Ethical and Social Rules

There was once no rules at all, before this world had cities or cars. Then small tribes began to appear, and from that day on, social rules appeared, the tribes that first found out that waste from our humans should be at an appropriate distance from where they live survived and populated. Natrually, there were leaders who took charge and prevented mayhem. As time went on, the ethical and social rules doubled and tripled, there was more to follow, more to learn.

How do we become conscious of the ethical and social rules in our societies?

There are so many ethical and social rules that we can never learn them all in a lifetime. We learn many of the most basic ones at home, from parents or guardians, who wants to best for you. After we have a vague idea of how we should behave in this world, we are starting school, and school takes us to another level or learning. At home, we learn about things, at school we can actaully experience some of them, and with the help of health class, we learn more about life. As we grow older and wiser, we understand why some things are wrong, and the punishment was not as simple as we thought it to be. All this talk about learning doesn't seem to say anything at all. So, in conclusion: We learn the ethical and social rules from everyone, doesn't matter who they are, we learn how to treat each other by knowing more people and listening to what they have to say.

New Perspective

Apple computer, plasma TV, cell phones, satellites, the Internet, and much much more! What a great civilization, this must be the best situation humans can live in, right? Actually no, humans have lived in this "modern" society for all our lives, people are used to live this way, if you take a single thing away, our lives will be disastrous. There are many ways to live life, and this is only one of them. There are other ways like living in the mountains at a few thousand feet, living in your own world, seperated from the other humans, and live a non-polluting life, you can go and achieve enlightenment, there are many ways to live. But they don't get to do anything, right? Again, no. Our cities, cars, and all the other objects that humans have created seems all good and great now, but it's only temporary. The groups of people who seperates themselves from all these stuff are the ones that do things that help in the long run, and anthropologist Wade Davis said that "If you took all the genius that allowed us to put a man on the moon, and applied it to the understanding of the ocean, you will get polynesia." We don't know more things than the people that lives in the polynesia, we just know different things. The people who live in the polynesia has a great civilization as well, same with the people in Tibet, they think in a way we don't know how, they can go inside the dark for their life long retreat for 55 years, and when the person comes out, you don't see a crazy person, but a person more clear than a pool of water in a mountain stream. No matter what we know or believe in, biologists have proven that we are all the same, we are all humans.

There are many unique cultures and languages in the world, but we are losing them each passing day. There are roughly 6000 languages in the world, but there are only half of the languages are being taught to the children, and the children are unable to pass it on. Every two weeks, there will be a person with a language which no one else can speak pass away, bringing the culture and the language with them. Another reason is because of the "modern" people, they think they are superior because they know how to program a computer system, they think they are better because they drive cars and use cell phones. They don't think much about other people elsewhere, the people who are doing nothing to pollute the planet we all live on. They assume that the world should just have a few of the most spoken languages because the rest aren't important. Most of the people don't really care or know about the dying cultures and languages. The disappearing languages and cultures are still actually very important.

We shouldn't just ignore the minorities, we should help them and try to get the languages and the cultures to go on, every culture and language is just as important as the other. There are things the people who lives in the polynesia can do, and we can't even imagine it. These are people that even today can name 250 stars in the night sky. These are people who can sense the distance of an island beyond the visible horizon, simply by watching the waves of the sea. Their knowledge of the sea is simply incredible. There are people in the amazon who went monkey hunting, and Phil Borges who was with them at the time said that the people can see things he couldn't see, smell things he couldn't smell, and hear things he couldn't hear. To us, it may seem like they are just randomly shooting darts in the air, but they are actaully shooting them at the monkeys. There are Tibetian buddists that are trying to understand the nature of existence. Buddaism is the imperial observation of the mind. The Tibetian buddaists have four nobel truths: 1. All life is suffering. 2. The cause of suffering is ignorance. 3. Ignorance can be over come. 4. The deniniation of a contemplative practice that not only had the possibility of a transformation of the human heart but had 25,000 years of empirical evidence that such a transformation was a certainty. The first one doesn't mean that life is negative, it just means that things happen. The second one means that the Budda meant that clinging to the illusion of life as static and predictable. These are things we should all learn, it's like a different way of seeing life, it must be very good truths, the people who believes it knows how to face life in reality. There are much more incredible things that these people can do, so it's very important to keep them here.

I would be willing to exchange places for a while, I don't think I can stay forever, because I am polluted by the society today, all the technology in everyday life. We should not forget these dying cultures and languages, we should try to protect them. The cultures and languages will never come back once it's gone, it has come, and we have to protect it. After all, no matter what, we all all brothers and sisters, we all share the same intellectual acuity, we are all humans.

What aspects of human life over the past several thousand years could be likened to a gorilla going from a forest to a zoo?

Mankind has bounded themselves for a long time before they even start noticing it, humans are not limited by cages and bars, they are limited by the absract things they created themselves: the law, so called civilization, and small rules humans have in everyday life. Mankind if bounded by the law because there are actions mankind has agreed on not to do, for example killing someone or stealing something. If one does and commit the crime, then they will be punished for what they have done, people have rights because the law says so, everyone agrees that we should have rights to do what they want, as long as they don't interfree with other people's freedom. Humans are also limited by civilization, it's not against the law to sneeze in someone's face, it's not against the law to fart in public, and it's not against the law to just swear (not directly at someone), there are more things that are what people consider uncivilized behavior, but not against the law. People don't usually do rude things if they can help it, we will control ourselves not to pick our nose in public even if it's itching a lot, humans are bound physically this way. People are limited mentally by civilization as well, for example: getting angry is natural, but it's not welcomed in this so called civilized world, we calm ourselves down when we get angry, we practice not getting angry, this is an action against nature, it is not normal to not get angry, it's welcomed in the so called civilized world. Humans are not bounded by cages like the gorillas they put behind bars, gorillas who never did anything wrong, who didn't do this to themselves. Humans on the otherhand limit and create an invisible line around themselves and force themselves to adapt to it, and for those who can't, they get outcasted. This is how humans are in the same situation with gorillas, they both are limited, both of them can't do what they want to do.

The Choices We Made

The current global situation is good for mankind, but it's devastating for mother nature. Mankind has always created and invented for their own benefits. The impact we have made before used to be small and ignorable, but about a few decades ago, the impact stared to influence mankind. The weather is getting more and more unpredictable, the strongest storms we know have all happened recently, the droughts are becoming longer and deadlier, and much more disasters are created because mankind has fought against nature and has crossed the line. We chose to go against nature and construct cities and civilization without knowing at first that we are destroying the only world we can live in. We have only started to acknowledge that we are polluting the Earth and should stop attacking nature. But we have lived this lifestyle for years, and changing it will be a blow for everyone, so the result was that mankind are selfish and decided to just help the world a tiny bit and recycle once in a while, but still keep on polluting.