Re: The Playground of Fear

"This life is the pain we must feel to participate in the experiment of time."
That certainly has been the common experience.However maybe it is possible to lessen the intensity, and quality of that pain, which is an inescapable part of life. We are all living by some myth, religion, world view. Most of it fear based. Regardless of if we are religious or not unless we are completely cut off from society, we share in many of the many of the belief common to the prevailing religion of our societies. So the athiest may not believe that god will punish her/him but she/he will believe that moral law, fate, the cosmos will extract vengeance. A prophecy, or belief that is so deeply rooted then becomes a script, which we then act out or experience.

In the bible we read that "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother ... Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city ... And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die." Deuteronomy 21:18-21
Yet now even the most devout believer in this holy writ understand that children go through stages and degrees of rebellion against them as a necessary part of individuation. Woe betides the child that does not go through some sort of disobedience she or he will not be able to say no to peer pressure or even establish any power in social relationships. Even Judaism would not recognize such a law now.In fact few people would stone their own child, but many would find equaly brutal aspects of holy writ to apply against different groups. I referred to the quotation above in order to say that a lot of the instructions and myths that are held so sacred are irrelevant, have been superceded, show little understanding of human nature and developmental processes and do not serve us well. Yet there is still this pressure from society to conform to this ancient, brutal collective worldview. The brainwashing is hard to overcome even after we make a conscious decision to persue a more rational life experience.

I say all of this in order to support my view that this sphere in which we live now can certainly be improved to a great extent by adjusting our expectations by means of better myth, beliefs, religions that reflect a more truthful and mature understanding of the world as it is, in a way that is congruent with our personal modern knowledge of the world, and ourselves, taking into account scientific explanations. Although this world is full of danger and suffering,the only way that we can see what we can make of it is to make the necessary changes and see where they take us. Rudi,I understand that you see it as some kind of boot camp to escape,or kindergarden to graduate from, and in your own way you are trying to put a kinder belief out there to use as long as we are here and to improve our lot in the future. Kudos to you!

To anyone reading this who does not trust science,I ask how is it that you trust that when you get into a CAT scan machine, that that calculated dose of radiation will not cook you, or that the aircraft that you get into will find its way to your airport even when its 30,000 feet above massive thunder storms clouds.