Do u see any value in building a sustainably HAPPY society, by exploring life-&-teachings of humanist authors and their philosophies & experiments w/o mythological mumbo-jumbo death-&-magic (but also w/o wasting time trying to un-convert non-humanists)? And if you don’t see hope for present society, do you see value in gathering individual strength for best chances of surviving the possible break-down of society, as well as building a constructive societal-infrastructure around which to form & grow civilization as it re-emerges out of chaos & anarchy.
We enjoy:
turning on the faucet and having water come out with which to shower,
flushing the toilet and the sewage disappearing somewhere,
turning on the ignition and the car taking us where we want to go,
pressing a button and our favorite video program coming-on to entertain us,
opening the fridge and having all sorts of food to choose from
opening our closet and having a variety of cloths to choose from,
closing the doors of our residence and feeling safe from the elements,
using soft toilet-paper.
But all these amenities of life require people working together collectively.
No hermit, survivalist, loner, individualist, can:
process all the water for all his needs,
and make all his sewage disappear,
and build his own car from parts he made himself
from raw materials he mined himself,
and film all of his own movies to watch on video equipment he built himself
from raw materials he mined,
and grow & process all of his own food from start to finish.
and make all of his own cloths from fibers he made himself,
and build his own residence alone from raw materials he mined himself,
and make own soft toilet-paper.
Get the picture? Even primitive societies traded, bartered because they learned that no 1 individual can build all the amenities of life for himself. Even during war people trade & barter. Even when social-order breaks down and low-lifes go on a looting rampage, they are looting stuff that someone else has built so they could enjoy other-built amenities. Even Kalahari Bushmen live in groups where they share responsibilities so that no 1 person has to do it all himself. Even devout hermits-survivalists-loners-individualists depend on something that someone else has made, be it weapons, ammunition, generators, cloths, tools, food, supplies, or whatever. I defy anyone to show me a viable number of hermits-survivalists-loners-individualists who do 100% of everything for themselves from scratch. And even if those do exist, how many of those who go around espousing that they are not joiners, could (or would want to) actually exist like that w/o a collective society to provide stuff & services for them?
Like it or not, admit it or not, we all depend on various collectives no matter how much some talk about being (or pretend to be) individualists. So at best we can strive to be a balance somewhere between total individualism (impossible/impractical) & total collectivism (dangerous – Communism-Socialism-Nazism-Fascism). So to practice the most efficient form of pro-survival, we probably ought to band (re-legion) ourselves in groups that are most conducive to our survival, while at the same time promoting as much individualism as practical.
The Soviet-Union is no more. Czechoslovakia dissolved. Yugoslavia is gone. Sudan split in 2.
The United-Arab-Republic is no more.
Half of Rwandans went after the other half to annihilate them
Half of Cambodians went after the other half
to annihilate them (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z1sj7gzpCk).
to annihilate them (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z1sj7gzpCk).
Where is the huge Enron & other top companies that have succumbed to the credit crunch and gone bust: Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, XL Airlines, K&S Travel, Silver Jet, Inside Track, Carlyle Capital, Wrapfit, etc.? U.S. is a great & wonderful organization, but as seen above, no organization is immune to falling apart. It takes people of good-will working together to keep things together. The U.S. may have its problems, but I’m sure most would agree, it’s still a wonderful place to live (otherwise they’d be gone somewhere else to live). Will the wonderful U.S. survive if everyone just lets someone else do it?
There are 2 possibilities before us. Society will either improve, become more civilized & sustainable, and survive & prosper, or it will degenerate into depression, chaos, anarchy, rioting, looting – a Mad-Max scenario
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k9yIp_h1Fw&feature=fvwrel). If civilized society does break-down and disappear for a while, those individuals will best survive who band (re-legion) together in strong symbiotic-mutualistic groups.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k9yIp_h1Fw&feature=fvwrel). If civilized society does break-down and disappear for a while, those individuals will best survive who band (re-legion) together in strong symbiotic-mutualistic groups.
And for civilization to begin to re-emerge out of chaos, it will need a constructive societal-infrastructure around which to form & grow.
There are a number of well-meaning groups (some I could enumerate)
working toward a civilization of sustainable world-peace,
or training strong pro-survival individuals,
or building strong constructive societal-infrastructure
for a possible future need.
But the one that I see as doing the-most in the direction of
working toward a civilization of sustainable world-peace,
plus training strong pro-survival individuals,
plus building strong constructive societal-infrastructure
for a possible future need,
is the ValueCreation-Association (Soka-Gakkai). I recommend placing your hands on the rope in this huge tug-o-war between Builders & Destroyers
(hopefully on the Builders’ side).
The term "Christian" did not even come up until a decade after he was gone. JC never wrote anything. The gospels were not class-notes written down as he taught, but were written many years later from memory & plagiarism (which makes me wonder even about the red-letters in red-letter editions). To make Nazarene-Judaism easy for pagan-Romans to accept, it was greatly edited by well-meaning Roman-Jew, Saul/Paul, who never even met JC and knew very little about him. What we call "Christianity" today, should more correctly be called Constantinianity, since it was totally re-designed by the murderous Constantine circa 312CE. If JC did in fact say he was God's son, he also said that God was everyone's father thus making all people the children of God. If he did in fact claim to be equal to God, he also said that his followers would do even greater things than he did, which would imply that his followers could become as perfect-as (egual-to) their father in the sky. And that's just another way of saying that each individual has an innate potential Buddha-nature which s/he can let blossom in this very lifetime, which is the emphasis of the SGI Buddhist faith-practice-&-study.