The Insanity of Humanity
Monday, September 13th, 2010
The late comedian Bob Monkhouse once said ‘I don’t think there’s intelligent life on other planets. Why should other planets be any different from this one?’ It’s an amusing quip that returned to my thoughts this week but from an entirely different perspective.
Arrogance is blinding. 2500 years ago Buddha said the only challenge for the human race was ignorance. If we had the courage, as a race, to look at ourselves and the world we have created, we’d not fail to notice that little has changed.
We delight in our perceived evolution, a belief fed by technological and scientific advancements of the past 250 years (which surpass the entire advancements of the previous 1000 years). Yet despite these achievements, we remain largely oblivious to the lack of advancement in ourselves.
This week humanity is bearing witness to its own insanity, a race preoccupied with technological and scientific advancement to the detriment of it’s own conscious enlightenment. Our allegedly superior intelligence over the animal kingdom doesn’t always stand up to scrutiny when observing human behaviour.
It’s hard to see the picture when you’re in the frame, and like it or not, we possess an extraordinary capacity for insanity.
Here we are, at the beginning of the 21st century, and the human race is still waging war upon itself based upon ideas that were accepted uncritically as the truth, indoctrinated by the dogma and intolerance of man-made constructs that underpin the belief systems of our worldwide religions. ‘We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe’ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr once said.
This week we’ve witnessed the wisdom of those words in the antics of Floridian Pastor Terry Jones, a man so blinded by his own beliefs he cannot see the insanity and hypocrisy of his intended actions. By just proposing to burn the ancient scripture of the Koran, he is visibly demonstrating the same fundamental extremism he believes he’s taking a stand against.
The only accomplishment Jones can claim is to have fed the very ignorance that has kept the human race imprisoned in the walls of its own insanity since time and memorial. Millions of lives have been lost unnecessarily in the name of religious denomination, and sadly, as we continue to stand by belief systems that didn’t originate with us, our ability to rewrite a our future is lost.
The insanity we witness in our world is the child of ignorance. We are all ignorant to a greater or lesser degree. The problem is in how religion (not faith) feeds it. Steven Weinberg said that ‘ Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion’.
Pastor Terry Jones is not an evil man, he’s simply lacking in the awareness to recognise how he too is indoctrinated with a belief system that is shaping his thoughts, feelings and actions. As the quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes suggests, our beliefs become so ingrained in our psyche, so entrenched in our personality, that we lack the awareness that differentiates between ourselves and the belief, it literally becomes a part of who we are, meaning any alternative view is perceived as a threat. You can’t escape a prison unless you know you’re in one.
Mr. Jones is not his behaviour, neither is he his beliefs. In understanding this, we should avoid the same rash judgments of Mr. Jones that he is currently unable to avoid making of others. As Gandhi said, ‘you must be the change you seek in the world’.
Even our most revered religious leaders could learn a thing a two from such wisdom. Pope Benedict’s declaration that ‘saving humanity from homosexuality was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction’ is a fine example. It may reflect the indoctrinated beliefs of Catholicism, that doesn’t qualify it as a spiritual truth that we should all accept as part of a consciously evolving society.
Our salvation lies in greater awareness. If we are to evolve beyond a fractious global community with a myriad of prejudices and intolerant denominations, we must place as much precedence on advancing our consciousness, the knowledge of ourselves within, as we do in advancing science, technology and learning about the world without. I believe the implications of not doing so are disastrous.
We all have the right to our beliefs, to our own personal truths, we do not have the right to deny other people their own. Judgments of any nature are polluted by personal belief systems and values. What we find intolerable in others we are blind to in ourselves, the behaviour of Terry Jones is case in point. The only thing we should be intolerant of is intolerance itself.
Until we are able to see past the falsity and recognise the truth that is reflected at the centre of all ancient scriptures, revealed in different terminology and language, we will forever experience the appalling effects of the ignorance that has blighted the human race throughout our history.
To do that we must develop the awareness that will allow our inherited belief systems to accept different interpretations of the messages within the scriptures, to question what was decreed as true by the authority figures of our specific denomination, those who also accepted it as a truth without ever questioning it’s validity. Only then will we achieve a broader perspective, one of an awareness that can grasp the inter-relatedness that exists between the core messages of all ancient scripture.
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
The truth is like traveling to the centre of a city, it doesn’t matter what district or suburb you come from, it all looks the same once you arrive at your destination. Nature reveals to us the most fundamental truth, it stands bold and naked in its simplicity, perfectly visible for those who have developed the awareness to see it. Beyond our theology and ideology, our most essential truth is found in the harmony of our biology.
We are all born into the physical world unified, without prejudice and beliefs.
When we finally accept that the differences we face are of our own construction, inherited as a consequence of societal, cultural and generational imprinting, when we’re willing to accept that our most cherished ideas and concepts aren’t necessarily a reflection of the truth, but simply our truth, when we are willing to listen to and evaluate alternative interpretations of what we hold most dear in life, without feeling the need to judge, condemn or even kill, then we can finally call ourselves an evolving race.