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[FEY] OF FEAR AND HATRED

www.erepublik.com/en/article/2667167

Done, I agree with you in th 99.9% , I leave 0.1% for the error...

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Interesting points, good stuff.

Thanks 😉

Good one, my nasty friend.

Thanks, my nasty friend.

Hoot hoot

Woooot such artikal, very win.


Scarecrow™(yea, the Batman villain) DOES NOT like this post 😠


Anyways, always perceived children as a blank white canvas. One can just go and sh*t on them and they will look the part. Or one can try to carefully craft a masterpiece by adding details, fine coloring, and putting in a lot of heart and skill...But, should someone choose this way, it only takes one little mistake, one wrong drop, to ruin them and lower their quality. Which is why these are so rare and highly appreciated. Most parents choose the easier/lazier road. And should the masterpiece get stained, there is no cleaning, just smudging but that isn't helping it. Gotta wait for the next generation for a chance to craft the perfect one...which might be pretty much what the nature is trying to do anyway. Always cycling, sifting, trying to forge a good enough entity for the next phase of the universe, whatever it may be.


And my younger self would object that one can never be too idealistic or Utopian.
'Cause reading these lines brought me back 12 years ago, when my younger self had just discovered the power of the internet and was having a heated debate online with a rival girl, who was trying to belittle and "futilize" all his trainings and strivings to better himself all the time, by claiming that "no matter what you do, you will never be perfect, so you just lose your time". My younger version responded along the lines of: "Yes, I do know very well perfection is unachievable, but that will not stop me from trying to become an asymptote to it(you know, guys, these pesky mathematical moments when a curve will never touch or cross a given line but get infinitely close to it. Also - yes, was back in school then, so knowledge of the matter was freshly acquired. Dang, I shoulda skipped classes and gone smoking pot in the backyard like the normal kids 😒)" So, anyway, here I am 12 years later, tons grittier, more world-weary and cynical, yet I am still inspired by plenty of the sh*t my younger self had said. Some damn nasty-ass fine job by my past version there, keeping me in line in the future and all.

Which brings me to the present moment...
The higher the bar is raised the higher they'll learn to jump. Just because an idea is so abstract it is untouchable doesn't mean we shoudn't try to get as close to it as possible. After all it is in nature's way keep bettering things, now we have the power to do so consciously and accelerate the process. And a good movement starts small. Always. It's why I do bother writing all this trashy mix of words here, believing they contain sufficient amounts
of experience, credible information and a good enough emotional charge to push others who bother to read it into acting for a better tomorrow and shape a better version of themselves with each passing day. So that they can, in turn, influence others in such a way. The universe is a pretty vast place, but it is still governed by all the particles it contains. And should enough of them perform in unison, a great deal of things can be accomplished.

[removed]

^__^

Thanks. Your younger self seems cool 🙂
Браво

Nice read 🙂

You make a very good point, and the two videos are great! You are exactly right that young children show how unnatural and irrational the fear of "others" is for many of us. Often those in power feed on and promote these irrational fears, and often they keep people so busy trying to meet their basic needs that they don't have time to think critically about the things they are told, or they fear the consequences of going against the tide. Thanks for giving me something else to think about today.

Agreed.

Thank you and you are most welcome 🙂

You are really an optimist Feynmann and that is awesome. I do hope more knowledge will bring a better future, however that will not always happen I think.

There are many nations without education that do welcome foreigners.
Fascism is a modern belief, it can unite a nation but it unites them against others.

Education is not without culture. A culture can be open to others but it can also be closed for others.
Young kids are very open, but once they are older their mind evolves. They discover they are an individual and discover that others are really others. They have to find a solution for that and they make their own group and they make outsiders. Than there is a problem and this has to be tackled.

That said real science should be open because that way the best ideas can be found. I agree totally that there are a lot global issues we best tackle together. So we better judge people only for their actions and not on their colour, religion or anything else.

Thanks for you positive article! o7

I too distinguish two types of fear:
- rational fear
- irrational fear


and most importantly, the point is: keep walking.

a very fine article my friend. I'm afraid it's more cogent and enlightening than mine.

we have always been on the same wavelength.

