoys love, education, opportunity and encouragement; a milieu in which each person accepts the hard responsibilities implicit in full spiritual, mental, financial and political liberty.
It is a milieu in which today’s cancerous Nation-States are replaced by a boundless profusion of small, autonomous, vital, viable and environmentally friendly Mini-States, many of which are not defined by geography but by cyber-space; a milieu in which no person can grasp the power necessary to initiate war. It is a milieu in which every person is appropriately informed and psychologically, politically and economically free to earn citizenship in any Mini-State to which he or she feels deeply drawn – or, if none inspires, to create one’s own.
It is a milieu in which the human need to love and to be loved, to receive and give earned respect; to give and receive needed assistance; to give, accept and evolve sincere opinions and to be a part of a compassionate and understanding world, is unashamedly recognised. It is a milieu in which creative opportunity is denied to no-one; a milieu in which all individuals are afforded opportunity and encouragement to seek a life that promises them spiritual fulfilment – whether from wholehearted involvement in life with a loved-one, a family, a team, a community, a mini-state or the World – as one’s natural aptitude dictates.
Robin McQueen, Saturday, January 10, 2004.
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One Man's View - Robin A McQueen
