Becoming
Humane - Being Humane Evolution of the
Humane - Globalisation of Peace - World in
Balance PRO
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VITA
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ET
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FUTURA
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MUNDI Navigating
towards Basics of
a by
Wolfgang Fischer edited by
Penélope Herrera Arango (Translations
For Progress) (
German
) ( Spanish)
( pdf.version
) Paradigm
shifts - The sun is
spinning around planet Earth? We know about the
resistance which had to be overcome until exactly the
contrary commonly became acknowledged: the earth is
spinning around the sun. Today - Economic
growth entails general well-being? Today we again
experience the resistance which opposes the realization
that ongoing economic growth on the contrary is putting
general well-being at risk. - Peace by
war? Millennia of
behaviour conditioning by warfare mentality still oppose
the simple realization that peace is a sole consequence
of justice. The balance of
justice easily could be achieved, however too many
privileges still oppose the non-violent approach.
How much more
suffering do we need until we start to prefer simple
dialogue for problem solvings which would benefit all of
us equally? - Since
thousands of years patriarchal civilizations shape the
way of life by domination. - That is why
many cultures still tolerate open or hidden forms of
misogyny, slavery and violence. - In the run
of history industrialization has been paid by goods
stolen from Nature and Indigenous
People. - Supremacy
of current world powers therefore is based on
injustice and crime. - In blatant
contrast to humanitarian promises the world is being
downgraded by political hypocrisy. - Any
mentality which promotes social inequality is
incapable of maintaining creative
balances. - General
decline of Life and the narrowing of future
perspectives are not at all natural, they are
man-made. - Common
well-being depends on creative relations, on a
sensitive togetherness. - Real
satisfaction, safe security, enduring peace and
spreading prosperity may be found in healthy social
environments only - never by war or at the cost of
others. - Joint
co-operation, mutual understanding and creative
flexibility shape the genuine humane way of
life. Having in mind Life
in Peace and Creative Conviviality I pursue a doublefold
strategy to make the realisation of this goal become a
completely natural purpose in life, for ever more people.
The first approach is illustrated by the attempt to empower
fellow human beings to live according to their autonomous
and personal perception. For this reason, my papers address
universal contexts, disclosing the various interests and
traditions that often and intentionally present and
communicate them in a controversial manner, leaving them
wrapped in mystery. As dealing with mental frames, their
intellectual level is high, though not in a scientific
mainstream way of communication. Aiming further and
deeper towards the common ground of life, conventional
concepts are redefined in order to break mental walls and
thus bring an alternative understanding into sight. The
second approach is to set free synergy of the human
potential by means of an enlightening dialogue carried out
through email exchange of ideas, internet discussions and in
personal meetings to provide further options, and to achieve
a creative quality of thinking. This reciprocal process
endeavours to complete the necessary organizational stage
that is to re-design global governance for the benefit of
world-wide fulfilment of vital necessities on local levels.
We, the people, have to stop national security doctrines
from putting planetary safety and natural evolution at risk.
(1) With
contributions of Dr. Olek Netzer, Free Thought,
Evaluation and Consequences Imagination and
Reality Despite the publicly
professed values and ethical standards, the world is
deteriorating at different levels. The individual often
feels stranded at the mercy of the designing powers. The
confrontation with eco-social decline and dehumanisation
could help us to refocus on humane common ground as hope may
arise to jointly arrest this deterioration. This refocusing
purposes to liberate revolutionary imagination, which is
still unthinkable to many people because of the
one-sidedness of traditional world-views and mainstream
conceptions. On the other hand, re-focusing entails
emotional harmony within human community and could curb
world-wide systematic terror against people and environment.
War and terror are social aberrations fuelled by emotional
dissonance. Violent behavior obviously roots in
dissatisfaction with unjust terms and relations,
historically grown in certain conditions that have been
created by inadequate conceptual maps of "Belief-Systems
& Assumptions of Religions & Politics". These
disorienting systems lead into dangerous abysms, as we are
able to experience globally and daily, despite their claim
to know the right way. They destroy nature and with it
humanity on the intent to make us believe that such way of
life is justified by profit and concentration of political
power. Revolutionary
imagination and living spirit are analogous to a car and its
headlights, in which, besides the knowledge of a place
through given maps, the beams point far ahead, to make the
territory visible and the road safe. Driving without light
or even with closed eyes while just relying on preset
conceptual maps eventually will turn any road dangerous. The
same happens for the human mind: preset ideologies can never
represent the authentic reality, which is constantly
evolving and can only be perceived through experience.
Learning is the evaluation of experience and therefore it
makes life easier: being an endless process, the conceptual
formulas are continually re-evaluated in order to keep one's
orientation updated and safe. In order to detect a
way out of current global decline it is indispensable to
clear our minds with an evaluation of the existing
conceptions. Any mental ossifications, like dogma or
prejudice, are to be re-evaluated and adapted, in order to
enable a better correspondence between professed values and
real life. I am sure that spiritual evolution provides a
healing process to the ongoing growth of dehumanisation and
destruction. Eventually, a humane religion that evidently
roots in all cultural values should emerge, entailing sanity
and reason, thus generating clarity of mind, full awareness,
considerate responsibility and mature human potential,
always ready and open to creative and empathetic adaptation
to the challenges of life. Revolutionary
imagination and vision are vital and indispensable
essentials in the struggle for survival in the cobweb of the
disastrous man made processes, which still are being
impelled by certain vested interests against common well
being. Neither the political nor religious institutions can
be of any help as their systems are part of the problems we
face. Their systems are war systems. Their message is: "If
force has not worked, more force should be applied" and it
is genuinely based on undue fear, militarism and
destruction. These threatening realities that have been and
are still created are known as "progress". This so called
"progress" that endangers life - through a non-supportive
development - is not real progress: the actual changes it
imposes barter all values and integrity for money. Evolution
towards a better world dies down, as the present
deterioration can be experienced by everyone anywhere on the
globe. Diversity of life is being rolled back and the
changes bring sewers and deserts on earth, disorientation
and loneliness. Artificial life and cyber space emerge as
replacements to the cultural values that really supported
life. These products of modernity are widely accepted by
vast parts of humanity without fierce resistance.