Thank you, my friend.

And indeed, we have been on the same wavelength since the beginning 🙂

Thank you for everything

o/

Though your article and Rican's one are both interesting and I share a lot of their content, I have to strongly disagree on something that you assume for true and, in my experience, is totally wrong and sincerely quite offending: the assumption that religion is a reason to divide and not to unite.

Although historically we have several traces of religions used as instrumentum regni or as a way to find a common enemy to fight, it's totally incorrect to assume that religion itself is the reason for which the people divide.

Older and newer wars testify this. Governements or kings or groups of politicians or lobbies always had clear goals which can be summarized in: money, power, influence. They used religion to justify their actions and gather allies or fighters. This happened for crusades, where the fight over mediterranean trade routes was in danger for christians. This happened in former Yugoslavia where there were conditions of economic and social rivalry and everything was presented as a religious dispute. This happens in Syria, where everyone can see that foreign countries support different factions to obtain the control of a strategic place.

Religion itself is a peace instrument, since no religions correctly followed allows you to kill or steal or discriminate. I doubt that any of the main religions allows you not to welcome the stranger, the immigrant or the poor.

In my experience I was grown in a sort of traditional family and they considered religion as a sort of "sign of aristocracy or moral superior rank". So I was sent to celebrations without the real intention to make me start to become a better person. But when I got deeper into the whole fact and started believing in a personal and authentic way, my eyes opened to the not-formal part of religion,so I changed my thoughts and behaviour too, trying to become the most tolerant I could and starting to volunteer mainly for kids and people in need. There's no need to say that in my family I became a sort of black sheep, considered utopist, fanatic, communist, dreamer and so on...

Religion should not be superficially taken as superstion. This is what some medias want you to believe, because religious beliefs create a third party often settled between you and them, so it doesn't allow your behaviour to be controlled from them. If you just open a not too biased history book, you will see who kicked slavery (still there are many things to do to complete the job), who first started to declare that women are equal, who first limited the overpower of parents upon kids, who first founded charities without restrictions between friends or foes (see Red Cross for example). Even art should be considered a reason to commit crimes, since people steal for it. Even medicine should be considered a reason to kill, since some scientists used their knowledge to create biological weapons. If you assume that everything which can be used in a wrong way is dividing people, you become the first one who discriminates others. In the end applying this wrong label to religion makes people superstitious more than any priest could be able to do.

Any choice about believing or not should be respected, but let's not be superficial over easy and definitely wrong assumptions. Assuming that religious people are a cause of divisions (especially considering that true believers are the opposite) is the same kind of fear that the articles suggested to quit.

While I agree that the central teachings of many, probably most, religions point to loving-kindness and peace as the path we should follow, it cannot be denied that religion has been co-opted historically and into the present day to justify war, divisions and a hierarchical order that enslaves people in practice if not in name. I know many people who have rejected religious labels for this very reason. They believe as you do, but do not find that organized religion, or at least many of those who claim to be followers of those religions, encourage living in love and harmony with our neighbors. While this may be an unjust view of the religion itself, it is hard to overlook the hatefulness that is spread by some who claim to be religious. I'm not sure we can call it superficial to notice that the hateful voices often dominate the conversation.

Many call eugenetics "medicine". If I had to judge the whole medic science as an experiment vs humans for this, would I be right? People assume that religions should create a dome of no fault and no evil, since they are or pretend to be created from God, but are we sure that God would give, as a prize to believers, the loss of freedom and the inability to make sins and mistakes? Applying to the whole religious thing the judgements that are given to a few people is a hurried and not logical judgement. We all have benefits too from the fact that religions are made by common people with their defects: who of us is perfect and who of us could be part of a "church of perfects"? A religion that didn't have this "humanity" characteristic would be false by itself.

The hateful voices dominate the conversation only if we listen to shouts more than we listen to whispers. Missionaries in the world are probably 100 or 200 times more than foreign fighters, terrorists or integralists. But we are impressed more from the few criminals than from the many saints. The main reason of this is, again, fear. We listen to the irrational fear instead of caring of the rational observation. And this is why terrorism is acting, because they rely on that. Learning to look to the forest that grows instead of just to the trees that fall, makes also each of us more responsible: if I watch only the criminals and terrorists I would probably lose faith not mainly in God or religion, but in the whole human kind, while working together with people who help the humanity grow will turn me into a more positive and responsible member of the community.

