DAVID YOUNG -: Can the human race handle thinking, or is it too into the Arabhamic way that it can only handle Dogma? Thinking would require total personal responsibility. Whatever we did would belong to us. With thinking the first thing would be, what do we want? without any idea of right or wrong.

The answer to your first question here David is obviously NO. Masses of people cannot handle the truth without dogma. The real reason most races (that means all humans) have sanctioned wars and genocide through their governments and armies thoughout the centuries terrifies them. After all which one of us would admit to sanctioning murder, we are all decent loving people aren't we? The fact that it is not about right and wrong is also another truth we can't handle because if we are not in the right,(justified),it again forces us to see ourselves as capable of the mass murder of men, women and children in the pursuit of our own survival and prosperity. As Clint Eastwood said in the movie Unforgiven. "Im not like that anymore." It's not true that we're not like that anymore either.

Look to your Biology books, man like every other species protects his children above all others, then his next closest cellular relatives his cousins,Aunts extended family. Next closest, his tribe to whom he is most recently linked through tribal intermarriage.

This means to ensure their survival at the optimum level we must have control of a territory that provides the resources we need for them to multiply and prosper. Our biology frightens people, they want to change it or reason it away. It doesn't fit in with their idea of loving, reasonable human beings, hence the need for Dogma.

CJ -: Your fight for a sustainable population would be one way to keep plentiful resources available for all and so dampen down man's territorial tribal hostility(racism). Overriding stupid religious leaders and providing freely accessable fertility control worldwide and urgently would be another way.

DAVID YOUNG -: The developing course of industrialization and modernization has not led to the unification of humankind.

Mankind has never been unified at any stage in history. We have always been biologically, a fierce survival animal. This idea that people have that factories(industrialization) and modern living could somehow change mankind's scripted biology completely baffles me.

How could something that's only happened in the last hundred years or so do that? It would take one hell of a lot more years of evolution before it was possible, if ever.

Ah, c'mon sharkfin,

We are going into space together with our old enemies,surely it's worth a try .

I agree on the animal instincts but we are supposed to be at the top of the chain .

Dear Kartiya Jim,
Thank you for your reply to my post. You are right we should never give up trying to bring about freedom from conflict and war but I wish the whole world could come at the problem from an unemotional and more science based appraisal of it. Why can't we step back and ask ourselves why as a species we act this way. As the famous television physcologist (Dr. Phil) says, you can't change what you won't acknowledge). That's why I thought this was a good article by David, if only mankind could think without the need for Dogmas and self delusion. A massive amount of people seem to be unable to handle horrible realities, they prefer their own explanations.

The fact that we are at the top of the chain as you say, on the one hand causes us to delude ourselves more about our superiorority and so we are less able to handle unpalatable truths that fail to back up our view of ourselves as superior, but on the other hand as you pointed out it does give us hope in our ability to keep on trying and one day work out a way to live in peace.