Karyn

Posted on 2021 January 4by Mark Macy

 

[Note: I think that all of our savage behaviors might come from the same place within us for similar reasons, which we’ll consider briefly at the end of the article. Meanwhile, this article’s mainly about lying and cheating… since the headline “Why do we lie, cheat, steal, deceive, distrust, fear, hate, assault, rape, murder, force our beliefs on others, and do other things that cause suffering?” would be cumbersome… and too gloomy to ring in the new year. MM]

Most of us lie or cheat occasionally, especially when we add fun deceptions like practical jokes and surprise parties to the mix. There are all sorts of reasons why we lie and cheat, as we’ll see.

The general consensus is that a LOT of people lie and cheat a LITTLE bit, but just a LITTLE chunk of humanity lies and cheats a LOT.

The Science: Most of Us Lie and Cheat

Recently some 30,000 people have been participating in a series of Duke University experiments (led by professor Dan Ariely) that, unbeknownst to them, are designed to see how much lying and cheating people typically do while performing simple tasks for money.

• They might roll dice to win the number of dollars on the dice (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6)—but they’ll win either the face-up number or the face-down number opposite, which they’ve chosen earlier with a checkmark known only to themselves. (There must be some fibbing, because the bigger number came up statistically, unrealistically too often.)
• There happens to be a “faulty” vending machine set up near the testing area that drops a half-dozen bags of candy instead of just one, and also returns the test candidates’ 75 cents. (Most of the surprised snackers abscond with three or four bags of candy and their money, and no one calls the phone number displayed prominently for reporting machine malfunctions).

The experiments all use the “honor system” based on trust. The researchers’ favorite experiment is set up like a classroom test. The people are given five minutes to solve 20 math problems to earn $1 per correct answer. After the test they count up their correct answers. Then they feed their worksheets into a shredder. Finally they report the number of their correct answers to the researchers… unaware all the while that the shredder is rigged to shred only the borders, leaving the test results intact. So the researchers later dig the actual test results out of the shredder and compare them to the reported results. (On average, people get only 4 correct answers but report 6.)

Over the course of all the experiments involving some 30,000 people, the researchers encountered only about 12 big liars and cheats who together stole about $150 from the program, but there were about 18,000 little liars and cheats who together got away with $36,000.

Applying those results to humanity at large might suggest that big crimes are done by burglars, robbers, swindlers, pickpockets, and other professional or compulsive crooks who make up just 0.04 percent of the population, while the little crimes perpetrated by 60 percent of us are far more costly.

Whoa, back up.

We all know that projecting detailed statistics like those out into humanity isn’t completely reliable for various reasons. Well, for example:

• The study is predominantly American, and US morality isn’t shared by all cultures. (Come to think of it, when I use a search engine like Google to research articles like this one, the search results are “optimized” based largely on my nationality, so this article is bound to have a USA bias… which I’ll try to sort out in the conclusion.)
• Also, studies like these are about money, and money often skews morality (which, again, we’ll consider at the end of the article).

Even so, the fundamental finding of these studies is probably valid in all human cultures:

A LOT of people tell a FEW lies and cheat occasionally, while a FEW people tell a LOT of lies and cheat frequently. And it’s the little deceptions perpetrated by most of us that are the most costly overall.

Still, the big liars and cheats certainly lower humanity’s grading curve on the cosmic naughty-and-nice list, so it’s interesting to figure out why they do it.

Famous Liars and Cheats

A great article about lying and cheating was published in National Geographic (June 2017), called Why We Lie. It spotlights some of the most famous liars and cheats over the years. Whether they did it for entertainment, for personal gain, for political reasons, as part of their job, or just for the thrill of it, they include:

• PT Barnum (showman),
• Bernie Madoff (investment advisor),
• Richard Nixon (US president whose lies paled in comparison with current outgoing president Donald Trump, who told so many fibs—20,000 in four years—that his staff started calling his tweets and comments “alternative facts.”),
• Charles Ponzi (and other swindlers),
• Frank Abagnale, Jr (impostor turned security agent),
• Valerie Plame (and most other secret agents),
• Lance Armstrong (and other athletes who use illegal, performance-enhancing drugs),
• Apollo Robbins and Ava Do (and other successful magicians and con artists),
• Daniel Negreanu (and other successful poker players),
• Alexi Santana (a.k.a. James Hogue, ex-con turned charismatic college student at Princeton),
• Jayson Blair (journalist and plagiarist turned life coach),
• Mark Landis (and other art forgers),
• James Johnston (tobacco mogul and many other marketers of addictive substances), and
• Zardulu (an anonymous photo-enhancement wizardess whose “three-eyed fish” and other realistic creatures have gone viral).