Understimating a structure for religious communities can be another misunderstanding of what religion is. Religion isn't mainly a vision of the world as an ideology could be. Religion is firstly an experience of being loved, that happens while you are in a community, such as a family is. Nobody forces parents to be good. Some aren't, some are. But when they are good, they teach you exactly what love is. Refusing by default the role of all parents actually cuts out all the positive possibilities that a family grants. We should first realize that humans are social for nature, and they need others for their growth, survival and maturation. We hardly realize how this applies to our soul because we are in a period of troubles for both relationships and spirituality. People start to be convinced that they don't have a soul, or that the soul is just the few feelings that their brain automatically produce. So they base relationships on the satisfaction of basic needs and the communication rarely gets to the depth of everyone. A community with roles for everyone, with rules and duties makes you more responsible and aware that, even if you hardly recognize it, you are responsible of your brothers and sisters too. This is why, for example, monasteries were create😛 even people who feel that praying is their first call, have to know that they can't stop to care for each other. Sometimes we feel the community as a burden, but most of the times, it's a large part of our strength.

Try to imagine a person belonging to an organized structure like someone setting up the alarm for the morning. Sometimes you set it right, so you get at work in time. Sometimes you understimate traffic or other events and you are late. You learn from experience and the next time you will probably be on time. If you stop setting the alarm, you'll probably get fired fast... 😃

Religions' structures are like this: there are often mistakes, betrayals, people using them for profit, but in the end, little by little, they grow more useful to people and they can help more. Would you erase missions or hospitals? They were built from people grown into a structure and they are structures too. Humans who are free thinkers still are humans and have to give themselves structures and rules to practice what they learned.
In my experience abandoning religious structure is more a matter of not feeling a part of a family anymore, not because it's convenient for the spiritual growth...
In my specific case, anyway, structure is part of the faith itself, with its good and its bad.

Each religion is simply an ideology, like democracy, monarchy, communism, dictatorship, anarchy etc.
Each ideology describes how humans can live together, they formulate rules of law and they define how power is spread, that's all.
The difference is that the founders of religions started their ideology with the lie, that their ideas were given by a superior, non-human individuum, what they call God, Allah or what ever and not by themself. The reason is they want to avoid discussions about the rules. In ancient times and today in regions where the majority had/has no intellectual education, religions are perhaps the only way to establish rules, but they are a choice that have to be substituted by a better choice like democracy.
Social ideologies are never compatible with each other. If you try to mix two of them, they are not coequal, one have to be dominant, the other has no own power and only small influence. If the devotees of the non-dominant ideology do not accept their status and hope to change it, they will start civil war or they will try to use the rules of the dominant system to takeover power and then substitute the rules.

Sometimes in monarchy or dictatorship the ruler try to glue religion by declaring that he/she was assigned by God/Allay/etc. to rule.

Everyone is free to believe or not. This is respectable. But pretending to tell to others what they believe in, is a bit too much offensive bro. I don't believe in an ideology. I fought ideologies hard. I believe in a person, and I don't force you to do the same, but please, be respectful too and don't tell me what I believe in or not.

Also: historically religions were born exactly in the opposite way of what you say. Totally the opposite 😃 All of the main religions existing at this moment were born as little minorities in opposition to the dominating power. How could a minority set rules as an expression of a power that they oppose and actually succeed in forcing the majority of people which obey to a different authority to believe and obey, you only know. I studied law and I specialized in relationships between religious and civil organizations. I can tell you that the description of the religious phenomena you talk about happened only in 2-3 episodes of Star Trek, but never on earth.

