Whether the flag wavers are phony patriots or real matters not. The very concept of patriotism is what is preventing our species from moving forward as a civilization. Every day I see a new reason to believe I was born 200 years too soon. Patriots are chained to ideas out of fear. The fear of a global currency for example.
Even a tea-party stalwart like Ron Paul has endorsed the concept of a global currency. The debate for the necessity of a global currency in finance and economics has been over for a good long while. Check your 401k allocation. Is there anything that says “global” or “international.” If you’ve never reallocated out – I’ll bet a portion of your money is invested in foreign securities/money. Uh-oh! You’re not such a patriot are you, betting against the dollar! Surprise!
Like anything else, simple truths pervade, but we deny or ignore them on a wholesale basis for political, religious and “patriotic” reasons. Patriotic reasons often boil down to some distillation of political or religious idealism. These are all things that will be abandoned if we are to surge forward. The reason futuristic drama entertainment franchises like star trek and star wars are so popular is not because of all the cool spaceships. The real reason is because, at heart, everyone wants to live in peace (except for a chosen few who actually make massive profits from war and religion). Ever notice how countries are referred to as expired ideas in Star Trek? Did you notice that delegates to the senate in Star Wars came from different species and/or planets, not nations? The people of the world must come together to do extraordinary things. We are no longer separated by geography.
and – surprise again – we’re already doing it! Ever heard of the international space station? We still prefer to identify the astronauts by home country – but the fact that the 1st world countries are working together over our heads is the purest testimony to the necessity of the globalization idea. There isn’t an American space station competing with a Russian competing with a Japanese competing with a Chinese.
The business world knows this too. International trade and commerce influences the wealth (or in our case, debt) of nations greater than ever in history. The largest commercial organizations in America are directly tied to foreign trade (Wal-Mart). The business world has adopted a one-world philosophy decades ago. “Buy American” is only a marketing gimmick used by those who don’t have the means to take advantage of all global resources at their competitors’ disposal. Patriotism is not profitable. Protecting native jobs at the expense of fully functioning capitalism sure sounds like communism to me… but apparently not to any politition up for reelection.
An abandonment of organized religion, or reliance on things we do not and cannot know, is another roadblock to human achievement. The jury is not out on this as the Pope would have you believe. The catholic church in particular, but really every religion, has held back science since the very beginning. The church claims to have advanced since the time of murdering Galileo, who only espoused truths – born of Archimedes’ work two hundred years before Jesus, but this too is a lie.
How sad then, the tale of these two men. One persecuted by those with a blinding faith sentenced to death for valid scientific discoveries – and the other killed by mistake by a foot soldier by an enemy invading people that still understood his importance. How sad that in the 1,700 years between their deaths, our civilization catapulted backwards and the murdered scientist was sent to his doom less than 500 years ago, while the revered mathematician killed by mistake was laid to rest over two millennia ago. It appears science was much more appreciated 2,200 years ago. …golly, I wonder what happened to change things since then…
But forget about Galileo. The catholic church has done much PR lately to convince the public they are pro-science. Behind this facade still hides the widespread irrational beliefs based on interpretations (whether you’re interpretting a tale of fiction correctly matters not) of the bible that literally kill people. Back alley abortions performed on girls raped by family members cause infections that kill. AIDs without the use of condoms kills. Terrible diseases that could be treated (and hopefully cured) by stem cell research kill.
And we don’t even need to begin to discuss the direct murdering that goes on in god’s name all over the world every day because of different interpretations of who is the “real” profit or who has the “real” interpretation of an old book. Let me present to you the ridiculousness of this situation. Pretend for a moment that we’ve catapulted 2,000 years into the past with a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Come back 2,000 years to the present and half the world believes that Vlad really could turn into a menacing eight foot tall invincible half-man half-bat creature and live forever. Now imagine that many innocent people are killed every day because they can’t agree on whether Vlad had black hair – or brown. Or worse yet, let’s catapult 2,000 years into the future and see how many idiots are killing each other in the battle between Team Edward and Team Jacob, never stopping to realize that there is no proof at all that vampires or werewolves ever existed.
Debate over what we don’t know has a stranglehold on innovation. We are still in the dark ages of humankind. In the far future this time and the time known as the “dark ages” to us will be commingled and no different to historians just as skirmishes between waring stone age clans are of no consequence to the overarching study of anthropology. We are still in a fog of human understanding kept dormant by our own obligations to serve ancient fairy tales. Whether carbon emissions raise the Earth’s temperature will be of little consequence to future humans who examine a past preponderance of pollution of every type possible and preventable.
What should the ultimate goal of science be? The preservation of human health and happiness, of course. What is the ultimate preservation of human health? To live forever. Imagine for a moment that we’ve found the secret to living forever. Who among us would object to this?
I’ll give you a hint – heaven and hell have no bearing on someone who knows they won’t have to end up in either one….and donations are surely to drop off once everyone figures out they don’t need tickets the big show any more.
The “ten commandments” work so well not because they are the rule of god, but simply because they are necessary to keep a society running smoothly. Atheists and agnostic have another name for most of the commandments – Common Sense. People who only operate on fear, however, need a higher authority to scare them into doing right. We should not ask WWJD, we should ask – What Would You like Done to You? Our species cannot move forward until we stop creating these people making every decision on one of fear (“oh my god, gay people getting married will destroy civilization!”). This makes the recent rise of Fox News and their long fearful shadow all the more disturbing. We’re headed in the wrong direction.
But this isn’t a rant about Fox News or anything nearly as current. I’m basically putting forth my belief that “one nation, under god” is a destructive idea. “One People” is what we must become. No flags, one currency, one people, one planet. Imagine how silly we would look to any alien civilization that makes contact, trying to explain what our flags mean. We are no more socially evolved today than cavemen throwing rocks at each other from opposite sides of the stream. With all our current issues, I don’t believe we’ll break free in my lifetime… assuming I can’t live forever.
I’d like to add one crucial addendum. I know there are very patriotic veterans who would take issue with the dissolving of the United States into a larger world government. However, their sacrifices were not in vain. In fact, the sacrifices of WWII soldiers were what directly contributed to the UN – which, flawed as its current inculcation may be, serves as the model for what must come to fruition once our prejudices and irrational beliefs are forgotten. Although many soldiers believe that they protected American freedom – they were really protecting the world’s freedom. In fact, many WWII veterans often acknowledged this sense of cooperation. It is only in the last fifty years that the “us vs. the world” ideologyspread to the military. Ironically (sadly) the hawks now flip this idea on it’s head and use it to prop up military initiatives that are anything but. Many veterans have seen and spoke of this, but you won’t find that on the news.