There seem to be no bounds to the human imagination when it comes to lying and cheating… especially in the age of high-tech (which we’ll consider in a moment). So, the obvious question is…

Why Do We Lie and Cheat?

That same National Geographic article includes a statistical breakdown of why we humans lie and cheat:

First, to promote ourselves:

• For money (economic gain), 16%
• For nonmonetary gain, such as fame or influence, 15%
• For positive self-image, 8%
• For entertainment and humor, 4%.

Second, to protect ourselves:

• To cover up mistakes and misdeeds, 22%
• To escape or avoid people, 14%

Third, to impact others:

• To help people, 5%
• To hurt people, 4%
• To be polite and non-offensive, 2%

Fourth, for unclear reasons:

• No known reason, 7%
• Pathological or sociopathic behavior, 2%

So it’s apparent that most of us lie and cheat, at least a little bit, for various reasons.

Today, however, computers and the Internet have given a small, select group of people the ability to lie and cheat in a big way that can have a big impact on the world.

Internet-Optimized Cheating: Hacking

The richest and most powerful organizations today—governments, banks, militaries, corporations…— are all run largely by computers. Computers are run entirely by algorithms—instructions that tell the computer and other devices connected to the computer what to do and how and when to do it.

Hackers know how to manipulate algorithms and are becoming more and more adept at breaking into computer systems. Here are a few of the most famous hackers in recent history:

• Teenager Kevin Mitnick hacked into NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command), which controls US nuclear weapons, just to prove that he could do it, inspiring the 1983 movie War Games.
• Two British guys, Matthew Bevin and Richard Pryce, nearly started World War III by hacking into military networks in 1996 and dumping Korean military secrets into American military computer systems.

• Anonymous is a network of unnamed hackers who came together loosely in 2003 to sabotage computer systems for what they deemed social justice, especially restrictions against the free flow of information and the harsh punishments meted out to hackers who divulge state secrets and company secrets. They’ve been busy attacking corrupt government regimes, inciting civil wars, exposing bank corruption, disrupting credit card companies that oppose WikiLeaks’ freedom of information principle, stirring the pots of fringe religious groups, and so on. “Anonymous” members tend to attack what they view as misguided bastions of self-interest and wrong-doing, but since they’re not an organized group on a clearly defined mission, the righteousness of their own acts depends largely on the contentious dispositions of the hackers themselves (again, there’s that list of reasons).
• Adrian Lamo (a.k.a. “The Homeless Hacker”) often lived out of a backpack while logging into public wifi networks and breaking into corporate websites for various reasons. He might offer security consulting services to the companies he hacked, or alter online news stories in a prominent newspaper like the New York Times—for example by attributing dubious public statements to dubious government officials.
• Albert Gonzales (or “soupnazi”) led a pack of troubled nerds in high school before stealing data from millions of debit cards. When busted by the FBI, he became an informant for a while, but then went on to pilfer millions of payment card accounts from several big companies and to abscond with $256 million from the mother company of TJ Maxx. Then he was sent to prison for 20 years.
• Jeanson James Ancheta played with software-based robots (bots) that he used to infect and control hundreds of thousands of computers in 2005. He was caught and sent to prison, but not before selling his techniques to advertisers who would plant adware here and there across the Internet.
• A 15-year-old called Michael Calce (or “mafiaboy”) figured out how to take control of university computer networks and use their combined knowledge to disable Yahoo, Dell, ebay, Amazon, and CNN… akin to a teenage David taking a billion-dollar gang of Goliaths to their knees.
• Kevin Poulson (or “Dark Dante”) hacked the Pentagon’s ARPANET in 1983, was caught, and got off with a warning since he was a minor. He was busted five years later for hacking into the computers of Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos, but went on the lam to continue hacking government computers without doing much damage. Finally arrested in 1990 and barred from computers for three years, he eventually became a “white-hat” hacker and journalist and helped develop DeadDrop, a program that allows secure communications between journalists and their sources.

That gives an idea of how (and why) hackers operate.

Most alarming at the moment here in the States is the wave of “Russian hackers” who are breaking into computer systems of US companies and government agencies—not to cause any apparent damage or disruption, but just to keep tabs on what Uncle Sam is up to.

The solution to all of this hacking might be pretty simple. Thanks to the Internet, we seem to be entering a new era of free-flowing information. Openness and honesty make hacking obsolete. In the coming years, those who harbor the most secrets are liable to be the biggest victims of hacking.

Meanwhile, two good rules of thumb might be: 1) To keep secrets to a minimum, and 2) If certain secrets are necessary, block them completely from the networks (wi-fi, cellular, Internet….).