Why? We witness a
regression of evolution, propelled by a systemic deadlocking
of learning processes, which ought to be provided "free of
charge" -brought by life-experience- and are essential to
fill-in all the mental "White Areas" human beings are born
with. Experience of life always delivers truthful
information to fill-in the White Areas, whereas books,
bibles and other mental concepts and, to sum up, all the
patronizing formulas that bear the risk to forward false
messages which fatally tend to turn White Areas into "Blind
or False Areas". Based on personal
experience and encouraged by empowering dialogue, I strive
to make my vision -of a safe system of orientation and its
emergence conditions- evident and understandable. May this
vision be widely and repeatedly perceived. May the many
theses be re-evaluated by everyone's experience so that our
inner worlds of symbols clear themselves, in order to
represent the outer world's reality as authentic as
possible. In this sense, a genuine orientation system
obviously would make everybody more reliable. I would like to quote
a significant fragment from my correspondence with Olek
Netzer, the developer of the Theory of Dehumanisation:
Of all the
propositions brought in this book, the Orientation system
- that contained in the concept of the Self functions on
a par with other organic systems - is the most intimate.
This orientation system touches on the most inner sphere
of the individual reader; it concerns self-concept or
self-image in all aspects, not only in the political
context; it asks for a change in the innermost
conceptual-map of ourselves as thinkers and doers, as we
touch the world and other people and cope with our
problems, as we orient ourselves morally and respond in
our social relationships. To be a human
individual, different from all other creatures in nature,
puts a burden of responsibility on us. That burden comes
from the fact that we are not endowed by nature to find
our way in the world by using only our senses. We cannot
respond instinctively in every situation: we think. We
are not equipped by nature to survive as human beings
without being taught to. We are born with a genetic
programming that endows us with the
potential to develop into fully
functional humans. In this order of ideas, to become
human an Orientation system must be developed in our
inner world. This Orientation system is not given to us
genetically but by inheritance from our social
environment, when we learn to understand and talk. Taking
as an example the known cases of infants that had not
been taught a language, it was evident the retardation on
the development of what we consider to be normal human
qualities, such as self-awareness, and early language
acquisition and proficiency. Thereupon, a
realistic self-concept - the simple "what am I" notion -
should include the knowledge that, along with other
genetically inherited organic systems like respiration,
digestion, blood circulation, nervous system, sexuality,
amongst others, we possess one acquired organic
system: our system of Orientation. That system works by
way of Symbolization, a unique and miraculous
process by which we human beings - alone in the known
universe - pour into the inner worlds of our offspring
the symbols that represent reality; and so, through this
operation, reality is perceived and understood by the
child. Consequently, this process must be conceived as
definitive of humanity, universal and therefore
organic. Our mind is the
organ of Orientation, the way our stomach is the organ of
digestion and the lungs the organ of respiration.
Language is like food and air, provided by the
environment and turned into an organic part of ourselves.
This analogy can be stretched further: without food and
air we could not survive as living beings and without
language we could not survive as humans. In this string
of ideas, as food can be nutritious or poisonous and the
air pure or polluted, so language can be good or bad,
helpful or harmful in various degrees for the ability to
orient yourself in the world sanely and cope with your
problems humanly. If we are fed junk-food or breathe
polluted air, our own organism is harmed, and we have
pain mechanisms to alert us of the danger. But if our
inner world is filled with symbols that constitute an
erroneous conceptual map of the human Territory, or if
we, on our own, generate ideas that make us harm
ourselves and the others, we very often become attached
to them and depend on them as on an addictive drug. And
so we can unnecessarily do terrible harm to ourselves and
to many others. For just one historically not too
significant example, it should be understood, without any
important qualifying disclaimers, that the deep-down
(direct) cause why those people, on September 11,
2001, smashed the passenger airliners containing
themselves and hundreds of others into the Twin Towers
willingly, consciously and in full harmony with their
highest moral - even Godly - values, is a result of them
having had bad Orientation systems. Regretfully, in what
can be taken as a reflection on the contemporary human
condition, they mastered the modern technology of
navigating the huge airliners well enough, but navigated
their ways in the world with terribly erroneous ages-old
conceptual maps. Be it members of political
administartions, of their secret services, of terrorist
groups - all of them are terribly wrong although coherent
within their respective belief-systems when tolerating
killing and actually doing it allegedly in the name of
humanitarian goals. Our Orientation
system differs from other organic systems in that the
adult person has much more control, and with it
responsibility, over it. It should be each person's
responsibility to know and remember that our concepts and
ideas about other human beings are symbolic,
generalizations, abstractions; that our conceptual
diagrams are Maps: never identical, in their truth or
detail, to the Things in the Territory. It should be our
responsibility to check these concepts against the
changing Territory and update our Maps constantly,
despite the pain of parting with old habitual
beliefs. I believe that a
conscious acceptance of our Selves as we really are - in
the sense of navigating our ways by symbolic Maps - would
help us to accomplish this on a wholesome manner and live
more sanely. That Self-concept would make us more aware
of our human limitations and the corresponding
responsibility, such as not to believe our
conceptual-ideological Maps blindly, even when all the
sign-posts of past traditions and our leaders want us to
follow them rather than navigate independently. Our human
condition of living in such different worlds requires
that we'd know as accurately as possible what we are
talking or thinking about, whether it is a Thing
