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The following is an article I have written in 2021. It is about the major conflict in the Western civilization. To make it extremely simple, the conflict is in the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Western Bible.
Jesus was the first one who understood the major problem of the Western civilization.
The problem comes from an ancient bible story:
Humans need only to obey god.
It is a sin not to obey god.
Or you can put it in another way: It is a sin not to obey the priests.
And you will be a selected people to occupy lands and drive away other people.
You're ordered to kill by the priests in the name of God.
Killings were the major practice of humans by then.
A major concern of Jesus was to correct this idea.
Jesus had been avoiding painfully to criticize about the Old Testament. He had proposed his idea about love, Yet he had not try to eliminate the other side of love. That's why his disciples had put the Old Testament and New Testament together in the same book. The two Testaments were completely contradictory to each other, yet they were both inside the bible.
To study the conflicts in the Western civilization, first we need to study the theory of Jesus:
(A summary of the theory of Jesus)
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A difficult question: What is love?
One of my friends had asked me what is love, and I answered him :
"You knew it."
All of us knew what is love and it is not necessary to hide yourself and said you don't know. Though few can be sure about what is love.
In my own understanding, Love is a bonding happened between the people who is working for a common goal: eg., a war. War is an important place to learn love.
The harder the fight, the stronger the bond. Some times the bonding is so strong that people are willing to sacrifice for the other people that they are willing to use up everything even their life and happiness.
Important is the goal. You would need a goal, and the goal must be noble and essential that you would like to achieve the goal at any cost. When you have a common goal, the bonding would be a natural feeling within your group. Sexual love is one of the feeling of the bonding if the loving parties do have a common goal among themselves. If they do not have this common goal, then the love is weak and cannot last long.
What is a bonding?
It could be a signed contract or a pledge or an oath. Those are all external things. The real bonding is something happened within. You will know each other and you will feel each other. You don't need to say a word and your mind is shared. With the guidance of a shared mind you will act together like dancing. You will be acting within the rhythms and there is beauty among your love. Therefore, love is beautiful and love is a state of well-being that you need it always, though love is not an aim itself.
We can expect the bonding will be improved in the future because of the power of evolution. There must be some unknown connections between human beings. Now we know not much about it. But the connection will be much stronger in future. It is sure.
And we will be seeing a more difficult part about love.
Jesus the ancient leader of the Western mind had said, you should love your enemy. And why should we love them?
Do I have some inner bondings with my enemy, too?
The answer is definitely yes. And it could be a deep secret about the Universe why there are positive and negative sides for everything. If you use a magnet to bond together two pieces of irons, you will have the different polars and the ends of polarities will go together. That is a fact and it is acceptable. What cannot be accepted is that you can never do away any one side of the polars. You can never "eliminate" the negative side, if you do think you are the positive and vice versa. You can only be sured that within your bonding, you will have them. You could avoid being together with the other polar but you cannot get rid of them. You both have the right to survive within the Universe. There are negative elements within your bonding and that is why you should love them, too. That meant if you ever tried to eliminate the other end, you will not be surviving.
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Why the West is in a status without love?
Let us get started with the thought from Jesus who is the origin of the Western mind. Jesus was the sole leader in the West, other leaders like Plato and Socrates were secondary.
Some of the Western people believed that one day Jesus will be back. Will Jesus be pleased with them?
This question would have no meaning for some of the Western leaders. They regard Jesus as a historic figure, and they will not take his philosophy as a reference. Western culture has taken Jesus as an important mind leader for the past two millenniums. However, the teachings of Jesus were mostly ignored. Almost all teachings by Jesus had not been fulfilled. Jesus was betrayed not only by one disciple but most of his followers.
Western people had been in an inner conflict since then. They knew what ought to do but they wouldn't do it. Or they could'nt do it.
The question is why. If we cannot explain this puzzle today, more conflicts will be on its way to spread around the world.
The major contribution of Jesus is the concept of love. Love was a concept not found in the older Greek culture. Love is not mentioned in the Fables of Aesop. Love is a new feeling for the younger generation since the Year 0001. Humans had come to a new era of love since that year.
Why can’t people love each other?
The first answer is politics.
Western love is political and it is far from wisdom. And it would be a deep feeling of sadness that this trend is found in other parts of the world other than the West, and it has been growing since.
