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"The great hope of society is individual character." - Channing
Society
Updated:
07/09/2019
A healthy person can live about 5 to 7 minutes without air, several
days without water, several weeks without food, but thinking people
admit they wouldn't want to live if there were never going to be human
fellowship. After our physical needs are met, our deepest spiritual
need—the need for communion with other humans—also represents the
highest potential for the enhancement of life. Quality social,
emotional, romantic, and sexual intercourse are peaks of fulfillment, as
good as it gets.
Another broader and enduring human need and desire is belonging to a
family, a society where one knows that the members share a common
heritage,
paradigm and values, and thusly identify with each other. We find
individuals in such societies feeling more psychologically safe and secure. Such societies
foster cooperation, compliance, and productivity. The desire for
appreciation from some part or whole of our society is part of the
motivation for everything that we do.
One of the most egregious social and philosophical divides in our
world is the one between Fundamentalism and
Humanism. Western civilization is currently marching relentlessly
towards secular humanism, while the religionists in it are taking as much
baggage along as they can. But there is a tacit admission by most of the
world's advancing cultures that separation of church and state must be
accomplished or maintained. China has defanged religion by allowing its
practice only on an individual basis but forbidding its promotion by public
assembly or public proselytizing. American and some other Western
cultures are on heightened alert for breaches in the separation of
church and state.
Another fundamental divide is between creation-less evolutionism and
intelligent design of some sort or another. Even though Darwinism and
other forms of "happy accident" beginnings to intelligent life—with all
of their dimensions—are beset with mind-boggling problems, the current
atmosphere in academia is generally poisoned against any consideration
of Intelligent Design. The reason seems obvious: there is an unconscious concern that
creationism founded upon textual or scriptural authority will somehow creep back into
oppressive position.
Bottom line? Modern society is fractured into a plethora of races,
religions, cultures, classes, and values. Our greater society is far
from ideal or satisfactory, so much so that many (most?) people
significantly insulate and/or
isolate themselves to an uncomfortable degree. The fraternal fabric of our society so often is deteriorating, and all
of our lives are lessened by this development.
You are free to do what you want, but you are
not free to want what you
want. - