Humanism - Tumblr Posts

Why the fuck.

Why the fuck did we complicated soo much our lives? Why have we created societies, why have we created money, work, the "living earning dying", the taxes, the "men are better then women just because they have dicks and can't bear literal life", why have we done all of that ?

We can live. We are alive! This is such a precious gift to be here, on Earth, where there is nothern lights, and stars, where there are forests, and mountains, and the sea!

We have cats, we have the flowers, and bees!

Why have we done this to ourselves? Why have we stuck ourselves with the economy, with letting white dying men controlling every thing all while destroying the beauty of what makes living a good things?

Why have we created all of this?

What's even the point? We could have been all happy, all equal, we could have done so many precious things, things could have been as easy as "you like to create wooden statues? Then do it! Oh you, you love taking care of plants and flowers, okay, go on!"

But now we have to spend 15 years minimum at school, with minimum Sun exposition, something that is a necessity for Vitamin D, having to sit down all day, in silence, while wrinting down things, that for the most of it, will be completely useless in our future, just to then either, killing ouselves with work, or doing some other years of studying, and, in some country, this simple thing can endebt families for 40+ years, and all of this, just to do a job that you will hate, that will make you depressed, and you'll have to work you arse off just to make the barely minimum to live, if you are even lucky enough just to actully do it.

People have to work three job just to able to afford rent and food, when 40 years ago, one job, a few month of money set aside and you could buy a nice house.

Why have we done this to ourselves?

What's the point? Depression, anxiety, su!c!d3, all of these are happening a lot more than before, children are killed going to school, people fights and have wars over the way of worshipping the same god, people are massacred because they are in love, and other for being who they really are.

There are more slaves in today's world then it ever had in the whole history, even back when it was legal. Children are left to die in the street, and are easily kidnapped into something that no one, let alone a child that can't even comprehend what is happing, should live.

All of this for what? For something as ridiculous and useless as money!! People are starving, people are dying, people are sick because of this world and because of money.

Corporations are getting you sick, just so you can buy medicine that will heal the thing you need healing all while it's destroying another part of your body. Because sick people spends more money.

Why have we done all of this... And after that people still wonder why am I depressed at barely 18, people still wonder why do I want to disapear. Us teenagers are aware of that. The adults are just brainwashed into thinking this is normal. And they are trying to brainwash us into thinking it's normal.

When it's really not.

Thanks to every one who read the whole thing.

A Different Worldview and a Different History; Catholicism and Orthodoxy

The Roman Catholic Scholastic thinker Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote in his massive work, the Summa Theologiae, that theology is the "highest scientia" since a high degree of rationality is required to understand the most important and complex philosophical concepts about God. The universities that developed during the Scholastic period in the Christian West were intended to teach students how to deal in this "science" of theology through rigorous conceptual analysis. Theology was considered to be the preeminent Scholastic endeavor, a good thing in many ways. Yet, as a result of the high regard for logic and rationality in medieval Roman Catholicism, those who studied and taught (the "doctors") came to be more highly regarded than the monks and nuns (the "religious") whose main vocation was to pray.

Theology began to be expounded by scholars outside of the context of prayer, pastoral ministry, and liturgical worship. Pelikan traces this specific change in the West through the changing job description of the theologian. He notes that, between AD 100 and 600, most theologians were bishops; from 600 to 1500 in the West they were monks. But after 1500, Western theologians are university professors: "Gregory I, who died in 604, was a bishop who had been a monk; Martin Luther, who died in 1546, was a monk who became a university professor. Each of these lifestyles has left its mark on the job description of a theologian." After the sixteenth century in the West, the task of theology increasingly became separated from its earlier moorings to the worship of the community and the spiritual disciplines.

From an Eastern Orthodox point of view, knowledge of God comes only from an encounter with the God who has revealed Himself: "What may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them" (Rom. 1:19). Thus, theology can never be separated from prayer, worship, and contemplation of the Holy Trinity. Metropolitan Ware affirms that all true Orthodox theology is mystical: "Just as mysticism divorced from theology becomes subjective and heretical, so theology, when it is not mystical, degenerates into an arid scholasticism, 'academic' in the bad sense of the word." That is to say, Orthodox mystical theology guards against either unacceptable extreme: subjective and heretical, or arid and academic.

- A Basic Guide to Eastern Orthodox Theology, Eve Tibbs

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On "Why are so many atheists leftists?"

Atheism essentially means that you're not convinced that there is a god. That's IT.

So atheism ISN'T necessarily synonymous with leftism, yes.

...However, skepticism often goes hand-in-hand with atheism.

And skepticism is a great way to understand reality.

And Leftism tends to grow out of both an understanding of reality, and a desire to make that reality better.

Therefore: it makes sense that a lot of people who are BOTH atheist, and skeptically-minded, would tend to be leftists/anti-capitalists, and/or humanists.

People who are just atheists can be whatever else they like! They can even be conservative.

It really depends on whether or not they care if what they believe and if the facts that they know are true, and, whether or not they care about other people and the world in general.

“Caretaker”

Acrylic on Canvas Paper.