A Worst-Case Scenario

(The following scenario is hypothetical, but I think it might deserve some attention at the moment. MM)

Imagine living in a modern democratic country with a corrupt government regime that represents just a small segment of society—say the super-rich. Since leaders are elected by majority vote, how would they win elections and hold onto power?

Most likely, they’d lie and cheat. They’d manipulate the media to spread propaganda to attract susceptible minds to their cause—to stir up fear, anger, and dissension—the way Hitler did in Germany.

Then they might employ hackers.

• To stay in power they could hire hackers to rig the computerized voting machines. That would give the illusion that they represent a popular majority.
• To stay rich (even in bad economic times) they could hire hackers to rig the stock market, pushing it up-up-up and then applying the brakes whenever the market tries to correct itself and drop. That would give the illusion that they’re running a strong economy.

Then imagine a fluke in which the rigged voting machines are neutralized and the corrupt regime is voted out of power. How could that happen? Well…

1. Maybe the rigged machines are hacked on election night by a different team of anonymous, gifted hackers who locate the cheating algorithm (maybe it has some predatory nickname like jackal or orca), and then disable it in order to ensure a fair election.
2. Or an epidemic might sweep the country during the election year so that everyone has to stay indoors, and voting has to be done by mail.

Unlikely? Of course. But what would the corrupt regime do if their sure-bet election did fail?… as though some highly accomplished (almost godlike) force had stepped in to thwart the lying and cheating?

If the deceptive leaders were desperate to hold onto power…

• They might demand a recount (making sure the recount is rigged in their favor).
• They might pressure the courts to overturn the election results.
• They might resort to projection and smoke-screening (deflection) by accusing the opposition of rigging the election. (Projection and deflection are common motives of those who lie and cheat compulsively.)
• If that doesn’t work, they might devise ways to impose martial law and to stage a coup.

If none of that works and they end up powerless? Then what?

They’d probably pull the plug on the rigged stock market—fire the hackers who’ve been pushing the market up-up-up. The result would be a stock market crash of epic proportions.

Again, this is all hypothetical, but in the unlikely event that such a scenario did play out, how could people weather the storm?

With a little foresight, they might (quietly) start pulling most of their money out of the stock market before the change of leadership (which here in the States happens around mid-January every 4 or 8 years… 2021 being one of those years). Then just observe for a couple of months until the dust settles.

Stay safe… stay comfortable.

Detach from the drama as best they can.

Then, when things return to normal, they could resume their lives and their investments.

(Again, this worst-case scenario is all hypothetical. I’m the furthest thing from an investment advisor.)

Why Do We Really Lie and Cheat?

It’s all about predators, so please bear with me (no pun intended)….

I’ve spent nearly half my life researching “instrumental transcommunication”—a small subset of afterlife research that uses technology to establish a fragile contact bridge with the other side, and before that I was mostly interested in peace and world affairs.

Our INIT group (1995-2000) were reminded on various occasions by our transpartners (or spirit friends) that our transdimensional bridge to smart, positive beings like themselves could only be sustained if we could remain honest, sincere and friendly with each other. If we humans started feeling suspicious or envious toward each other (with thoughts of lying and cheating, for example), then we’d no longer resonate with our transpartners, and the bridge would weaken and become susceptible to negative and confused spirits—those that are drawn to people on Earth who are best described as “… swindlers, thieves, yes, even murderers…”. (Here’s more about that particular telephone contact… )

That, I believe, was our group’s biggest challenge and the main reason why our contacts began to dry up around the year 2000: Unwavering honesty, sincerity, and good-will are difficult to sustain in human relationships over time.

The question is, why?

I’ve been trying to figure that out nearly all my life—why human relationships are susceptible to deception, mistrust, fear, and other bristling emotions and motivations that lead to fights, riots, and wars.

Recently I think I’ve figured it out, and the answer is fairly simple:

Earth has a complicated symbiosis (or tangled web of relationships among living things), and we’re part of it. While most interactions between living things on Earth are forged on mutual respect, collaboration, and even love (especially mothers’ love of children), a relatively small but eye-catching number of interactions are predatory, in which living things hunt, harm, and sometimes kill other living things.

It’s that predatory quirk of life on Earth that leads to most of our drama, such as lying and cheating.

To survive in the wild, predators have to be deceptive and aggressive; prey have to be suspicious and wary.

In society, predatory behavior among us humans is more a choice than a necessity, but it certainly happens a lot, so we have to be on our guard constantly. Buyers and borrowers have to be wary of predatory businesses and banks and lenders. Businesses and banks have to be wary of predatory criminals. Criminals have to be wary of predatory cops (the rare “crooked” cops, or “bad apples’). Women have to be wary of predatory men. Peace-loving nations have to be wary of predatory nations….

