Kingman, Arizona——15 minutes of Hilarious Fame

Kingman, Arizona——15 minutes of ‘whatever’

I just watched Sacha Baron Cohen’s con job on citizens in Kingman, Arizona. To tell the truth I wasn’t outraged at all, it was comedy from the very start and would have been even if I didn’t know it was a hoax. We all know, despite the Statue of Liberty, the Declaration of Independence, the Golden Rule, our bragging about our country being a melting pot, and so on—we are basically a rather prejudicious cabal in many respects, not all that different from most other citizens elsewhere in the world.  

The segment was neatly done I admit. He starts by telling them a mosque would be built in their town. He could have said it would be a Buddhist temple, A jewish University, a black entertainment center, the headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses—and there would have been the same signs of mild irritation—like what do we need such a thing for? 

Then the guy took it to the next level and announced it would be biggest Mosque outside of any Muslim nation.  Of course the reaction was like, “What the hell are you talking about, why would they build it here? We don’t want Muslims invading our space.

Then it got real hilarious (at least to me) when he showed them a picture of the mosque, in which this huge structure towered over the whole town, making their own homes look like insignificant shacks, almost like little grass huts for the natives. That was the last straw.

Some would say there is nothing funny about this con job and none of the citizens were laughing. But it is funny and the same result obtained if some village official in rural/suburban community outside Baghdad made the same pitch to their citizens at a town meeting: A Catholic church was going to be built on prime real estate in the middle of their community; the largest Catholic church outside a Christian nation; no eyesore, it would be a huge gilded cathedral towering over the whole town, making their own homes look like insignificant shacks, almost like grass huts for the natives. 

It is funny because it shatters the absurdity that people everywhere actually follow the Golden Rule. While everybody everywhere agrees it is an ethical principle, we all, in varying degrees, only practice it in certain situations. That’s the reality and behind this current global surge in terrorism. Myself, known to be contrary sometimes, I oppose any religion building glittering cathedrals anywhere, period. I don’t belong to any church, and one reasons is that I am not putting money in any collection plate to build a glittering cathedral with my money. My FANAFI Fund gives grants, for example, to organizations like Doctor’s without borders, EarthJustice, and Save the Redwoods league. The day they start using money collected to build huge gilded corporate headquarters with that money is the day I stop giving them any of my money. 

Lets change Sacha Baron Cohen’s presentation a bit. Let’s say he simply announced that Muslims were opening an office in one of the downtown office buildings. The response would probably be: “What for? There are hardly any Muslims living here”. And the response were to be: “They want to provide financial aid to anyone who can’t afford health care and is sick” or “they want to build good schools for the poorer areas of our community” or “they want to provide legal assistance for the oppressed”, etc.“This is not just for Muslims?”  “No, anyone can apply.”  “Why would they do this”? “There’s something fishy going on here, we take care of our own, we don’t need their help.”

Several favorite quotes come to mind here:

“Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.” W.H. Auden (English/ American poet) 

“Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.” Rene Dubos (American microbiologist) 

“Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity. John Hume (Irish politician) 

“Hard to dislike a chap who likes you, isn’t it? Well, there’s your peace plan.” Unknown 

“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.” Lenny Bruce (Jewish American comedian and social critic) 

Here’s something to ponder:

Which religions originated or used the following at any point in history:

stoning people to death

beheaded them

burned them at the stake

fed them to the lions

launched some kind of crusade in which all heathens were put to death

quartered them in a public square

used machetes to kill fellow citizens

dropped atomic bombs to kill people

killed members of their own religion who were different sects of the same religion

hung people of certain races

burned heathens alive

tortured captives

cut off limbs or cut out eyes

enslaved others

The direction of evolution has never been easy to predict, probably not even possible for us to do so, but I am going to guess that if the human species is to survive it will be by learning to control our own population growth, learning to reduce our violent nature via the Golden Rule, protecting our environment, putting limitations of capitalism so the wealth of society can be spread around more,  global regulation of all matters which have now become global in nature, and humans stray away from secular religions and alter their perceptions of God.   

Evaluating Our Own Persona, Worth, and Importance Via Logic and Reality (personal favorite musing)

Note: This, for now, is one of my favorite creations in the sense it took a lot of isolated concepts that I have bantered around in other musings and put them together into a relatively cohesive finished product. Of course, it hardly proves how accurate a depiction of reality is embedded therein. But as musing hobbies go, reaching conclusions of a broader nature is more satisfying. Given my age now, and the many paths trodden throughout a challenging life, time is running short to arrive at sweeping conclusions. It is not clear what purpose sweeping conclusions serve at such a short distance from the finish line. Then again, increased contentment is a good thing during any phase of life. At worst, it is harmless illusionary philosophistic (invented this word) specious claptrap with no impact whatsoever on the evolutionary process. Perhaps we are all equal in this respect.

Evaluating Our Own Persona, Worth, and Importance Via Logic and Reality

Some people are taken back when a character like Terrell Owens runs up and down the sideline yelling “I am going to love me some me” or “Who Can Make a Big Play? I can, I can,” and tells his Offensive Coach during time of a contract dispute: “You don’t talk to me unless I talk to you first”. How, the question is asked, can anyone be so self centered (obnoxious)? Then there are those who praise everyone in sight—no matter how disingenuous. Always. Which is worse I can’t say. Is either bad?  I can’t say. There are those who think a lot of negativity about others, especially those not mirror images of themselves. I feel sorry for those they think bad about because so much of what these detractors say, do, and vote for is going to make the lives of their targets more difficult. I guess we all spend a lot of time thinking about others, at least those part of our own world, ethnic group, nation, cultural group, genetic cabal, etc. How we think about, and feel about others diverse from ourselves, appears to have a substantial impact on our own sense of contentment.

