GO ON TO CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION
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Arthur M. Jackson
Copyright 2001, 2003, 2006
The aim of this book is to promote the establishment of a science of ethics and wisdom groups. Both of these are attempts to help persons achieve maximum personal freedom and to use it well. These efforts are simply an expansion of the first and second goal of wisdom. The first goal of wisdom: Escape the bondage produced by the accident of one’s birth. The second goal of wisdom is: Avoid replacing any restrictions set by birth with others that impose equally severe limits on one’s ability to think and act.
Normally an individual automatically accepts the religion and values of the family into which they have been born without much thought or examination. I was unable to follow that pattern. As a result I have labored since early youth to find alternative answers for the meaning of life. The ideas presented here developed out of those efforts to find something I could believe in enthusiastically without embarrassment, or being mentally shackled.
Common wisdom tells us that in catastrophe there lies opportunity. I’ve been very fortunate because my early life afforded such opportunity. I grew up in a single-parent, dysfunctional family, without a father, in poverty, with almost no social ties, moving at least once a year, and some years as many as seven times. Collectively, all these things provided me something that was priceless. They set me free for my own wisdom quest receptive to ideas from all cultures and all of history, and ultimately, they have led to the publication of this book.
My life's quest has been to fit all relevant ideas into one congruent whole. My conviction is that I have found a way to do this. Unfortunately, this approach -- which I take to be the only one that will work -- involves ideas considered to be taboo by most members of current societies -- those with a scientific bent as well as those more in tune with the humanities, not to mention a broad spectrum of non-academics.
I claim to have laid the basis for a science of ethics utilizing as an organizing principle "meaning of human life." I believe through good fortune -- being in the right places at the right time -- I have been able to ask the right question. And, though it is unlikely that I have found the final answers, I hope that what I have assembled provides insights that will allow others to better focus on developing the answers humanity needs in order to get through the difficult years ahead and blaze a path toward a future in which each person is a self-fulfilled participant in a world-wide utopian society with a clear vision of what it takes to sustain this lovely planet with sufficient biodiversity to make it an exciting place for human living.
I was raised in a Christian family with a single parent mother, a younger brother, and an older sister by a previous marriage. We moved a great deal since Mother as the sole bread winner had to play every angle to provide the necessities of life with limited advantages to draw from. Although for brief periods we lived near family, mostly we grew up pretty much independent of strong social ties. Outside sources of values, guidance, rules, standards, requirements; i.e., schools, newspapers, movies, and related sources of input, were disembodied forces even when enthusiastically embraced. As a result rarely was there clear guidance in setting goals, assessing abilities and weaknesses, evaluating motivations, etc. I rarely if ever consciously accepted anything just because it was the custom, or because it was supported by authority. Unless something made sense to me based on my own experience and understanding the best I could do was to reserve judgement until I gathered more data. That was the background for my interactions with religion.
[p. 2]
Our family was Protestant (non-practicing); however after I reached school age my mother encouraged us kids to attend Sunday School. I did so intermittently over the next several years even though I never liked it. Even when kind acts were done such as providing Christmas presents to our poor family, my primary feeling was shame rather than appreciation. The thing that finally led to my separation from church attendance at around the age of ten was my recognition of the implications of the ongoing message: "Only we are saved. All others are damned to Hell."
For me rather than being a reason to be with the "saved" this was rather a reason to opt out of a group with such a cruel God. Part of what made this possible was the effects of our frequent moves as I was growing up. I had attended various Protestant Churches of different denominations. They all told the same story: "Only we are saved." It was the recognition that though they couldn't all be right, they all could be wrong that caused me to stop going to Sunday School. But for reasons I can't explain I wanted to learn what was right and what was wrong. I assume that this was part of a basic human drive for social connection, which each person plays out in a way appropriate to her or his particular circumstances.
I spent the next ten years or so of my life wading through religious ideas in an attempt to clarify this point. During this time I discovered science and was immediately attracted by its approach. This became an ever-expanding source of study and interest for me, which eventually led to my becoming a science teacher for six years. But since in my community science was suspect and religion was not, I continued to explore religion. As I searched for answers I alternated between examining the various religions; agnosticism; atheism; being overwhelmed by confusion, fear, conflicting messages; being "turned off;" feeling ready to try again; etc.