Although predatory behavior is the exception to the win-win rule of life, the list of predators on Earth—both in the wild and in human relationships—is fairly long. And that produces an endless crosscurrent of deception and suspicion between predators and prey.

All of that deception and suspicion boils over into a whole range of negative thoughts and motivations that get trapped in Earth’s spiritual shadow.

I’ve come to believe that the entire omniverse is created and nourished by life-energy from the source. Life everywhere is intended to flourish on noble motivations that are bundled up in the life-energy, but the predatory nature of life on Earth deflects some of that life-energy, casting a spiritual shadow around our world. Lying and cheating are just two of the many ways that we humans contend with the shadow.

If you’re interested in learning more about the shadow and its influence on human affairs, (this article might help… )

On a closing note:

• Earth’s dark, symbiotic compulsions (predation, parasitism, and competition) are apparently rare throughout the omniverse. How and why they evolved in our world is a matter of long, complicated debate among us humans. There are much finer, brighter beings who’ve monitored our world across the eons, and they’ve given us some insights (which can be found here… ).
• Money is a manmade version of life-energy. While life-energy is a bundle of purely noble motivations that create and nourish the entire omniverse, money is used to create and nourish the noble-savage systems of our world. That’s why it can be used to nourish both our noblest dreams and our most savage inclinations, which include lying and cheating. On Earth we prize money the way other living beings throughout the omniverse prize life-energy.
• The key to finding peace, honesty, trust, and other noble motivations during a lifetime on Earth is simply to get in the habit of connecting our conscious mind to the source, for example through meditation, prayer, and other spiritual practices. Inviting the life-energy into our lives can help us realize that the dark dramas going on around us are just part of the illusion of our world… and our place in the drama is short and fleeting.

So lying, cheating, and other dark inclinations are simply a part of living on Earth, but if they cause others to suffer then they lower our spiritual vibration in a way that can have unpleasant consequences both during and after a lifetime.

The key to long-term peace and happiness is to adopt practices that foster noble motivations in our relationships with other people and with the planet… then decide from day to day whether, when—and especially why— we really want to lie and cheat.

In particular, how much suffering will it cause?

Best to choose carefully.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/01-earlyluxcollage1.png?w=434&h=206

Glimpses of the spirit worlds (third level) through the TV of ITC researchers Maggy and Jules Harsch-Fischbach of Luxembourg (circa 1987).

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/10energyflow0-1.png?w=303&h=307

Managing Life

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/02-julesverne3pix.jpg?w=640

Two lifetime pictures of Jules Verne (left) compared to a picture of him in his spirit body (right).

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/wanderer11c-small.png?w=348&h=261

The 7 heavens and 7 hells, according to Franchezzo.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/03-edisoncommunicator.jpg?w=379&h=297

The Saturday Evening Post advertised a spirit communicator based on the work of Tom Edison around the end of the first World War, when seances and Ouija boards were all the rage.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/04-robert-juliet-dalai.jpg?w=640

Robert Muller (UN Assistant Secretary-General), Juliet Hollister (Temple of Understanding founder), and the Dalai Lama. (photo courtesy of Alison van Dyk and Peter Ledermann)

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/05-worlditcnethomepage-border.png?w=640

The public and private sites (links to the left) provide a template for developing a resonant group.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/07-etherealbeing.jpg?w=640

Nsitden, one of The Seven ethereals or superhumans who regulate the ITC bridge.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/08-7collage.png?w=640

The seven (from top left)… Chakras, Rishis, Matrikas, Archangels and Churches of Asia, and Hathors.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/10-mark7.jpg?w=230&h=266

Here I am (left) with my late dad (right)….

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/11-aliens-dark1.png?w=640

A close study of Carly’s photos often reveals surprise visitors among us, invisible to the naked eye.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/12-heavenhell-vankcathedral.jpg?w=373&h=280

Heaven and Hell as depicted on a mural in Vank Cathedral (Isfahan, Iran)

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/14-geomeek1.jpg?w=640

George Meek, father of ITC… my mentor.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/15-marsquakerocks-nasa-small.jpg?w=291&h=199

A recent space.com article analyzed pictures of ruts and grooves behind some of the Mars rocks, suggesting the rocks had slid downhill recently, maybe as a result of a marsquake. (Credit: NASA/HiRISE image)

Posted on 2020 December 17by Mark Macy

Philosophy means “love of wisdom,” so this article is about the wisdom that’s been gathered by human minds across the millennia… what it is and how we humans shape it and use it in the course of a lifetime… or over the span of centuries as empires rise and fall.

