Logic, Denial, and Reality
More so than most, I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the broader aspects of life, especially in my terminational years—-part of why my 21 years in this terminational phase have been different, pleasant, and more contented. Naturally, many things I did in my productive years cleared the way for contentment in my terminational years. Our formative years prepare us for our productive years and our productive years sort of prepare us for our terminational years, which in turn determine our attitude during our final lap—regardless of whether this lap is short or drawn out.
Be all this as it may, some of these larger issues in life are so complicated that we need condense our thoughts to totally grasp something meaningful. One could legitimately ask me, “Why spend so much time thinking about all these larger issues in life when you are likely to be dead in ten years?” The answer here is simple enough—namely, it brings me more pleasure to ponder these issues than a whole evening of inane chit chat about personal nuances of attendees at a social gathering of some sort. These inane issues were more meaningful during my productive years, and considering the job related nature of such conclaves back then—they were more stressful.
So I guess, part of contentment for me is to have the time, solitude, and atmosphere to give thought to all this larger ‘stuff’ about life. None of the particular ‘stuff’ any of us spend so much time on has significance to the evolutionary process, so the better we understand that, the less frustration we have with life.
The 20th Century might best be titled the Century when ‘Enough was Never Enough’. Greed ruled human society at this stage in Earth’s history. So far, in the 21st Century, we seem to be sailing along with increased emphasis on anecdotal medicine, alternate facts, and the Dominance of Feelings over facts. Trump probably exemplifies all this as much as anyone. The classic example, which should mean nothing, but likely means everything, was right after the election when Tump declared more people attended his inauguration than any inauguration before. When showed aerial time stamped photos of the crowd, indicating otherwise, he dismissed it by saying “I was right there, I saw the size of the crowd with my own eyes—every direction I looked there were so many people, huge numbers of people—I saw this with my own eyes”. In his mind this made him right and his estimate of the crowd a fact. While the subject matter here is unimportant, the way our President thinks, is important.
As a trained scientist, all this muddled thinking is abhorrent to me. It has no basis in fact, nor logic, nor reality. On top of this, we now have a President who genuinely, and without remorse, is going to make life more miserable for those in our country and the planet whose current life is relatively miserable and/or unfortunate. We are about to find out how this goes down. When the ‘Have-nots’ get to a certain number level and rebel, never bet against the Have-nots. While the Have’s in history have always scrambled to protect their loot, the ‘Have-nots’, with nothing to lose, always historically tend to win.
Let’s take a look at the larger issues of life and see how best it can all be condensed. Wherever there is a gift there is a gift giver. I call the giver of life and this planet’s environment God. There is no evidence, aside from anecdotal testimonials, that we can know anything about God, or have direct communication with God. IF God wanted humans to follow specific laws and rituals in order to get to some Heaven after death, then logic dictates God would be sure all such laws and rituals were given to each person born at some point——NOT pass on such laws and rituals via inherited religions. Otherwise this process is unfair and sadistic. No good parent would ever deliberately give only some of his children the guidelines needed for parental rewards. And where is the logic that would remotely endorse a parent who goes before the city council and says: Many of the people and kids in my neighborhood are bad people and I am going to let them kill my only son in order to save all these others from their sins. Then on top of that, after 3 days that parent will raise their son from the dead to live for evermore. It almost makes more sense back when more primitive religions would kill animals or humans as a present to God to make God have mercy toward them. Why, when there is nothing we can really know for sure about God, do we need to invent a God in our own image Who actually looks and thinks like us? If that is not self-serving, how can anything else be? We are so selfishly insistent that God views us as His favorite species that we are little troubled by the fact that humans are now responsible for one of the highest species extinction rates in evolutionary history. Whatever our species wants at any moment is always portrayed as done with the approval of God.
If no species can really know much of anything about God, does this make ethics moot? Things just progress according to the laws of nature which were created by God and that is that. It is generally human nature to not accept our own unimportance in this process. That is, if we are not individually important to the process what is the purpose of even living? Well, what each of us desires is some contentment with our life. We have a chance for this, although the playing field is not level. Like lotteries, if we don’t play, we can’t win. And like playing the lottery we can’t individually control whether we win or not. We need, when all is said and done, a good genetic hand, a good environment at the right historical time, and help from others in order to achieve varied degrees of contentment.