in the outer world or some idea, feeling or concept from
the enormous treasure of linguistic symbols that populate
our inner world. The very nature of our Orientation
system requires that we make it a point of personal
commitment, a point of honour I'd suggest, to be open to
change our ideas and get the courage to validate that
commitment in human communication. Therefore, introducing
the system of Orientation into our organic self-concept
and taking the responsibility for its proper functioning
become necessary conditions for the ability to change our
political experience. In the following
pages, a description of the evolution of the universe and
human kind from an interconnecting point of view will be
exposed, in order to clarify emergence, function and
aberration of the human Orientation system. Later, we will
re-focus closely on the pitfalls which cause Dehumanisation
and are related to the process of individuation and
socialization. Then, a most simple tool will be provided to
enable a therapeutic approach towards a humane world. It's
unnecessary to say that anybody can easily contribute
according to one's resources to make peace and justice come
real. Evolution of
WoMankind - Unifying Definitions For aeons and aeons,
the universe has vibrated according to the Regularity of a
transpersonal and trans-causal force which I like to call
Creative Power (CP). CP exists beyond and within everything
and is the Origin of Universe and Existence, including the
Solar System, the Earth, and everything else in cosmos. Life
wells from One and the Same Regularity and Identical Source,
developing gradually in various forms and shapes, starting
from simple oscillating atoms and molecules that create the
most complex and ever-evolving inherited material: the genes
of DNA. In this way, the DNA represents with exactitude this
Regularity, and also the unadulterated intention of CP;
simultaneously, and according to inherent information, it
creates the vast diversity of life, which we know as the
Creative Reality of Nature. To start with, there
is no need for Nature's members to understand its processes:
nature has innate knowledge and wisdom. Unintentionally and
guided by the Original Regularity, Nature evolves into
highly complex and most differentiated diversities of the
vegetal and animal realms. In the run of evolution, the
later a species develops and changes, the freer it is to
move around and to have options. Concurrently, all of nature
is aligned to CP's regularity, which in turn is attached to
the DNA as well as to instinct: whereas the former is
inherited, the latter is partly learned and partly
inherited. The latest intention, invention and creation in
this long line of evolution so far - the human race - it's
been set free to find their orientation and identity by
themselves. As we know since long,
there is one decisive difference between WoMan and Nature:
although WoMan obviously is part of the Reality of Nature,
it is free to decide, according to the options that are
based on intention and volition. Thereupon, due to this
innate freedom, WoMankind without exception carries the duty
of Responsibility for the consequences of its way of life,
individually, socially and historically. We all start
naked. We all are born with White Areas within the
evolutionary new parts of our brain. This new tool in
evolution enables the finding of complex decisions, due to
its self-reflecting potentiality, especially in the frontal
parts of the cerebral cortex. However, considerate options
and path-finding decisions depend on adequate mental
fill-ins. The cognitive landscape in the human brain is
meant to represent the outer world authentically, in order
to recognize and to foresee the effects of one's thoughts,
actions and behaviour. That is why the period of time from
birth to mental maturity - known as process of individuation
- threatens specifically the human beings. In this sense,
the human common identity would be represented by the
intrinsic connection and interdependency between freedom of
choice and the responsibility of these decisions. A decisive
factor that would ensure an ideal development of the human
being in this high-risk stage is the reliance on a social
community and a culture that would acknowledge, first and
foremost, nature's learning processes and their general
outcome: in few words, the access to an infinite stock of
genuine and authentic information. Truthful information
can be conceptualised as First Guiding Spirit or Rational
Authority (Erich Fromm) which entails wholesome effects. To
follow the First Guiding Spirit means to organise personal
life as well as society, according to the teachings acquired
from experience. All the time, by trial and error, nature
teaches how to live a prosperous, peaceful and constructive
life. Whereas the experience of joy and resonance teaches to
keep on going, the experience of pain or dissonance teaches
to change direction, to get off the current track. As long
as this simple principle of sensing joy or pain is not
interfered or spoiled, it entails overarching peace and
justice within a most colourful diversity of bliss and
satisfaction; if adulterated, the lessons get tougher, more
painful, finally lethal for WoMankind, since nature does not
risk its integrity. History has shown that
some individuals in various communities decided to live
according to nature and its inherent regularity. They built
their societies upon such regularity, hence generating
abundance and unifying their spirit, in rendering it
identical to the spirit of CP. Those people, according to
Erich Fromm, are called "the biophiles". As they love life
and honour its innate glory, they live in peace unfolding
their humaneness. On the other hand, there are those who
decided to live according to different, mostly egoistic
interests and self-made rules. They built societies upon
man-made rules and on the basis of doubtful and divisionist
world views and assumptions. Fromm called them "the
necrophiles". As they love matter before life, they
transform it into commodities, cherishing money and the
illusionary wealth of their products; they live in constant
doubt and uncertainty. As history can prove, the second
group is more violent, less sensitive, less loving. Their
motivation and orientation override, on a violent fashion,
the necessities of the integral reality of life: with it
comes the creation of partial realities in bits and pieces,
an ultimate misery comparable to Hell on Earth. Due to its
growth and behaviour, from time to time it destroys itself
and the respective environment on account of the effects
produced by the parasitic mode of its existence, ergo
spreading scarcity and misery all over the world. Deeper and
deeper they drown in dehumanisation, inducing a vortex of
consequences which threaten vast parts of the environment.