I started off accepting without even realizing it, the core Christian assumptions: God created the universe, Jesus was God, people have immortal souls that go to Heaven or Hell depending on how they live, the BIBLE was written by God, and much, much more. Slowly, I began to identify more and more of these things that had been accepted with no conscious thought. As I learned that these things were not rational, logical, universally accepted, or useful, I tentatively doubted most of my culture's religious beliefs as I worked to determine to what extent I had been misled. This was not done consciously as part of a master plan, but rather feebly, haltingly, and uncertainty. I searched and searched for a rational position. I did not necessarily expect to have every question answered. But I did want some assurance that my beliefs would have a better foundation than the accident of being born into this particular culture. I searched and listened to everyone I could find who had relevant things to say about religion. But their positions were always inadequate.
I began with tentative doubt. As my search to find a combination of reason and Christianity met with continued failure, my doubt became less and less tentative. In this first stage of doubt I was ashamed because I doubted and largely kept my doubt to myself. I could see that there were many things wrong with the supernatural view, but I still believed enough of the associated ideas to have a shaky foundation from which to look for an alternative belief system.
In the next stage, I expressed my doubts in intimate discussions with others without reservation, but I was embarrassed when I heard expressions of doubt voiced by others in public. I thought that people should not publicly say that the BIBLE is not divinely inspired or that God does not exist, etc. Also, sometimes when I felt quite alone, I would fall back into believing some of the comforting teachings of my childhood. But, as soon as I heard others talk about Christian or theistic ideas and concepts, the ignorance being expressed forced me away. I was compelled to continue my search for ideas that would not require persons to deny their ability to think and reason, the abilities, which most profoundly separate us from the other animals and lie at the core of our humanity.
[p. 3]
In the subsequent stage of doubt, I felt no embarrassment on hearing any opinion. I tried to evaluate the comment on its own merits putting aside my own sensitivity based on the painful inner struggles that led to the rejection of Christian doctrine. I could even defend what I judged to be the worthwhile and useful aspects of systems presenting a world view built on the supernatural: for example the focus on community and helping each other and on charity towards the poor and needy, some denomination's emphasis on the importance of each individual's ability to interpret what they read in the BIBLE, contributions to art and culture, support for humanitarian social change.
The following stage consisted of rising above doubt (going "Beyond Doubt"). In this stage, I realized that it cannot be proven whether God exists or does not exist. More important, I realized that it does not matter whether or not She exists. Her[1] existence or lack thereof has nothing to do with humanity. Those who most profoundly and most deeply study God recognize that God is the Great Silence[2]. Any messages from God turn out to only be echoes from within the suggestible person's own brain. Our only connection with God is through other people, or a "feeling" in our brain. Either way it's our own thinking that guides us. We decide whether or not to be guided by our priest, friends, customs, etc. So the fact of God would be immaterial since there is no way of knowing God's will, what God has in mind for us. Anyone who says they know God's will has a great deal to prove.
In addition it became clear to me that even if God's footprints could be clearly seen, the existence of God would not ensure human beings meaning per se. Given God, people might still be the accidental products of other God directed goals, or have been produced for other reasons, etc. So, in what way does God's existence provide people meaning? This is what the system presenting a world view that makes up a given Church has always tried to answer. In a universal sense, they have always failed because the results were not successful -- as measured by any objective standard -- even within the society of origin. When "missionaried" out of that society, they were even less successful, and frequently horrendous.
Christianity has destroyed numerous individuals and societies and must bear the responsibility for those deeds (along with the praise for its message of love and efforts that have led to the recognition of the importance of the individual). Folk religions[3] must always fail because their strength is in their appeal to the "tribal" propensities; e.g., belief in magic and the power of wishing, us vs. them, dominace/submission, territorial imperative. ("Tribal" propensities are discussed in Chapter One.) Focusing on, and promoting these propensities prevents the development of the parts of the mind essential for the long-term survival of our species, and the development of our "Symbolic Species,"[4] or "wisdom" potential. For all these reasons I conclude that it is not possible to construct a system presenting a world view to provide sustainable "happiness"* by use of a God concept.
We can only know what we are and not what God is. I saw that it is important not that we inquire into the nature of God, but that we inquire into the nature of human beings. Beyond Doubt is acceptance of the One Right Way corollary; i.e., all God concepts are based on ignorance. It is not the denial of God's existence, but the denial of the importance of this question. When I accepted the One Right Way (discarding all supernatural explanations), I accepted a path not a position. This was the quest for Wisdom -- the spiritual quest.