This is where the Golden Rule comes in—do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Each participant here wins, a truly win-win situation; those helped receive more personal contentment, and those giving help receive more personal contentment. As T.O. would say, “fair is fair”. How do we know this? Because endless studies over many years indicate that those most contented in their life live by the Golden Rule. People from all cultures, ethnic groups, economic status, forms of government, varied organized religions, and so on are the most contented to the extent they follow the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is essentially a genetic characteristic of the human species. No species can compare to humans when measuring ethical values. Everyone, everywhere, considers the Golden Rule an ethical principle. To what degree varied people personally follow the Golden Rule is another matter. Take two wealthy people like maybe Bill Gates and Donald Trump. Clearly Bill Gates is more satisfied with life than Donald Trump. Bill Gates gave society something valuable and then has generously shared the wealth he received in doing so. Donald Trump inherited millions and then used the money to stiff investors, contractors, and workers who built his real estate empire, actually squirreling money collected away in protected legal shelters, declaring bankruptcy many times, and each time becoming richer. The man, obsessed with wealth and a ‘trophy’ wife, is angry at just about everyone and everything. Hard to perceive any level of personal contentment in his life. Any contentedness is as fleeting as the wind.
A major part of my terminational years has been my once daily and now alternate day wanderings around in nature and urban neighborhoods. Since I tend to meander 5-7 miles at each outings, these little outings take anywheres from 3-4 hours, or all day if in the city—a good chunk of time. For me these outings are therapeutic, just as others may do meditation or jogging or socializing. We all have different ways to relieve stress and mellow ourselves out. But no matter what population of people I observe on these walks, there are always those obviously contented and getting a lot out of life and those achieving little contentment in their lives. The contented people are a pleasure to be around and can be trusted, the discontented are interesting enough, but generally we need to be on guard when around them—they simply cannot be trusted. Given a chance, like slippery sharks, they take advantage of others.
All of us are burdened with illusions about ourselves, others, our own family, race, religion, form of government, country, and just about any other aspects of our life. These illusions are invented to protect ourselves from reality. The mobster who goes to church every Sunday does this so he can maintain God is on his side, despite all the bad things he does to others as he feels the need. Every organized religion creates a God who is merciful and ever ready to forgive sins and send the saved on to Heaven. It is rather ironic that those Americans who consider themselves the purest followers of their religion are often politically aligned with a political party which least follows the Golden Rule toward all citizens. The most intense believers of a particular organized religion are rarely contented. How can they be when there are all these heathens here, there, and everywhere who must be punished in the name of God. Religious anger is probably the worst kind of anger around, and does the most damage to others, especially in times of open warfare. Religious wars usually are the most savage wars imaginable. Brutality in the name of God seems to have no limits. We call ourselves a Christian nation, despite the reality that our founding fathers made clear religion was to be clearly separated from state. Can anyone imagine Jesus leading the invasion of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and a whole slew of South American and African nations? Or using property taxes to fund schools so the poorest communities will have de facto inferior schools? Or being against universal health care for all citizens, or gating the poor off in communities out of sight and out of mind, or letting the wealthy give unearned huge amounts of money to offspring as inheritances? Which prophet of which major organized religion ever suggested such things?
We also understand from studies over the years that addictions and compulsory behaviors never lead to personal contentment. Except for addiction to the Golden Rule what other compulsive behavior or addiction leads to personal contentment: eating too much? too much power over others? too much wealth? the accumulation of material things? athletics kills? academic skills? physical attractiveness? particular religious rituals? endless opportunities for sex? social popularity? We need be careful here. This is not to say any of the above, to a certain degree, may not be needed to maximize personal contentment. For example, if we could be physically sexy to a high degree, we would then expect to be so satisfied that we would have the best sex life with the sexiest spouse and be happily married till death do us part. Yeah, sure, like the movie stars. Of if we could have as much money as Trump, our life would be so ultimately contented. Yeah, sure like Trump and most of such ilk. On the other hand, there are those very sexy, or very wealthy through earned honest fair efforts, or athletes very successful, etc. who manage to achieve a high degree of contentment. And that is because they share their good fortune with others, and never become addicted to their peculiar advantages in life. Obama seems never to have found a group of diverse people who he didn’t attempt to make their life more pleasurable or make the playing field more level for them. And who seems to live a more contented life than Michele and Barack? Realizing when enough is enough of just about any good thing is essential to achieving personal contentment. He who is satisfied with little is more content than he who has much, and always wants more. Addictions and compulsive behaviors are always, or at least almost always, self destructive in terms of contentment, unless the Golden Rule itself becomes our personal addiction. Maybe that can be over done too, just not sure.
The goal here was to condense a whole lifetime of pondering and observation into meaningful concepts about life. All of the above are some of the larger issues about life. To the extent we can get these larger issues sorted out successfully, we can then live our lives in ways which maximize our contentment. But we must always remember that the evolutionary process depends heavily on diversity. Diversity is absolutely essential. Diversity is good. We need learn to appreciate diversity and embrace it and do this by treating others as we would like them to treat us. There is no need to go get an academic degree of some religious sort to be ethical. Almost everyone inherently understands that the Golden Rule is an ethical principle. If we practice the Golden rule enough we can achieve our Heaven on Earth —maximized contentment.
