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G’DAY FOLKS!  INDEED!  YET ANOTHER BLOG:

THE REAL WORLD.  HOW IT WORKS

AND HOW TO GO ON LIVING ON IT

PEACEFULLY

Hadn’t We Better Learn?  

Below and continuing onto the ABOUT Page is a perhaps rambling Introduction.  If it strikes any Notes for You, Welcome.

For new POSTS and COMMENTS, go directly to  BLOG PAGE.   This “Intro” is subject to revision;  so consider occasional re-visits.  🙂  

First quickly, who am I? An 82 yo, married guy.  Modestly educated but no expert credentials.  Limited mobility; (can now only dream of wandering the Mountains and Meadows I love.)  But, I’m intently Curious; Our Planet, and the Cosmos.  Looking for newly constructive insights and means to improve our prospects.  And with an ingrained viewpoint that the sustematic “Scientific and Philosophic Method” of investigation is the Portal to reality and positive Results. 

So, ONWARD.  from WHERE, and HOW,  do we begin, in pursuit of the GOAL posed in BLUE above.  How to glean for the World’s most measurably successful “Organizational” practices, First catalogue and assess 

both individually and in organized “collectives,” to identify extant conditions inimical   . Those that you and  I judge to be essential to re-forge it all into a nonviolent, “equitable,” and functional World Community.  Assuming that we DO want to improve our survival prospects.  Well! Is THAT a Project, or What?  Unfathomable?  Only if we let it be.  While it is is comprised of a likely infinite array of interdependent conditions, we must start somewhere to “break it down,” into it’s interdependent “major pieces” at some level, to go to work on them simultaneously.  So, who’s responsible for this Never-Realized Project?  Yup, It’s Us.  Wait.  Isn‘t there already out there, somewhere, an omniscient, omnipotent, “higher power”  who/which promises to make things right, provided we follow it’s dictates?  Indeed, whole “Religions” counting on such an entity?  With adherents comprising perhaps  a majority of world population; from the Big Religions, on down to vast numbers of small Sects.  Each with differing and conflicting Stories and Dictates they pose for us all.   Is there Tangible Evidence of These “higher powers?”   Back to That again later.  Meanwhile, My Guess is that “God” is the Cosmos; and We’re on our Own to learn how it all works.  What our “Purpose” is, and how to keep It going.

 Maybe a place to start: a “Working Committee” Assignment. To identify and define a “beginning” fundamental level each of the Human Values deemed essential in the structure of a peaceful individually and collectively productive and evolving world community.  A mutually agreeable set of specifications encompassed in all   community “charters.”    Maybe we can “self initiate” that discussion with one another.   (To that end, let our exchanges be “Open Minded;” listening and learning from one another;  as opposed to Debating to “Win the Point.”)

Personally, I’m trying to go on learning also with a reading list of books and periodicals.  Commentary on History, current Public affairs, and several Science Journals per the above mentioned predisposition.   Along with “Philosophy” and the “Humanities” as they inform and are informed by the Sciences.  Maybe to find things that, within my limits, that I can personally act upon; and to encourage like-minded folk.  

Truth:  I can barely begin to keep up with all those sources.   Yet the literal survival of Mom and Pop Earth, and all of us riding along on, is at risk as never before in Human history.  Our  rising cumulative numbers and our combined impact.  We’ve got to discover, assess, and correct our myriad impacts.  The tens of thousands of ways, (each of us in our unique, infinitely complex individuality), in which we are unwittingly straining the Planet’s capacity.  Caring for the environment that sustains us has been our Responsibility from the beginning of sentient human life; and it is now critical.  So, Reality;  how the natural world/universe/cosmos works. What’s Real?  What’s True?  What are the implications for us.  Here on Mother Earth, our speck in the Cosmos. 

 One Piece of that:  How did we “Humans” get here to begin with? The choice between Science and God, (or some supernatural entity with all the “God-like” powers)?  It is the Scientific (Realist)  consensus that we emerged from interstellar gas and dust as a rocky Planet;  and the interaction of inorganic materials and forces produced the first forms of life.  And that rudimentary organic Life evolved over billions of years through successive forms with increasing abilities and ultimately consciousness.   And onward to a brain capable of searching for the breadth and depth of reality.  Alongside our current, “modern history” of  desperate fumbling with Belief, Culture and Governance, trying to learn how to survive together peacefully.  Available to us is the step-by-step “Scientific Method.” So What’s been revealed so far?

Global Warming?   Good luck with that alone.  In fact Humanity in its’ sheer mass is comprehensively impacting the ecosphere to an end condition incompatible with human life.  Colonize Mars or other destinations?  Enthusiastic and acclaimed as it proponents are, write it off.   The scale it would require is so great that that we’ll have self destructed long before. What are the Barriers to our action?  One example.  The majority of the world’s population which lacks the basic physical necessities for life, either in hand or in reasonable prospect, and thus no surplus of resources to learn of the reality.  Up the continuum to the significant proportion of “well-enough-offs” like you and me.  Too many of us are either content with entertaining ourselves – “Don’t worry, Be happy.”   Or already “worn out” thinking about it all.  We’d better Get a Handle On.

Anyhows.  It Scientific inquire is to predominate, where do “Religion,” “Spirituality,” “Alien Experiences” and such fit in?   We humans  do experience these phenomena, so they are in some manner real too.  Likely, part of that answer:  We “experience” everything first through the Brain.  Many things, like pain, surely are Real.  Yet we first experience it in our “Consciousness.”  Same as everything else that is physically tangible.  And so also with all those intangible experiences.  They too Feel Real, but are they?  In some tangible, verifiable manner?  One Note:  Current Scientific research in Brain Mechanics, even with the incomplete scientific tools we so far have, shows that the brain can create myriad kinds of mental experiences with a “physical feeling” component.  On it’s own, without external “input.” 

We find ourselves living on a Physical planet which permitted the origin of life and of habitat allowing homo sapiens and all the rest of life around us to survive and continue to evolve.  Our Place in the Cosmos.  Let’s accept responsibility for it.

OK, if you’re still “with me,” you’re among the most Patient folks to be found. 

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