If we do not recognise and reduce the dominance of our Mind and the excesses it drives us to, we will see the so-called Homo sapiens turn into Homo stupidus, the species that fouled and destroyed its own habitat.
Albert Einstein reflected on this more than half a century ago, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
The evidence of our increasing irrationality is all around us. Because we can map our genes and the universe, cure a disease or correct a deformity, manipulate our environment to suit a lifestyle, prolong life or curtail it, our arrogant Mind leads us to believe Homo sapiens is the superior species 'über alles'.
Yet the six billion people on earth are already consuming more than the planet can reproduce, eliminating all that supports our existence, and our population is still increasing.
We have fought wars over sources of energy and it is likely that next there will be wars over potable water, wars that will drain or damage the very resources they claim to protect, and our growing population demands more.
These facts are well known, but our Mind dislikes them as it undermines its sense of superiority. Such an illustrious and progressive species must be allowed to pursue its glorious journey to the stars, so we grasp at the seeds of doubt in the facts so we can ignore reality, and the idea we may not be so superior becomes one of many taboo subjects.
Our world is still influenced by the mores of religions that were created thousands of years ago when our rational reasoning was even less developed then it is today. These religions emerged from far earlier myths and beliefs, and were drafted in a naïve age by our reptilian brain's 'either/or' logic epitomised by, for example, Christ's dictate "He who is not with Me is against Me". This intolerant call to arms has disenfranchised millions over the past two thousand years, as it still does today.
Similarly the predominantly Christian West's pride and its preferred form of government, democracy, promotes a competitive culture. This is in direct opposition to its supposedly egalitarian and tolerant ethos and a sad achievement of the Mind's superiority complex.
Locked into ancient unrealistic 'wisdoms', which we are loathed to discard despite our experiences, we appear to fear growing up and leaving the nursery. Thus, we remain dominated by the primitive mentality that prevents us from achieving rationality and the wisdom of maturity.
Sex has become a toy that everyone, especially the male Mind and its ego, may indulge in without regard to consequences. We continue to reproduce regardless of seasons or circumstances, and blind to the conditions we are creating for our offspring.
We subscribe to religions that encourage procreation, and forbid the use of contraception or abortion. To suggest, because it is killing us, that it is an unlikely godlike decree, is taboo.
In this Christianity provides us with another particularly comic paradox.
Christianity insists we are born with original sin, which the Christian God supposedly does not like. If this were true then surely it would please the Christian God if we ceased to bring more sinners into the world, in which case the Pope should bless contraceptives and abortions. However perhaps God actually likes sinners, for without them we would have no need of Him. If this is true then the greatest sinners are Catholic priests and nuns for they are not supposed to procreate.
For all our proclamations and global screams on the subject, we are stoically indifferent to the problems of pollution and the insatiable demand on the planet's resources. This has been left in the hands of the 'omnipotent' Free Market, which incidentally is a creation of an uncertain Mind and its instability, speculation, risk taking, adventurousness, expansionism and excesses. The Market is a state imbued with nervousness and agitation that overrides rationality and obscures prevision. This 'beneficent' ideal is consistently funding publicity aimed at minimising or discrediting the scientific evidence of its irrationality and the planetary destruction it is causing.
In our neoteny, we are convinced that reality is a plaything that we can adapt to fit our religious, ideological, political or economic beliefs, and we are in the process of ratifying our illusions in fear of being seen to discriminate-political correctness is an excellent creator of taboos and an almost criminal substitute for good humour. Human beings have rights, but their home and habitat, this planet, does not. The saddest part of this is that the planet will most probably survive us, and not even notice our passing, indiscriminately nurturing other species after we have disappeared, and that is reality in its own right.
Our Mind's aggression, panicked by uncertainty and impervious to reality, has spawned uncountable tonnes of armaments and weapons to fight the wars of one wishful belief against another.
The stupidity of humanity ruled by the Mind's systems of wishful beliefs is so obvious when one considers the enormous amount of natural and human resources wasted in producing these tools of war in order to keep the Mind's world in existence. No one has calculated this cost on a global scale.