[p.4]
It appears to me that each of us have within our personal experience the evidence of our own erroneous ideas and beliefs. For some persons these signs are crystal clear. For others they can only be recognized at unique moments, or by outsiders. I share my life story not to refute the supernatural, but to show one person's path in doing so. The hope is that this will provide encouragement to others searching to make sense out of their own life. I am not interested in destroying any individual's religion. Rather, I want to build an approach based on wisdom that will make life better for everyone. The ultimate refutation of folk religions consists of providing an alternative that each individual accepts eagerly because they realize it is truly what they have wanted all the time. An inability to accomplish the foregoing of course by default tends toward maintaining current folk religions and the present state of the world.
Part of that current state of the world is the threat of world calamity that could actually wipe out our species. Part of that current state of the world is the existence of starvation, disease, poverty, corruption, ignorance, exploitation, suppression, abuse, crime, war, and all those atrocities perpetrated by Adolf Hitler, Stalin, the Ku Klux Klan, and all the other tyrants -- petty and not so petty -- throughout human history. All of these problems are in a fundamental way tied into the inherent, unfixable problems within folk religions that would be effectively addressed by a science of ethics.
Folk religions have diverted human thinking from the real to the fanciful because they focus on Good vs. Evil which are Platonist ideals rather than on knowledge vs. ignorance which are empirical concepts that include things that exist in the real world. Folk religions often say that the vicious actions by many individuals show that there is Evil in the universe. But for a science of ethics the problem is not Good vs. Evil. That is where folk religions have misled us from the very beginning. The problem is between knowledge vs. ignorance. Knowledge provides us the potential to find Wisdom. I define wisdom as that aspect of knowledge which when applied to one's life increases the probability that they will achieve their goals and that those goals will include achieving their full positive potential.
Today, we can move farther in the direction of becoming our best self than persons of previous ages only because of the knowledge and experience they have provided us. However, only an enlightened community has the required goals, structures and priorities for using resources to provide the necessary assistance each person needs.
No individual can become an enlightened person only through their raw genetic propensities. Part of what stops us is the trauma of our own childhood. We all have been subjected to so many destructive influences that most of us need therapeutic counseling and support to work through these barriers. Part of these influences are cultural -- all the errors, distortions, lies, etc. we have been exposed to, and that have influenced our thinking. These are too many, and too deeply imbedded in our being to get rid of by doing a little reading. Most individuals don't transcend their upbringing with four years of college education in which they study scores of books many of them among the best yet written and spend countless hours of bull sessions with fellow classmates exploring the deepest questions they can ask. Even if this book were correct in every detail -- and it is not -- it could not permit one to immediately metamorphose into an enlightened person, or achieve their full positive potential. It is my belief that one can only become an enlightened person through active participation in an appropriately structured organization; e.g., a wisdom group, and related organizations. But who will set up the wisdom groups? Who will lead us toward development of the enlightened community? Will you? Vital tasks need to be done. Any interested person can help. Without this help the necessary organizations cannot be established and any progress will be too piecemeal and disorganized to initiate the necessary revolutionary changes.
[p. 5]
The goal of this book is two fold: 1) To lay the basis for a science of ethics. 2). To encourage the growth of organizations to help persons apply the findings of science of ethics. My primary concern is not for what will ultimately happen, but to do a better job in handling the pain and suffering, the waste of lives that is occurring today. My intent is to bring about conditions with as little delay as possible, which will ensure that all people achieve a joyful life based on knowledge, love, and cooperation with all other people. Results now, not in 500 years.
As part of this effort we must approach folk religions with the proper frame of mind. We need to evaluate their history in the same way we look at the history of science. Science changes its view of how the world works as knowledge accumulates. We should expect the same thing to happen for religion. Because of the contributions of folk religions we have now reached a position where it is possible to develop a reasonable, useful position -- an ethical system based on wisdom. It is my fondest hope that this book will help many churches, synagogues, mosques, and groups from every folk religion to see more clearly their mission and become part of the wisdom network to apply the findings of science of ethics. Each group in this network must draw from everything useful in all folk religions and everything else currently known while recognizing that many, possibly all, of our ideas will change as we learn even more in the future.
