Maps and Keys

I have just finished reading three of five books written by author, philosopher, neuroscientist, Sam Harris.

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004)
Letter to a Christian Nation (2006)
The Moral Landscape: How Science Cn Determine Human Values (2010)

I read them in the order he wrote them and have yet to read "Lying" or "Free Will", the last two book he has written thus far, but plan to get to them soon.

I suggest reading his books.  The idea of honesty comes to my mind.  Or maybe dishonesty, with regards to our own, with our selves and those around us.  Fear also comes to mind as well as just plain laziness.  This fear and laziness that each of us clutch on to in order to avoid thinking for ourselves and making real and honest observations and assessments of our situation in this world, in this life.

I gathered that Harris would have us decide our morals, rules for society and laws by way of reasoning out what is best for attaining, and what is, human well being.  I am all for it, but I would go a step further.  In a step that might be dismissed as just a matter of semantics I would say that we need to base our values, morality, and governance upon what is best for attaining the well being of the "living community", or of all things, if you don't want to include the planet as part of the living community.

I perceive that much of the suffering and struggle and strife that is beset upon us and the rest of the world is the tendency to separate out humanity from the rest of the living community, as if our well being alone could be achieved without the well being of the very community that supports us.

Much of religious belief says that the world was put here, by God, for the benefit of man, or at least, for man's usefulness.  This idea, or at least our interpretation and implementation of that idea, has set upon us most of our troubled situation.  Wether we are defining the minerals of the earth or other human beings and animals, as being for our usefulness, we are subjugating all of the world to human needs and cravings, and weakness, all in isolation, and justifying the destruction of the very relationships that support us.  We do this with a divine justification.

Even as Harris points out the liabilities in basing our morality, and thus governance, on religious principal and dogma, he has led us into an equal but different trap of creating our value structure from a point of human well being that removes the human being from the physical world in which it exists, from all the life that makes that world and our existence possible, and good.

I am well aware that most religious doctrine would have us devalue the physical world, and value only the spiritual world, that we have yet to know in any way, shape, or form.  The conflict this creates in us, between us and the rest of the living world and amongst each other is what we are facing as the source for our very destruction of our race, at best, and the end of what is known life at worst.

We look out now, with this amazing state of technology that we are in, and see into other time.  Even with such range of vision we have found little if any signs of anything that we would call life.  We, this planet, this community of living organisms is unique as far as we can see.  Yet, for the sake of greed, and sloth we corrupt and destroy and extinguish life and relationships around us at a rate and level that is simultaneously impressive and horrific and stupid.

We each do this, every day of our lives, many times over each day.  We can observe that rivers flood and drowned fields and that fires burn forests, that animals of the forests, jungles, oceans kill and eat other animals of the forest, jungles, and oceans, but if we look honestly at ourselves, what we are doing is not at all comparable.  We use this as evidence that we are different from the rest of the living community and to reinforce our belief in a divine plan for salvation.  But what we are looking for salvation from is what we are making of ourselves and our world.  It is a self manifesting destiny and an ignorant and stupid choice of situations.

We could go back to hunter gatherer lifestyles and turn our backs to industry and technology and wait while the systems that support us regain some balance and health.  We could do away with possession of lands and monetary systems and live more as the rest of the living community lives.  Actually, we probably couldn't, and why would we?  But, we can pick a more reasonable path.  A path of honesty about what we know, and what we don't.  A path that allows for what we need to be really happy, not just occupied with the pursuit of supposed happiness while never actually attaining it.

I think that a path to real well being can't begin with anything less than the perspective that our well being is completely dependent on the well being of the rest of the living community.  If the world, the earth, the animals and plants that are our food and sustenance, the water that is unique to this planet, the climate that allows all of this to flourish, if all of this is not in a state of well being first, then we are going to find if very hard, if not impossible to attain well being for ourselves as individuals, and as a species.  This perspective leads us to understand the need for well being that goes beyond the individual, the family, the neighborhood, the town, the state, the country, the species and opens our minds to the need for compassion towards all life and being.

Having said all that, I am grateful to Sam Harris for his work and articulation of thought and highly recommend his books and lectures/debates that I have found on Youtube.