Quite obviously this group keeps on following a program that
at the least should be named morbid, inasmuch as by
technical means and structural enforcement entails an
exponential and moribund development beyond natural
limits. The crux of the
ideology of this group is the manipulation of the public
awareness, and the subsequent and partial success in
creating a blind belief in alien and/or illusionary forces
that are made responsible for their own (dirty) effects. The
immediate implication of this proceeding is the inhibition
of the natural learning process, to the extent of a
generalized loss of the innate relation of humanity - which
would be equal to human Religion - with CP, having the
already mentioned negative effects upon nature and man.
Owing to the fact that illusionary and shining wealth -which
only belongs to a few- is inseparably embedded in the
growing eco-social decline, many people become easily
convinced that, solely by subordination and strong
competence in the frame of this the ruling system and its
(inadequate) conceptual maps, it might be possible to reach
also such shine and wealth. One concrete detail of this
conceptual map, which is highly spread to the masses, is the
preset idea that materialistic wealth and private property
are a proof of being acknowledged by god. That is why some
individuals of this group even feel evoked by their god to
subordinate global life to their systems, without realizing
the abysmal and self threatening immorality and criminality
of their deeds, while destroying global integrity and
leading it astray towards the kinkiness of
monotony. Because of a long
history of several thousand years, nearly all people do
harbour biophilic and necrophilic aspects and tendencies
altogether within themselves. The war between the various
immature conceptual maps has continued from the beginning of
times, meanwhile the forces that have been released by
adhering people individually as well as collectively grow
constantly. The challenge is: How to overcome this
situation? Close-up View at
Humanity's Achilles Heel - Focussing on
the Cause of Dehumanisation and Finding an Exit out of the
Maze. "Psychology can be
regarded as very subversive when it enters the arena of
power politics", Carl Rogers, 1977 How exactly does it
happen that normal human beings, all endowed with a
conscience, an awareness of their individual responsibility
for their judgment and choice of truth over untruth, reason
over irrationality, justice over injustice and morality over
sin, manage to justify in their own eyes even the most
inhuman atrocities and acts of self and mass-destruction of
others? What
exactly in concrete detail is it that turns fellow human
beings into enemies and nature into an adversary thus
leading to abysmal dehumanisation? If we take a close-up
view at Humanity's Achilles heel, two major weak points are
revealed: The first weak point
in this summary is a concept that has been already mentioned
in the course of this paper: the White Area, which is a
vacuous space of evolutionary new parts of the brain. In the
run of history, this mental space has been prone to be
colonised by different spirits and conceptions which may
oppose each other. Anything can be stored into the mental
memory: authentic information as well as illusionary
concepts. Being mental programmes independent from their
wholesome or morbid qualities, they have authority to
determine human behaviour. It is indeed a part of the
process of individuation to evaluate these conceptions by
the assessment of consequences. Let us pick up again the
subject of how joy and pain are both reciprocal, in insofar
as they enable the discrimination process between consonance
and dissonance, assuring an essential and vital guidance to
draw and find the right paths in our conceptual maps. In
this sense, neither of both perceptions should be ignored or
disturbed, since this would affect the way the White Areas
are configured and filled, bringing, as a result, a fatal
outcome. The second weak point
of Humanity's Achilles heel is the fact that this
discrimination ability, without exception, depends on a
genuine mental frame of reference. And exactly such a frame
of reference in human beings is neither biologically
inherited nor a cultural tradition that, with its influence
on the way society is organised, would ensure global peace,
justice and well-being. For instance, we could point out the
fact that anybody can experience a determined sensation as
pain or pleasure without necessarily adapting her or his
behaviour in order to avoid those sensations in the future,
even if the frame of reference gives a different
orientation. In this sense, even primary joy like sexual
pleasure, aroused by carnal attraction and closeness, can be
alienated, as for example in cases of sexual crimes or the
effect that porno industry has upon it, channelled in turn
by various political and economical purposes. A quiet conscience not
necessarily proves to be clear. If mental equivalents
(emotion / symbols / patterns of behaviour) do not or
do only insufficiently represent or comply with outer
reality (truth / things / expected ethic behaviour)
then human reaction (effective behaviour) hardly
can be adequate. If for example, by social convention
fleecing other people is considered to be OK, only few
people will not follow this convention: succumbing to the
pressure of their peers, they are bound to fleece
others. Only few people will feel the dissonance within
themselves when fleecing others and, because of their
emotional resonance in the future, they will treat others
the same way they like to be treated by them. They behave
ethically. They are emotionally intelligent. However, too
many people hardly reach such a humane level of emotional
intelligence, although they might be brilliant powerful
politicians or scientists of philosophy, theology, economy,
physics etc. The world's inclination towards shifts and
breakdown of natural balances is owed exactly to those
people, who still did not reach wholesome levels of
emotional intelligence. Whereas emotionally intelligent
people live within authentic reality / meditation /
satisfaction, all the others tend to get caught by their
multifarious realities / diversions / addictions, which in
fact are nothing but illusions; though painfully and
destructively real. At certain point, the
perception of "dehumanised" or emotionally flat people
filters out all evidence into "Blind Areas" that, in the
long run, could deter them to realise that in fighting and
killing they may not be doing the right thing. The direct
and simple cause for wars is not what bigots, fanatics or
warmongers believe; it's in fact all that is beyond their
