Version #16
We find hope and give kindness by:
- —discovering the orderly nature of our Universe, so we can help ourselves and others benefit from all that is possible.
- —creating an ideally balanced human society, so you and I and everyone else can have a meaningful life in a sustainable world.
- —dedicating our wisdom to the great tradition of alleviating the suffering of all living beings.
- —helping one another use our abilities for our own and others’ well-being.
- —appreciating that we as a fellowship of people expressing diverse views are discovering wonderful new ways of living.
- —making a habit of clearly acknowledging other people and their need to love one another and our Universe.
Today, when reading my version #16 above, I recognized a horrible problem. This method of living with the Universe and with other human beings doesn’t address the problems of Natural Selection. This version attempts to create a wonderful Universe to live within. It is intended and designed to help everyone and everything live together in peace and love.
That’s great … except … it violates the whole system of interactions created by nature’s form of Natural Selection. I stated it that way because our human theories are always words, and can never be more than words, attempting to describe in general terms the infinite complexity of what is actually happening in the natural world. The real world of the things that actually happened and are happening is infinitely more complex.
What my principles attempt to do is to put a kind and loving system of human behavior around that infinity of possibilities, and that totally encloses everything, including the totally non-caring parts of natural reality. That is an overly ambitious goal that was dealt with by the Stoics two thousand years ago under the general topic of things outside of a person’s control. Their response to those kinds of dilemmas is not to confront them, because a person can’t win, but to accept that reality and adapt to its natural demands.
There are many things that are impossible to control, but which are easily adapted to and peacefully lived with. That is stated in principle #1 as – discovering the orderly nature of our Universe, so we can help ourselves and others benefit from all that is possible. However, some parts of our orderly Universe, like mosquitoes, literally hope to eat us for dinner. We can’t control many predators’ natural behavior, human predators included, but we can make adaptations of our own behavior that will serve our interests to preserve ourselves and not theirs to preserve themselves.
These kinds of problems have been dealt with by the classic folks and I will get to that in the future … possibly.
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