Excerpts
Excerpts from "My Best Guess At The Truth" by Robert Benelux
Law should be based on one or two principles.
I propose the first principle is "What is good for humanity is good." And as a corollary, "What is bad for individuals is bad for humanity."
That corollary is important because otherwise slavery would be just fantastic. Imagine, cheap labour, building things for the benefit of all of humanity (except the slaves, and the other potential slaves out there).
There must always be a balance between the interests of the individual and the interests of the group, because of what we humans are like. It might be OK for bees to have one queen, some drones, and a vast population of female workers to do all the hard work, and sacrifice their lives for the hive the moment it seems to be threatened, but that kind of thing doesn't work in most human societies; not for long, anyway.
Humans need a sense of independence. It is an intrinsic motivator [citation needed]
A good religion needs to be able to provide certain requirements:
Compassion. We all need to feel understood.
Forgiveness. After Apartheid was dismantled in South Africa, the healing of the nation was, in part, facilitated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. The TRC had the power to grant amnesty for crimes. And many of the people who had committed the most horrific crimes, after spilling their guts out in public, some of them crying like babies, and being granted amnesty, went on to become amazing contributors to the wellbeing of others, others who just a few years prior they had been working hard at destroying.
Hope. Religion needs to provide a situation or environment that helps people to get up, and keep going, even when all seems to be lost, because, sometimes, it isn't.
Salvation is this, and more. And it needn't be thought of in the "Jesus" sense. It must be thought of in the "human" sense. It is time we grew up. Whether you believe in the existence of Jesus, the deity of Jesus, or deity at all, you must recognise that the people doing the doing, are people. Just as it is with Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny; the eggs, the money, the presents, they are all put there by people, so it is with salvation. Salvation happens as a result of people. And the thing that they do is they help you to understand who you are.
Any society that can bubble the best in any field, skillset, or aptitude to the top, will blossom.
Here's a quick story of the Jews from the south of Spain. In the early sixteenth century, the combined Spanish kingdom of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella managed to conquer the Muslims who occupied the south of the Iberian Peninsula. And what the Muslims left behind was a population of Jews. They were educated, and skilled, and Spain flourished as a result of their being active, contributing members of the society.
Back in those days, Muslims and Jews got on quite well. But soon the Catholic monarchs required the Jews to convert, or leave. And when some of the converted Jews were not converted enough, or just pretended, the Spanish got Inquisitive. In fact, their Inquisition resulted in the deaths of about 13000 Jews. Many fled back to Islamic territories in north Africa, and were warmly welcomed back. Many fled to Spain's neighbour, Portugal, where the Portuguese were a little more lenient about their religious beliefs and practices. And as soon as they started to contribute to Portuguese society, their economy, and voyages of discovery started to bloom.
But the Portuguese had given them an ultimatum, after which time they must have converted to Catholicism. Many moved to the Netherlands.
And what would you know? The Dutch economy took off.
There are many lessons to be learned here. Lessons of religious tolerance; and that while some immigrants can strain your economy, some can boost it; lessons about the benefits of education and skills development. But my point is that if you have smart and talented people, do everything you can to help them to do smart and talented things.
I know a guy called Xolani. He earns his living from manual labour. But Xolani is a smart guy; and inquisitive. He will pull machines apart and put them together. The fact that he earns a living from manual labour is an indicator of how wrong the country he lives in is; there are many, many people can't put machines together. They should be doing the manual labour. Xolani should be doing something else; for his benefit, for the benefit of his country, and for the benefit of every human in the world.
It's very important for everyone to understand that we're all in this together. What's bad for Mexico is bad for the United States. What's bad for France is bad for Britain. What's bad for Zimbabwe is bad for South Africa, is bad for Africa, is bad for Europe, is bad for the planet.
This seems rather simplistic. Sometimes what is bad for Africa is good for America, or what's bad for Russia is good for Europe. But these are only true in the short term.
On a longer term perspective, what goes around does, eventually, come around. Even if it takes hundreds of years. And a longer-term perspective is what we could really use more of.
Thinking bigger than our own lifetime is very overdue.
Humanity is the Universal Church. It is the best equipped to heal the broken. If the oppressed and downtrodden have people in whom they can place their faith, then they can become people in whom others, in turn, can place faith.
Any successful group of people -- a country, a company, a religion, a family, a club -- has at least an implicit understanding of the laws of nature as they pertain to humans, and their interactions. Underneath the suits, the robes, the t-shirts, we are smart, and mostly hairless, monkeys. We get fearful, we fall in love, we eat, we have sex, we want stuff, we die, we want control, we want leadership, we want to be left alone, we want to feel part of the group, we nurture, we fight. Any organisation that we have lived in for generations will be paradoxical, contradictory, flexible, and resistant to change; just like us.
"Ubuntu ngubuntu abantu". A person is a person because of other people.
This is an African proverb, that reveals our interconnectedness. But I'd like to touch on something else about those words. When I am alive, I am the sum of my nature, my experiences, my actions, and other people's memories of me, personally and by reputation.
When I am dead, what remains is the sum of my actions, and other people's memories of me, personally and by reputation. That is what it is to be immortal. If you want to live after you're dead, then do stuff.
Some dead people have quite a reputation! Their reputation might be far removed from their actual lives.
Some reputations belong to people who never even existed, like the elves of Santa Claus. (Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra (270 - 346) who was known to give gifts anonymously. Myra is now Demre, in the Antalya Province of Turkey. Most of Saint Nicholas's bones are kept in the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy. The man was about five feet tall, and had a broken nose.)
Everything that we do, everything we create, everything we use, should be used, created and done for the betterment of nature, humanity and its individuals. Nature, not just because we are a part of it, and it is beautiful, but also because we rely on it. Humanity because it is the greatest achievement that we are aware of, and its progress is our highest goal. Individuals because humanity's history is only a story, it's future is only a prediction, but its individuals are its reality, and it comprises all of them. We all affect each other. What is bad for some of us affects others.