Lastly: democracy as a raw concept was maybe an invention of ancient Greece (also if there were a lot of communities not communicating with them with equalitarian rules), but pluralism, which is the only way to avoid the famous "dictatorship of majority" and obtain equal rights to everyone, was a invented in the 17th century with ius-naturalism from a christian philosopher. It was already part of the religious doctrine in 19th century and finally it was accepted worldwide in the declaration of human rights which was created in opposition to the overpower of ideologies (marxism, the one you took your concept of religion from, included). So actually democracy is opposing to ideologies, yes, but at the same time it's a concept generated from religions and religious thinkers.

Formally each religion pertain to the category social ideologies. Show me any nation where different ideologies coexist with the same amount of power. Turkey : No it's an dictatorship which used the rules of the former democracy to break it and is glued with islam. Germany: No, It's a Democracy, and religions doesn't matter, neither christianity nor islam, until now. Iran: Islam dominates, the democracy has no power. There are some dying democracies, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, perhaps USA and more, substituted by Dictatorship, Olygarchy, Fashism.
Minorities are successive in surpressing majorities with violence. See communism in UDSSR, China, nationalsocialism in Germany 1933, see also many other dictatorships or the christianizations or islamizations in the Middle Ages.
If a religion is the dominating ideology in a nation, it surpresses every other religion. Christianity did this in the Middle Ages, Islam did and does the same. The believe of the people was seldom the decision of the indiviuals, but it was inforced with violence by the powerful.
Open your eyes, you ignore the truth only to defend your religion.
Pluralism is a wonderful word or should I say ideology? My opinion is that monotheistic religions are not compatible with pluralism. May be that a religion will be found someday that has pluralism as central idea.
Because of that I say, every one may believe what he want, but never give power to any religion.

Fantastic 🙂 The same words written above, without a single reply to my points. Bro, you will agree that typing without replying is more or less like talking without listening: another sign of lack of respect. I showed you with proofs why religion isn't an ideology. In your last comment you stated again that, without even taking care to reply to my arguments. Oh, and I should believe you just because it was you writing? Who are you, Jesus Christ? 😃 If you pretend me to agree to your divine undisputed authority, you should at least avoid criticizing religion, am I wrong? lol
If you wanted to really show respect you would have replied to my comment, point to point, to answer my observation. As you can see, you just write exactly what you wrote above, not even taking care of my opinion. You just changed the words.

As always, those pretending to teach you the highest form of democracy, end up showing that they don't even know how to respect you. Even if I am not hurted, because I don't take it personally, you are lacking of respect towards yourself, because when you take such a hyper-materialistic vision of life as an assumption, considering religion just a ideology and believers just a faction, you simply depauperate the concept of the human being to a sleazy piece of meat, with no soul and spirituality, maybe with a few neurons more than a fly (not in all cases I would say). That is exactly what they want you to think 🙂 Because if you don't pretend to have a spirituality and a moral which lead you to positive behaviours beside your own interest, you are just a work force and a consumer, easy to influence and easy to control. Sorry. Sad that you think you are, but happy to know that I am not. Go to say to a girl "hey, when I say - I love you - I just want to show to be part of that half of humanity who accept to use this keyword to be repaid with sexual performances". Then tell me how she reacts xD
People are more than just parts of a leading majority or a submissed but conspiring minority. And the respect due to a human being is not just a social contract, is a right that everyone owns.

Brother, please, take a few steps to upgrade your assumption to the rank of opinion. You have an opinion only when you have seriously compared it with others. Which should be a dialogue. Which should be the basic of democracy. Which should be this unknown thing... civilization 🙂
Watch less Star Trek and more Star Wars 🙂

Seems that we do not speak the same language. You simply ignore any arguments and proclaim that you are the lonely guardian of wisdom. LOL

@Fanaxidiel

A quick question before I address your... 'arguments', though judging by your replies to Magnus it will all sink into empty space.

"Oh, and I should believe you just because it was you writing? Who are you, Jesus Christ?"

Whatbif he is Jesus? Will you believe him?

Is that even a question bro?
How could I believe someone pretending to be Jesus Christ and saying at the same time not to believe in Jesus Christ? xD
I believe in something only if I think that it's coherent and reasonable.