It comes from the Greek word philosophia, so we often think of the Greeks as the founders of modern philosophy —Socrates in particular. Socrates would probably be the first to admit, though, that he was no more a founder of philosophy than Newton and Darwin and Einstein were founders of gravity and evolution and relativity. Human cultures have always revered wisdom, just as they’ve always been subject to gravity and evolution and relativity. That said, Socrates certainly was a vital figure in philosophy. Not only because he was smart and charismatic, but also because 1) he came on the scene at a crucial time, and 2) he was a paradox.

Paradox. Socrates (470-399 BCE) was a retired war hero who urged nonviolence while wandering the beautiful streets of cultured Athens as a rather homely, barefoot, bearded, unbathed vagabond. He enjoyed lively debates with young intellectuals, posing question after question as he skillfully guided the young men toward the contradictions of their beliefs. Socrates rejected the pantheon of Greek gods (tantamount to a Christian or Buddhist rejecting the Christ or the Buddha), but he admitted he was guided by a “divine inner voice,” and he often referred to God. The cultured, overindulged Greek epicureans dismissed Socrates as “that Athenian buffoon,” while the revered Oracle at Delphi (psychic channel to the gods) called him the wisest man in Athens. Ultimately the Athenian government, exasperated by Socrates, convicted and executed him (via poison hemlock) for defying the gods and corrupting the youth.

Crucial time. World civilization was at a turning point that started around 500 or 600 BCE* and lasted for a little more than a thousand years, ‘til around 500 or 600 CE*. That thousand-year period is sometimes called the “Classical Era” of world history and was made up of “Second Wave Civilizations.” Looking back on that time, it almost seems as if enlightened minds like Socrates in the West and Gautama (the Buddha) in the East were being born on Earth to usher humanity into the current era. Out with the old, in with the new. (More about that in a moment when we look at religion.)

It was a tumultuous time for the young civilizations as they sorted through the wisdom of the ages, found a few gems, stumbled upon a few dirty secrets, and went about devising philosophies for the new era. By the end of this article (or at least by the end of the series), we’ll try to get a better sense of how political advisors, scientists, teachers, and other philosophers of the time (and since) embraced the secrets of the ages, or tiptoed around them, or locked them away in closets.

• *BCE (before the current era, or before the common era) is another term for BC (before Christ), and it refers to all of the history that came before Jesus Christ was born. So the terms CE (current era) and AD (after death) refer to all of the history since the time of Jesus’s death. The timeline was established in the Holy Roman Empire while Christianity was prevalent in Europe, hence the use of Jesus as the major turning point in history.

History of Philosophy

Philosophy has a rich and colorful history… which I’m mostly going to ignore because 1) it’s unfamiliar terrain for me, and 2) there’s just too much information to fit into this relatively (and arguably https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/svg/1f642.svg ) short article. For those who are interested in the historical journey, some really good roadmaps are available.

First are a couple of flowcharts (right) that can be found here (history of philosophy)… and here (Eastern philosophy).

And second, there’s a neat trick—a simple 3-step process—that anyone can do:

1. Get a snapshot of the world at any particular time during the past 4,000 years—from around 2000 BCE to around 2000 CE,
2. See which cultures were flourishing on the planet at that particular time, and then
3. Type the name of a culture into a search engine like Google Chrome or Firefox, and start looking for gems of wisdom.

With that little trick the entire history of philosophy is at our fingertips. All we need is an Internet connection and a computer. Lots of those snapshots for Step 1 are already available on wikipedia. For example, here are just a couple of maps of how the world looked around the time of Socrates and the Buddha:

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/01c-worldculturesmaps-collage.png?w=1024 These are snapshots of human cultures around the time of Socrates, some 2,500 years ago (500 BCE and 600 BCE). A big collection of these maps were created by multiple authors* (top left), and by Thomas Lessman (lower right). Just go to wikipedia (with one of the following links).
Left: a convenient map of worldwide cultures, by John Haywood, The Cassell Atlas of World History. Andromeda Oxford Ltd.)
Right: a more detailed map of cultures in the Eastern Hemisphere, by Thomas Lessman.
Then, once you’ve arrived at one of those two linked pages: 1) locate the list of time-period maps and click on one, 2) choose a culture from the new map, and finally 3) type the culture name into a search engine to embark on a philosophical journey.
*(The “multiple authors” include John Haywood and Javier Fernandez-Vina and others, and they can all be accessed at the first link above.)

That’s about as far as we’ll go with the actual history of philosophy per se. Now we’ll take a look at some of the big forces that shaped philosophy down through the ages.

