One characteristic I've recently come to realize I admire greatly in people is fluidity. Religions, many traditions, and many mentalities adhere to a strict set of laws which are considered "sacred" and "timeless". However, as faults in these laws come under scrutiny, it becomes apparent that one has only three options:
1. Stick to the laws no matter the circumstance.
2. Overlook the faults and pretend they don't exist while making small adjustments to the laws to make them more acceptable.
3. Realize that the laws are man-made, time-dependent, and far from perfect, and discard them completely.
Who has the right to define how you live your life, how you treat people around you, the things you can and cannot do, or even what you can eat or drink? People try to suppress what they cannot understand or accept, their memes fight a losing battle for dominion, hindering progress and destroying generations in the process.
I always find it funny to see some narrow-minded traditionalist, or religious apologist, struggling to keep up with globalization, trying in vain to close all the holes in a sinking boat. A small rubber band, trying to stretch to contain what can no longer be contained until it ruptures. The casualties of the process, however, are children that grow up in a severely contradicting environment, children who are usually not lucky enough to escape the viruses of the mind their environment is infested with....
2 comments:
Whoa! It's also possible to decide that these laws are the result of evolutionary selective process - imperfect, but probably more helpful than not (although our world changes, so they may not be as useful now.)
We used to think light at night was very bad - even moonlight. Now we've adopted a 24-hr light culture that science is showing to be very harmful to our health (see photoperiodeffect.com)
Superstitions that are helpful are more likely to survive than those that aren't - not certain, but more likely.
Evolution (natural selection) works within cultures too.
Wow, this is the best thing ive read in a long time.
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