Are we at the dawn or dusk of our civilization? I was asking myself that question, and realized that in a thousand minds, we might find a thousand conceptions. For some, we living in the dark, waiting for dawn. For some, it high noon. For many, we are in decline, and the sun is going down.
As I thought about it, though, I decided that the “sun” in our imagination moves spaspodically, in quantum leaps that correspond to paradigmatic revisions. Was Louis the Quatorze (I think that is right) not the “Sun King”? Yet did not the idea enter the French consciousness that they were living in darkness, and needed the “dawn” of revolution? (Note: not all revolutionaries were lunatics or criminals: the moderates got killed by the radicals, in a pattern which has since repeated many times.)
And if we use the metaphor of a cycle of darkness and light, has there not always been some sun rising when some other sun had set? As the Western Roman Empire was becoming moribund, and evolving into the universal “Catholic” Church, was not Islam expanding?
And it’s a funny thought to think, but Muslims were likely much physically cleaner than their Christian counterparts, who had no equivalent in their Bible for the Koranic “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” If I’m not mistaken, bathing was considered unhealthy for much of the Middle Ages, likely in part due to the prevalance of water contamination.
What I am trying to do with this Goodness idea, is set the sun back to dawn; to set our perceptual filters to the idea that whatever our progress to date, we can do infinitely better in the future. We are not at the end of a civilization, but contemplating the creation of the first truly just universal order this benighted planet has ever seen.
America was clearly conceived as a Christian nation, within which the tolerance of Christian charity would be practiced. Yet I would like to see us evolve past this. I have significant problems with received Christian doctrine.
For example, why would a just God require killing in his honor? Why would we need to ritually slaughter animals, as the Jews did? Tenfold: why would we need to ritually slaughter a human being?
Theologically, if one accepts the doctrine of free will, then it would follow logically that those who wrote the Bible were acting as individual, fallible human beings, and as such likely screwed up the actual message of Jesus, to a greater or lesser extent. Add to this the power aspirations of the Catholic Church, and you have a powerful incentive both for suppressing non-conforming views (with violence, as happened often), and for supporting views which likewise support your position of authority.
As far as Islam, the core, necessary contention is that God is one, and not many. I am quite willing to accept that, but not that God has a name or gender. God is what God is (this is, I think, close to the meaning of Yahweh), and our task is to see this force for ourselves, and bring it to earth, and use it for Good.
Thus, what I would like to see in the day we begin after we renounce all remaining vestiges of darkness–embodied most fully at the moment in the spirit of political totalitarianism, and the docrines which derive this idea–is a wedding of sincere goodwill, and open use of science for human improvement. Science is and always will be subordinate to creative, directing spirits. It cannot solve problems of meaning for us. Yet it can, in my view, bring the realm of God closer to Earth, by helping us understand how we are all connected, and what happens to us when the forms we use on Earth stop working, and our consciousness moves on.
God, in my view, is composed of two parts, which I have called (after the Chinese) chi and li. God is the matter/energy “stuff” of which the universe is composed. God is also the possibility of form. In our “chi” self, we are the same as God. We are composed of light. In our “li” self, we are unique. As I envision the matter, God does not “create” form, per se, so much as create a sort of sketchpad that retains shapes over time. God is mold with memory, perhaps.
Some passing thoughts. Hope they help someone.