Lucky, Voltaire, and Me

April 26, 2020

A dear friend of mine just lost his son and another good friend recently damaged his spinal cord in a bicycle accident. My heart grieves for them. Life is real, especially for those who suffer, and though we may have empathy it's not like being there. We are all trapped in a giant Shakespeare play that doesn't end.

As for me, I am a handful of stardust and one of billions of people, just trying to get through life and trying to survive. I am thankful for my rescue dogs. Animals have feelings too and I am grateful that I can give them food, shelter, and warmth. Once they were wolves and great hunters, but humans bred them into companions and work dogs, and without human help they can barely survive on their own. At best they might scavenge for enough food to stay alive.

The fact is that we're all organic matter and we live, eat, crap, screw, and die. It's called being alive and though some people search for a deeper meaning, there is none. The only meaning is what you apply to your life.

Two More Epiphanies

Okay, my blog is all about writing down epiphanies as I go through life trying to figure it all out. So, here are my two "ah ha" moments for today, which are a continuation of last week's blog post.

The first is about my fellow journalist Voltaire, who lived a long and productive life in the 1700s. As I touched on last week, he was a leader in the Enlightenment movement and put forth major ideas like religious tolerance and separation of church and state. He was a deist and he came to that point by reason, which is the basic pillar behind the Enlightenment. So, now I see how he got to that point. He believed that God set the universe in motion and stepped back.

Voltaire, my hero.

In 1775 Voltaire wrote a fantastic poem about the Lisbon earthquake. It gives me goosebumps to read it. In the poem he takes a swing at philosophers who, at the time, were into the "all is well with the world" ideology. And he also slam dunks the religious people who said it was "God's will." Estimates vary on how many people died in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which was followed by a tsunami and great fire, but Voltaire goes with the high number of 100,000, which he said "the earth devours." If anything, he said in his poem, the Lisbon tragedy reminds us how fragile human life is and how close we all are to death from "cruelties of fate."

So, Voltaire came up with his deist belief through reason, which, to me, is the same as critical thinking. He was very much into science and a big fan and promoter of Sir Isaac Newton, one of history's greatest scientists. But Voltaire lived 200 years ago and missed all the discoveries and knowledge that we've acquired since that time. If he were alive now he would probably reach the conclusion that nature and evolution are handling everything and, based on discoveries, we can say that there's not much work left for God to do. He's basically unemployed because physics and evolution seem to get everything done.

The point being is that Voltaire felt that religion was good for the masses, and here is my epiphany, which I found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

For Voltaire, those equipped to understand their own reason could find the proper course of free action themselves. But since many were incapable of such self-knowledge and self-control, religion, he claimed, was a necessary guarantor of social order.

This one sentence completely changes how I view religious people. To summarize this statement, religion fills the gap for people who are incapable of critical thinking. It is incumbent to all of us to travel our path of life through reason and self-reflection. With all the science and knowledge now available, I think it's impossible to believe that a guy lived three days in a whale, but if that's where your intellectual journey takes you then, well, okay.

Now, let's jump to a quote I found by someone reviewing Conversations With God, by Neale Donald Walsch:

Most people who swear by the Bible haven't even read that much of it. Why? Because society has ingrained and brainwashed and created their belief systems and then anything that contradicts their paradigm of the way the world is must be wrong and blasphemous.

Reason demands an open mind. What I'm seeing now in the U.S. is a massive amount of willful ignorance, which is the opposite of reason. I'm guessing that people follow this path because it gives them comfort, and as I mentioned last week, it requires less brainpower.

Why I Love My Country

The Founding Fathers were strongly influenced by the Age of Enlightenment and incorporated much of the ideology into the Constitution. What I love about the men who created our country is that, yes, many of them were rich, but they were not corrupted by money. They were true idealists, which is something that has been lost in American politics. They looked at all the problems in Europe and wanted to create a country that was better and they drafted this remarkable document that holds us together after nearly 250 years. That is the miracle of true idealism because our country is fused together by an ideas, and not race or creed.