But when all is said and done, any realistic appraisal of ourselves, or even others, requires a firm handle on reality, and we just don’t have that. Contrary to what religious leaders preach, reality cannot come from beliefs. Beliefs, I reckon, can be true—but they can never be fact as we define fact. We all chase reality for an extremely miniscule period of evolutionary time; after all is said and done, the only sure thing is that we will die. If humans didn’t have considerable intellect and emotions, everything about us would be more unimportant, even to us, given then our poor ability to understand consequences or causes.  

Religious leaders tell us God loves us, every one of us. Really?  How would we know in what way God even loves? Is there ever sex involved?  No preacher ever talks about the sex life of God. And if God is all powerful and loves every one of us, why didn’t He make everyone of us perfect and live on a perfect planet? And if God would not save Lincoln from tragedy what chance do we have? If I had a choice to have God remain God or let my parents be God, at least until I die, I would choose my parents. I would be more confident of a good life and good death. My mother might verbally assault me until death do we part, but if she were God I would be a star in life until death, no matter how many of her own rules she would have to break. She, as God, would do that for me. I believe in God, but it is a hard concept given my conclusions about God. God’s evolutionary process gave human ethics (the Golden Rule) so that we can help the less fortunate and therefore maximize the number of people achieving maximum contentment. Essentially God has created an evolutionary process in which we either help each other or we pay the price, both the givers and the receivers, albeit in most cases we are both.  

Enough meandering here. How can we go about evaluating ourselves, assuming we can pause long enough from evaluating or judging others? I, intuitively, think I am a pretty good person, but I don’t trust the evaluations we make about ourselves or others. There is no evidence humans have mastered reality and maybe we never will. My reality just is, it comes thru tinted glasses filtered by all my experiences with my particular life.  Perhaps dreams enable reality to appear just how we would like it to be (or fear it to be in case of nightmares).

So it comes down to: who is the real us? Who are the real others we know to different degrees, and who are the real others we don’t know—right now over 7 billion on our planet. After so many years with ourselves, round the clock, it still is no easy task to grade ourselves, let alone others. 

We can start with ourselves and make a list of our good and bad traits. Some of these traits will be genetic. But almost all genetic traits are a matter of degree. Even skin color, yet I never see a grading system for skin color that can match the thorough grading system for paint colors. There are, after all, shades of white and black and brown and whatever. But humans only come in a few colors and many shades of these colors.  Certainly we can’t grade ourselves on our genetic traits, we just inherited all this. Really, we can’t really brag about something genetic. We can just be grateful or disappointed. Other traits about us have been learned or influenced by our environment. Grading here is not much easier than the genetic traits. Some people are quick learners or have more willpower, or are physically and mentally more healthy, but all this is genetic/environmental too. 

So once born, and the right to life enthusiasts disappear from the picture, there we are with certain genetic cards in our hands to play, as best we can, given our environmental circumstances. Until the end of our formative years others, to varying degrees, play our cards for us. Now this is strange in that it is the formative years which are the most important years for us to achieve our full potential—physiologically, mentally, emotionally, and anatomically. A lot can happen during the formative years which can alter any of the aforementioned. Yet we personally have so little control over these years.

Even at this point in this analysis, so much which is now us was not that much determined by us. We either inherited something about us, or we achieved our potential in many areas via help from others. The first time we are really in charge is when we go out on our own to fight all the battles of life amongst a cast of characters we mostly did not choose. Early after our formative years have ended, a lot of what we think or do reflects indoctrination during the formative years. This is hardly a logical basis for reality. Most people ‘know for sure’ that their inherited religion is the true religion, that their biological family is ‘more important’ than others, that their political views ‘are solid’, and what they most want at the time is the best focus for their actions. Much of what “we know’, at the end of our formative years, will prove to be illusional, albeit not always admitted.

While some never break the apron strings, most do, and others have no choice, or never had apron strings of any real sort. If we are going to reach our full potential as an individual it would seem, at the end of our formative years, we need discard all our indoctrinated thoughts and re-evaluate every one of them, and begin to put together our own persona, beliefs, and how we judge whether anything is wrong or right, and what are the consequences of these decisions. Everything about this process is selfish for every person. We all have to face a daunting number of choices to make, how to prioritize them, and how best to move forward on so many fronts: material acquisitions, sex, love, wealth, career success, marriage, raising children, power trips, titles, winning or losing varied contests, reputation, friendships,  health matters, and so on. All these things come at us rapidly in our early productive years and will be there, in many cases, throughout. The term productive years here is simply a time span between the end of the formative years and the beginning of the retirement years. Maybe it should be titled ‘potential productive’ years. 

If we die before our productive years, what exactly has been the worth or value of our life? This, I suppose, goes back to the purpose of life. We could droll on here about purported noble contributions to life here on the planet—via God’s evolutionary process, proceeding according to God’s laws of operation, but this would be little more than another attempt by us to think we run the show. I say this a lot, but the point is important as an illustration: If Lincoln had not engineered the elimination of slavery, someone else, down the line, would have. We are the puppets in the show merely responding to the multiple forces operative in the evolutionary process. This is postulated here as the reality.  The goal of all humans in life is to achieve the  maximum level of contentment as often and as long as we can. Contentment, like any other emotion, is not a continuous state, and if we pretend it is, or ought to be, we are then contributing to our own reduced contentment level. I, for example, don’t really worry about dying. It is the destiny of those born. I can’t escape dying but I can avoid a long drawn out miserable dying process, and thus for years I have had at hand a helium tank when I have had enough. We should all know, regarding anything we like, life included, when enough is enough. 

