As I pointed out in Omar’s “religion and politics” thread,
I believe that both religion and politics value lies in
creating a person’s understanding of their place in the universe…
having a religion, any religion, creates an understanding of where
one’s stand’s in the universe………. it creates a place for one to
stand, a worldview allows one to say, here I exists in the universe…
so it is not the specific religion or the specific political stance
that is as important as the general belief in a religion or political stance…
so one might be a “Christian” in a Christian country,
but had that person been born in an Islamic
country, they would be Muslim or in a Buddhist country, Buddhist…
it is not about the specific religion as it is the need to create
an understanding of your place in the universe…… and religion
creates that and a political viewpoint creates that understanding
of who you are in the universe………. it creates a place for a person to
know who they are and where they fit into the universe………
adapting a religion or a political stance is to discover who you are,
but if that just means adapting the local traditions as a means to
place one in the universe, then it is possible that by adapting
the local traditions of religion or politics, you hid or misunderstand
who you are and what is your place in the universe…….
this is the value of toleration… it allows people to discover that they
are in fact, not Christians but perhaps they are really Buddhist or
Hindu and because they were born where they were, they never
discovered that……… they simple adapted via the myths and habits
and prejudices and superstitions of the local area that they were born in…
you support capitalism and you support Catholicism not because you truly
believe in them, but because you were born in an area that had as
their belief system, capitalism and Catholicism………you simply
took over the local belief system as your own…………
and this isn’t the path to truly understanding who you are…
it is simple taking the path of least resistance and taking over
your society worldview and making it your own………….
become human, truly human means trying to understand what you truly
believe in, not what you believe in because it was already there as a
worldview…………….the myths, habits, prejudices, superstitions that you simply
took over as your own…………………
a reevaluation of values means to understand what your real beliefs,
what your real worldview is, not just the beliefs or worldviews you
simply picked up as a child…………
it is not enough to be Christian or to be a conservative or to be
a capitalist……… you must actually discover if they are your real beliefs
or simply beliefs you adapted as a child because it was the indoctrinations
of your childhood………
do you have the courage for an reevaluation of values that might
tell you that your firmly held “convictions” are really just the
indoctrinations from your childhood…….are you brave enough to
undertake a true “reevaluation of values”?
few are brave enough to challenge their own tightly held beliefs
that sustain and create certainty and a place in the universe for them……
do you have the courage?
Kropotkin