Anyway I hope that the level of discussion moves out of fanatic marxist dogmas like "religions are the opium of people". They were proved wrong, fake and stupid by history itself. Whole nations subjugated from those marxist, so called, "democracies" showed that religion survived even under the most hard and persecutory dictatorships. I witnessed their fall and their shame.
I can have some kind of interest towards arguments coming from a reasoned philosophic atheism, but sometimes I feel like someone comes to me saying "hey, Spock showed us the way, you bigot". I don't recognize such an authortity other than on planet Volcano xD

"I believe in something only if I think that it's coherent and reasonable." Hmmm
Ok, how is that coherent and reasonable? The world (the universe) was created by an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing, all wise, all loving ... omnipotent invisible Creator (call him by his name at your own risk... you might be stoned to death).
So that God was all perfect, but... I don't know, I guess for the lolz he made his most beloved creations (that even bare a visual resemblance to him - bearded and all) flawed - they were expected to honour him (HIM) for the fact that he created them and not doubt his omnipotence and power, but they were 'given' curiosity and for some reason he planted a Tree of knowledge whose fruits were not to be eaten, cause the Creator will be mad.

Didn't he expect, with his omnipotence, that those creatures, 'flawed' with curiosity, by default, will strive for that knowledge? Did he made them like that, flawed on purpose?

tl:dr Enter Eve. That foul woman, that was only designed as a companion to the embodiment of God was even made a bit later, cause God didn't forsee his most beloved creation will need to be entertained. She was extra flawed, maybe cause she bore little resemblance to the Creator. So she made the perfect, but flawed at the same time, God's creation to taste those tempting apples.

tl:dr Daddy was mad and cast both of them out of the Utopia the were given to live in. He assigned his angels guards to barr the gates of that Utopia and armed them with... swords (couldn't he at least give them long phasers, instead of making them 'go down' and poke someone with their flaming sword - since you love Star Trek so much?).

Despite being mad, the Creator loved them so much that he gave Adam and Eve a planet to live on and dominate over (a nice and tiny, mostly watery planet in a remote area of the Orion arm of the Milky way galaxy, cause Andromeda was too good for their crime).

Despite being obviously flawed by design, they were still forced to breed, cause why not and because The Creator loved them and loved their prayers and still demanded their obedience and eternal gratitude.

They and their progeny all had a dominant genetic marker of the original sin and they had to live a life atoning for that birth given sin - with prayers and regular sacrifices.

tl:dr they were breeding well. And they managed to worship him with a varying success, which sometimes made the creator so mad that he picked only a handful and wiped the others and for some reason he wiped most of the animal and plant life and asked his chosen ones to do him a favour and save a pair of each animal species at the time, cause he needs to repopulate that planet again, when he calms down.

tl:dr repopulation #2 - God's flawed creations' experiment #2

The creator was still mad so he decided to speak only to a handful of his most loved creations and since he was peaceful he preferred 1v1 conversations in caves, mountain tops etc. in a small part of the Planet that will later be called Middle East.

Those few chosen ones wrote down the words of the Creator and stared an organisation that spreads those words to the Gods creations, that were not worthy of the Creator's personal time.

Since those Chosen ones were busy writing and spreading the word of the Creator, they needed to be taken care of, but not by the creator, but by the lucky recipients of the knowledge - they gave land, food, their labor.. anything the Chosen ones needed to praise and spread the word of the creator. They even build special buildings that were the preferred way of God to be worshipped and adored into.

tl:dt he was regularly annoyed and sent his angels to smite some undesirables or gave superpowers to some of his chosen ones to tackle the flawed creations that didn't really like worshipping him.

tl:dr people were naughty again and even his most faithful servants were getting naughty. So he tried a different approach.

Transformed himself and planted himself into a unsuspecting woman, that he thought was not that flawed, and send one of his guards to tell her the good news.

tl:dr he was delivered as the son of creator, while actually being himself and started preaching.

The problem: the son of the creator, who was actually the creator was very different from the creator that his creations knew from his own previous words. He was more like a pot smoking hippie, singing 'all you need is love'. And to top that he didn't have his full powers - unable to split oceans, move mountains etc.