Forget some sort of Heaven after death. There is no logical basis whatsoever to believe this. If God favored any particular religious group on Earth, this would have become obvious long ago. We all pray for the same sort of things, but when the statistics are amassed concerning who dies on the battlefield, or who survives cancer, or who is protected from rape, or car accidents, or having their house burn down, and so on— no religious persuasion has been spared. At some point in my own life I just stopped praying for advantage over others. I happen to be, with a lot of help from others and a lot of luck, one of the more fortunate in life. Now why would God save me from some medical problems, or get me through a test of some sort, or protect me from being murdered, and then ignore the current 75 million refugees living in tents, many starving—almost always through no fault of their own, and sometimes because our own country went in and pulverized their infrastructure, killed people by the hundreds of thousands, then tired of our own casualties, declare victory and leave the invaded country to be ruled by thugs rampant everywhere, all the time after declaring we were going to bring peace and prosperity to their country? Talk about convenient illusions, we seem to be masters of this.
If there is no Heaven after death, does believing in Heaven have any consequences? Certainly not to God or His evolutionary process. To the believer it probably varies. For those whose participation in organized religion has them following the Golden Rule, they just get their Heaven on Earth. The problem is that the religious right in any organized religion fail the Golden Rule test a lot—in their addiction to wealth, their politics, their focus on ‘family values’ to the exclusion of others, their lack of real empathy for the less fortunate, and the list goes on. In that sense they are limiting their ability to achieve some real contentment with their lives. Plus, it certainly gets frustrating, with all that praying, when so many prayers go unanswered. What if there is a Heaven, can those who don’t believe, ever go to Heaven? It would seem if one seriously follows the Golden Rule, that they would meet the test of being eligible for Heaven. On the other hand if we can know nothing about the nature of God, then there is no real logical basis to be able to answer this question.
Many think the life of every child is so important that abortion is a horrible sin, but after the child is born care little what kind of health care, school, neighborhood, or opportunities that child will have as a child or young adult. I think Christ would have cared. Buddha would have cared, the Dali Lama would care, and every really ethical person would care. Ironically, to the extent we do care and act on our concerns, the more contented our lives become. We can act via direct assistance, supporting the right kind of politics, sharing excess wealth with admirable charities, and using the Golden Rule as our ethical mantra in all aspects of our own lives. It is not family values, but human values which make us ethical. And of course our own families are humans too.
This short little treatise is the best I can do after so much pondering on some of these larger issues. Very little is original above, it comes from a lot of reading, and a lot of solo wandering around, and a lot of observing. We are vastly diverse from each other, but we need remember that the larger issues in life are part of all our lives. As is human nature, I am self centered, and would love to think that any successes in my life, modest by anyone’s measure, were because God really likes me enough to have helped me along the way, and protected me from the many land mines in life. Only reality enables me to accept this as nonsense. Out of the billions of humans on this planet right now, my ranking, if it were possible to accurately rank, in terms of the ‘best’ example of human perfection, would be embarrassingly down the ladder. I know this, maybe I would rather not know it, but sometimes we just force ourselves to be honest about ourselves. Once we can let go of thinking we are personally of any importance to God’s evolutionary process, then we can concentrate on being thankful for the many good things we have gotten out of life and go gently down the stream to non existence. Every trip has a beginning and an end. It’s fair enough. Other new genetic genomes will get a chance to prance around on the stage of life for a minuscule period of time. We go, Time stays. I wish I could keep my memories but then again what for? Maybe that is why memories fade with age, we really are not going to need them anymore. We are all born alone and we will all die alone. If every person I ever knew in life could be around my deathbed, It would be rare indeed that I would still not die alone. While others may work themselves up in a dither the dying are busy fading away, despite silly efforts like “Say that again, I am sure he/she recognizes you. We need talk to him/her, it is said that hearing is one of the last senses to go.” It probably is, but the ability to process what has been heard has already left the station. That’s all ’she wrote’ and the silence, to others, will be deafening.
It seems that those who manage to accept there is no personal relationship with God, no God protecting them from life’s land mines, and understand the kind of life which leads to personal contentment, will not only achieve more contentment in life, but will go through the dying process with less frustration, not to mention all the anger that comes with sensing there are all these heathens who have to be persecuted. Certainly there is less fear of the dying process if one feels he/she can control their own dying process, and when ‘enough is enough’ can die a painless peaceful death.
