United Political Debate

[Joep]

In another context, the cooperative group, the single person attacking with the spear would be defeated by Caveman #2 and #3 working together to defeat him. This is how much of human prehistory was conducted, and still to this day in some still-existing hunter-gatherer tribes. The "meanness" seems to have been an invention of civilizations, who constantly needed more and more land to feed their increasing populations. The story of Cain and Abel is the story of agricultural civilization destroying pastoral groups. Abel was a shepherd, and Cain worked the fields. In the story god preferred Cain, so Abel slew him.

As Daniel Quinn points out in "Ishmael", this story only makes sense if you realize it was written by the pastoralists, not the agriculturists, to illustrate the forced taking of land from the herdsmen for the agricultural civilization. Your attacking caveman with the spear is our civilization destroying the relative peacefulness of the prior lifestyle of living with nature, instead of against it by forcing the land you grow what you want.

[Vaipen]

That is an interesting idea, that a bible story reflects the changes mankind remembered from going from hunter-gatherer to an agricultural society.

But let's not glorify the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Even though the agricultural way allowed us to save surplus energy to multiply.

It is still possible, after all, to have an eco-friendly lifestyle with farming included. I am gonna grow biological food. Some people take further and grow almost in a hunter-gatherer fashion in some way. Biological-dynamical gardening. They stay as close to the cycles of earth and the heavens as possible, taking account the moon and seasons together. Sort of spiritual. I don't know about that, it sounds complex and a lot of work.

[Joep]

I'm not glorifying hunter gathering. To me it's just the way humans can live sustainably. What you are talking about sounds like permaculture, which isn't agriculture, it's trying to live within the means of the land, not raping it the way agriculture does.

[Orion Blastar]

I think the Buddhists had it right.

1. Avoid doing bad deed. Discipline, Morality, Ethics. 5 Basic moral codes: 1. Do not murder, 2. do not steal, 3. do not practice sexual misconduct, 4. do not lie, 5. do not drink or take any illicit drug or intoxicant.

2. Do good deed. Mind development, mental discipline, concentration. Give food and clothes to the poor, shelter to the homeless, help out others.

3. Purify one's mind. Insight meditation leads to wisdom, transcending good and evil. End of suffering to reach Nirvana and become one with the universe/nature.

These are the three principles of the Buddhists, requiring implementing mindfulness and self awareness to be effective.

They had this 2625 years ago, and 625 years ago Jesus taught almost the same thing, but prayers instead of meditation.

Yeah they learned to live with nature and not abuse it, but put back what they took to balance things out. To give back to nature and civilization what they take, yin and yang to balance things out in nature, civilization, and themselves.

I am not sure why Atheists, Secular Humanists, and even Christians do not do these things.

[Orion Blastar]

Anyway it means being compassionate and tolerant towards other people. Even if they do things to upset us or try to destroy us. We really do not know why other people become mean or intolerant or uncompassionate, or even hate, but that has been the cause for many wars and many oppressions.

Buddha figured it out a long time ago, and what I wrote was Buddhism for laypeople or dummies. The Chinese Dafa taught it, as did the Christian Jesus. Just that we tend to have forgotten that, and ended up being the caveman with the spear either running toward another caveman or being the caveman with a spear running towards the caveman who saw us and ran to defend his village.