Ecohumanist Lab

What we need to unlearn

What do we need to unlearn

By 2050 and maybe sooner the humans need to unlearn a few things:

1. some people are yours and others are different kind
2. if things are unfair you can try use force
3. money makes you safer
4. poor people are dangerous
5. people of your kind make you safer, the more of them the better
6. dying is always sad and bad
7. conversation about quality of life is a taboo
8. we are free to have any weapon we want
9. we are free to teach children anything we want
10. we are free to buy whatever we want
11. the more you play the happier you are
12. in danger you can always call your God and you feel better
13. if an experience is deeply personal and moving you call it religious

and learn few things:

1. how to share our worlds, what we know and what we have and what we do.
2. how to teach children about families and learning
3. how to create strong families
4. that the friendship produces cooperation , but not other way around
5. how to create strong friendships
6. how to create democracies, local and global

If we are ok by 2050- think of this as a Houdini escape.

Early Hominids, Hunter-gatherers, I think they are the inventors of the friendship. This new type of the relationship was beyond the power structure of the wolves’ pack. It was a skill highly beneficial for the group’s well being, learned during the childhood and the adolescence, sinking in the genetic code during the last million years. The friendship is the kind of love which is non kinship related, non- sexual, and non- spiritual, but it rewards the participants with most of pleasures, the gratification and fulfilments of love . It is centered on the cooperation.

The cooperation make friendship fun and the friendship makes cooperation fun. We need a renaissance of the friendship- the only way out.

My friend and teacher, Dr. Guo thinks there is no crisis- the same circular history in 5000 year history of China.

It seems that 3 billions of people in Far East believe in the circular history, so there is no worry, 1 billion Muslim believe that they will conquer the rest, so there is no worry, 1 billion Westerners believe that, if the Disaster comes, they will survive because of money and technology, so there is no worry, others are weak and poor and few so their opinion does not count.

I think there is crisis. I think it was always there together with the solution.

Early hominids started proto-civilisation with the development of the complexity of the nervous system reflecting the complexity of the society, with the metaphors, language and technology.

It took many civilizations to grow and fold, many cultures to flourish, and die, involving more and more of the population and resources.

Kurt Johnson believes that in the core of the deepest mystical exploration all religions are the same. With his idea of the Interspirituality all boundaries will fall away : religions, nationalism, racism, maybe others? It is good that these guys, the enlightened mystics, the monks, the meditators are there, better few dozen than nobody, but what about the rest of us?

Also it is amazing and wonderful if to these guys , each appropriate god is saying the same thing. It is interesting from the neuroscience point of view. But for this revelation they still rely on the message from god. We are relieved that the message for them is “love, love, blah blah, no violence, compassion, etc”, but why, and for how long? We do not understand god, can not guess him, so anytime and anyplace,  maybe tomorrow , or to other guys he or she will say “what would Jesus bomb?”.

Turn on your TV and see if my idea is purely theoretical….

So the religions, by following and relying on the god’s message, are intrinsically toxic and evil.

All these wonderful, best people, my brother Piotrus, my late Mom, Andrew Harvey and Dalai Lama, they all build walls. They allow the bombing (God bless USA) and beheading (Allah Akbar), because- “we just do what our god tells us to do” and “ it is clearly written”, and “ we swear on the scriptures, we are right”. And we can not tell them, “you are wrong, you uncouth primitives”, because these wonderful people, together with Kurt Johnson, are saying exactly the same thing!

Our only chance is that the last million years have build-in the critical thinking, the reflective thinking and the ability to be friend, in our core nature ( the kinship and cooperation are in our genes, that’s for sure, the ants and E.O. Wilson confirm it ). Or, I am wrong, an optimist and utopian, one million years is pretty short time for the evolution and other “survival” traits of fear and greed and seeking power and mate are stronger….

And, frightening as it is, all these latter traits are the base for the development of spirituality and religions!