The article is in Huffington Post.

Okay, I'll confess. I was trying to figure out why Desmond Tutu was writing about computer operating systems (there is a flavour of Linux called Ubuntu). Of course, he's talking about the word "Ubuntu" that the developer of Ubuntu Linux used to name their version. Sigh, I live in geek-land too much.

 

As for the article itself, I am totally with the Archbishop. I had not actually known the meaning of the word but the concept it embodies, at least from his explanation, harmonizes beautifully with my UU principles, esp. the first and seventh.

 

 

 

And he is right. Without recognizing the interdepence of our lives, we cannot easily bring about the peace that this world needs.

 

Mendalla

 

Yup. I should have expanded on it so people could catch the drift of it at a glance-in the OP. I posted it right after I read it last night.

The principles (both Ubuntu and UU- thanks for that Mendalla.lol Almost typed 'Mandella') make total sense to me. How could they not, one has to wonder?

Oh. Oops. Thanks for pointing out, his formal title is 'Archbishop' Desmond Tutu.

Actually, he is retired so I think he's "Archbishop Emeritus" or something like that.

 

Mendalla

 

The new age is all about "synthesis", which is an awakening or the realization on a global scale of exactly what Mr. Tutu says regarding no one being an island. Humanity will take huge strides once it begins to work and think as groups, rather than individually.

Often, thinking in groups is part of the problem, i.e. tribalism- but I think you're right in that looking at things from a whole picture perspective is crucial. The whole human family= 1 group.

It's the only way Kimmio, as we expand in arwareness our horizon begins to envelope the world. It's been said that when the Christ makes His official entrance into world (and thus "awakening" humanity from a deep sleep), it'll be like He is "embracing the whole world ". Mankind will never be the same again, living with the awareness of God.

N Frye would say that that larger relating would be like "de phoqah us in" ... broader view ... and the human part was removed as in error ... or Eire! Thus the milque'n of de moloch entire ... so much bull is required for continuum ... as demonstrated in the myth of Juda' and Tamiyr ... chi stilled the fires of juda' with a darker version of heat ... sort of kohl sects ... differs from tribalism!

 

The tribunal of humour when you see this from beyond the fringe group ... causes distribution when your Piscine in Riffs ... this might appears as Eyre, or odd winds in reality ... like Mariah! Maria on the west's ide with those hoods ...?

 

The myths and musique one must sequester to cause syncronicity ... sloe Ba'aLeim ... for those conditioned not to think ... religion of stew ß'iddity if you don't know strange letters and alien icons!

 

If you do know strange things those of brute ability will make you out as a grape ... the conjecture of loo Greece ... sometimes spelt as Lucrece ... and the Rape of the Classic La-Di ... Roman brutis were like that ... look what they did to cley o patois ... where we get the line on Pi and it goes on and on  as Pi is lengthy as suite ... goes round!

Like it or not, scientists are the "High Priests" of today

 

Once scientists come down on the side of synthesis, by declaring that the universe is one inseparable whole, an eternal energetic singularity in a state of synthesis, then it will be easier for people to feel universal at-one-ment, and think and act from this feeling.

 

 

 

In one way, in that they are the ones actually curing diseases and discovering knowledge about our world and universe - things that religions used to attempt to do, and do badly.

 

Again, saying what science is going to discover is going too far. I know this is what you believe, and how you view the world, and that's great. But to say you know what the scientific consensus is going to be...just sounds like more religious thinking to me.

 

And you think people will act on this sort of discovery?

 

Arm, we're all related, if you go back far enough. We're all Africans. At the atomic level, we're even related to the rocks under our feet and the ice at the poles. We all come from the same stuff.

 

If this knowledge hasn't changed people, what discovery about the universe is going to change behaviour?

 

Yes, chansen. Unfortunately, this knowledge hasn't changed people.

 

I had some mystical experiences when I was ignorant of basic science, but I did not believe in supernatural explanations. Then, when I tried to explain my mystical experiences and feelings in scientific terms, I stumbled and bumbled  badly, and my cousin and friend took pity on me and gave me a high school science textbook to study.

 

I did, and jumped high for joy. How spiritual it all was to me! I couldn't understand, and still don't, why people who learn basic science in high school don't jump high with joy over it?

 

Maybe because it is not presented to them in a spiritual way? Maybe it is because they think that the ancient religious superstitions is the only way to be spiritual?

 

I don't know, Arm. I think Carl Sagan went a long way towards presenting the universe of science in a more spiritual way. Just read the "Who Speaks for Earth?" chapter of Cosmos.

 

The problem is twofold to my mind: the old superstitions are simple and they relate everything back to being human.

 

Even a child can grok Genesis (on day one, God did this; on day two, God did this; and so on) and the creation myth leads straight into a myth about the human condition (Eden and the Fall).

