incarnate
I guess i'm something of a cruel-humor activist. I haven't resigned myself to giving up on humankind, though i've certainly driven all faith in the species from my mind. I don't know how i learned that people would not be swayed by argument, pressure, or any variant of the traditional religious conversion tactics. (Perhaps i just endured too many attempts myself.) People are too smart to be swayed forever by fear and too stupid to be swayed for long by reason. Put more symmetrically, people are too skeptical to allow themselves to be convinced of anything they don't want to be.
So, how does one reconcile a cause they feel is vital to humankind with one's inability to convert others to it? The religious people (rather, people with religion) i know generally have given up the first premise and proclaim that faith in their own belief structure needn't be shared by everyone; "to each zer own". Yet most of them believe what they do because they were raised on it. They essentially were converted from indifference by their families but refuse to convert anyone else but their own children. Why convert the children, if the choices they'd make without a religious upbringing would be just as decent as theirs? People seem to think of religion less as protection from the harshness of the world and more as something that needs protecting. What good, and of what consequence, is a religion that's weaker than its adherents?
Anyway, my own solution is somewhat pessimistic. I gather that a person's justifications give less insight into the person than the philosophies and actions they justify; the latter more fairly define the person's path as the former serves as a walking stick. This is not to say that a person's philosophies and actions are independent of the justifications available for them; but philosophies and actions are certainly at most guided-not determined-by a person's knowledge and understanding.
I justify all my cute little activist stuff (the layman's term for refusing to accept lower prices in exchange for others' misery)-doing little more to champion it than set an example-by a simple understanding: If humankind is to both survive into the space age and balance its own wealth and suffering fairly among its members, then it will have to be on the merits of almost everyone. (I think people should be informed of what harm they're causing, but not made to cease. If enough people then take it upon themselves to cease anyway, there's hope.) If, instead, humanity is to be reduced to a squabbling mass of insignificance fighting over as tiny a tract of land as Earth, then i can take personal pompous comfort in knowing that i didn't contribute to it.
So, how does one reconcile a cause they feel is vital to humankind with one's inability to convert others to it? The religious people (rather, people with religion) i know generally have given up the first premise and proclaim that faith in their own belief structure needn't be shared by everyone; "to each zer own". Yet most of them believe what they do because they were raised on it. They essentially were converted from indifference by their families but refuse to convert anyone else but their own children. Why convert the children, if the choices they'd make without a religious upbringing would be just as decent as theirs? People seem to think of religion less as protection from the harshness of the world and more as something that needs protecting. What good, and of what consequence, is a religion that's weaker than its adherents?
Anyway, my own solution is somewhat pessimistic. I gather that a person's justifications give less insight into the person than the philosophies and actions they justify; the latter more fairly define the person's path as the former serves as a walking stick. This is not to say that a person's philosophies and actions are independent of the justifications available for them; but philosophies and actions are certainly at most guided-not determined-by a person's knowledge and understanding.
I justify all my cute little activist stuff (the layman's term for refusing to accept lower prices in exchange for others' misery)-doing little more to champion it than set an example-by a simple understanding: If humankind is to both survive into the space age and balance its own wealth and suffering fairly among its members, then it will have to be on the merits of almost everyone. (I think people should be informed of what harm they're causing, but not made to cease. If enough people then take it upon themselves to cease anyway, there's hope.) If, instead, humanity is to be reduced to a squabbling mass of insignificance fighting over as tiny a tract of land as Earth, then i can take personal pompous comfort in knowing that i didn't contribute to it.