So naturally they killed him. So he returned to his cloud, but for some reason he decided not to smite everyone, flooding the planet, but chose the passive aggressive behaviour and adding bonus tortures for the extra flawed in hell and some brimstone to the Torture kit of his Hell guardians.

The creations that bought the Son of the Creator, who's in fact the creator wrote down his teachings, after he was killed and they started their own organisation to worship both the creator and his son, who was actually the creator.
At first they did that in secret cause the ones that didn't believe the Son had anything to do with the Creator and the ones who didn't even worship the creator didn't really like the worshippers of the Son.

BUT one particular ruler of the non-worshippers found out that the creator gives him signs that he's the actual creator and the Son is legit too and that he was chosen to help spread the Son's, who was actually the Creator) words. He embraced the teachings of the Son and the Son's worshippers were no longer outcasts, posting Fish grafitti on Sewer walls and mosaics.

Their organisation grew bigger and the word of the Son/Creator in the form of hundreds of books were classified, removing the ones that were not really the word of the Son/Creator and leaving only a hadful of legit ones.

tl:dr the organisation of the Son/Creator worshippers grew stronger, joined by a handful of rulers that the creator decided to pick as rulers.
They often were in conflict with the ones that preferred the original temper of the creator, and didn't believe the Son/creator was legit. Resulting in more work for the Hell guards.

Anyway the Creator found another guy that was ok and decided to speak to him in a cosy chill cave in the Arabian desert.

For some reason he told him the Son/Creator guy didn't get it quite right and was a bit 'fishy' (I guess it was cause of the graffiti)


Anyway, that guy had the updated words of the Creator written down and started a new organisation.

The creator often had a few chosen rulers, members of that organisation.

tl:dr the members of these 3 organisations started hating each other and fighting over the Creator's love and for the hope atoning their genetic sins and flaws by design in a hope for a better time spent in the Angel barred Utopia.

The Creator kept his passive aggressive state of mind and decided to let them settle it on by themselves till he decides to end the World...

I would love to have a debate (even if based on genuine irony) with some respectable atheist about the philosophical reasons to accept or not a cult or its beliefs. I did it many times at university and me and my mate both found useful the chance. Unfortunately here I just find simpletons who copy/paste some pastafarian bs and call it an argument. Trying to ridicule the bible without managing the basic key-concept of interpretation (better if it was the proper ermeneuthics) is ridiculing yourself. Since you didn't even talk seriously with an average informed believer about the bible, you assume wrongly that the book doesn't have its own language you don't try to get out of it a "cosmogony" or an anthropological vision to, eventually, criticize. You just pretend that believers should reject it since it seems strange to your eyes. And you talked in your article about the fear of strange and new things. Wow. If you doubt what I consider coherent or not, well this is a clear example of a non-coherent behaviour.

If you were interested just a bit to the best for others, you would debate like mature people, not just post some bs. Let's assume I am wrong. Would ever a trolling attempt to ridicule my beliefs help the cause of my enlightenment? Or you assume that I should be intimidated from your irony attempt to change my beliefs? So, just after you claimed that you despise fear and hatred, you are trying to use "the bad ways" to make me more similar to you? Where did I read that the same is happening? LOL

If there is someone with true arguments, contact me in PM. I have time for that, but not for this 🙂
Even true atheism would be a progress in some cases.

I have seen in many nations and in many times a great difference between believers of religion. Some religious people (including some of their leaders) spread their words of true love and tolerance, some religious people (including some of their leaders) spread their words of pure hatred or intolerance to others.
One example is Buddhism. Some doesn't want to kill even small insects so they wave the way they want to walk first so the insects are not any more on the path they walk. However some others (and there are many of them) do support the killing on Muslims by the Burmese army claiming there is no place for Muslims in Burma. I could give examples of Christians, Muslims and Hindus too.
The same however can been said about non religious people (and their leaders). I don't judge whether people are religious or not and I don't trust their words neither their (holy) books, I judge their actions. How the group that has the power in a nation treats their minorities shows a lot about their true intentions.