Imagine the amount of oil, wood, coal, cloth, rubber, water, earth, concrete and metals that were spent to install communism in Russia and to keep it alive for 70 years.
Imagine the amount of these resources spent by the USA and the West solely in defending their systems of beliefs against communism.
Imagine the amount of resources spent by the Nazis throughout Europe, to establish and keep alive their system of beliefs.
Napoleon destroyed a great deal of Europe 's resources to build an empire based on his wishful beliefs, all this to give us a grand history and leave some of us driving on the right hand side of the road.
Now imagine the amount of our planet's precious resources that are spent in inventing, producing, protecting and maintaining weapons of mass destruction, which will inevitably be in the wrong hands, so that we can spend the rest of our lives in fear of these weapons. Now imagine, if they were used, the enormous amount of precious resources we would lay waste to.
We actually find it thrilling to spend obscene amounts in this manner because it pleases our sense of importance, as does our power to destroy.
We almost appear to be aware of our destructive path as we are beginning to spend substantial amounts of resources to recycle things we should never have cycled on in the first place.
That there is something terribly wrong with our perception is evident not just in our increasing use of Mind-expanding substances, but also more poignantly in society's attempts to rationalise this. For years governments have avoided tackling the drug producing countries for fear of creating instability in strategic areas and now some scientists have even gone as far as to suggest that seeking intoxication is just as important a biological drive of human nature as is hunger, thirst and sex.
The same can be said for the restraints against condemning an irrational belief system, and now a scientist, no doubt soon to have many followers, is convinced he has found a 'god gene' that predisposes some people to become believers. It is more logical to believe that thousands of years of ideological belief systems have imposed a gene carried behavioural pattern allowing us to be part of the surviving pack, but weakening our grasp on reality. Since it has recently been discovered that genes can be 'switched on and off' they can, in this case, be 'switched off' in time, by using humour to advance intelligence, all the more reason to start the remedy sooner, rather than later.
We are creating cultures that accept negative elements they are too apathetic to combat, and we are changing laws to pretend to contain what should be addressed at source, and eradicated. We do this in the name of 'cost efficiency' when in reality we are subscribing to a 'live now pay later' ethos, without considering there may be no viable 'later' for our children.
As the power of the Mind increases, so do its anxieties, evident in the World's ever increasing consumption of anti-depression pills.
The human tragedy is a vicious circle of follies. The uncertainty of the Mind hopes to find relief in expansion. Instead of achieving less uncertainty, expansion creates stress and more anxiety, proven by the increase in stress related diseases and mental disorders.
In fact,this desire for intoxication or an 'altered state of awareness', or a ratification of our belief systems, or 'a higher state of existence' is conclusive evidence that our Mind is unstable and therefore able to be manipulated. One cannot 'alter' reality nor see nor know it through a haze of chemicals, nor understand it through myths and legends.
Einstein said, "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of Nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security." (Quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston 1977.)
Einstein gives us credit by assuming we are intelligent enough to understand and act upon the wisdom of his keen insight. Unfortunately,as long as our Mind dominates our perception of and approach to life we cannot become truly intelligent. We are blindly fixated upon our Mind's exciting wishful beliefs, and oblivious to the prison they create. The Mind fears intelligence, which would put an end to its illusions, and beguiles us with figments of intelligence such as cleverness and deviousness, by which we are deceived, deluded and ultimately cheated.
In fact, the Mind's wishful beliefs, creeds or dogmas consistently inhibit the development of intelligence. The Ancient Egyptians, who considered the Sun and its energy to be the source of all life, were much closer to the truth than religions that invented an omnipotent god who created everything out of nothing. The indoctrination of such ancient scripts as the Bible prevents us advancing in intelligence from the primitive Mind's either/or, black or white, way of thinking towards a recognition of the nuances of our existence.
The Mind is particularly attracted by absurdities, just as it is intrigued by mystic and excited by excess. Modern Christianity, like many other belief systems, demands a 'leap of faith' to blindly accept the unseen and intangible, in order to belong. Thus, the Christian world latched onto the idea of "credo quia absurdum" ("I believe because it is absurd") and took it to heart.