Thus, our contentment level, during the formative years, is pretty much determined by our genes, environment, and ‘parental’  or ‘peer’ influences. We, our own persona (defined vaguely) hardly gets any credit at all. That’s exactly why it is called the formative years, we have not yet gained control over our own lives, and in some sense, considering the laws which govern the evolutionary process, we never will. God’s laws continue to prevail, at least in the long run, which is what really counts in the evolutionary process. 

Here we need pause and reflect that the goal of life postulated above is a very selfish goal. I don’t think I have ever met anyone who doesn’t seek personal contentment. The elusive answer is a lifetime struggle, more for some, less for others. Given the diverse genetics, diverse environments, and chance as the operative forces, the playing field is never level for all humans. Come the first prom everyone realizes it is not who they would most like to take to the prom, but who might be a possible fit—given our appearance, our personality, our intelligence, our ’station’ in life, etc. We are, at that late stage in our formative years, less what we wish to be, and more how can we find a way to fit in which will give us maximum contentment.  

But let us now leap to the end of our productive years, where it seems we have a better chance of evaluating our own worth, and I suppose, some sort of means to determine the worth of specific others. I start here with a given that the laws of evolution run evolutionary progress, not any of us. The question is never which humans are going to determine evolutionary direction, but which direction will the evolutionary process lead for the future. Whatever else we are, we are not the future. We exist at a certain minuscule point in time and all we can hope to do as individuals is to achieve the greatest amount of contentment we can. 

When we stand on the threshold of our productive years we have certain cards in our hands which we did not earn but inherited via genes, and certain beliefs and values instilled in us by others and our environmental circumstances during our formative years—including a unique personality, a unique physical specimen, and varied degrees of intelligence (using the term vaguely), and some times unique talents of some sort. To the extent all of this in the last sentence is true, we are reaching past human capabilities to actually measure the worth of anyone at a specific point in time. Even after we conclude that contentment is everyone’s goal, how can we accurately measure this?  I feel more contented in my terminational years than I felt in my formative and productive years. But, of course, this is a feeling and perhaps the feeling is illusionary. We all have known people who sing ‘zippedy do dah day’ most of the time even when nothing much is going right for them. Illusions of that sort are simple protective denials.

Let’s take material wealth. Does this bring contentment? Various studies show, in the United States right now, that material wealth does affect contentment up to about $70,000 dollars/yr income, and then it fades away as contributing to contentment. This is probably a ball park figure since we all vary in exactly at what point income will be enough to ‘allow’ us to gain a degree of contentment. Physical appearance might be measured this way also. After a certain point it doesn’t continue to contribute to our contentment. Titles probably fit here too—we all would like to be ‘somebody’, but after a certain point titles have their limitations. 

This all leads to an important point about life: addictions and compulsive behaviors, by definition, cannot lead to contentment. This in turn leads to the caution that we need learn when enough is enough of most anything we seek for pleasure or contentment. We may need a certain degree of physical attractiveness to achieve sexual successes, but too much of a good thing here can easily lead to compulsive/addictive behavior and when it does, contentment will never be achieved. We all know the most attractive have a far greater divorce rate than those only moderately attractive. I am not sure about the least attractive, I suspect they may hang in there longer for the simple reason their prospects for a more attractive mate are slim. Wealth, is another matter to consider. My career brought me in close enough contact with wealthy persons (I was even a chauffeur at one time), and it is clear that they are not a happy lot at all, with few exceptions (a Gates or a Buffet comes to mind). Just recently I was eating an ice cream cone in McDonalds during off peak hours, and the helpers (who work hard for such trifling wages) were constantly laughing and joking with each other. It dawned on me that I heard more good natured laughter from them in twenty minutes than I have ever heard from Donald Trump during hours of his public appearances (unless you count sneering at others a form of laughter). Who, despite all his wealth, is less contented in life than that man?. And it would be hard to find anyone who has such a long record of swindling others, and making the lives of so many others so much more miserable. Maybe he just wants company, the old ‘misery loves company notion.

Take most anything capable of creating addiction or compulsive behavior and when enough is enough is not enforced, it will never bring contentment; that includes wealth, sex, titles, athletic success, eating, spending money on endless material things, gambling, recreational drug use, most hobbies, winning, and so on. Once addictive or compulsive, contentment deteriorates. 

One logical reason for humans having a finite existence in the evolutionary process is that it simply becomes more difficult, over time, to achieve the same excitement, or challenge, that was once achievable for the same life experience. People vary, but when someone advises me to spend my time in my terminational years going out, doing adventurous things, take on challenging tasks, and just live life to the hilt as long as I am healthy——well, been there, done that, and I view the terminational years as the opportunity to mellow out, control the pace at which I do anything, and emotionally live via the gratitude for the many people, who often out of the blue, helped me succeed at this or that in my productive years, or at least stopped me from hanging myself figuratively speaking. 

I don’t have a lot of respect for those who brag about their achievements in life and proudly believe that they achieved their success the hard way, they earned it—and furthermore those that have not achieved such level of success simply failed themselves by not earning it, like they themselves did. 

I suppose, using genetic or environmental factors, and a great deal of help from others along the way, I may have made some good decisions along the way and can pat myself on the back——EXCEPT, without the genetic, environmental and chance factors, the opportunity to make good decisions would have seldom been there. When we can understand this, then we can see the brilliance of the human genetic sense of ethics (the Golden Rule).