 

The Big Bang is a terrible misnomer and not really an accurate picture of what modern cosmologists think happened but sticks around because, again, it is a simple image. However, it also comes across as a very remote (in space and time) event that is hard to make relevant to being human. That's where Sagan succeeded to some degree in Cosmos. He actually found images that related being human to those cosmic events.

 

The short answer, I guess, is that we need more Carl Sagans who can make science feel spiritual; who can take cosmology and evolutionary biology and make them feel relevant and show how understanding them helps us understand the human condition.

 

Mendalla

 

 

when Alexis de Tocqueville toured the USA, he noticed the peculiar genius of american society -- self interest properly understood -- paying attention to everyone's self interest is a precondition for ones ultimate well being.

And he noted that this wasn't done out of any ideology or nobility, but, rather, out of America's pragmatism.

Adam Smith shared these ideas as well.  Remember him?  Wealth of Nations and all that.

 

 

If my (and my fellow WCer) mores, ethics, cultural norms, sense of fairness, etc are a global outlier, as seem to be supported by recent realizations (see 'WEIRD psychology'), then that makes trying for a universal syncretic way of being even harder...

(those notions might be the notions of us WEIRDos for one...)

and these have physical effects too -- like how us WEIRDos see Muller-Lyer Illusion differently than, say, people from Senegal

 

and various other things like our notions of governance, treatment of mental illness, economics:

 

"The test that Henrich introduced to the Machiguenga was called the ultimatum game. The rules are simple: in each game there are two players who remain anonymous to each other. The first player is given an amount of money, say $100, and told that he has to offer some of the cash, in an amount of his choosing, to the other subject. The second player can accept or refuse the split. But there’s a hitch: players know that if the recipient refuses the offer, both leave empty-handed. North Americans, who are the most common subjects for such experiments, usually offer a 50-50 split when on the giving end. When on the receiving end, they show an eagerness to punish the other player for uneven splits at their own expense. In short, Americans show the tendency to be equitable with strangers—and to punish those who are not.

Among the Machiguenga, word quickly spread of the young, square-jawed visitor from America giving away money. The stakes Henrich used in the game with the Machiguenga were not insubstantial—roughly equivalent to the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies. So Henrich had no problem finding volunteers. What he had great difficulty with, however, was explaining the rules, as the game struck the Machiguenga as deeply odd.

When he began to run the game it became immediately clear that Machiguengan behavior was dramatically different from that of the average North American. To begin with, the offers from the first player were much lower. In addition, when on the receiving end of the game, the Machiguenga rarely refused even the lowest possible amount. “It just seemed ridiculous to the Machiguenga that you would reject an offer of free money,” says Henrich. “They just didn’tunderstand why anyone would sacrifice money to punish someone who had the good luck of getting to play the other role in the game.”

 

--excerpted from here

 

(this also makes me think of the psychology, social norms etc of the Bibble writers...it would be a mistake to automatically assume that they were like us...our notion of agape might be tremendously wrong...but then, what do we do, really?  we adapt our experiences through our particular WEIRDness and make it our own...)

That precondition for our well being will begin to spread out as we widen our horizon to include the "larger" self, i.e. the heart of Humanity, the great fallen angel.

 

Lucifer #1 fan :3

 

EDIT:  i grok

 

the well being has to be voluntary and not strictly in the hands of elites

 

and, and it probably is a good idea for America to survive, then, and spread its particular brand of pragmatic self-interest into the globe which doesn't necessarily have that...i see you agree with American Exceptionalism...:3

Absolutley Mandalla, but Chansen's right in that we so far we've done nothing with the knowledge we already have..

As long as we're human, I'd say, we'll always be changing our behaviour. Hope springs eternal, right?


Heaven, they say, is a state of mind, an inner state of Being or consciousness. If the world is going to change it has to be "us" who change it. It has start from within. With our actions and behaviour towards our neighbours.


All the knowledge in the world can't save us without the practice of "right human relations". This is path of least resistance to living in peace. This is wisdom backed by knowledge.

 

Neo,

 

who is this we?

 

Humanity has done nothing with the knowledge humanity already has?  Do you truly feel that, since 'heaven on Earth hasn't been attained', that humanity has not accomplished anything worthwhile?

We haven't done nothing, agreed, but the same old demons of war and poverty still plague our society, in the third and the first worlds. Despite our technologies and our philosophies, materialism still (apparently) rules the world.

Maybe I expect too much.

And Utilitarianism (belief in what's good for one should be good for all) is a fallacy in the phoqah thyself syndrome ...

 

Such things are mental intercourse that screw up the brian that is primarily gonadal matterial ... why they are sometimes called psychic phoqahs ... or just brain farts?

 

One has to live in the PEW a bit ... to evaluate the stray intellect ... it is scattered or sometimes called onan-ized! This because the great dark demon lost it when (s)heh in what was made by love alone ... without a Shadow of doubt?

 

Yes, of course, Carl Sagan represented the universe in a spiritual way. That's why I became a Sagan fan in the mid-eighties, joined SETI, watched his original Cosmos series with fascination, and read his book Cosmos with even greater fascination.