Thus the Mind triumphs and its aggressive and restless culture has lead, not to successful and cohesive communities, but isolated and fearful individuals craving more and benefiting less. Such an environment lacks the enlightenment of humour and is the antithesis of wisdom and intelligence.
Absurdities make the best targets for ridicule and derision, which betray and expose the machinations of the Mind. The function of humour is not to amuse, but to redress the balance we have lost by being pretentious and contemptuous of humour, and allows us the clarity in which to develop intelligence, wisdom, reason and rationality.
One might say that humour could not have helped save anyone from the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, but the human reactions to this disaster clearly underline my contention that we are in the grip of a Mind created world which we desperately need to deride and expose in order to regain our own grip on our own precious reality.
In December 2004, the planet scratched its back and over 200,000 people died. Almost the first response was to demand to know why there was no earthquake detection system in the Indian Ocean like the one in the Pacific, which would have given some hours warning of a potential Tsunami.
I suspect that many people would have been relieved to hear that the disaster was man made. If this had been the case then man could wallow in his superiority - his ability to lay-waste and devastate HIS planet, and if he could do this, then he could make it better, he would have been in control, and therefore less fearful.
The outpouring of assistance from around the world, whilst unquestionably appropriate, was accompanied by a sense of glee that we were being so magnanimous that we could almost hijack Nature's power. We appear to be fighting like mad to be 'on' this planet rather than 'of' it.
This Tsunami was predictable without man's expensive technology.
Very few animals were lost. We know, as there have been endless observations throughout human existence, that animals become nervous and flee from natural disasters undetectable to humans. We have not only lost our intuitive capacity and presentiment, but do not even have the intelligence to pick up the messages from the animals that have them.
Some scientists even suggest that we are no longer able to sense earthquakes because we have become bipedal and wear shoes, and thus lost direct contact with the ground and therefore have no way of feeling what the Earth is up to!
I believe that living in the Mind's world is a much more efficient lagging than having only two muffled feet on the ground.
When people saw the waves approaching, it appears many ran for their cameras rather than rushing to the rescue. What arrogance, I wonder how many bodies were washed out to sea clutching a camera, or a wallet, rather than something that would float or another person?
We are a species without experience because our memories of even the recent past are filtered, distorted and deformed by the needs of the Mind. This explains why we cannot learn from our experiences, nor develop better intuitions, nor mature.
If they had the concepts, I am sure that animals observing our poor performance consider it absurd, ridiculous and incomprehensible, and deserving of their pity. We must also appear the most frightening and unstable creatures that ever existed. As if to compound our errors, in the middle of the last century, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary,man insisted on adding another 'sapiens' to the name of our species. We are now calling ourselves, 'Homo sapiens sapiens', and this from the only animal to unconscionably foul its own bed.
Using humour will rekindle our trust and confidence in our intuitions, so long suppressed and dismissed by the doubts and anxieties of the Mind's world. We will improve our ability to sense the vibrations of the world around us and to understand the messages Nature provides. Intuition enables us to anticipate the next step, and react without having to speculate.
If we truly want to feel supreme there is no better way than by promoting good humour to bring us into harmony with the universe and being grateful that we are part of its creation, part of life.
By being grateful to be alive, we develop a love of life. Gratitude reduces the Mind's selfishness and promotes generosity. Sharing is a more intelligent, logical and beneficial approach to living and in essence, the most valuable asset we have, creating good humour, and a healthy sense of humour.
None of this is new to us, we all know intuitively that happiness and contentment are healthier than stress and discontent.
The irony is that despite the fact there is increasing scientific proof that generosity activates the area of our brain that generates feelings of happiness and contentment, which underpin good health, and that tension and stress lead to feelings of unhappiness and chronic discontent, which open the way to disease, our Minds are set on pursuing excitement and excess to the detriment of our sense of well being, the health of our bodies, and of the planet.
"RIDE, SI SAPIS"
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