Children of the Flame

The world of tomorrow will likely have in it persons who no longer live with the central orientation of fear, like savages, that place the material world as the be all and end all of existence.

That is to say, it will be a population centered heavily around the capacity to reason - as Fromm defines it below. In Man's slow and painful, yet continued evolution, this is the stock of human that will (or should) be selected for.

Why? The prerequisite to a peaceful Earth is an enlightened population. And there can be no enlightenment without the life-flame of reason. Reason taking precedence is what raises the savage human to a higher standard of being.

"Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man."

― Erich Fromm

“Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.”

― Ibid

"By intelligence I mean the ability to manipulate concepts for the purpose of achieving some practical end. The chimpanzee -- who puts the two sticks together in order to get at the banana because no one of the two is long enough to do the job--uses intelligence. So do we all when we go about our business, "figuring out" how to do things.

Intelligence, in this sense, is taking things for granted as they are, making combinations which have the purpose of facilitating their manipulation; intelligence is thought in the service of biological survival.

Reason, on the other hand aims at understanding; it tries to find out what is behind the surface, to recognize the kernel, the essence of the reality that surrounds us. Reason is not without a function, but its function is not to further physical as much as mental and spiritual existence.

However, often in individual and social life, reason is required in order to predict, and prediction sometimes is necessary for survival."

― Ibid, The Sane Society

Originally published on my Facebook page March 15th, 2017.

Divine Uncertainty - Quantum Thinking

Binary or black and white thinking (ie: "Yes, this is a fact/no this is not a fact") is extremely basic and is a sure way to destroy one's mind or relegate oneself to automaton status, which occupy the lower rungs of society. On the surface it appears that it is 33% less computative or less powerful, but I suggest it may be upwards of 90%, perhaps even orders of magnitude greater.

Let me explain.

Most people decide yes or no based on very simple, readily available, easily accessible data, and generally desire the immediate relief/comfort to decide as quickly as possible whether a thing is true or not - as uncertainty brings discomfort. And so in many ways, this hinders or shuts down the contemplative capacities of the mind.

Unfortunately for them, this is also where the beauty and magic lies. In the grey. That's where the fun is. It's also where all the action is, because absolutes like "yes" or "no" kill the possibility of any journey of "...maybe, let's investigate!"

Few venture into the realm of possibility, of uncertainty, because it requires courage, humility, letting go, and hanging on to nothing except the trust and confidence in themselves. In a world full of lies and deceit everywhere we turn - as it has been for thousands of years - we have nothing else to believe in and trust, except ourselves.

The most powerful minds thrive on uncertainty. Being rationally skeptic and curious. This is the path to discovery. They can accept not knowing or understanding, yet have the confidence in themselves that they can one day figure it out and will put forth a gargantuan effort to do so. They know that accepting the hand-me-down answers from God-knows-where in a society built-on-lies is akin to death and darkness.

Originally published on my Facebook page Sept. 4th, 2016.

Navigating the Undead

"I should add…that just as it is important to avoid trivial conversation, it is important to avoid bad company. By bad company I do not refer only to people who are vicious and destructive; one should avoid their company because their orbit is poisonous and depressing. 

I mean also the company of zombies, of people whose soul is dead, although their body is alive, of people whose thoughts and conversation are trivial; who chatter instead of talk, and who assert cliché opinions instead of thinking.”

—Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

Artwork by Gustave Doré for Dante's Inferno (1855)