Forces That Have Shaped Philosophy

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/01d-philmap-forcescollage.png?w=1024 These maps show how certain macro forces have spread through the world in modern times to shape philosophy and the accumulation of wisdom: (1) literacy hence science, (2-3) economic and social vitality, (4) peace and conflict, and (5-8) religion. (all maps courtesy of wikipedia)

These are some of the powerful forces that have shaped wisdom and philosophy since the time of Socrates:

• Science and literacy,
• Economic and social vitality,
• Peace vs conflict, and
• Religion, especially

1. Christianity (a spin-off from Judaism),
2. Islam, and
3. Hinduism with its offshoots that include Buddhism, Yoga, Jainism, and Sikhism.

Just a few interesting comments on each of these forces….

Science and Literacy

Map #1 indicates world literacy (the darker greens) in recent years. Where literacy leads, science follows as educated people try to make sense of the world.

Western philosophy has been shaped largely by science ever since the time of ancient Greece, when Aristotle, Socrates, Thanes, and other bright minds sought meaning through astronomy, mathematics, ethics, biology, and other studies. Science separates truth from myth as best it can with the scientific method. A couple of very recent studies are especially fitting for philosophy and wisdom:

• Psychiatrist Dilip Jeste and his colleagues view wisdom as “a complex human characteristic or trait with specific components: social decision making, emotional regulation, prosocial behavior (such as empathy and compassion), self-reflection, acceptance of uncertainty, decisiveness, and spirituality.” The scientists associate wisdom with certain parts of the brain, and also with happy, healthy lives for those who put it to use. (Read more… )

• Lots of us growing up in a scientific culture have a philosophical a-ha moment when we start to notice that the microcosm resembles the macrocosm. Tiny atoms resemble huge star systems… the interactions of body cells and germs inside us are a lot like the interactions of people, plants, and animals around us. This year two Italian scientists have found amazing similarities between the structure of the brain and the structure of the universe. The brain consists of some 100 billion neurons, and the observable universe contains some 100 billion galaxies. Astrophysicist Franco Vazza and neuroscientist Alberto Feletti report, “Although the relevant physical interactions in the two systems are completely different, their observation through microscopic and telescopic techniques have captured a tantalizing, similar morphology, to the point that it has often been noted that the cosmic web and the web of neurons look alike.” (Read more… )

At the end of the article we’ll “wax philosophical” about whether those structural similarities between brain and cosmos might be more than just a coincidence.

Besides science, another force that affects philosophy in a big way is the economic and social condition of society.

Economic and Social Vitality

A vital society with a vital economy provides us with comfort, leisure, and the opportunity to let our minds explore philosophical issues that intrigue us.

Map #2 and Map #3 show how vital* various countries are in recent years. Darker colors indicate greater vitality—places where philosophy can flourish. When life becomes a struggle (lighter colors), philosophy and “wise life choices” often take a back seat as we react to and contend with the many problems around us.

• *Economic vitality is often measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and social vitality by the Human Development Index (HDI).

Peace and Conflict… and General Suffering

Map #4 shows societies throughout the world and how peaceful they all are in recent years. Dark green indicates the most peaceful countries, such as Canada, Australia, and Japan. Bright red indicates the least peaceful countries. Yellow countries such as USA, China, and Brazil struggle between peace and conflict (and the suffering and confusion that come from conflict).

We often think of peace and conflict as opposites, but peace is a little more complicated than that. The Global Peace Index (upon which the map was created) lists eight “pillars of peace”:

• well-functioning government,
• equitable distribution of resources,
• free flow of communication,
• good relations with neighbors,
• high levels of human capital,
• acceptance of the rights of others,
• low levels of corruption, and
• a sound business environment.

When these “pillars” break down, wars, rioting, and other forms of conflicts are just a few of the painful symptoms that can rear an ugly head. (There might also be famine, widespread disease and addiction, burgeoning refugee camps, crime waves, a host of economic problems, and much more.)

In any case, philosophy can flourish when these pillars are stable and there is peace.

Some would argue that philosophy can flourish under any economic and social conditions; there are even philosophies of war, after all. But that implies that there could also be philosophies of lying, cheating, stealing, murder, rape, and other savage behavior. I prefer to think of philosophy as a way to foster and understand the noble aspects of human nature such as love, honesty, generosity, cooperation, and kindness, while putting the savage aspects (including war) into their proper, shadowy perspective. (More about that at the end of the article.)

