Cedric: I feel that InI humans are a way for creation to contemplate about itself. Add in InI ability to express that through art. Add in InI ability to use science to learn ways to harmonize systems of nature (not for industry but for abundance and diversity of life). Add in InI ability to reason about InI viewpoints and ideas. Combine those abilities into one being, and that describes an incredibly powerful entity. Those qualities are some of the things that I feel make humans special. Clearly InI are special and powerful in a lot of ways cause InI literally letting the military industrial complex mess up the entire planet right now. So clearly that power isnt just inherintly good by itself. InI messing up pretty bad as humans right now, but I think InI are capable of doing good on a equally powerful scale.
Yes... in my own opinion, I agree that humans are a way for nature/creation to contemplate itself.
oftentimes the view of evolution is something negative, but in reality, it is something positive.
but this is also the idea of entropy vs evolution.
In other words, as human beings, our ego would very much like to believe we were perfect and heirs to the entire universe. To me this is no different from little girls playing with Barbie, having an impression of what a perfect life and family should be like before the reality of actually having one of their own. There is very much an image of how things "should be" that constantly competes with the reality of how things actually are. I try to embrace both because, I, as a human, desire greater perfection and the building of some type of utopian society. But I also embrace where we are now, in the balance, and see what we need to do to strive against reality to reach for a better future.
And I believe evolution somewhat works in this way. I don't personally have to be the catalyst in moving humanity forward. However, if a person thinks differently, or may have some ideological/theological/etc. "mutation" then they should share it to see if others see the 'advantage' in sharing that perspective or knowing that piece of information that person finds important/interesting/etc. Whether that idea gets carried into the future thus depends on the communication and whether other people see the value proposed.
This is the reason we, even though smaller than many species, are the dominant species because we continued to evolve mentally, psychologically, and socially. In other words, you will get diminishing returns at some point, when you only improve the physical hardware of a system. After that point, it is the software that can continue to develop. I am grateful that our human software hasn't stagnated to perpetually repeat any former time period because, for different reasons, they were all challenging. These challenges made us stronger, but sometimes in ways that took us backward.
It is fair to say, if one understands the choice of words in the Hebrew language, that we are the "gods" of this world; because we are the most advanced, most powerful species on the planet. And like little girls playing with Barbie dolls, we create "gods", in part, based on who/what we want to be. We looked up and saw birds and imagined angels flying with wings. And then we built our own wings. So now we can fly too. That is the power of humanity; the ability to turn dreams into reality. The writer of Genesis realized this when writing about the tower of Bav'el; that human beings, working together, could accomplish anything.
And why not?
We are the product of millions of years of evolution selecting from different species which would be the highest form of life on this planet. The downside is that, because our ancestors (animals) still exist in our DNA, we still have the capacity to act like them. We have to consciously choose to be better, consistently and continually, until those behaviors fade into historic memory. So it's more than just having spare time. It's using that time as an opportunity to choose. This goes back to the garden of Eden construct and the two trees like the two hemispheres of our brains.
Animals, including pets, are rather preoccupied with base level of survival:
"When is my next meal?"
"I need to sleep to conserve my energy for the hunt."
"I smell the scent of another animal who could compete with me for my source of food."
"I need to practice and train so I can be a better hunter. Humans mistake this as me playing."
"I need to exercise so I wont be too slow to catch my prey."
These are kind of like default programs that are part of their "Operating System"
Animals, it seems, don't have to teach their young how to be a cat, or how to be a dog, or how to be a lion. Even separated from their parents while their babies, their behavior still follows what is normal for their species with the divergence of behavior in captivity vs behavior in the wild.
Animal brains remember a lot of things but their capacity for everything we associate with sentience is limited. Beyond what they think and feel at any moment their behavior is kind of a repetitious cycle of different thoughts that evolve from survival instincts. These instincts seem to be passed by DNA. So things like "fight or flight", we still have that.
So yes, we are special. But I think what makes us special is because we choose to be.
Animals choose the Tree of life. But what does that mean? Eternal life? I don't believe life was eternal for the individual organism because of how DNA replicates. However, there is eternal life in the species. If you were to consider the species as one person, then that person splits off (like cellular mitosis) and reproduces in a way that he has eternal life. And it is interesting because Adam isn't simply the name for one person but is also the name for our species.
And I think this is key because we have individual thoughts about ourselves, as well as collective thoughts. But who are we? Are we ONLY the individual parts? Or are we also, and simultaneously the collective whole? When referring to myself, are all my trillions of cells not included? This applies to some of what GA was saying about the nature of the universe.
Back to human sentience...
But we can choose to do self-destructive things, not realizing that we are both Russia and Ukraine. That is one of the unifying messages behind the language construct of "InI". "InI" recognizes the I in everyone. The universe has the same spirit of life that fills us all. And to some degree, when we stop and reflect, we can feel that natural connection; that 'energy' that flows through us. This is getting dangerously close to my personal beliefs as a Jedi so let me digress, lol.
But going back to our choices, we can choose life and simply be ignorant of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. But the more knowledge we have the more we have to balance it with love-which is what I believe you said before. Choosing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, itself, is not the problem. The problem is that having knowledge = having power. And all power comes with responsibility. The same strength a man has to beat his wife can be used to protect her. Which one is righteous? We wouldn't have any clue if we only choose life. We only understand what is righteous because we choose knowledge.
And this is what, as the bible says, makes us like gods.
|
|