But, sadly, those with money and special interests are continually coming up with insidious ways to undermine our democracy to meet their own, selfish objectives. The way we keep our country strong and democracy strong is to continually defend our ideals and national integrity. Some people have told me the world would be better off being ruled by enlightened dictators, but I find that a pitiful cop out. I'm an idealist, my country is founded on idealism, and we just have to defend our principles.

A perfect example of the problems in the U.S. is when my governor, Brian Kemp of Georgia, appointed a wealthy campaign donor to fill a vacant Senate seat, a woman with zero political experience. To me this is the perfect example of money and special interests corrupting our ideals. But I assume the governor thought he could get away with it because apathy is so rampant in our country. We, as citizens, should have burned up the phones and written thousands of letters expressing our dismay at this decision. Politicians who violate the intent of democracy must be held accountable. It is an educated and engaged citizenry that will keep our government strong and healthy.

So, my second epiphany is that our country and government are GOOD, but it's the money and self-interests that corrupt it, and we must guard against that. Conservative politicians regularly claim to be Constitutionalists, but they selectively push a right-wing agenda, and we must guard against that as well. The Constitution is for all the people.

My rescue dog Lucky

Industrial Revolution

My other favorite author Daniel Quinn marks the birth of totalitarian agriculture, which began 10,000 years ago, as the key turning point in human history. I agree with that but feel that the other main turning point is the Industrial Revolution, which hit its peak around 1820. This era was mainly ushered in by James Watt and his steam engine, which completely revolutionized society. The steam was powering trains and factories and people were moving to towns to find work. The industrialization also created a huge demand for raw materials, which required the labor of a vast army of slaves in the Americas.

Before the Industrial Revolution, people had basically lived the same way, in an agrarian based society, for several hundred years. It was a hard and simple life where every household had to do their own sewing, grow their own food, and make their own goods. Industrialization brought efficiency to the world and despite all the terrible hardships, overall people began to see a rising standard of living.

I bring all this up because I'm a believer in science, and the natural byproduct of science is technology. I'm not like the Unabomber or Luddites who blame technology on our social problems. I will just say that it's advancing faster than we humans are adjusting, which has caused all sorts of disruptions and many unintended consequences, such as obesity and various diseases.

Industrialization has also divided people, which we saw so sadly in the American Civil War, where the agricultural South fought the industrialized North. Today we have this great chasm between urban and rural people, and among the various financial classes. When we see the huge divide between the MAGAs and Libtards here in modern day America, we have to remind ourselves that this division is nothing new and has taken place around the world for hundreds of years. What we DO NEED TO DO is listen to the other side and show acceptance and tolerance. That's how Voltaire would have done it.

Conclusion

In Europe there were constant wars for hundreds of years. Sadly, in the 1600s many of the wars were about religion and among the most brutal. According to Quinn, while most of the focus is on the 10,000 years since agriculture, we need to look at the thousands of years before that time to put human behavior into perspective. I will add to that by saying we also need to look at the last 400 years to understand why people behave the way they do. There must be a reason why most people lock themselves into the "one right way" and never question their beliefs or never accept new ideas from others. I don't understand it, other than to say it's some sort of defense mechanism or that by holding on to the status quo, and never questioning, we achieve some sort of comfort. What we need are more social mutations of free thinkers who can put progressive ideas into action and help us to make forward progress as a society.

I do not believe it's possible to be a critical thinker and religious at the same time. Voltaire explained all the pain and suffering of the world by simply saying God started the whole mess and then stepped back. But I know that everything that happens is ultimately the result of physics, and no supernatural being is needed. Maybe God triggered the Big Bang to start us off. I don't know, but what I do know is that Voltaire is right — God is not around now.


Sources:
Voltaire, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, July 30, 2015

  Photo: Grant Ritchie