Utopia
On Truth, Reality & the Evolution of Utopia
Utopia as the Evolution of Human Culture & Society
Founded on Truth & Reality
Only the individual can think, and thereby
create new values for society, nay, even set up new moral standards to
which the life of the community conforms. ... The ideals which have lighted
my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully,
have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth.(Albert Einstein,
1954)
Communities tend to be guided less than individuals
by conscience and a sense of responsibility. How much misery does this
fact cause mankind! It is the source of wars and every kind of oppression,
which fill the earth with pain, sighs and bitterness.
(Albert Einstein, 1934)
A human being is part of the whole called
by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves,
our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of
optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons
nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening
our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole
of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined
by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from
the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity
is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)
The only immediate utility of all sciences,
is to teach us, how to control and regulate future events by their causes.
... He sees such a desperate rapaciousness prevail; such a disregard to
equity, such contempt of order, such stupid blindness to future consequences,
as must immediately have the most tragical conclusion, and most terminate
in destruction to the greater number, and in a total dissolution of society
to the rest. ... the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose
the selfish theory. (David Hume)
For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue
that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community
it becomes a destructive vice. An animal that embarks on forming states
without greatly restricting egoism will perish. ... We must not wait for
things to come, believing that they are decided by irrescindable destiny.
If we want it, we must do something about it. (Erwin Schrodinger)
Introduction
to Utopia
HI Everyone,
I have just written up a short essay on Politics,
Market Economics and Utopia that I hope you will read. I think it
is important because humanity is currently creating 'Hell on Earth' by
destroying Nature on our dear little home that we call Earth. As Thomas
Hobbes wrote;
Hell is truth seen too Late!
The two truths that are obvious
and yet we are blind to them.
1. We have ignored the most
simple obvious explanation of reality - which clearly works.
2. We are rapidly
destroying Nature - from which we evolved and depend upon for our
future survival.
I realise that the 'Utopian Ideal' is seen as fanciful. But
this just depends on how you define 'Utopia'. I define utopia as
the evolution of human society founded on true knowledge of reality.
i.e. Without truth (which ultimately comes from reality) humanity can not
be wise (just think about our current world - it is living proof of this!).
As Plato wrote;
When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated
by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them,
and functions intelligently; but when it turns to the twilight world of
change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and
its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence. (Plato,
Republic)
And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing
to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean
knowing things as they really are. (Plato)
The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world
of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality
which is the object of knowledge. (Plato)
Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate
it as much as he loves truth. ... And is there anything more closely connected
with wisdom than truth? (Plato)
What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error
to the truth, that climb up into the real world which we shall call true
philosophy. (Plato)
It is now obvious that the discrete and separate particle
conception of matter is wrong. The Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) explains
the interconnection of matter in Space and the dynamic
unity of reality (where Space exists as a wave medium). Thus humans
are intimately connected to all other matter in the universe - by destroying
Nature we are destroying ourselves. Think about it! We are talking about
the lives of our children.
Geoff
Haselhurst
The
notion that all these fragments is separately existent is evidently an
illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict
and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that
the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing
series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as
is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction
of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political
disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically
nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually
there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in
the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces,
going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings
who are caught up in it. (David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
Quotes on Utopia, Humanity, Nature, Truth, Reality & Society
(Kuhn,
1962) The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms
change, the world itself changes with them.
(William
James) The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human
being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
(Hume,
1777) And though the philosopher may live remote from business, the genius
of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse
itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on
every art and calling.
The only immediate utility of all sciences, is to teach
us, how to control and regulate future events by their causes.
... He sees such a desperate rapaciousness prevail; such a disregard to
equity, such contempt of order, such stupid blindness to future consequences,
as must immediately have the most tragical conclusion, and most terminate
in destruction to the greater number, and in a total dissolution of society
to the rest. ... the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose
the selfish theory. (David Hume)
(Gandhi)
All our philosophy is dry as dust if it is not immediately translated into
some act of living service.
(Einstein,
1954) We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity
is to survive.
We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in
the present depressing situation is possible without a severe struggle;
for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute
in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided. And those
who have an interest in keeping the machinery of war going are a very powerful
body; they will stop at nothing to make public opinion subservient to their
murderous ends. (Albert Einstein, 1954)
The population of the civilized countries is extremely dense
as compared with former times; Europe today contains about three times
as many people as it did a hundred years ago. But the number of leading
personalities has decreased out of all proportion. Only a few people are
known to the masses as individuals, through their creative achievements.
Organisation has to some extent taken the place of leading personalities,
particularly in the technical sphere, but also to a very perceptible extent
in the scientific. (Einstein, 1954)
In two weeks the sheeplike masses of any country can be
worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men
are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed, for the sake of
the sordid ends of a few interested parties. Compulsory military service
seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal
dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering today. (Einstein,
1954)
(Popper,
1975) In my opinion, the greatest scandal of philosophy is that, while
all around us the world of nature perishes - and not the world of nature
alone - philosophers continue to talk, sometimes cleverly and sometimes
not, about the question of whether this world exists.
If a theory corresponds to the facts but does not cohere with some earlier
knowledge, then this earlier knowledge should be discarded.
Merely
human opinions become accepted when derived from ancient beliefs, and are
taken on authority and trust like religion or law! We parrot whatever opinions
are commonly held, accepting them, as truths, with all the paraphernalia
of supporting arguments and proofs, as though they were something firm
and solid; nobody tries to shake them; nobody tries to refute them. On
the contrary, everybody vies with each other to plaster over the cracks
and prop up received beliefs with all his powers of reason- a supple instrument
which can be turned on the lathe into any shape at all. Thus the world
is pickled with stupidity and brimming over with lies. (de Montaigne,
1592)
Knowledge is a very weighty thing: they sink beneath it.