Since this is a human genetic trait, and like any genetic trait, it varies in degrees—all of us can be ethical to varying degrees. How ethical appears to depend on, among other things, the genetic degree of willpower we inherited. Willpower and ethical behavior are linked and operative together. It is not often that we don’t know how to apply the Golden Rule. But it is often that our immediate self interest would be to ignore the Golden Rule and apply it at a more convenient time. Willpower is our first line of defense for good ethics, and since our willpower decreases over time, habit may then need be the driving force to keep the Golden Rule operative. Doing the right thing might not bring immediate benefit to our bank account, or career advancement, or marital stability, or any other immediate want, but it is like money in the bank towards a more contented state in the long run—which is really what counts. 

Nothing can be achieved by ethics without a reward for being ethical. It appears the reward is contentment in our lives, not some contrived Heaven after death. In essence, contentment is achieved by both the givers and the recipients.  Almost all human created religious sects conveniently have a loop-hole for escaping any permanent ban from their proposed Heaven after death. That, of course, is repentance, even on our death bed in some cases. This is logical nonsense. Maybe when younger we were a little wild and killed three people in state of rage. Let’s say two out of the three had not yet repented their sins. They go to Hell. But we, in our maturity, have repented and are no longer going to kill others. So off we go to Heaven. That’s a good deal. Maybe we all ought to wear wrist bracelets that instruct: “Please use all means to keep me alive until I have repented. Thank you.”  

Let’s take two well known ‘successful’ people and measure their contentment levels. Abraham Lincoln was born a ‘nothing burger’ in a log cabin. No matter, Abraham, like others, understood that the Golden Rule was an ethical principle. He also grew, pretty much on his own, to have real insight into human diversity and nature. He had a lot of inherited willpower, learned to focus his attention on matters that interested him, never joined any church, and communicated with each person as unique and precious. He never pigeon holed people into groups to like and dislike except those who mistreated others for selfish gain. All who personally knew Lincoln tended to like him precisely because he liked and understood them. And he was genuine, not a pretentious slap your back, disingenuous social gad fly. Nor was he particularly close as friendships went. He was a loner, and people tended to come to him, not he to them. There are no stories about how Lincoln stiffed or swindled or tricked anyone for his own advantage. He lived simply, he dressed simply, he ate simply, and yet he was one of the most contented persons I have ever studied. 

Some will say, “Wait a minute, he was known for depression, sometimes severe.” That is true, but being contented does not excuse us from any of the normal emotions in life. Contentedness is more a state of mind in which you know you are doing the right thing, the best you can do, and intend to keep on doing the right thing, and the best you can do. Lincoln was President during one of the most brutal civil wars, in which horrid things were happening to hundreds of thousands of his citizens. That would seem a situation in which depression would be appropriate. Depressed often during the ordeal, nevertheless Lincoln never lost any of his mental acuities or his determination to just keep doing the right thing as dictated by the Golden Rule. Lincoln never saw things as the Devil vs God, or evil and good, or found any group of humans to be a symbol of bad or good people. Each person, to Lincoln should be judged on their own merits, no matter what religion, race, culture, or political wing. It may sound weird, but Lincoln’s depression was a healthy depression. He personally felt the pain of all who suffered during that war. Of course he was shot to death, hardly the kind of reward God would give Lincoln if God were intervening with His own laws of evolution to save a particular person from these laws. 

Now let’s take a look at another President with whom everyone is also familiar. Donald Trump was born in wealth—and money became His God—his measure of his own success. He loves to say that he has so much money he doesn’t even really know how much he has. Very well, let’s not quibble here about whether money, no matter how obtained, can be a measure of success. Trump made his money with a few million dollars from his dad as a start up. Outside of making money by any means, Trump is not known for being an educated person on virtually any topic. When is the last time the American public ever heard Donald Trump sit down and calmly explain the logic and intricacies of any policy issue that is important to our country?” He simply rants and raves, lies about matters that are impossible to really lie about, gives just about everyone of importance a juvenile derogatory nickname, brags about himself endlessly, is never in a good mood, is humorless unless smirking at the many groups of people he can’t stand, stays up half the night tweeting sophomoric insults at friends and foes alike, and personally creates more misery for those citizens least able to defend themselves. His wealth was obtained by stiffing contractors who built his buildings, and the investors who invested money in his ventures via declaring bankruptcy (through legal loopholes available to the wealthy), then using his numerous bankruptcies as the basis for paying no taxes. With each contrived bankruptcy Trump grew exponentially more wealthy. His justification for all this, in his words is “That is because I am smart”. If there is any contentment in his life it would be hard to spot. The man is clearly miserable, which I suppose, is deserved considering how much misery he is causing the least fortunate in our country. Still, many of the less fortunate fail to see this. What his popularity reflects is just how angry and discontented so many people are, and to the point where they vote for the candidate most angry about everything and everybody. People who think Trump is the sole problem are misguided. When 43% of adults in this country do not have enough income to even qualify to pay federal income taxes, we have a huge problem. When three citizens have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of our citizens, we have a huge problem. Trump did not create this situation. He just personally got elected by this situation.

