Saturday, January 2, 2010

The caring instinct

I believe that human beings have a caring instinct. This instinct can be strong or weak. If we don’t have any children of our own to take care of, we will have to find someone else’s children to care for. If we are not able to find any children to care for we will have to get ourselves a dog or a cat. If we don’t have any children and no dog or cat to take care of, we will have to feed the ducks or the pigeons in the park. If we don’t care fore anyone or anything but ourselves, we will get sick.

I believe that all people here on earth today are descendants from a small group of humans who lived about a hundred thousand years ago in South Africa. We are all related. All of us belong to the same clan. Differences in skin color are just adaptations to different climates.
Human beings are much more closely related to each other than chimpanzees are. This is what modern genetic research has arrived at.

I believe that human beings of today are a result of a biological and a cultural evolution. At some point in our evolution language and an ability to plan for future events gradually developed. Those who were good at anticipating future events and able to make workable plans survived, and those who couldn’t plan disappeared. Human beings are extremely dependant on the ability to cooperate and the ability to make plans because we are so weak compared to the other animals with their big teeth or horns.

If we focus all our attention on the future, if we are extremely goal orientated, we will of course forget about the now. We can become so obsessed with the future that we completely lose our ability to be present in the now. The ability to be present in the now withers away, like any other ability, if it is never used. I believe that the ability to be present here and now can be improved and I believe that some people are able to be very present in the now. I agree with Eckhart when he says that only the now is real. It goes without saying. However, if we never look in to the future we will soon find ourselves in trouble. (I’m sorry. I can’t come with you. I can’t afford it. I have so many bills to pay next week.) I do not believe that living in the now implies that we cannot plan for the next week.

I believe that because of our ability to see different scenarios in our imagination we are forced to choose, one way or another. Free will implies choice.

I believe that a human being can become obsessed with almost anything because of his or her ability to fantasize, combined with his or her headstrongness. We can become obsessed with alcohol, drugs, ourselves, sex, career, money, power, art, food, religion, daydreaming…

Some people seem to always be somewhere else, even if they are not focused on future goals or brooding on the past. They are lost in their dream worlds, pondering what was going on before the Big Bang or what is happening to us when we die.

I believe that awakening is about waking up from daydreaming and obsessions. I believe that this wakeful state of mind never last for long. We will again and again get lost in fantasies and conceptual thinking. I believe that this is how the mind works. However, if we were not able to wake up to this present moment, again and again, we would be completely lost in delusion and the imaginary dream worlds.

Why are you here?

What is the purpose with you’re visit here on our planet?
Seriously. Are you a tourist?
Are you looking for a job here?
Are you here to get rich?
Are you here to exploit natural resources and poor people?
Are you on the run?
Are you involved in illegal activities?
Are you involved in drug or sex trafficking?
Are you here to have sex with children?

Esoteric and exoteric philosophy

All people have a philosophy of life, not just philosophers. Many people have, in fact, two, one exoteric, public, and one secret, esoteric.

The secret philosophy of life, the hidden agenda, is often not as becoming as the official one.

It is our secret philosophy of life that directs our actions. When we make up our mind and decide if we shall stay or if we shall go, if we shall accept an offer or if we shall say no, these decisions come from our esoteric philosophy of life.

Our secret philosophy of life is secret also to ourselves, it is unconscious, we don’t think of it, we are not aware of it. It is like learning how to drive a car. In the beginning, we have to put all our attention into the driving, after a year or so the driving has become automatic. We don’t have to think of it. We can put our conscious mind on other things while the unconscious mind does the driving for us.

However, we have to change when things around us change. For example, if you move to England you have to get used to left-hand traffic. You will then have to put a lot of attention to the driving again and this is tiring. It will take some time before the driving becomes automatic again.

Neither our exoteric nor our esoteric philosophy of life is our own. We have picked them up from people around us, from our family and friends, from books and TV and parts of them have probably a genetic origin. We are conditioned, socially and biologically.

Chimpanzees have only one philosophy of life. They are not at all like humans though we share 98, 5 % of their genes.

Bonobos, or the Pygmy chimpanzees, are not like chimpanzees. Bonobos have so much sex with all the members in the flock that a father will never know which of his offspring is his. They live in matriarchal communities; chimpanzees live in patriarchal communities and a chimpanzee boss has to put a lot of energy into guarding his wives from having sex with others than him.

I have changed my mind again. It is not possible to live, I think now, without a philosophy of life. We are wired for explanations, mind constructions and beliefs. This is one of the important differences between human beings and other animals. We can’t stop the thinking, birds can't keep from singing and fish can’t stop swimming.

All the religions have proved to be disastrous. They have not just caused endless miseries because of superstition, but what is more important; they have created a `them and us´ way of looking at life which has resulted in war and violence. All the political ideologies have also proved to be disastrous. What can we do? Can't we simply drop the religions, the ideologies and the philosophies of life? I think now that this is not possible.

I think now that we have to create a new religion or a new philosophy of life and a new ideology that is adjusted to this time. Christianity is two thousand years old, Islam is a religion from the Middle Ages, Communism, Nazism and liberalism is from the ninetieth and the twentieth century. They are all passé.

I used to think that what we have to do is getting rid of all the religions, philosophies and ideologies, that we must free ourselves from conceptual thinking, social and biological conditioning, without creating a new belief system to replace the old world idiocies with. Now I understand that this is not possible. We have to create a new religion. Human beings are not able to live without beliefs, values and ideas.

What is the point with creating a new religion or a new philosophy of life? The old religions and ideologies are still here, aren’t they, thousands of different versions of Christianity, thousands of different versions of Hinduism, thousands of different versions of Islam? And, as if this is not enough aren’t there already thousands and thousands of new gurus and teachers to be found on the internet? There must be someone or something for you out there. What's wrong with Eckhart? What's your problem? Do you want to become a guru yourself? What's wrong with you?

You’re trying to put out a fire with gasoline, aren't you? What makes you think that you can create a new religion, without creating more madness?

Because I have to. And so do you. We all create new religions, beliefs, interpretations and philosophies of life because we are made to do it. We are all gurus, high priests and preachers. We’re not at all like the apes.