Their mental apparatus has not enough energy nor skill to display the noble
material and to apportion its strength, to exploit it and make it help
them. Knowledge can lodge only in a powerful nature: and that is very rare.
Feeble minds, said Socrates, corrupt the dignity of philosophy when they
handle it; she appears to be useless and defective when sheathed in a bad
covering. (de Montaigne, 1592)
The
ordinary man and woman live in an asphyxiating smog of opinions foisted
on them by society. They lose all independence of judgement and all freedom
of action. They see themselves increasingly as limited special functions,
as parts of a machine, with neither need nor right to perform any other
than their role in the economic structure of society. The civic sense becomes
atrophied. It is the job of the police to prevent crimes, not yours and
mine; it is the job of the town councilor to run the town, not yours and
mine; it is the job of the underprivileged to fight for their rights, not
yours and mine. Thus more and more live in cities, and yet more and more
become decitizenised. What began in the suburbs reaches right to the city's
heart. (Fowles, The Aristos, 1964)
For
a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve
the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice. An
animal that embarks on forming states without greatly restricting egoism
will perish.
.. We must not wait for things to come, believing that they are decided
by irrescindable destiny. If we want it, we must do something about it.
(Erwin Schrodinger)
..we need to see nature as the true capital
on which our lives and economy depend. And if we learn to value nature,
our real wealth, we will take better care of it. Our economic system works
for no one, except maybe the one percent at the very top. Our system wastes
the environment. It wastes people. And it's very, very expensive. We need
a radical change in how we relate to resources and people and the environment.
(Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce)
..this
power of conscious choice is a vital human endowment. It allows meaning
to enter one's life, since one can decide on the course one's life should
best take. It ensures one is not impelled down instinctual roads of action,
but can search out and adopt a new solution to any dilemma. It permits
artistic creativity and the opening up of new styles of life, and it even
permits progress to human enlightenment in the Buddhist sense. (Robin
Cooper, The Evolving Mind)
Beauty is truth, truth is beauty (Keats)
This truth is to be lived, it is not merely pronounced with the mouth...
(Hui Neng)
Great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses. And now, as
all the world is in error, how shall I, though I know the true path, how
shall I guide? If I know that I cannot succeed and yet try to force success,
this would be but another source of error. Better then to desist and strive
no more. But if I do not strive, who will? (Chuang Tzu)
The
philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point,
however, is to change it. (Karl Marx)
Uncertainty,
in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured
if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is
not good either to forget the questions philosophy asks, or to persuade
ourselves we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live
without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps
the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study
it. ... Ever since men became capable of free speculation, their actions,
in innumerable important respects, have depended upon their theories as
to the world and human life, as to what is good and what is evil. This
is true in the present day as at any former time. To understand an age
or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to understand its philosophy
we must ourselves be in some degree philosophers. There is here a reciprocal
causation: the circumstances of men's lives do much to determine their
philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their
circumstances. (Bertrand Russell)
We have to treat others as part of who we are,
rather than as a ‘them’ with whom we are in constant competition.
(Robert Bellah)
The crisis that threatens our planet, whether
seen from its military, ecological, or social aspect, derives from a dysfunctional
and pathological sense of self. It derives from a mistake about our place
in the order of things. It is a delusion that the self is separate and
fragile that we must delineate and defend its boundaries, that it is so
small and so needy that we must endlessly acquire and endlessly consume,
and that it is so aloof that as individuals, corporations, nation-states,
or species, we can be immune to what we do to other beings. ..This view
of human nature is not new. Many have felt the imperative to extend self-interest
to embrace the whole. (Joanna Macy, World as Lover World
as Self)
He
who has seen deeply into the world knows what wisdom there is in the fact
that men are superficial. It is their instinct for preservation which teaches
them to be fickle, light and false. (Nietzsche, 1886)
Madness is something rare in individuals- but in groups,
parties, peoples, ages it is the rule. (Nietzsche, 1886)
Inasmuch as ever since there have been human beings there
have also been human herds (family groups, communities, tribes, nations,
states, churches) and always very many who obey compared with the very
small number of those who command - considering, that is to say, that hitherto
nothing has been practiced and cultivated among men better or longer than
obedience, it is fair to suppose that as a rule a need for it is by now
innate as a kind of formal conscience which commands: 'thou shalt unconditionally
do this, unconditionally not do that', in short 'thou shalt'. This need
seeks to be satisfied and to fill out its form with a content; in doing
so it grasps about wildly, according to the degree of its strength, impatience
and tension, with little discrimination, as a crude appetite, and accepts
whatever any commander - parent, teacher, law, class, prejudice, public
opinion - shouts in its ears. The strange narrowness of human evolution,
its hesitations, its delays, its frequent retrogressions and rotations,
are due to the fact that the herd instinct of obedience has been inherited
best and at the expense of the art of commanding. (Nietzsche,
1886)
Every serious student of the subject knows that the stability
of a civilisation depends finally on the wisdom with which it distributes
its wealth and allots its burdens of labour, and on the veracity of the
instruction it provides for its children. We do not distribute the wealth
at all: we throw it into the streets to be scrambled for by the strongest
and the greediest who will stoop to such scrambling, after handing the
lion’s share to the professional robbers politely called owners.
We cram our children with lies, and punish anyone who tries to enlighten
them. Our remedies for the consequences of our folly are tariffs, inflation,
wars, vivisections and inoculations – vengeances, violences, black
magic. (George Bernard Shaw)
On the Evolution of Nature & Culture
Human, Society, Ecology, Life, The Environment & Universe
RSS
"When
forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time
and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter. ... Physical
objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended.
In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning. ... The particle
can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or
the energy density are particularly high. ...