I need conclude here, as usual, because of the length. We are all selfish and want to achieve contentment for ourselves in life. Ironically, the amount of contentment we can achieve is directly related to the Golden Rule—specifically how much we give to others by our words, actions, and votes, and how much luck we have in life being recipients of the Golden Rule by others—individually and collectively via government policies. We should never forget that every government is responsible for all the communities within its borders. Patriotism should always be directed toward all of humanity.  We cannot measure our personal worth because we are all here as diverse entities. We would be comparing apples and oranges. Given that genetic diversity, environmental diversity, and chance all play huge roles in the evolutionary process we cannot shake up the can, let a few of the millions of combinations fall out of the can and then judge their worth amongst them.  We can only use the Golden Rule to generate some genuine contentment in our own lives and support government policies which ensure all citizens— especially children, receive good health care, safe environments, good schools, good teachers, job opportunities at livable wages, good pensions, adequate vacation time, and a job situation where 30 hrs is today full time employment, since machines now can do so much of the work humans used to have to do. Somehow, everything is falling out of kilter, and so far, for the time being, Humpty Dumpty and all the Kings Men, cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again. Having ended on a depressing note, we need remember that us humans do not control the evolutionary process—-yet there is no reason to believe forward progress in evolution will stop. It all started 4.5 billion years ago, humans appeared on the scene about 2.5 million years ago, human agricultural communities appeared around 100,000 years ago, written language appeared around 20,000 years ago, and the American Constitution was written about around 250 years ago. We do not ourselves have such evolutionary time vast span perspectives to remotely forecast much of anything about the future, nor will we be among the players in that future. A decent degree of contentment during our life is about the all and end all of it, while generalized adherence to the Golden Rule is everyone’s ticket to maximum contentment. 

Overview of Evolution Pt 2

Early Human Civilizations

Having passed rapidly over human existence from 2.5 million years to 100,000 years ago (a short discourse from lack of solid information), we can learn a lot more as soon as human groups developed language/writings which left more reliable information. Writings, of course, are far more reliable than verbal hand downs from generation to generation. 

But this might be a good point to consider whether God, the gift giver of our Universe and the creator of the laws which govern the evolutionary process, ever personally interferes with the process, on our personal behalf, and overrides the laws which govern the process. The tendency by humans has always been to envision a God who is human-like, thinks like us, and considers us high enough up on the evolutionary ladder that we can have a personal relationship with God (however we define Him/Her/It). It has been assumed that humans, alone among the millions of species which have existed at one point or another—- qualify, after death, for Heaven or a Hell. On face value, this is obviously self serving. But not meaningless. It provides individual humans with the strength and hope to endure the difficulties that come with the gift of life. Clearly such beliefs are sustained solely by faith alone, and science can be of no help. Logic, however, does not lend itself to support this belief. If God favors those who worship him, and they follow their inherited or marriage adopted religion/scripture, then by now there would be statistical evidence of such a relationship between God and His human followers. All people, in every religion, as part of their relationship to their God, pray to their God for the same kind of things: i.e. that we don’t die from a disease, or get killed on a battlefield, are able to do well in an athletic contest, or on an important written exam, or our children not get harmed (raped, run over by a car and so on), or our marriage last, and this list becomes quite long. Yet in all of history, there are no statistics that the followers of any particular religion, are spared in any of these areas. No teacher wonders why all the Buddhists get good scores on an exam, or any General wonders why few Catholics ever get killed on the front line, or why marriages of certain religions last, or why deathly car accidents seldom happen with followers of certain religions, etc. The Pope, each New Year, prays for global peace—which hasn’t yet ever happened. Whatever comfort prayers to God might bring, there is no evidence prayers work, or the stats would be there, and my religion obvious to all.  

It also defies logic that if God wanted us to be a follower of a certain religion and scripture, why would God do this via inheritance?  And what makes us think God likes us better than all other species?  We all really do know that terrible things can happen to the best of people, and good things to the worst of people. The answer given is that we must have faith in our religious doctrines as the basis for getting to Heaven. The earlier religions in human history are easily subject to ridicule like killing humans to placate an angry God. For that matter, why would we think God has such annoying emotional states like anger, jealousy, revenge, etc.? If almighty God wanted a perfect world for all his creations, why wouldn’t He/She/IT just create such a perfect world and be done with it? We tend to create a God whose imperfections mirror ours, and dismiss all the personal tragedies in life as ‘God acts in mysterious ways’. 97% of species that ever existed since the start of the evolutionary process are now extinct—but many insist God’s chosen humans go to some imagined Heaven, making humans the only species in evolutionary history which God really loved—if God loves in the same manner we do.   At any rate, we can believe we have a personal relationship with God, and we have many beliefs of varied sort, but beliefs are only as valid as the evidence for them. That some people declare, solely on their own faith, that they have a relationship with God, well——that is about as convincing as the mother who adamantly claims her son would never, ever, have committed such a crime. Not very strange, but her insistence doesn’t carry any weight in the court room. I have waited all my life, for someone who has conversations with God, to invite me over for a three way conversation. I suppose their answer might be that it is a private conversation, implying that God is not willing to share with others. It is all a bit “over the top”  that God loves everyone but is only willing to share his ‘Word” via inheritance or private conversations. 

But all the above leads to another question which is less absurd. Can we rule out the possibility that God does indeed tinker with His evolutionary process to ensure that life can move from water to land and from land to sky? To end up with the variety of dogs we have today, humans had to help the process along. Maybe God helps, from time to time, the direction evolution takes. After all, it seems to be the evolutionary process which matters, not individual members of any species. The evolutionary process is amazing in and by itself. Why do some people feel contented only if they are the focus of God’s attention? Is being lucky enough to have the chance to participate for a short length of time in the evolutionary process not enough? There seems no way we can resolve this via any kind of evidence. Thus, by logic, it seems God is not assisting any select group of humans, but whether God ever interferes with the direction of the evolutionary process is not something we can infer via any kind of evidence. It is also possible that God doesn’t ever intervene in the process and God doesn’t really know where it will ever end up or maybe it will just never end up. After all, if something originally came from nothing (God for example), can anything then go back to nothing? 