intuition and perception: the enemy's fallible humanity and
individuality as well as their own, or the unsteady nature
of the reality that seems to justify war and enmity. Blind
Areas are the origin of one of the most far reaching
scourges of our world: the "Dehumanisation Syndrome". Blind
Areas effectively protect the dehumanised against
experiencing any "cognitive dissonance" when committing even
the worst crimes against humanity and nature. The
pathological features of dehumanisation imply a destructive
behaviour, that, as a ferocious threat disseminating from
the private level to the public domain in science and
politics, roots in the tendency of private motivations and
overriding interests to maintain a specific orientation
system at all costs. The social disasters
that we experience nowadays, along with their environmental
consequences, have been originated from a historical process
based on a deficient mental program that has been operating
at the cost of sub-natural conditions. In a nutshell, this
process comprises all the dark parts of civilisation
(2):
from the missionary development of patriarchy via witch hunt
and slavery to the early origins of capitalism and its
conversion into the current neo-feudalism, germane to the
global "culture of consumerism". A practical way of avoiding
the emergence of these Blind Areas, restraining their
graceless exploitation and rendering it irrelevant, is to
constantly refresh the diverse mental frames of reference
which fill-in the White Areas. In order to accomplish this
task, these frames always and constantly need to be approved
by Nature's Reality and adapted in order to serve all
members of existence equally well. Ignorance of the
Duty to Serve the Communion of Life is the origin of the
anti-spirit, source of illusion and destruction and opponent
to Rational Authority and Creative Power. If individual life
is obstructed and limited when following nature's learning
process by man-made preset dogmas as ideologies or
institutionalised religions, Nemesis is bound to arise,
starting THE PROCESS OF DEHUMANISATION which in turn begets
confusing and morbid Multiple Realities. Genuine life is
brought to alienation under man-made rules. Now, let us
consider that as the cycle of ontogenesis is prone to repeat
the major steps of that one of phylogenesis and still have
the ability to evolve into new forms of life; likewise, the
process of individuation by nature must be open to lead
beyond current concepts and fuel the conditions and chances
for the improvement of individual or social behaviour,
instead of denying it. This natural process aims to
originate creative mental frames: it will be an emancipatory
process insofar as human spirit and soul, liberated from
bondage to ignorance and falsehood, remain true to natural
freedom. Never this process must be blocked, diverted and
alienated. It is an evident fact that the Wheel of History,
characterised by never ending war and misery, has been ruled
by ideology-driven elites and a few dominant groups with
deficient mental presets. Their erroneous orientation
systems sacrifice the conditions of life and jeopardise
individual experience, thereby accelerating an imminent
general decline. Gathering all this
reflections, it's important to remark that, in order to
maintain future social evolution, human societies and their
conceptual frames must allow first-hand individual
experience. For instance, the societies of the ant or the
bee show that a close adherence to their natural frame turns
out to be vital for their survival. As we can witness, those
frames exist everywhere in nature. One of the most basic,
the DNA, is directly structured to carry the
information of life supplied by the Original Regularity
(that is why any human intervention on the genetic code is
fatal). Instinctive behaviour is a frame taught by life to
ensure coexistence within animal kingdom. Within this frame,
competitive behaviour patterns evolve into cooperative and
subsidiary ones, in order to enable a more complex and
diverse organisation of life. Emulating this biological
configuration, human society ought to globally develop a
cultural frame which ensures peaceful human behaviour in
order to safeguard nature's balances. At any time, human
beings have the chance of supporting the biophilic part that
dwells within them and, as a consequence, enjoy sustainable
life. But if they resist to doing so, inevitably they will
face disaster and destruction. Evaluated in the light of
this context, we could define the "Good Acts" as all those
acts which take place in favour and for the benefit of human
beings, nature and global well being. Contrastingly, all
those acts which take place against the favour and benefit
of human beings, nature and global well being are "Bad
Acts". So, as such, all human's "Good Acts" lead to
prosperity in Paradise and all "Bad Acts" lead to the
disaster of Hell on Earth. It is worth to repeat that, in
order to achieve common prosperity and Paradise on Earth, we
just need to remember that we are free to decide and
set up the pattern of behaviours, thoughts and acts that
further and empower CP's overall Energy and Glory. At the
same time, we must remain aware of the contrasting powers
and strength of the cycles of action and reaction that occur
in ourselves. Only this way, the destructive forces can be
conquered for the benefit of global wellbeing, by means of
liberation of human life from the dangerous grip of any
belief system and thus establishing Security, Creativity
& Love. The Theory of
Dehumanisation (3)
represents a complete breakthrough in social theory with the
offer of comprehensible answers that illuminate dark and
blind areas of the human being, arousing awareness of the
outdated nature of the main conceptions and thus affecting
the direct cause of this lethargy. Thus analogy - an
organic analogy - suggests that these Blind Areas and
Patterned Beliefs are similar to a virus that has inoculated
the software of a web, i.e. the human brain. In this sense,
a reinstalling of the software, a reconstitution of the
natural system of Orientation would be equal to a
healing that indeed would tackle the very
source of the anomaly. So far, the other known methods of
amelioration of the political, geopolitical, social,
economic and educational conditions that work through the
prevention of prejudice and hatred only undertake them with
indirect actions that, at best, will only have the effect of
precautionary measures. The Theory of
Dehumanisation entails a list of some of the behavioural
symptoms -including the Blind Areas- that are present in the
discourse of the war-oriented and prejudiced thinking, in
which we recognize and diagnose the Dehumanisation Syndrome.