Jesus had two most important thoughts in his lifetime.
First is that he desires love more than rites (sacrifices). It means church services is not important, but to love people is.
Why are people going to church? The first purpose should be to love each other while the secondary purpose is to perform the rites.
Religious people will say, to perform the rites is to worship God. Very well then. That means to worship God is not the first priority but to love people is. The most important thing is to love. However, people would doubt that if they were really worshipping God, if they were not loving people. Many of the Old Testaments, if you examine them in this context, you will find them completely wrong:
God will not ask Abraham to kill his son as to love is more important than obeying.
And this is the idea of Jesus whom for some reason did not argue with the priests about the Old Testament.
What is rites?
If we put that in a modern language, rites is almost the same with politics. Politics has been the dictator for daily life in the West. Politics is the tool for self-interest.
There are politics everywhere: offices, schools, and families. Politics are same as the church rites.
People are not concerned to each other; they do not love each other. The rites eased their minds that they had done their duties. They go to church and do all the rites but they do not love people.
The essence of politics is very much the same as the ancient rites. People will do many things but they will not love each other.
Love seemed to be a simple matter but the question is why can’t people love each other? Weren't them taught with a wrong message from the very beginning? It might be not.
And then we had found the second important thought of Jesus.
The reason why people cannot love each other is that they are not wise.
Any one wise enough will understand the importance of loving each other.
However, most people are lacking wisdom. Before his death Jesus had told his disciples that he would send a 'Spirit of Wisdom' to help people to reach truth. This thought about wisdom is neglected in the generation that follows. The purpose of human is not to seek wisdom but to seek material satisfaction. Jesus was betrayed since then. People had chosen politics and materials in the millenniums.
And we would still ask a question why. Why can’t people pickup wisdom instead.
And we need to take a note here that the so-called wisdom is not an aim of life.
Wisdom is but a thinking ability only. It is a tool. It is not the aim itself. If the cultures in the future take wisdom as an aim, they must be fooling themselves. The 'Spirit of Wisdom' could be a helper or a teacher, but it should not be an aim of the human beings. Church people took the 'Spirit of Wisdom' as God to worship cannot be the idea of Jesus. The concept of 'Trinity' may not be right. It were due to the military might of the early Romans that the concept was spreaded.
And now we are facing a painful situation. If love is so important, why is it neglected? There must be a reason for it.
The reason may be related to the course of evolution. Humans are living in a form of individual units for the past two millenniums. They must fight for their individualistic interests, no other will help them if they cannot help themselves. There are no true friends and all others are potential enemies. Capitalism is but a later form of the individual units. In the ancient times when there were no stock markets , people are working on their own survivals only. Love will not be prevailing in a self-centered and self-interest oriented status. It might not be the problem of political systems. People will not know what is politics then. It might be only a ‘pattern' of life in the ancient time. They did not know how to organize the whole community to help each other. They would live like animals and were working for the bread of tomorrow and that is all. Humans had not been co-operative until recently when a co-operative thought is happening in a new situation other then the West.
Humans are changing from a self-interested situation to a co-operative situation. And that could be the process of evolution. You will have love in a co-operative way of living. You will have hatred in a hostility way of living. Many of the Western thinkers were supporters of Jesus, however, it was due to this pattern of living that love had become impossible. And the teachings of Jesus will not be obeyed. It was completely dreadful when a nun who was respected by the world and her name was Mother Therea said there is no love in the United States.
Will you say it is wrong for Jesus to preach love and wisdom if the way of living is self-centered? Of course it is not. The idea of love and wisdom may always be a hope. The evolution process may be easier for humans with some guidance. When humans have learned to love and choose it as a basic attitude of life, they will be evolving better.
We are evolving quickly. Many people thought that the course of evolution were slow. But it may not be the case. It will be happening very quickly. The patterns of living will not be the same, and the thoughts will not either. The bonding powers in human brains will be quickly improved. You will know what the others are thinking before they actually express it. We are getting smarter and smarter and will be able to do many things in a co-operative pattern of life and more importantly, in love more than in politics.
Love is more important than politics.*
Charismatic political leaders such as Alexander the Great put politics second.
Charismatic religious leaders like Mother Teresa put rites second.
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* humans without love will have no wisdom,
everything will be wrong without wisdom.
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