What Were We????
Oct 15, 2018 17:28:00 #
Twardlow
Loc: Arkansas
I posted this in response to a post and move it here to induce thought for and against...
As I have said in other contexts, it is our fundamental responsibility to seek out ‘fact,’ and ‘Truth,’ as best we can learn and understand it.
The ancient Greeks laid the foundations of Western Philosophy, and in many cases haven’t been bettered in some 2500 years of philosophical specultion.
Still, they invented a silly collection of Gods, lusting after and raping or having sex with humans, causing wars, turning humans into plants and trees, insuring perpetual agony, drunkenness and so forth, leaving us a rich literary heritage, but often still rather silly.
They were followed by the Catholic Church, bastion of brotherly love—true universal love—tainted with torture, with murder, with rape and incest, with drunkenness, corruption and violence, preaching a God of Love who gave us syphilis, TB, AIDS, polio, war and rape and ceaseless violence, preaching that said God really was concerned about our puny individual planet.
Still, there were Greeks and Catholics who expanded knowledge and increased our understanding of ourselves and the envoirnment around us—sought, found and published verifiable, provable Truth for all mankind to enjoy, to learn from, and to profit by.
Truth is never easy and is very often bloody and a perpetual war against ignorance, stupidity, and corruption.
With discourse that seldom rises above the second grade level, like children calling each other a POS or liar, lying repeatedly and clumsily, displaying our scientific and moral weakness, we are proud of our self-assumed excellence if not our genuine seeking of verifiable truth.
Not one of us—not a single one!—has sufficient background to evaluate climate issues, and we wildly accuse others of merely mouthing the company line of their tribe, while we more assiduously declare more fervently the company line of our own tribe, with vigor and intensity, and ignorance, and with blind, destructive emotion.
And some of us pursue truth and growth following a messiah who has told ten times more lies than all previous Presidents combined, who is incompetent, devious, dishonest and revered, at least by some, and who has destroyed any verifiable fact or truth in the White House—a government of illusion and confusion.
Is not the search for truth more important that cheap politics? Is not the search for growth more important than votes or dollars? Is not the search for truth more important than tribalism, than listing who is the latest POS, than hiding ignorance behind the accusation of “liar,” than scoring ‘win’ or ‘lose,’ in our own minds, or defending against a lie with a larger lie?
Are we better liars than before? Have we perfected ignorance? Is our hatred of the best quality? Can we learn no more?
What have we become?
As I have said in other contexts, it is our fundamental responsibility to seek out ‘fact,’ and ‘Truth,’ as best we can learn and understand it.
The ancient Greeks laid the foundations of Western Philosophy, and in many cases haven’t been bettered in some 2500 years of philosophical specultion.
Still, they invented a silly collection of Gods, lusting after and raping or having sex with humans, causing wars, turning humans into plants and trees, insuring perpetual agony, drunkenness and so forth, leaving us a rich literary heritage, but often still rather silly.
They were followed by the Catholic Church, bastion of brotherly love—true universal love—tainted with torture, with murder, with rape and incest, with drunkenness, corruption and violence, preaching a God of Love who gave us syphilis, TB, AIDS, polio, war and rape and ceaseless violence, preaching that said God really was concerned about our puny individual planet.
Still, there were Greeks and Catholics who expanded knowledge and increased our understanding of ourselves and the envoirnment around us—sought, found and published verifiable, provable Truth for all mankind to enjoy, to learn from, and to profit by.
Truth is never easy and is very often bloody and a perpetual war against ignorance, stupidity, and corruption.
With discourse that seldom rises above the second grade level, like children calling each other a POS or liar, lying repeatedly and clumsily, displaying our scientific and moral weakness, we are proud of our self-assumed excellence if not our genuine seeking of verifiable truth.
Not one of us—not a single one!—has sufficient background to evaluate climate issues, and we wildly accuse others of merely mouthing the company line of their tribe, while we more assiduously declare more fervently the company line of our own tribe, with vigor and intensity, and ignorance, and with blind, destructive emotion.
And some of us pursue truth and growth following a messiah who has told ten times more lies than all previous Presidents combined, who is incompetent, devious, dishonest and revered, at least by some, and who has destroyed any verifiable fact or truth in the White House—a government of illusion and confusion.
Is not the search for truth more important that cheap politics? Is not the search for growth more important than votes or dollars? Is not the search for truth more important than tribalism, than listing who is the latest POS, than hiding ignorance behind the accusation of “liar,” than scoring ‘win’ or ‘lose,’ in our own minds, or defending against a lie with a larger lie?
Are we better liars than before? Have we perfected ignorance? Is our hatred of the best quality? Can we learn no more?
What have we become?
Oct 15, 2018 18:01:19 #
trump has taken respect down so low that I don't think it will ever rise again. trump has killed the world. We are doomed. 
Oct 15, 2018 23:16:46 #
Twardlow
Loc: Arkansas
Kraken wrote:
trump has taken respect down so low that I don't think it will ever rise again. trump has killed the world. We are doomed.
Doomed indeed...
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