Building Our Understandings

(On Something Other than Religious Dogma)

I've mentioned this before, but after watching some Kurzweil talks, I am convinced it should be mentioned again. We are already running into severe difficulties with humans failing to keep up with an exponentially growing rate of technological development.

What we need, and have not done enough to develop, are an interlocked system of social programs designed expressly with the intent of helping people develop, not just the intellectual, but also the emotional tools and understandings to adapt to this rate of change.

The last time I spoke of this, I framed it as a kind of semi-comical "new religion" approach, but I now realize that putting this in the hands of religion is entirely antithetical to the intent of people adapting to advancing technology. Religion is all about stagnating and control - an imposed stasis of human minds, capacities, and attitudes. Rather than seeing advancing technology (and even learning) in a positive, exciting light, religion strives to divorce us from these exciting changes and isolate us into the poverty of inflexible, unchanging dogma. Religion is not the answer. It really never has been, and has locked us in a vicious mental/emotional stasis.

We need a new kind of thinking than anything we've had in the past, and it begins with leaving behind dogma, not just religious dogma, but dogma itself. It takes a clarity of understanding about how dogma works and how to counter it intellectually, *and* it also requires an emotional shift from certainty to skeptical thought that allows for a world of constant change to be emotionally comprehensible to all individual humans - thus allowing us to more easily adapt to constant change in a way that allows us to be active participants in our societies with a positive view to the future.

This is where skepticism can shine, as a positive force for future development, not just of our scientific understandings, but also of our emotional and social growth throughout our ever-increasing lifespans.