One of the phrases I frequently heard tossed around is that knowledge won't become so much what you know, but how efficient you are at finding that information - the idea that the browser world puts so much information at your fingertips, that knowledge is not so much an accumulation of intellectual capital but various networks to access that knowledge. Which I agree with, largely, but the piece it misses out on is how critical it is in this age of information overload to be able to react and evaluate using a reasonable mind. If you have reason, and the courage to use reason, you can begin to sift through what is true or nor true simply by evaluating the merit of the ideas presented by another. If you find that after one or two questions, you are being called an idiot or a traitor, you begin to wonder how firmly a person understands their convictions, not to question their belief, but belief without understanding, or at least a fragment of introspective reasoning, not muddled in the idea that that warm fuzzy feeling some people call faith is simply an escape into a warm fuzzy place where you can avoid responsibility for the decisions you make and the knowledge you decide to maintain, a simpler place, whereof atrocities grow, which is a large part of the dynamic of these types of movements reaching a tipping point amazingly quickly, as a result of a mass delusion (that our poverty is the fault of the Jews and that our strength will lie in reawakening the greatness of our mythological war gods from an age not documented well enough to either confirm nor deny the new propaganda) feeling so comfortable, and without need to tap into any challenging, uncomfortable higher states of mind, that it rapidly degenerates into mass psychosis (kill the Jew, take back our ancestral homelands, be the master race that is our God-given destiny).
Reason can help prevent the idea that as long as there is enough consistent barrage of messaging around something, it must be true, or that truth can be developed by consensus, which, while a valuable component of establishing a reasoned approach to truth, is not itself truth. Unfortunately, in the context of today's age, not only is truth being determined by access to wealth, too often extracted at great cost to the many, for present and future generations, and to the benefit of too few, we are also beginning to define majority rule not as a function of streamlining discourse, which it does do to some degree, which does exclude some voices from the debate, a way of maintaining disagreements in a civil way that does not completely forestall any movement in a direction, and create some accountability for the choices made, but as a "will to power." That having 50% plus 1 means, as the victor, you can simply destroy discourse, and declare your ideas the winner. There ought to be a safety valve that any government which creates refugees should immediately be dismantled. That if you can't run the business of governance well enough to keep people in your own damn country, you shouldn't be governing, including creating wars that the public begins to understand as so vile and unjust that you can't get a volunteer army to continue to fight.
Reason would say that leadership should demonstrate leadership, that you might still hate the person, or their politics, but you understand that they are being honest with you, that they operate from an integrity beyond prayer and naming Jesus as your co-pilot, which are words that have become too easy to use as tools of disassembling. Reason would also question the validity of any religion or cult that relies on stifling information, or attracting profit. Concentration of wealth, knowledge or authority, in my mind, does not lead us forward in our quest towards that which makes us whatever better we want to become, we need to become to survive.
I was thinking about this in the context of Ramtha, who may very well have some great wisdom from beyond, but whose views, I think, are verbal manifestations of a more primitive vestigial understanding of the evolution of species - that the Atlanteans were not a race on a continent, but some other "competing" species or part of our own evolution that either lived in or by the sea, and maybe had some special knowledge that gave them a signet (maybe the beautiful crystals they used, as some theories contend) that lasted thousands of generations, especially as those images are made in the own fancies of that generation (that would actually be an interesting thing to track, how ideas of mythically powerful beings conform to the standards of dress and technology at the time, or at least something that the society adopts as meaning classical, the way our myths of the Atlanteans tend to have them wearing flowing Greek robes, like some Hollywood classic, and having their beautiful blond hair curled so perfectly). But I immediately begin to question the ideas propagated by a being that speaks in such general platitudes that, while meaningful, really have nothing to do with re-revealing some ancient wisdom as it does paraphrasing it in a way that new age addicts will buy into. That may actually demonstrate a very ancient intelligence, tapping so immediately into the mass mediated world of this century. But I don't think the authenticity needs to come from being some 30,000 year old being - it should stand of it's own reason, not impressed upon you by some housewife wearing weird velvety Society for Creative Anachronism garb, drinking out of goblets, speaking in some accent Americans might use if they were trying to tell a joke the way they think Queen Elizabeth might speak, with a glassy eyed look like the stoner you want to avoid at a party, before he or she launches into some spiritual diatribe, that makes no sense and yet, if you are yourself not completely cogent, seems so compelling to them that you can't help but think that it must be something meaningful. You might even hang out with this person for a semester, thinking they must really be on to something, and leave them realizing that the only thing you found there was your hunger for meaning, for knowledge, that can only ultimately be fulfilled with a journey inside you. Which is another thing that makes the easy answers often the warm fuzzy ones, taking you into that place where the blanket is enough to protect you from the boogey man, and your parent's voices the only assurance you need.
Part of that whole phenomenon also relates to the idea that becoming fully adult means accepting your own vulnerability. You need to deny that to some degree just to survive those early years - you can't run away, you can't walk, you can't feed yourself, you are completely dependent and taking the world in from a complete place of vulnerability, potentially the perfect victim. Except these other beings take care of you, and you learn from them, and your world is safe to explore. Growing into adulthood is a process not of toughening up, but recognizing our frailty, and in fully accepting that fact, and the frailty of all around us, coming into a place of compassion with all things and a spontaneity of being, at least being cognizant in the moment, understanding the blessing of each breath in, and each breath out.
I think one of the reasons we cling to fear is that it allows us to absolve ourselves of the fullness of our responsibility to be. It's a lot easier to put responsibility for your actions, if you think they are righteous, on the shoulders of a deity. You may feel divinely inspired, but you have to be able to pass the litmus test of whether the place where you find those voices in when you meditate into your warm fuzzy place, or the more challenging aspect of the divine - when you see, understand and accept decay, realize mortality is our shared destiny, and make decisions based on making the world a more prosperous place for all the invincible vulnerables who will come long after you are dust.
The whole way we are consuming the planet today, creating our own Apocalypse, is leaving a legacy of decay, a deficit, whatever way you measure the world's resources and economies, that grows with each generation that doesn't sit up and say "whoa," and start hitting the breaks. It so distresses me that with one of the most important international treaties of my lifetime, the Kyoto Accord on Global Warming, we continue to sit on the sidelines, somehow forgetting that we all share the same air, that water touches all of our lives, that the earth is not something we can burn. Even if every other country on the planet begins working towards compliance, as Great Britain is doing, the great old U.S.A. could easily destroy the whole planet.
I would not be surprised if there comes a day when economic embargoes, possibly even a civil war, erupts here over our nation's failure to grasp the incredibly costly implications of abusing the environment as we do. I don't want to really grasp our use of resources - the numbers always seem so big, the percentages so astounding, especially since I enjoy that privilege.
But so much that I want to enjoy life at the expense of my future gene line? What type of organism is that. The cockroach gives its species a chance at survival by letting itself get stepped on, growing wings in succeeding generations to survive. What will we do for our own?
