The Ultimate Fixer-Upper

Humans are the ultimate fixer-uppers. Truth be told, in our realm we are the ONLY fixer-uppers. Humans spend every moment of their lives solving problems; fixing things that have gone wrong or seem not to work as we would like them to. So, why have we had such little success in fixing our culture, in solving the most pressing problem that we face as a species? The answer is easier than you think and that very simplicity makes it more difficult than we could imagine.

Take a look at your local bookstore shelves and you will find scores of self-development books devoted to telling us how to become better at something or learning how to do something. Architects can buy books on how to become better architects and people who want to become architects can buy books on how to become better architects. Sometimes we have to use these books in conjuction with a formalized course of study but the idea is the same; that there exists the notion of the optimal. Either we are becoming better at what we do or are, or we are discovering how to become what we want to become.

There is one area that is missing in these books. We are already human beings but you will not find a book on how to become a better human being. That is the book or course of instruction we need. It is true that if all humans become better then the race will be better, but that is a temporal fixe given the fact that good humans became what we are now. It is an even more powerful idea that if the race can be made better all humans will be better. That should be our goal.

Stay tuned.

Get it!

Nothing disappoints me more than the reluctance of my Christian brothers to accept the fact that we are one race. It is disappointing to me because this teaching is so powerfully presented in the very book that they claim to their scriptures. It is as if the message of the Bible is incidental as far as they are concerned.

In the beginning God created the heavens (and the earth). I placed those parentheses because the contents are redundant; the earth is a part of the heavens. When it comes to the creation of man most miss the fact that there is only one creative act. God creates man from the dust of the earth; a commondity that was in plentiful supply. In that man there was both male and female, just as it is with every zygote that grows into a foetus and into an adult via infancy. We began as male and femal and each of us began our lives as male and female.

The point that most miss is the fact that God did not create the Woman. The creation of Adam was the last creative act in the Genesis account. The woman was taken out of Adam because she was a part of the man. This is why Adam declared, "This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." Why do Christians have such a difficult time with such a simple concept? Is our desire for vengeance so strong. Is our "hatred" of those who do not agree with us so overwhelming? What is the problem with us?

Gone but not forgotten

I posted the following on my facebook page and it has generated quite a bit of discussion:

Recent deaths have brought out the usual remarks, "He will never be forgotten." When I think that some of these people were practically forgotten in their waning years, I wonder why people say these things. To all intents and purposes you... forgot about him while he was alive and you were busy living your life, what makes you think you won't forget him now that he is gone?

Learning lessons

During this absence I have been very busy conceptually. I have learned a number of hard and frustrating lessons, all of which are related to the anomaly of this species and system we call the human race. We have become so accustomed to our current condition that we have begun to believe that it is normative. All our lessons have been learned from nature yet we refuse to apply the most important lesson that nature has taught us, which is that every system exists to maintain its own existence.

There are many reasons for this. The first is that scientific research, which is the main engine of human development is not designed to benefit the human species. Science, by its very design, is meant to benefit individuals or groups of individuals.

This is not easily seen because science, more directly the statistical probabilities that underly scientific research, invokes the distribution of populations. We always assume the population in our research. But that is only a major factor in our analysis of the data. When it comes to application our thoughts go to the individual. This is why we employ the negative term "outlier."

What is an outlier? How can any human being be an outlier in a distribution of human beings? It only means that he does not fit the characteristics of a particular group of humans. So we find that the fragmentation of humanity is built into the tool on which we depend to forge our development.

. . . In between . . .

It's amazing how animals spoken into existence and man created from dust have so much genetic material in common. Even more amazing that animals spoken into existence return to dust the same as man who was created from dust.

From the benign to the malignant

Adam's perception of the Woman as being inferior to him because of something she had done was the basis for Cain feeling so inferior that the only way he could guarantee his survival was to kill his brother. This is not a sufficient explanation because it is obvious that for a while they co-existed peacefully, pursuing different vocations. Why didn't Adam kill Eve if his view of her resulted in one son killing the next. That will be the subject of my next post.

My Gift

Adam's reaction when asked about the fruit is interesting. At first he called the woman, "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." The meaning of that statement is found in the commentary that follows, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Adam realized that the Woman was one flesh with him. She did not have an independent identity. But he was reacting out of fear when he called her "the woman you gave me." This is significant. She had gone from being me to being mine.

As bone of his bone she was equal to him, but he now viewed her only as a gift. It does not matter how much a gift is admired and appreciated, it is never equal to the recipient. A gift can be abandoned, discarded, mistreated, destroyed, in addition to being cherished and appreciated. It simply is not equal to the recipient. Why the change? Not because she had changed. She was the same woman. Adam viewed her differently because of something she had done. And in that moment the seeds of human misery were planted, because inequality is the root of all human violence, in the same way that inequality in pressures are the root of all violent storms.