I’ve noticed this thing that happens whenever the learnéd armchair academic types talk about resource-based reasons to go live on the moon or Mars or wherever else in space. They always make a big deal about “oh it’s not really worth all the trouble when there’s more accessible and cheaper alternatives.”

Let’s use Helium-3 as an example.

He3 is the miracle fuel. Using it in a nuclear fusion reactor with hydrogen will get you loads of useful energy with negligible beta radiation and no radioactive byproducts. The only problem is that it’s rare as shit on Earth, to the point where the vast majority of it available at the present time has to be synthesized in difficult and highly radioactive deuterium-lithium reactions.

Most relevant studies indicate that the surface of the moon is loaded with He3, at least compared to Earth, because it has no atmosphere to intercept the solar wind. But of course, economists and aerospace nerds alike hem and haw about if it’s reeeeally worth it to go all the way to the moon for He3.

Okay, sure, you have to get off the surface of the Earth, which takes a lot of energy, then burn more energy getting to the moon, then burn even MORE energy getting OFF the moon and back to Earth orbit, and then a little bit more energy to get it safely to the surface of Earth. But I fucking guarantee you that if there was oil on the moon, the United States would have invaded it by now. That’s not a joke, it’s just stating the fact that oil barons have the money to get what they want whenever they fucking want it, regardless of how “practical” it is. It’s a matter of how broken our civilization’s value system is.

This extends to Mars (and beyond), because in the course of my researches I keep seeing people saying “there’s no useful resources on Mars we can’t get on Earth and living on Mars is hard to do so there’s no real reason to settle it.”

Do you know why Edmund Hillary climbed Everest?

In his own exact words: “because it was there.”

“Because it’s there” is the approach we should have to developing space exploration and expanding our civilization beyond Earth’s gravity well. Besides the scientific value (which is always superior to resources), actually living on other worlds is worth all the challenges.

Why?

Why not?

We as a species are prone to doing things just because we can, or because we think we can. We like to solve problems just so we can feel clever. Why live in hollowed out asteroids? Why live on Mars? Because we fucking can, dude, because it’s cool as shit and it’s a thing that we can do if we solve enough problems.

I was reading a Reddit thread earlier (bear with me) about what economic resources a Mars colony could provide. You know what the best answer was?

Art.

The most valuable thing future Martians will have to offer the rest of humanity would be their culture. Their new, exciting, melting pot culture. I think that’s 100% correct, and also the best thing I’ve read all year.

Once we get into space and start mining asteroids and gas giants, or hopefully long before that, our value system will have to change dramatically. Because metals and gases and water and carbon are abundant in the universe, but you know what isn’t?

Creativity.

Imagination. Art. Music. Literature. Dancing. Films and books and songs and a million other ways that humans express themselves. Imagination is the human spirit; art is love made manifest. That’s rarer than life itself, but it’s what makes life worth living for us human beings. For such small creatures as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.

Humans are not parasites on the world.

One thing that I think a lot of Environmentalists in America really overlook is that humans are supposed to be part of an ecosystem.  Humans are part of the food web; we fill an environmental niche, just as much as beavers and wolves do.   

We are SUPPOSED to interact with the environment- the problem arises when we begin interacting with the environment in UNSUSTAINABLE ways. This idea that we should try to “return” the environment to the way it was “before” humans so so so often ignores the way that Indigenous people all over the world were (and are) an important part of their environments- and trying to “preserve” those places without people filling their ecological niche can cause harm in super weird ways. 

You know how its shitty for deer populations if you take out all of the wolves? It’s just as bad if you stop all human hunting too. Humans hunting deer has been an important part of the food web for thousands and thousands of years! Deer populations NEED hunters- human, wolf, cougar- to stay healthy. 

Yes- massive clear cutting of forests and strip mining is bad. HOWEVER, not allowing Indigenous people to practice traditional controlled burns of grass lands? Not only makes wildfires worse, but ALSO fucks up the bio-diversity of those grasslands. Totally unmanaged “pristine” grasslands without humans are actually less healthy than grasslands that are sustainably managed by people.

Mono-crop super farms are not good- but humans have been farming for thousands of years- tending for plants and increasing their yield, monitoring the soil, in ways that benefit those plants and the other animals that eat them, and the other plants that use that soil, and the insects that make their home there. Sustainable, diversified farming isn’t bad. 

Laying out acres and acres of asphalt and oil pipelines? Bad. But digging natural cisterns in the dessert that catches rainwater for grazing animals to use? Benefits the entire ecosystem and all the animals in it. 

We are part of the environment. We belong here. And the ecosystems that human beings evolved in and lived in need us just as much as we need them. We aren’t parasites on the planet, we are a part of it. It’s just that global capitalism has thrown us terribly out of balance.  Colonialism and profit-seeking are the problem- not human beings existing.  

The goal of environmentalism should not be to protect nature by keeping humans totally separate from it, but rather to restore balance with our interactions with nature, for sustainable practices that help us coexist with the ecosystems that we are part of. That we have been a part of forever.  And that is hard with billions of people on the planet, yes, and we will need to be clever and resourceful and thoughtful to find ways of restoring that balance, it will take a lot of people working together to find those answers- but humans’ greatest trait has always been our cleverness and our ability to work together.