- #1
MaxS
- 38
- 0
The past must never be forgiven, or forgotton. Years gone by are not simply a blurb in a textbook but a living record that repeats again and again in the present among the swarming multitudes who all too easily ignore or forget the lessons of history, doomed to repeat them all over tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Does it not astonish you that since before there was a written history there were wars, vast armies that marched on one another in the name of God and virtue?
Human society has made incredible leaps in recent years. The technological age has transformed life on Earth so quickly that it has left no time for it to adapt, threatening to wipe out the very life by which it was given birth.
Yet, over the millenia nothing at all has changed in regard to the essence of Man. The technological age has brought with it an aura of skepticism, true. All over the world in "enlightened" societies, the concepts of superstition and even religion are beginning to lose their hold.
And yet, religious fanaticism is giving way to another age old trick, a secular devotion: Nationalism. All the pre-requisites for subservience are still present - virtue, devotion, love. Killing in the name of love for one's country.
It seems devotion to a cause is at the very heart of Human essence. Something to live for. Something to kill for. Something, finally, to die for.
The great question among thinkers of the new age must become one of transformation. How do we as a society transform that cause from war and betterment of the country, to the betterment of an entire species? To the betterment of sentience? How can we transgress the primitive emotions of hatred and love - so useful in the early years of mankind - to reach what we know now to be the pinnacle of the human condition: compassion. The conciousness of pain in another sentient being. The desire simply to help.
Does it not astonish you that since before there was a written history there were wars, vast armies that marched on one another in the name of God and virtue?
Human society has made incredible leaps in recent years. The technological age has transformed life on Earth so quickly that it has left no time for it to adapt, threatening to wipe out the very life by which it was given birth.
Yet, over the millenia nothing at all has changed in regard to the essence of Man. The technological age has brought with it an aura of skepticism, true. All over the world in "enlightened" societies, the concepts of superstition and even religion are beginning to lose their hold.
And yet, religious fanaticism is giving way to another age old trick, a secular devotion: Nationalism. All the pre-requisites for subservience are still present - virtue, devotion, love. Killing in the name of love for one's country.
It seems devotion to a cause is at the very heart of Human essence. Something to live for. Something to kill for. Something, finally, to die for.
The great question among thinkers of the new age must become one of transformation. How do we as a society transform that cause from war and betterment of the country, to the betterment of an entire species? To the betterment of sentience? How can we transgress the primitive emotions of hatred and love - so useful in the early years of mankind - to reach what we know now to be the pinnacle of the human condition: compassion. The conciousness of pain in another sentient being. The desire simply to help.
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