This line of thought brings us to the acknowledgment of this
Syndrome as an analytical tool that identifies the condition
on an objective way in terms of individual expression and
behaviour, so it can be approached, understood and discussed
as a psychological state of mind. The purpose it serves goes
beyond the political speech that regards the various
manifestations of prejudice, racism and many other isms of
our culture as a personal matter, relying merely on
subjective estimations. The Application of the Theory of
Dehumanisation in education, culture, peace studies,
political discourse and political prediction would justify
the hope of a slackening of intergroup conflicts and war as
a collective result of individual disorientation. It is our
confidence that dehumanisation will become a thing of the
past. A simple technique
found most effective to induce the healing process of
epidemic Dehumanisation is asking open and unsuspicious
questions about realities hidden in the Blind Areas. This
technique circumvents resistance, since it does not question
dehumanised belief or awareness but rather points at human
realities in the territory and in oneself and asks people
who normally avoid paying attention to it, what they make of
it. By that, it helps them fill-in their cognitive maps with
the human realities that were missing there. Innocent
questions as a tool of humanisation are meant to liberate
people and their systems from prejudice and deficient or
destructive orientation. A society of members who are aware
of the dangers of Dehumanisation would not regard war as an
option for resolving problems. Such a society reveals
dehumanising symptoms within their structures and also in
their ways of communication with the help of open questions,
by a permanent dialogue that nobody can elude. In
consequence, it becomes a necessity that the solutions
raised throughout this study - and that are at hand of any
individual - reach a realisation; given that if a sufficient
level of humaneness is cultivated along with a global
cultural revolution, a caring civilisation, free of violent
behaviour, could be achieved. One of this solutions,
the Circles of Enlightening Dialogue, represents a
simple tool -applicable to all levels of society - useful to
ask questions and express feelings, seeing that the nature
of this dialogue touches the intimate and personal sphere of
the participants, entailing thus a spur in the path-finding
effects on social organisation, from local to global levels.
Development of culture and global social organisation which
reflect the First Guiding Spirit can not be stopped. Those
individuals and societies that feel independent - in an
erroneous way - from Natural Law and Life-Energy and
simultaneously create dependencies on alien forces and
violence, will, on time, have to acknowledge that fear and
weakness are a mere consequence of parasitic use of energy
of other people and Nature. On the other hand, real courage
and strength are a proof for being independent from this
negative and parasitic modus vivendi, while voluntarily,
happily and autonomously being dependent on the Law of
Nature and the Energy of Life. It is humanity's open
destination to maintain a truthfully humane way of life, by
paying the closest attention to the never-ending Creative
Programme of Nature's Learning Process, always provided by
the First Guiding Spirit, the Spirit of Life. Its main
lesson is the challenge: Love! Do
what ever you like and learn from the consequences! Share
your experience, your mood and thought frankly with others
in dialogue! An enlightening
dialogue that covers all sides of the human complex is the
simple tool to keep culture creative. This enlightening
dialogue is the unifying tool to develop an Orientation
system and Programme of Life, which is in fact able to take
care of all aspects of life. Such an Orientation system
replaces the White Areas by understanding, knowing and
feeling, entailing integrity and wholeness in the form of
holiness. As the mapping and
imprinting of our nature start even antenatally, particular
social protection should be provided to the situation of
families. Schooling of children and adolescents should
acknowledge the principles of dialectics in education, in
order to keep awake curiosity, as well as wariness by
flexible learning (4).
What is final and conclusive is that flexible learning
avoids the emergence of Blind Areas through a continuous
adjustment to given necessities: it entails patterns of
behaviour and decision paths that always take into account
natural interdependencies that ultimately will assure
genuine freedom of all and for all and thus to maintain
global wellbeing. We acknowledge the aberrations which
occurred in the run of history and we strive to correct
them. We focus on eliminating mistakes, we try to minimise
adversities and we concentrate on recovering losses in all
the concerned social and ecological dimensions. We organise
Global Communion. We validate the creative quality of
evolution: and then, from family bottom up to collective
consciousness, the fruits of authentic thinking can be
harvested. A few
Conclusions: However, without
mental frames of reference, which are experienced in a
physical way and corrected or validated throughout the
lifetime of the human being, a peaceful culture will not
emerge, neither truthful humanity. A cultural
tradition that equally respects life and also environment
by an adequate socio-ecological organisation of the world
may very well develop independently from the metaphysical
and theological doctrines in order to be a guarantor for
global peace. A Global
Communion in Peace and Prosperity only based on
world-wide mutual subsidiarity will be the proof for true
religion. Without this proof, there won't be a future for
humanity . True
Religion, by Robert Green Ingersoll (Humanist,
Freethinker, USA, 1833-1899) source:
The
Spiritual Progressives Footnotes: 1)
Evolutionary
Biology and The Simultaneous Policy, Vision-Logic for the
Next Stage in our Evolutionary
Future,
by John Bunzl 2)
CAPITALIST
PATRIARCHY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR A 'DEEP'
ALTERNATIVE,
by Claudia von Werlhof 3)
PREVENTION OF DEHUMANIZATION IN (CLASSROOM) EDUCATION,
by Olek Netzer (pdf-version) 4)
The
Einstein Project,
by
Antonio Rossin Literature and
References: - Allport,
Gordon W., 1954, The Nature of Prejudice. Garden City NY:
Anchor Books THE PRACTICAL
HUMANIST MANIFESTO Are you a Humanist? -
Many people all over the world would say "I am a Humanist"
if you asked them. By and large, whether they are religious
or not, they believe that all human life is equally sacred.