Religion

[Note: The last four maps in the collage only show the four most populous and widespread religions today: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. I reluctantly excluded the Jewish religion—Judaism—for three reasons. 1) Judaism today is mostly confined (80 percent) to the USA and Israel, 2) most Jews (62 percent) believe that Jewishness is defined by ancestry and culture; only 15 percent believe it’s defined by their religion, and 3) most Jews believe that being an actual Jew means having a blood link to Abraham, the father of Judaism some 4,000 years ago, and doesn’t include non-Jewish people who marry Jews or who simply adopt the Jewish religion or lifestyle. In any case, Judaism played a big role in ushering religious wisdom from ancient times into the modern era, as we’ll see below.]

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/01f-phil-religiontimeline.png?w=880 Religious timeline with a few key milestones. A proverbial “End Time,” or planetary spring-cleaning, apparently occurs several centuries before the end of an epoch amidst a long dark age, then a new epoch begins.

The Seven ethereal beings told our INIT group (in 1996) that the Second Epoch began in Babylon and was preceded by a long dark age. Earlier they’d told us that we today are entering another dark age with widespread drug abuse and conflict as we approach the end of the Second Epoch. So…

Referring back again to the world-maps montage:

Map #5 (Christianity), Map #6 (Islam), Map #7 (Hinduism), and Map #8 (Buddhism) represent the most prominent religions today. Of all the forces that have shaped philosophy, religion provides by far the richest understanding of how wisdom of the ages has been shaped and shifted for modern times. Here are a few important examples:

Hinduism and Buddhism

Hinduism in India (along with Judaism in the Middle East) is the oldest religion still alive today. It emerged thousands of years ago, includes the belief in many gods or deities, and is based largely on four puruṣārthas, or proper goals for human life, which could be considered philosophical cornerstones of the religion.

Four puruṣārthas of Hinduism:

• Moksha (liberation and freedom through spiritual understanding and practice),
• Dharma (righteousness, service to the greater good, and discovery of our life purpose),
• Artha (personal prosperity in relation to current social, political, and economic conditions), and
• Kama (desire and pleasure through beauty and sensual gratification).

During the classical era, those four cornerstones of Hinduism were tailored by Buddhism into three gems and four noble truths.

Three gems of Buddhism:

• Buddha (enlightenment through spiritual understanding and practice),
• Dharma (righteousness through worldly understanding and love), and
• Sangha (active participation in a resonant community).

Four noble truths of Buddhism:

• To live on Earth is to suffer from dissatisfaction and stress.
• The cause of suffering is our desire for the world to meet our expectations (or our expectation for the world to fulfil our desires).
• We can end suffering by seeing and understanding the true nature of reality that exists beyond the illusions of our material world. It’s a transformative process that involves spiritual practice and right thinking. Specifically…
• There are eight steps that can help us make that transformation to an enlightened state of mind: right views, intentions, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.

Although Buddhists don’t believe in God as a creative being, their concepts of “Buddha mind” and nirvana do suggest a central source of boundless love and wisdom to which we are all connected.

The important thing to notice about Eastern religion is that when Hinduism ushered very ancient wisdom into the current era (which began around 600 BCE), it included the belief in many gods and the pursuit of wealth (artha) and sensual pleasures like sex (kama). Most ancient human cultures believed in many gods, and epicurean living (sensual pursuit) was enjoyed throughout much of the civilized world. When Buddhism boiled down Hindu philosophy for modern times, the first things to go were those gods and the preoccupation with money and sex and other worldly pleasures, which can be a distraction to spiritual pursuits. The Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) said the cause of suffering is our desire for earthy things, which are illusory and fleeting.

So gods and money and sensual pleasures can became problems for spiritual pursuit if we become overly attached to them.

Christianity

Some 500 years after Gautama Buddha developed a tailored version of Hinduism, Jesus Christ developed a tailored version of Judaism in like fashion.

Many of the early ancestors of Judaism, such as Seth, Cain, Enoch, Menthuselah, and Noah probably had long lifespans or were otherwise “larger than life”—superhuman… like the legendary Sumerian kings, who were said to have lived some 20.000 years or longer. We might be able to consider them “gods,” for all intents and purposes… but that gets into touchy semantics.

Christianity (starting with the birth of Jesus around 1 BCE / 1 CE) used the rich, ancient wisdom of Judaism as a foundation for its religion, but Christians made it clear that by far the most important wisdom came from the teachings of the Christ himself, which include:

• Love God.
• Love your neighbor as yourself.
• Forgive others who have wronged you.
• Love your enemies.
• Ask God for forgiveness of your sins.
• Acknowledge and account for your sins (often interpreted as “repent” your sins.)

Later Christians would add, “Jesus is the Messiah and was given the authority to forgive others of their sins.”

The teachings of the Christ are similar to the teachings of the Buddha: Ancient heroes and gods and a preoccupation with worldly pursuits like wealth and sex are obstacles to spiritual advancement, not part of the way. (Again, more about that at the end of the article.)