Thus, religion will move out of its enmeshment in separate cultural groups dependent on mysticism, oscurantism, custom, and authority. It will move toward a universality that will include all people. It will be based on cooperation, the methods of science, and study utilizing the relevant experiences drawn from as many people and societies as possible. Structures will be developed that work for the cooperative effort of all people based on universal principles. And these structures will exist in every society thereby helping each individual to develop their full positive potential. However, this will not be achieved easily, and part of the reason is discussed later in connection with religious fundamentalists.
In addition we cannot look with arrogance on any folk religion, or fault them for having failed to meet the true challenge of religion -- even those who vigorously oppose a science of ethics and call us the new Satan. They have done as well as could reasonably be expected considering the time in which they developed. Historically, they have, in fact, gotten us through our difficult "childhood" of the past 50,000 years or so since our language ability evolved to a critical point. Since that time I believe humanity has been in the process of creating itself[5] out of the genetic elements of our evolutionary past. This has happened very fast because cultural evolution is so much faster than genetic evolution. Up to the evolution of the modern language ability human beings had "meaning of life" as a natural aspect of their existence in the same way as do the ants, bees, termites, and every other living thing. When human beings achieved their current language ability individuals gained the potential to evaluate their own existence and become "self determining and intentional creatures"[6]. At that point we became capable of asking the question, What is the meaning of life? Why choose life rather than death?
And, that is the question each person today must still answer regardless of what he or she believes or what they doubt. They still must get through this life -- or, choose not to. Since human beings are social animals human warmth and affection are critical to this endeavor. The wisdom quest involves persons working together and grounding their efforts on the methods of science. I have spent my life looking for others to work with in pursuit of the foregoing goal.
[p. 6]
I realize in retrospect that when I studied ethics in college I had expected to find the answers about how to live the good life. I apparently assumed these answers would be provided by those many learned individuals who had gone before. Instead, I found that not only had philosophers not blazed a clear path toward the good life that everyone could follow, they tended to focus their intellectual talents on every issue but the one I saw as being most important; i.e., meaning of human life.
As I began to understand the foregoing points, I decided to tackle the problem myself and develop a science of philosophy to help myself and anyone else who was interested in finding the meaning of life through understanding the natural world. I have pursued that path ever since. However, I have recently recognized that what I actually had created was a science of ethics. But this came about only after I recognized the relationship between folk religions, philosophy, science, and a science of ethics. I now believe the key to this understanding is as follows: Folk religions are based on nonfalsifiable assumptions; i.e., their claims are not testable, they are not subject to experimental justification, nor refutation. In addition they cannot be questioned because this violates their traditions and their appeal to authority. Philosophy also is based on nonverifiable assumptions. However, the claims of philosophy can be examined, questioned, recombined in new ways, etc. Therefore, this is a fertile area of exploration. When assumptions are generated that are falsifiable they move out of philosophy into the realm of science. Basically this is the way that philosophy gave birth to the sciences, one by one, as it provided the testable assumptions upon which each field of science rests. This is why there can be no Science of Philosophy. A science of ethics requires an understanding of human nature in ways that were not possible until the development of evolutionary psychology and an evolutionary understanding of symbolic language. Further, it is based on an organizing principle or concept, which lays the basis for testable assumptions. Wisdom groups would need to develop structures to use that knowledge to help build enlightened communities made up a enlightened persons; i.e., utopias.
If we are to make the final breakthrough and achieve our unique potential as goal directed individuals it is essential to develop wisdom groups, based on a science of ethics. A science of ethics is not only the right answer; it is the obvious answer. I hope you will join me in taking this step and help to build a utopia where we can together reach the light at the end of the tunnel.
[p. 7]
GO ON TO CHAPTER ONE 1. I use the feminine pronoun to refer to God in order to demonstrate the hidden associations that exist when God is assigned a gender. I hope readers will utilize any feelings generated by this approach to better understand their own beliefs in order to change them if they desire.
2. A HISTORY OF GOD, Karen Armstrong, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993.
3. Folk religions are faith-based/authority-based systems (e.g., Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Scientology, Confucianism, etc.). They are not based on science -- on falsifiable hypotheses -- but like folk medicine incorporate the wisdom of the culture. They have no mechanism to test that wisdom, except as the life process proceeds.
4. This term draws from the ideas presented in the book: THE SYMBOLIC SPECIES, Terrence W. Deacon, W.W. Norton, New York, 1997.
5. As discussed in UNCOMMON SENSE, Alan Cromer, p. 26, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993.
6. Deacon, op. cit., p. 458.
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