The wellbeing of each and every living individual on Earth
is their supreme value, not any groups, ideas, or
institutions. By wellbeing they mean freedom and personal
growth toward self-actualization rather than material
wealth. They value individual
freedom and individual rights and strongly insist on
democracy as the basis of any government. They tend to identify
themselves and others as humans on this planet more than as
members of their respective nations or ethnic groups.
Accordingly, they are naturally peace-oriented and inclined
to Nonviolence. They are nice persons
too. You'd find that they are not aggressive in treating
you, do not devalue you by acting bossy or superior and do
not act as if they wanted only to "sell" you something to
make profit of you; they even can genuinely listen, more
than you'd normally expect. They are remarkably
free of hatred and prejudices against other people and have
retained their sense of caring for the oppression,
exploitation and suffering of their fellow human beings. In
the developed free countries they tend to believe that
modern life should be made more cooperative and harmonious,
less competitive and aggressive in relation to the other
people and to the natural environment. You'd find that many
of them have the best of intentions and wonderful visions
embracing the widest spheres, such as "cosmic harmony" and
"global peace". You'd find that they have no
practical action plans to get there and feel powerless to
change anything. This Manifesto
heralds practical means of Humanistic empowerment. So
far we Humanists have been facing an impossible dilemma: in
order empower ourselves, we must organize politically.
Nevertheless, political organization means a hierarchical
power-structure, incompatible with our Humanistic
egalitarian values. Besides, we know that power corrupts. We
remember well the terrible or miserable end of idealists and
well-wishers who organized themselves in a political party,
such as the Bolsheviks and Communists; or such that rejected
organization, as the "New Left" in North America and Western
Europe. NEVERMORE OF THAT. We now have an alternative
model of organization for social change that could lead us
out of this predicament and that gives us practical means to
become effectively empowered without compromising our
values. It abolishes the Power Pyramid entirely. It gives us
chance to become empowered as equals and practice Humanism
with our fellow men and women here and now, while making
decisions democratically and effectively toward reforming
society. We call this model
THAT WAY NEVERMORE: A HUMANISTIC PROGRAM FOR CHANGING OUR
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE How does it work? -
The structure of decision making in the Humanistic political
organization is based on a scientific know-how in the areas
of human organization, communication, motivation and
behaviour, conflict-resolution, decision-making,
time-management, and more. Practical emphasis is put on
small-group dynamics. We used all the available knowledge so
we could design an organizational environment that suits
best the practice of Humanistic values, including the
strongest safeguards against power corruption. It also
includes the widest range of organizational decision-making
units and the in-group working processes. The program is free
online
for anyone who is enthusiastic about a new humanistic
approach in thought and action. We are all
kinsfolk; our birth to a particular nationality is nothing
more than accidental. Conflict and
greed-driven competition between independent nation states
is the norm. The current anarchy, harnessed to modern
technology, has the potential to destroy our species, and
take many others with it. Sapiens calls for
the surrender of key aspects of national sovereignty to a
Democratic World Government, elected by the individual
citizens of the World. Only such a unitary
authority will have the power and the legitimacy to save us
from ourselves. We must end the age of fully sovereign
nation states before it ends us. Read
the full text: The
Sapiens manifesto Proposal
"THE TRANSITION TO A SUSTAINABLE
CIVILISATION" Presented to the World
Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesberg Synopsis: We
have a very important proposal and message to give to the
World. Humankind has reached a state of development in which
old modes of thinking and behaving threaten to destroy human
civilisation. Our proposal makes a diagnosis and looks at
the causes before defining possible solutions which involves
the creation of a new paradigm integrating spirituality and
science. Our main aim is to
gain the support of the United Nations and the governments
of the World that we may implement the solutions defined in
our proposal. At the beginning of
the 21st century the world now finds itself teetering on the
brink of what some would call holy war or a clash of
civilizations divided along spiritual lines. Of course,
international politics and policies of economic
globalization make everything much more complicated than
that, but the fundamental human predisposition for conflict
and separation remains firmly established. That is why a
spirituality of oneness would be such an extraordinary leap
forward in human thinking. The big difference
between our age and any previous times when new spiritual
ideas surfaced, is that we are now experiencing a symbiotic
effect of spirituality with ecology and technology. Most
people who give serious thought to our existential
predicament know that we face a big turn around in how we
live together on the planet. That big turning will not be
inspired by spirituality alone, but by its integration with
ecology and technology-comprising three pillars of
transformation. The new
spirituality will be informed by as well as inform new
technology, both being mediated by a deeper appreciation of
ecology. All three forces acting together have the potential
to produce a transformation of life on the planet greater
than any so far recorded in human history and coming faster
than anything humanity has previously
experienced. In the midst of
this turbulence all of us are being challenged to take our
place in the scheme of things. Are we supporting the change
or holding onto the old? It is a time of enormous creative
tension. Can you help resolve the tension in the direction
of a vision of hope? Read
the full text:
The
Transition to A Sustainable Civilisation 23 - 28 June 2006
Vancouver, CANADA
http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/human/orientation.html
the Destiny of Human Life
Safe Orientation System
the developer of the psychological Theory of
DehumanizationThe Human
Orientation System is, to date, the last vital area of
interest that science, in its understanding, has not yet
made an important imprint on society. In the beginning of
our cultural evolution, natural scholars had systematic
interest in the things farthest away: stars and heavenly
bodies; however, to the 20th century there has been no
scientific inquiry into the closest things: ourselves.