Islam

Islam, like Christianity, uses the ancient wisdom of Judaism as its base, but by far the most important wisdom for Muslims comes from the teachings of Muhammed, which include the Five Pillars of Islam:

• Profession of Faith (shahada). “There is no god but Allah (God), and Muhammad is the Prophet or Messenger of God.” (Muhammad was said to have received a revelation from angel Gabriel. “O Muhammad, you are the messenger of God.”),
• Prayer (salat) for spiritual advancement and purification,
• Alms (zakat) for generosity,
• Fasting (sawm) for physical purification, and
• Pilgrimage (hajj) for anchoring oneself to the faith by traveling to a holy city—especially to Mecca (at least once in a lifetime), and other pilgrimages can include Medina, Jerusalem, Karbala and other holy sites.

Islam is similar to Buddhism and Christianity in that it dismisses the ancient gods while urging spiritual and physical purification.

One final note about these religions: All of them, with the possible exception of Buddhism, believe in God (the source of all existence), ethereal beings (angels), and spirits that all exist beyond the physical realm. At the end of a lifetime we join them as we leave the Earth to resume living as a spiritual being. Some religions believe that our living spirit can return to Earth for another lifetime (reincarnation).

And now it’s time to sort through the ancient wisdom, to figure out what’s been preserved in good form, what’s been lost, and what needs to be restored as we humans try to come up with a philosophy for the Third Epoch.

Back to Basics

Here are some of the basic questions that I believe need to be asked as we humans develop a sensible philosophy for the future (I tend to believe at the moment that the answer to all these questions is “yes,” but that’s just one guy’s opinion, and the questions are certainly open to debate):

• Is science the most reliable earthly source of information about our world and the material universe?
• Are there “parallel” universes superimposed over our own material universe, all within a vast, multidimensional omniverse?
• Is there a source at the center of everything (God, Allah, Brahman, Yahweh…) that creates and nourishes the omniverse?
• Are material things more illusory and spiritual things more real?
• If there are highly advanced extraterrestrial cultures who want us to join them, should we make an effort to do so?
• Is it important or even valid to polarize human behavior (right/wrong, good/bad, noble/savage…)?
• Does world culture go through a series of major “End Times” that purge the planet?
• Can we assume that literacy, peace, and economic and social vitality are in the best interests of our descendants? And should we today make them a very top priority?
• Does the nested structure of life that exists on Earth —systems within systems within systems—also exist in spirit?*
• Were gods and giants on the Earth in ancient times?**

Questions like these are what we’ll be exploring in future articles in this series. Regarding the last two on the list, for example:

*Yes, the nesting that we see in material things also seems to apply to spiritual things. If we looked inside ourselves with both physical tools (e.g. microscopes) and with spiritual techniques (e.g. meditation), we might discover that…

• Our body contains organs like the heart, which contain cells, which contain even small systems called organelles. Physical nesting is a certainty of life.
• Interdimensional or spiritual nesting is also part of our human make-up. Our body contains a series of subtler living copies that extend “in-beyond” (into subtler dimensions) leading toward the source. As well as the physical body, we have astral bodies, energy bodies, and light bodies “inside” us that are imperceptible to us.
• Just as we have finer beings within us as part of our make-up, planets and stars and entire galaxies also have subtle copies in spiritual realms. It’s easy to imagine that a finer spiritual template of a galaxy is “really” a brilliant light being, or maybe a vast community of light beings, each residing close to the source but also representing a star way out there in the material galaxy where you and I can see them through telescopes.
• We might even learn someday that every living thing on Earth contains within itself a tiny facsimile of the entire universe… the way our brain of 100 billion neurons seems to be a tiny reflection of the vast universe with its 100 billion galaxies.

The sheer enormity of these issues makes them suitable subjects for the noble field of philosophy.

**Did “gods” and giants walk the Earth in the days of yore? Evidence strongly suggests they did.

https://macyafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/01i-megaliths.png?w=1024 Did gods and giants walk the Earth in ancient times? As the mysterious “Mr Occam” might say while observing the mighty, ancient megaliths in our world, “Well, duh….”

Of course there are many other questions that have puzzled or excited philosophers down through the ages (check out a list of more than 200 of them here). A few of those questions might also be the addressed by future articles in this series, such as:

Why do we lie and cheat? – What’s the meaning of life? – What’s a good life? – Are lives shaped more by fate or by free will – What’s consciousness? – What’s intelligence? – What’s humor? – What are human rights?

So, I’m looking forward to exploring some of these philosophical questions in the coming weeks and months… and hopefully this article is a good start.