 

Yes, we need more Carl Sagans! Neil Tyson is a worthy disciple, and so are others, but there aren't enough of them. I wonder why? Because conventional religion still dominates the field of spirituality, and gives the impression that to believe in the old superstitions is the only way to be spiritual?

 

 

We have taken a few important first steps toward creating "heaven on earth," but there is much more to do. The fist step is always to raise individual consciousness or awareness to the unitive level of universal at-mone-ment. The right thought and action will then inevitably follow. I think more and more of us humans are becoming aware that we are one inseparable whole. Alas, this awareness has not yet reached a critical mass.

 

Once we have reached the critical mass, there will be a mass conversion.

Some people are getting it, Neo, and some aren't. We had a discussion about this at a gathering hosted by some Bahais friends of ours and the Bahais are feeling the day is coming close when we will transcend old tribal divisions. We have certainly made progress over the last few decades. This Bahai gathering illustrated that, if nothing else, with a mix of nationalities, ethnicities and religious ideas (no, the gathering weren't all Bahais) that likely would not and could not have happened in, say, the 1950s.

 

But, as you rightly note, not everyone is getting the message or they are getting it and not getting on board with it. Witness the fundamentalism in both Christianity and Islam as an example of this. The human tendency to associate with like and shun or persecute the unlike persists not matter how much science and philosophy may show us how much we really are an interdependent whole. I'm a realist and do not expect to see a world based on "Ubuntu" in my lifetime but I'm also hopeful that if voices like Sagan and Tutu keep speaking up and hammering home the point, if people like you and me who do do get it start trying to live it, then the day may come. That is really the hope of my faith - that we can make the world better, work towards a "Kingdom of God" (where God is whatever our highest value is) even if it isn't something imminent.

 

Mendalla

 

If you're outside a certain band of elite Christians (successful in earthy dimension) you are going to helle as a hollai Lam (Greek Lambda). Jared Lambda usually is implicit as 50 shades or so ... doesn't keep well when opened --- Da Vinci! Perhaps something to do with the blood-brain bar rai-erre!

 

You know the "bar"? Eim ITz Fa ... something to approach with great difficulty like Bo-shun ... or the confusing cold shoulder from those that follow the rules of passion and war ... all'sfaere ... so why not take flight in a tongue that few understand ... then they won't know your immersed in strange thoughts ... like reading about Dr. Noes tome on ETIHÇ (teleontological; single purpose as vs deontological which allows there is a duty to discourse or LOGOS, or one should talk it over). It is designed that way so those that don't want can be sated with non-Des-ider-aða ... or absence of thought. Whats an "aða"? 

 

IT is a smooth unknown and unseen explicite by those that haven't been there ... beyond themselves! It is something the ego-centric cannot get over as Sysiphus ... a kind of sybilline rivalry in a dimension that claims to be equitable ... but isn't! In rationalite ... the mind regresses or recesses into any available cracks as a Seman-ite does into an effort to connect halves that experience weird connects! These would be mentally spiritual and thought provoking after the mind phoqah ... sometimes referred to as brain f*ck by those that don't believe and thus don't possess, or are possessed by sol' ... a buried emotion (spirit) that Shadowy! There are opposing forms where the talent of eternal wisdom is also unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18 that supports the Ab Ba'd as quality in which abstraction make the heart grow fonder). This is very intriging if you think it over profoundly with the internalized Complex "i".  Some don't believe and damn such visions! These cause cults beyond sects ...

 

If you have to ask you don't got "nun" and should get some ... but possibly are in denial of  the potental! It can be eclectic ... like jillbolted when in proximity to hoersis ...

 

According to Matthew 5:22 if you call the lesser people in this competition fools ... "ye shall see the lights of eLLe"!

 

Then there are those that just cling to the physical version of gold instead of the fools quohl-aÐ ... a wisdom that'll knock you çillai when encountered out there ... in thr dark depths!

 

You don't expect me a creature of 'eLLe to say this simply when it is issue of complexity like the imaginary "i" (eye)? Such abstracts as con-science look over your shoulder. It this hind vision is in place causes passionate actions to alter.

 

Some people do not believe in psyche's that are the home of conscient bean of ahasasca ... it grows in a spiral as escalina ... but those that don't immerse themselves in LOGOS will never understand that spiralling sort de vine formation ... Dante stated that this was the place of the seed of everything except the human life ... this was cultivated in a mental state ... which, if mind does not exist ... must be an imaginary state ... that depending on the nurture could be heaven or hell! Some jinns are required ... but these are everywhere due to the explosion of all other life on the face of the dirt of IT. Sometimes referred to as mire which is opposing to MIR!

 

What's IT? Something that dunnes hat must collect  between the rim/rhyme/rime/rye as old salt, or in the circle of androidian cap ... which too is mortal ... he is characterized in an Irish Car Tune ...