Archives for posts with tag: behavior

A small gap rests between the two fingers
as the most important moment in human history is about to happen
– God making contact with the first person.

I’ve been struggling for a while to understand why God is still relevant for us.
Why so many of us continue to believe in him and why so many of us struggle to demonstrate he doesn’t exist.
Why so many of those convinced he doesn’t exist blame him for so many of our own follies…

Because we’re ‘escape artists’!

So many of us continue to smoke.
Since not everybody who smokes develops a cancer or dies of COPD – Chronic Obstrusive Pulmonary Disease, those addicted to nicotine find ways to rationalize their habit. For it’s simpler for them to hope they are among the lucky ones than to accept the fact that they’ve acted foolishly for so long. I know what I’m talking about, I’m one of these people.

Similarly, it’s a lot simpler to use God as a scapegoat than to accept full responsibility for your destiny.
The less control/resources you have, the simpler it is to ask for God’s help. To lay your fate in his hands.

‘He must have had his reasons.
The fact that I don’t know what they are doesn’t change anything.
He’s in charge, I can do nothing but accept my fate!’

Same thing for the disbelievers.
It’s simpler to blame (a) God, or (a) religion for aberrant/abhorrent behavior than to accept that human beings can be manipulated – in certain conditions – into such behavior. Into such inhuman behavior.

‘If they could have been manipulated in such a manner then I might be manipulated in the same manner.
This is not acceptable.
It’s their God/religion which is at fault. Something like this cannot happen to me.
I don’t belong to any religion – or to a different one, so I’m immune to all this.’

Man has a natural tendency to prey on other people.
This being the reason why humans must be educated
and for which we need a lot of coercive measures.

I strongly disagree.
The first sentence is utterly wrong and the second is brazenly manipulative.

Something which can be educated isn’t ‘natural’. Not in the sense implied above!
People can be educated to eat in a certain manner. As in having ‘table manners’.
People can be educated about what to eat. And what to avoid eating. To avoid eating things which are both delicious and nourishing.
People can be educated even about how much to eat!
But you cannot educate anybody to stop eating!

What is truly natural about ‘Man’ – about all people, actually – is that they need to interact with other people. In order to become full fledged human beings, people need to live among other people.

What can be educated is behavior. How to interact with other people.

People can be educated to cooperate.
Or people can be educated to gang up. And prey on those outside the gang.

Please note that those who gang up in order to prey on others do cooperate among themselves!
Even if that cooperative behavior has a strong hierarchical nature.