You can't just tear down hundreds and in some cases thousands of years of nation states and expect a Utopia to blossom. A country, which in essence are a people located in a area have every right to restrict access to 'other' people. They have every right to preserve their culture and their particular way of life. In doing so, they must restrict the rights of those not born in what they perceive as land in their 'control' entering in numbers that could be deemed detrimental to their existence. This could be 1 or it could be 10,000,000, that is for the people to decide by their elected hierarchy. Free movement of people only creates more problems then it would ever solve. We are a hierarchal creature that preys upon weakness.

The free movement of ideas really should be the free EXPRESSION of ideas. Stupid people should have every right to say stupid things and I should be free to call you a 'f*cking idiot'. Unfortunately a lot of our Left Wing Governments have forgot this and deem it perfectly valid to not only police our speech, but also our thoughts. This is the main reason why we see massive tensions across the West with regards to race and religion. I'm not as optimistic as you, I can only see 'rivers of blood' in the streets unless ideas, thoughts and speech, no matter how heinous are allowed to be aired. Every idea is bad to someone else, being able to freely discuss will help us find the ground in which the bad elements of every idea are dampened.

I think what you said is partly true. Do think however how nations are created. A lot have conquered other nations, some are created because of a struggle for liberation. Almost all nations have severe groups of minorities within their borders or have kicked them out. I don't think there is a border of a nation in the world that hasn't give frictions. The acceptance of the idea that a country is equal to a nation isn't that old either. Nationalism is a romantic idea that creates many problems. I also see that migration gives many problems, however it is as old as there are humans on the world. It is to believed in science we all come from Africa.

Hey Niemand,

How far do we go back with science? If science is to be believed, we all come from one common ancestor that started life in the oceans...

Of course nations have had to fight for their existence at some point. That is the way of the world. It is seen throughout the animal kingdom. We thrive on hierarchy, we have leaders and we have followers. The nation state does bad at times, it also does immense good. What other structure do we have to replace it?

Do you lock your front door or do you leave it unlocked?

Yes indeed far in history we all came out of the ocean, but that is so much behind us and I think that is not important in this discussion. What we should know about states that the concept of one nation, one state is relatively short in our history and the problem there is that a lot of nations wants a part of other nations and the other way round. The greatest states were multicultural. Greek, Roman, & Ottoman to name some. Same is for the USA nowadays. That said I do know that the multicultural empires conquered a lot of nations. The greed is bigger than the world is.

"Stupid people should have every right to say stupid things and I should be free to call you a 'f*cking idiot'."

I cannot agree more on that. And all the political correctness, that is so dominant lately creates a lot more problems than it solves. And yes, what I meant was 'free expression', but also access to ideas.

As for the national states - yes, they can be eliminated one way or another, but luckily there's no need to do that.
I'm not suggesting everyone should give up their homes or force you to accept other cultures or ideas. You have every right not to. I am not that much of an utopian, thinking people will love each other very much and start farting rainbows.

What I am suggesting is that people are sufficiently reasonable to:

- acknowledge the fact that we are all one species and we need to work together to ensure our future as a species, despite the trivial differences of skin pigmentation, facial treats , etc. Is that so hard to acknowledge?

- acknowledge that nations are obsolete, a romantic ideology, that have caused and is still causing a lot of trouble and suffering. Instead of national pride and dignity don't you think we should value the personal human dignity? Or as a philosopher in my own country once said (roughly translated):
"I know of no case the human dignity have hurt someone's national dignity, but I know of countless cases of the opposite'.

We are already a global species - our technology is global, our economy is global, our problems are global - it is only the human society that is dragging behind.

Take for example the US. They started off as 13 quite different in terms of resources, production, culture, etc. colonies.

But their leaders were smart enough to realise that they only stand a chance against the mighty British Empire as a whole, as a team. So they gave up some of their rights and created a union... a federal government, to face their common problem, but they kept their distinct cultural features, that can be seen even today. It is far from a perfect system for many obvious reasons, but it's a good base model, imo.

Unfortunately, I have had my freedom of expression restricted for expressing a joke about educated Muslims, so I'll have to reply via the Org.