We all admire how much more raw intelligence humans have compared to other species. Today, with the rapidly advancing AI (artificial intelligence) we are faced with the reality that we can now create machines with more raw intelligence than humans. What will this mean for the future? Will God then consider personal communication with these machines more interesting than conversations so many purport God has with them? And just to interject here another puzzling thing: We love our pets, we really do. If God loves us, wouldn’t He love pets just as much and admit them to Heaven?  If God is selecting who goes to a believed Heaven, and I were God—then I would pick any of my life pets before I would pick me. Just trying to be realistic here—except claiming to know anything about God is hardly a realistic claim. 

But let’s get back to early human history. At some point some humans ceased to be hunter/gatherers and settled into permanent communities with agriculture becoming a way of life. With this came new ways of thinking and communicating. This process began between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago. If these are nice round numbers that is because there is no way right now to be more specific. Here it is worthwhile to consider an appraisal of this switch from Hunter/Gatherers to Agricultural communities presented by Yuval Noah Harari, a Ph.D. in History from Oxford University.

Prior to forming communities, humans were as much subject to biological laws as any other animals. Mother nature was essentially running their lives. Right now is a good time to point out that we tend to pay perhaps too much attention to anatomical changes in the evolutionary process whereas in humans, especially, tremendous changes were taking place in brain power. This is much harder to document than changes in anatomy. As human brain power developed over time, humans became more and more masters of their own destiny. We started to use nature, instead of being totally controlled by nature. With language and writing more and more information could be passed on from generation to generation. Look at all the solid information available to us after we learned to read. We really did advance on the shoulders of those who came before us. Knowledge counts, and we really are a lot smarter than those before us—as a species, if not as individuals. 

We said earlier that humans first tended to exist in groups no larger than 150. The way people communicate in a small group is different from how they communicate with each other in large groups. In the smaller group it is personal, very personal. For a large group to become cohesive, there has to be some commonly accepted concept (or myth Harari would say) which keeps them together. For example, everyone live in the same country, or be members of the same religion, or have the same ethnic origin, or same cultural background, or same economic background, or same political bent, and so on.  But we need remember from the onset, while all of these factors can bind large groups of people together as a ’community’, it right away breeds seeds for discontent between large groups. So far, humans have not been able to break away from such discord. In fact, in some sense, the greater the binding of a common concept—the more likely there will be violence between opposing groups. Thus, while specific religions claim to be about peace and prosperity and good will between all men, it is simply not true, and most of history bears this out. In fact, the degree of violence is highest when a conflict is about religion. The ‘heathens’ tend to be then killed in the cruelest of fashions. Most of the worst methods of torture and death were invented by religions as the appropriate God willed death to heathens. Except maybe for Quakers and Buddhists, no organized religion I can think of is exempt from the previous sentence, and Buddhists probably are not either. 

Once agricultural communities of size were established, and language/writing in place, human advancement as the dominant species on the planet rapidly (in evolutionary years) proceded. Not everybody in a large community had to be a farmer. Some could specialize and provide some substance or service to others in the community. Knowledge could be written down and preserved. The next generation would add to the knowledge base in an exponential fashion. Still, all of this was not without downsides. At this point individuals began to accumulate material wealth. No longer having to pack up and move quickly to where food was at a particular time of year meant those individuals who gathered the most material wealth became superior, in some way or another, to those with less. Of course, at least for the time being, community members were safe from outside groups of hunter/gatherers. On the other hand, those human outsiders from the smaller groups were not safe from their much more numerous neighbors in a much larger community. Not surprisingly, sooner or later, some ruler or rulers of the larger agricultural community decided it would be prestigious to enlarge the community by capturing surrounding tribes, near or distant. Along with this came the idea of slaves and captured persons as the perfect sacrifice of the conquered on alters as gift to the Gods. The good life, emotionally, was reserved for the victors, not the conquered. It might be fair to say, that anyone who is really ‘civilized’ does not take pleasure in torturing or making life miserable for other humans. It might even be fair to say that no one is really ‘civilized’ until the concept or ‘myth’ that binds humans together is, to them, the brotherhood of all humanity. 

It need be remembered that human ethics changed over time too, or at least which humans deserved to be included in any ethical sphere. In earliest time of the human species, survival of the fittest applied as much to humans as any other species. Mother Nature pretty much decided which humans survived or not. For the purpose of this musing I define ethics as the Golden Rule—that we should treat others as we would have them treat us. This ethical concept is most developed in humans and has a genetic basis. All humans, everywhere, seem to agree this is an ethical concept and therefore I use it as the universal human genetic ethical basis. This of course will vary from human to human as any other trait— just as our will power is now scientifically accepted as having a genetic basis. We can test, for example, how much willpower a child (or adult) has. Furthermore it appears willpower can be used up over time. We once called it “breaking a slave in”. Like most traits in humans it all gets kind of complicated. But ethics and will power are connected genetically. In some sense, most of us want to be ethical to everyone but our will power in this area may be lacking because there are many unethical actions we can take which will ensure we will win, or have more material goods, or get an advantage by supporting the passage of certain laws, etc. Greed more often wins out over the Golden Rule. Power, titles, material goods, winning at most anything, reputation, control over others, and so on all can interfere with to what extent we treat others as we would want them to treat us. 

