Dubious wrote:Consider how conscience developed in its journey through history. How did it manifest itself from 3000 years ago until now...and is it still happening? What was once mostly tribal has transfigured itself into becoming more ecumenical.
A major revelation too is when not too long ago, conscience considerations applicable only to humans are now forwarded to other citizens of the planet, at least in the West. The East is still a cesspool.
seeds wrote:I’m not so sure about that, Dubious.
Compared to the horrors that the West bestows upon other citizens of the planet in the form of industrial farming of animals, I can’t imagine the East being much worse, at least not in that regard.
In other words, ask a factory-farmed chicken or pig, for example, how they feel about the West’s empathy and conscience.
Of course there are still too many exception to the rule but when its reported people get really mad and ready to lynch the perpetrators. Companies too are very careful to protect their image when it comes to handling animals not only based on cruelty laws - which barely exist on the other side - but even more so on public image. In most of the East very little of this applies.
How do you think people in the West would react if anything like this happened here? The following is only a "mild" presentation of what goes on in countries like China who after 5000 years of civilization accomplished nothing except how to steal.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/05/ ... 659410.jpg
Gandhi correctly said
The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Based on this alone, you can judge for yourself just how little East & West have in common.
seeds wrote:you still have not provided any preemptive solutions (perhaps “proactive” solutions might be a better word) to your own suggestion that conscience...
“...only needs to be activated more....”
I admit the word “only” makes it sound a little too glib, too easy when there’s nothing easy about it.
Only doesn’t really apply but the rest of it stands. Conscience gets activated incrementally by acknowledging what invoked it. Once administered, like a vaccine, it stands guard against it. Mere metaphysical revelations of good and evil, like placebos, are ineffective in establishing its presence.
seeds wrote:...I have often wished that NASA would create a project whose sole purpose was to travel out into space just far enough in order to capture a collection of hi-definition, three-dimensional images of the earth.
That would indeed be interesting to see; I have no doubt it won’t be long before it happens.
seeds wrote:Now that may sound silly, but I honestly believe that such higher visualizations of our shared situation on this tiny orb might aid in the raising of humanity’s overall awareness of the utter insanity of the artificial and imaginary walls that divide us based on religious and political ideologies.
One would hope that’s true but I doubt it. If, with all the pictures of the Milky Way galaxy, in which we barely exist as a speck, we still aren’t convinced how would a 3D representation of our minuscule outpost accomplish it...though as mentioned, it would be something to behold.
seeds wrote:Needless to say, I could be woefully deluded by wishful thinking; however, those are the kinds of “proactive” measures we could take that might speed up the process of increasing humanity’s conscience.
Can you think of any others?
Again, it’s rarely the grand metaphors which are the proactive agents but failures in the full realization of its consequences which whips the conscience into action.
seeds wrote:Now of course I am just speaking metaphorically here, but think of the measures mentioned in the prior post as having something in common with the monolith in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” that helped the apes (our ancestors) to awaken into a higher level of consciousness, with the ultimate point being that we may be on the cusp of another transformative awakening...
It was a great Si-fi story forcing one to speculate on possibilities...the music was also magnificent though for its very mysterious ending I would have chosen the coda of the first movement to Bruckner’s 9th symphony. For me if the cosmos could be rendered in sound, that’s what it would sound like.
Recall the monolith in the story was an object planted by some mysterious alien intelligence. We don’t have any such guidance to affect us or move us forward. We can only imagine such an ideal event with virtually zero probability of it happening. We’re on our own with very little in our philosophy to help us out. I don’t believe its wise to expect some kind of transformative metanoia surging across the globe. We’re in a process of transformation anyways whether we feel it or not; the only thing we can do is see where it leads...win or fail!
seeds wrote:(Now I realize, Dubious, that you are strongly opposed to any form of metaphysical conjecture, so just take all of the above as being the wild speculative blatherings (hopefully interesting blatherings) of a crazy old hippie. )
...not as true as you imagine. I just don’t see the advantage in making too many leaps beyond our current reality with all of its limitations and insidious tendencies. The present in any instance is contained in the future not in imagining some cosmic presence simply because we can or wish to.
Having said that, there’s also nothing wrong
in playing with the idea of some grand cosmic coda of human destiny. I know and feel the fascination of that more than you think I do. Nevertheless, we live in a world of reality however it presents itself whose horizons fall very far short of those conceptions. I prefer to acknowledge the present as a moving point going to who knows where...perhaps to its ultimate
D minor conclusion of an endless journey.
)