You are preaching to the already converted. The Western Nations already acknowledge these rights. We have laws that back up this thinking. In order for your viewpoint to come to fruition, you need to push this agenda on the more inferior cultures of the world. The backwards third world where stoning is still a punishment and Women are considered 2nd class citizens are the people that you need to educate.

A global society is the romantic idea, not the nation state. Humans work more efficiently in smaller groups, this is why we have local councils and the such. We are not the global creature that you espouse yet. We are individuals with individual needs. Our world is interconnected, not global. There is a massive difference and a difference that needs to be acknowledged. What you want, is years in the future. Pushing the agenda too fast, too soon will lead to devastation, quite likely never seen before.

The 13 Colonies were not vastly different culturally, they were European Christians, English Liberalism had won the day already by the time they rebelled. They shared a common language and a common faith... At least try to be intellectually honest.

Yeah, I do agree with you and I thank you for that comment.

I am 30 years old this year and I don't believe that I will see the changes I am talking about in my lifetime, but I am hoping my kid will.

Yeah, the third world countries desperately need access to better education and Western democracies are well equipped in terms of legislation and long term tradition in practicing those laws and rights, but that gap can be closed in only a generation or 2 if the political will to do it is present. Sadly I don't see that will and I am not sure what drive is needed to generate that will for change. The current divide benefits too many influential people.

I agree that humanity is not mature enough for such a giant leap forward, not yet. But it will be one day.

As for the 13 Colonies example - I really misused the world cultural, describing their differences. They had their differences, but not cultural - I stand corrected.

Colin Woodard makes a good argument here: http://www.colinwoodard.com/americannations.html that North America has been multicultural since colonial days. He divides us into 11 distinct regions, some of which originated with the 13 original colonies. Patterns of settlement made us more divided from the beginning than we like to think.

A global society is also a romantic idea, same as with the nation state. Indeed people work better in smaller communities. That make more sense in villages or cities. It doesn't work with the millions that live in the current nation states.
Also thanks MaryamQ to give a link why there were real big cultural differences in the USA. They even didn't speak the same language (there was English about half of the people. Many spoke apart from native languages Dutch, Spanish, French and German. A lot of the ones that spoke the same language also didn't agree with each other. Cultural diversity is almost everywhere. It has been much oppressed in the nineteen century in Europe together with mass killings. In the twentieth century many millions tried to do that again.Sad story it is, but we better learn from it.

Guys, when we talk about cultural differences, we ain't talking about the French kissing both cheeks compared to the English firm handshake when meeting. We are talking about the mutilation of penises, the chopping off of clits, throwing people off roofs due to their sexual orientation or stoning woman for adultery.

The difference between European Christian cultures are slight. tbf Maryam, that just reinforces the believe that people like to be around those they see as familiar. Had the first lot of competing cultures been Japanese, Arab and Anglo you can bet your bottom dollar that the United States would never have been formed.

Until the nation's of the world are on a more equal socioeconomic level globalism is a dangerous ideology to push. The first world should not be asked to house and feed the world. we should be buying their goods and helping them trade their way out of poverty. Asking people to make dangerous trips in order to better their own life is condemning millions in their home nation to continued poverty. Simply opening the doors to everyone in order to pay for our pensions (which is an argument for open borders) is one of the most selfish acts I can think of. We gut a nation of its youngest and brightest, leaving those without the means to escape to a increasingly worse position, in order to allow our old people to live a rich and healthy and prosperous retirement.

Come on guys, doing the thing that feels nice isn't always the nicest thing to do...

Good stuff. Go science. No gods, no masters. Burn the prisons.

Well, at least someone's still writing about shit that isn't this game.

i hate dumb people dose that make me afraid of them? also did you know that John Lennon tuned the C on his guitar to 528 Hz it is the sound of love. that particular song makes some of the most beautiful ice crystals.

I now have a VERY intelligent newspaper in eREP.

Subd here and on utube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRmbwczTC6E&feature=youtu.be
( Feynmann's channel)

Nice quotes Feynmann

o7

All "fear" can be boiled down to a fear of the unknown.
NOT knowing what will happen, or the outcome of a given situation
stresses the human brain. This "stress" is commonly known as "fear."

Fear of (insert *unknown* variable here)