I brought this up now because once humans live in communities greater than 150, ethics changes. It is easiest (some times) to practice the Golden Rule just for our own family and immediate relatives, but then it might spread to our religious congregation in proportion to the size of the congregation, or to our political base, or to our ethnic base, or to the country in which we live. It always seems interesting that those who sing the loudest and most emotionally during any national anthem seem to be those whose major interest in their country is what it can do for them—especially them and their clan of whatever. We see this today in the debate about protesting during the national anthem. Any group who tries to protest about how their group is treated becomes the subject of intense anger. “Go the hell somewhere else if you don’t like it here” is essentially the sole message. It is not much different from the slave owner who tells a protesting slave: “Go run away and die in the woods or get shot for running away if you don’t like it here. I feed you and house you and you are so ungrateful. At least you are alive so stop protesting or else.”. Of course the slave was not being fed or housed or treated in a manner the slave owner would like to be treated if they were the slave. Human interactions are always seeped in ethics. 

Be this as it may, ethics is always part of evolutionary progress. Once humans started to live in larger stable communities, there could be no stability unless some concept or ‘myth’ existed as the cement which held them together. We have already listed what concepts or ‘myths’ might apply to do this. Very rapidly all kinds of tools began to be invented, improvements in the way crops were grown, or how tools could be made, the labor to do something could be lessened, and so on. Also large communities began to experiment with forms of government and how to keep order in a large community. Part of keeping order more frequently began by setting of some sort of ‘class’ system which essentially created levels of stature and worth for differing citizens in that community. Various systems of how disputes between members could be resolved were created. 

But it also seems with complexity comes more stress, more matters which linger on one’s mind. Materialism became more and more important. Things mattered, and often mattered a lot. Then, of course one has to spend time protecting all the things that are now personally ours. Social matters needed attention. Sex became more and more a question of whose property a sexual partner was. Otherwise there would be fisticuffs all over the place and often. Since males were physically stronger (but interestingly females are stronger physiologically at all stages of life) they became the ‘owner’ of the relationship, the dominant partner. There were very few exceptions to this. As time passed and knowledge accumulated, parents knew how to take better care of children and the death rate for children went down, although the medical knowledge to fight disease took centuries to discover and maybe the biggest advance here came with the discovery of microbes and antibiotics which really took thousands of more years to get discovered. Thus, the advance of tools, politics, social structures, material goods, advanced far faster than effective medical treatments. In some respects life was ‘cheap’ for thousands of years more after larger communities became existent. 

As to where these larger communities first arose depended on where the fertile land was for growing crops and this was almost always near a large river, where the soil was the richest from drainage of minerals from distant mountains. To a large extent, which societies became the most advanced depended on Mother Nature. This would remain true throughout future history after these first settlements. 

The first weapons used by humans to kill animals and other humans were not used by Homo Sapiens but another hominid species 500,000 years ago. Homo Sapiens learned this from them. Archery probably dates to 20,000 BC., but the earliest people known to use bows and arrows were the ancient Egyptians who used it for hunting and warfare. This means early serious conflicts between different human groups must have been rather crude and vicious, like stoning or strangling to death or whatever. How common these conflicts were is hard to pinpoint because there was so much land available—good land, for human settlement, that it may well have been easier (and safer) just to move on. It may well be that more people were killed by animals than by other humans. A lot of huge animals existed, most of which are long extinct. As long as animals could get up close for the lack of long range weapons, humans would have been good targets. Fear of animals must have been right up front for these early human communities. Stones were right up there in the early days. They could stone animals and other humans to death. There are stone tips with animal blood that date back 64,000 years in Southern Africa. About 2500 BC the Egyptians began to ride chariots so they could rapidly approach closer to their prey—animal or human. About 1300 BC swords became available. Anything resembling a modern day gun was the matchlock gun in 1450. They had to be reloaded after every shot, but nevertheless, by the time Columbus invaded the Americas, guns were plenty efficient against an unarmed native population. 

But, while guns enabled humans to get the upper hand against almost all animals, it also made it relatively easy to kill other humans and to wage war against any population not able to defend itself from these guns. We cans see the bind here between the Golden Rule and the use of guns to kill others. Guns have the advantage in any conflict. By the time a person or hostile society is able to implement the Golden Rule to decide a conflict, the opposition has settled the conflict by killing with guns. 

Guns, of course, do not apply to these earliest settlements in the Near East, 100,000 to 70,000 years ago. Regarding domestic violence these communities lived relatively peaceful lives. Mother Nature would remain the biggest threat to their existence for thousands of years. 

Because I keep finding more information in this search to know more about the Human evolutionary process, not everything is going to flow smoothly here. At this point I need to write a bit more about the sex lives of humans before the early civilizations about which we begin to have written records and more fossil evidence. We can tell a lot about how humans live from the objects and writings left behind. But hunter gathers left no writing and hardly had any objects at all, nor could they be much interested in having material objects since they moved around frequently from place to place. Even in their worshipping they had no place in their lives for statues or religious symbols of any kind. We said earlier that the early homo sapiens had had no real knowledge of where babies came from. And we have no way of knowing anything about their sex lives. Some researchers think they were very monogamous and had strong nuclear families. It could just as easily be argued that sex was just something they engaged in when they felt like it, and with whomever at the time would be a willing, or maybe even an unwilling partner. When babies were born no one knew who the father was or they may even thought the baby came from something they ate or was a gift from God. There is just no way of knowing. If they didn’t know who the father was then all the adults co-operated in raising the children as part of their group responsibility. It is possible that sex was a lot less important to them than it is at our present age. We learned from childhood that sex is going to be important and that it is involved with having children and that whatever couple fathered a child is stuck with raising the child, period. Which system is more ethical—nuclear families, or community families, is not clear. There certainly are no divorces in community families compared with all the stress divorces entail. 

