Agreed. Sagan's compassionate and all-embracing Oneness has nothing to do with the psychopathic, exploitative, collectivist dreams of the sick elitists.Frank Freedom wrote:I agree with you here in the ideal sense of the term and ?probably? how Sagan meant it to be realised,however "oneness" as is being pushed by the new age guru's seems to be heading as I described above.acrobat74 wrote:Very insightfully you spotted a seeming contradiction of monism.Frank Freedom wrote:Within the messages of many prominent speakers of truth,comes the themes of oneness, and global consciousness.
This at first glance would appeal to the vast majority of folks,but the concept has a hidden agenda.
"oneness" it seems implies the sacrifice of the self,aka the naughty ego,and individuality,they start wars apparently so I ask do we want to be unthinking drones?
However, bear in mind that to realize that all is One does not negate the self. It's simply a realization.
I think of it as rays of Light going through a prism.
Agreed.I would agree here also but for the all things does that include rocks and suchlike?Now, how you translate this realization into a socio-economic system
Plotinus wrote:God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that he is so.
If it does this seems to going down the green agenda route of ?panthaeism?,if that's the correct term (and spelling?)
If our phone is on the hook, all is full of love.
Yes. And, apart from sick elitist psychopaths, they are also intelligent and well-read and they control subsistence, public policy and the most powerful channels of propaganda.This is all very well,and an ideal solution to the madness that's been orchestrated into this capitalist experiment of ours.Now, how you translate this realization into a socio-economic system is a different question.
In this field, by far the most human solution seems to me to be the abolition of money and competition. Totally utopian for now, but you never know.
John Maynard Keynes wrote:When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals.
We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.
We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value.
The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease ...
But beware! The time for all this is not yet.
For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.
"The Future", Essays in Persuasion (1931) Ch. 5, JMK, CW, IX, pp.329 - 331, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930); as quoted in "Keynes and the Ethics of Capitalism" by Robert Skidelsy
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
Bertrand Russell wrote:Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.
Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others.
Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.
Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
Only problem is, those that have profitted the very most from this experiment, still get to decide the fate of others.
Never said it'd be easy