"Unfortunately, in seeking to read the book of nature
more faithfully, the new thinkers banished the thinker
himself from the picture as peremptorily and arbitrarily
as Socrates, and after him the Christian theologians had
turned their backs on nature."... "Those who looked
upward and outward and forward, and were prepared to
traverse astronomical distances, forgot to look downward
and inward and backward." - Lewis Mumford, "The sin of
Galileo", in The Myth of the Machine
Spirituality
is not a guarantee for mental quality. Just as little the
belief in God or other metaphysical speculation are
charters for being a good human person.
To
love justice.
To long for the right.
To love mercy.
To pity the suffering.
To assist the weak.
To forget wrongs and remember benefits.
To love truth.
To be sincere.
To utter honest words.
To love liberty.
To wage relentless war against slavery in all its
forms.
To love wife and child and friend.
To make a happy home.
To love the beautiful in art and in nature.
To cultivate the mind.
To be familiar with the mighty thoughts and noble
deeds that genius has expressed in the world.
To cultivate courage and cheerfulness.
To make others happy.
To fill life with the splendor of generous acts and
the warmth of loving words.
To discover error and to destroy prejudice.
To receive new truths with gladness.
To cultivate hope.
To see the calm beyond the storm and the dawn beyond
the night.
To do the best that can be done and then be resigned,
for this is the religion of reason, compassion and
love that satisfies both the brain and
heart.
SPIRITUALITY
AND GLOBALISATION, Visions of a different type of social
organisation,
by Wolfgang Fischer
- Weisse Barbarbei, Vom Kolonialrassismus zur
Rassenpolitik der Nazis White Barbarism, (From Colonial
Racism to Racist Politics of the Nazis), Rotpunkt 2004,
Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe
THE
REAL CAUSES OF WAR BEYOND THE MULTICAUSAL
APPROACH,
by Olek Netzer
(pdf-version)
LIBERATION
FROM PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLOITATION: THE THEORY UNDERLYING THE
WORK TO BE DONE,
by Olek Netzer
(pdf-version)
THAT WAY NEVER MORE - Egalitarian Alternative to the
Pyramid of Political Party Power, by Olek Netzer
(pdf-version)
Prevention
and Healing of Dehumanization Applied to Individual
Orientation/Belief System,
by Olek Netzer, Ashoka Fellow, ashoka's
changemakers
NONVIOLENCE:
The Humiliation-free Strategy of Using Power in Political
Conflict, by Olek Netzer (pdf-version)
Truth,
Belief, and Negative
Language,
by
Antonio Rossin
The
Lessened Flexibility Syndrome -
LFS,
by Antonio Rossin
"Religion
- Communication -
Addiction",
by Antonio Rossin
Democracy
or Fundamentalism: which Education
Model?,
by Antonio Rossin (June 08, 2007) pdf
- Dennen, van der Johann, 1987, "In-group/out-group
differentiation". In V. Reynolds, V. Falger, & I.
Vine (eds.), The Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism London and
Sydney: Croom Helm pp. 1-47
- Erikson, Erik, 1965, "Psychoanalysis and ongoing History:
problems of Identity Hatred and Nonviolence", American
Journal of Psychiatry. 122, 241-250
- Fromm, Erich, 1941, Escape from Freedom, New York: Holt,
Rinchart and Winston
- Johnson, Wendell, 1972, Living with Change, New York:
Harper & Row
- Kochicheril, Satheesan, 2005, Pure
Reason: Culture and Spirituality Nobody can
Make,
BookSurge Publishing
- Koenigsberg, Richard A., 1992, Hitler's Ideology. New
York: The Library of Social Science
- Kressel, Neil J., 1990, "The Politics of Knowledge
Production in Social Psychology." Journal of Social
Psychology (130, pp. 5-28)
- Kressel, Neil J., 1993, "Politics and human nature", in
Neil Kressel (ed.), Political Psychology. New York:
Paragon
- Mumford, Lewis, The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of
Power (1970), New York: Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich,
p. 33.)
- Rogers, Carl R., 1977, Carl Rogers on Personal Power. New
York: Delta
- Reinsborough, Patrick, De-Colonizing the Revolutionary
Imagination - Value Crisis, the Politics of Reality and why
there's Going to be a Common Sense Revolution in this
Generation by
http://smartmeme.com
-
Rosenberg, S. W., 1988, Reason, Ideology and Politics.
Cambridge UK: Polity Press
- Simpson, E., 1987, "The Development of Political
Reasoning". Human Development. 30, pp. 268-281
- Shlain, L.,: The
Alphabet and the Goddess, The Conflict between Word and
Image
- Waller, James, 2002, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary
People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. New York: Oxford
University Press
by Michael Ellis and Pavel Kasyanov
The World Peace 2006 is an international gathering of
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Please
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Emanzipation
Humanum,
version January 2006,Criticism, suggestions as to form and
content, dialogue, translation into other languages are all
desired
http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/human