Some say we can extrapolate the answers from tribes of bushman in Australia who were still hunter gatherers when white persons found them long ago. The trouble is that these small groups of hunter/gatherers all had their own language, religion, norms and customs. This confirms what we stated earlier, that there was no pressure for hunter/gatherer groups to form bigger groups or have any interaction at all with other groups and there were hundreds of these small hunter/gatherer groups in Australia. This sounds deflating to early humans but let us consider horses. They are herd animals and the herds are relatively small, probably never exceeding the 150 number limit. They have no language but communicate limited emotions to each other. They can make sound to warn each other of danger, to call each other if looking for others, they eat together, they sleep together, they play together, they have sex together, they fight with each other for dominance and position within the group and that is about it. They certainly don’t sit around and chat with each other, or make plans about anything for the future. Remember, humans needed to develop anatomical structures to make language possible, and also to evolve enough brain power to enable discussions to take place in an abstract way. It took thousands of years to do this, but when it finally came together they formed larger groups around certain concepts (really myths) and these common concepts kept such large groups intact. 

I am further enough into this musing to realize this will not be a musing about artifacts, pottery, clothing, style of government, culture, etc. so much as an attempt to understand why the human species ended up where we are today. For most of the 2.5 million years humans have been on our planet it was Mother Nature calling the shots, just as Mother Nature called the shots on all other animals. But when humans finally developed language and the ability to write, humans began to themselves play a more important role in the direction of their history. For example, whether we like it or not, or what the effect this has been on evolutionary history, the human species has been the most destructive species with respect to all other species, especially the larger species. It has been the human species which has driven more plant and animal species to extinction than any other species on our earth.  Before humans invented the wheel, writing, or iron tools, humans  drove to extinction about half of the larger animals on the planet. 

At first it might seem strange how humans could drive to extinction large animals that were much stronger than themselves and had nothing but primitive weapons—no guns or any other such sophisticated weapons. Part of the answer appears to be that these large animals in places like Australia, North and South America, New Zealand, etc. had no reason to fear humans. Humans did not have a very threatening appearance. Thus, before these large animals could learn to fear them, as the large animals in Africa did, they became extinct rather quickly. Australia was first invaded by humans around 45,000 years ago, a most remarkable feat for humans to even get there, but they did. Within a few thousand years, all of the larger species weighing 100 lbs or more in Australia disappeared. A lot of smaller species disappeared also and this is true everywhere humans invaded. Humans arrived in New Zealand about 800 years ago and within a couple of centuries the majority of the larger fauna was extinct along with 60 per cent of all bird species. Humans had become, as they spread to new territories, vicious ecological killers. 

Humans first reached the Americas 16,000 years ago and by 10,000 BC humans had spread from  Alaska down to the southern tip of South America. The fauna then was far richer than it is today. Within 2000 years of human arrival, most of the larger, really huge animals were extinct. North America lost 34 out of 47 genera of large animals. South America lost 50 out of 60. Sabre Tooth cats, who had been around for 30 million years, became extinct. So did giant ground sloths, oversized lions, native American horses, native American camels, giant rodents, and mammoths. Only in Africa did the large species hold their own, in large part because the African continent was rather hostile to settled agricultural communities. Humans, like many other animals in Africa, had to migrate seasonally where the food and water were to be found. Only when ‘civilized’ humans rediscovered Africa and found it unmanageable, did Europeans leave after carving up Africa into specific states with boundaries that had little consideration for various tribes or the need to let Africans have free access to land as the seasonal needs changed.

Nature lost considerable control over human destiny when language and writing enabled humans to have increasing control over their future.  Human culture then started assuming a larger role over future human evolvement in the evolutionary process. It is probably fair to say that violence became a way of life for humans as a species, albeit the use of violence as means to solve conflict was by no means universal among human populations, and it has remained that way right up to the present. Humans as a species were more like a plague of locusts. Destruction of any form of life in the way of humans, as they invaded all parts of the planet, was the operative mode. It seemed clear after a couple of million years passed since the first humans, and humans developed the ability to speak a language and had the intellectual capacity to formulate original ideas, that not only was human environment playing a role in human future but so was intellect, memory, and human emotional swings.  For millions of years, size mattered among vertebrates but humans changed that, and for the most part human intelligence drove these larger species into extinction. Interpretation of all this is beyond my limited intellectual skill. But it does make me wonder, where is all this heading? Humans are now all over the globe and right now our activity is the reason for the 6th large extinction period in evolutionary history. Human overpopulation of the planet is now a reality, and if it doubles the next generation like it has in my generation, it is hard to see anything good coming of it.

In the past century human rights made significant advances for minorities, women, gays, and the handicapped. But when an overpopulated species begins to feel the pinch from inadequate natural resources to sustain enough species’ members  in a prosperous life style, then tolerance for minorities begins to crack and then at some point all groups regress to a battle between themselves for as big a piece of the pie as they can get. I personally assume Mother Nature always bats last and all these problems being caused by human activities will eventually, on evolutionary time,  be dealt with when eventually the shit hits the fan. It need be pointed out here that when ‘civilized’ humans invaded new territories the native populations were always driven to extinction or near extinction. All human established religions assume God loves humans the best of all species and has given us dominion over the earth and all living things. This seems a bit self serving. If I were God and created the laws which govern the evolutionary process, it is not clear that I would most adore a species which has developed a presence which is driving so many other species to extinction. All this is a difficult enigma.

I am going to pause here, because of the length, and continue on with this later.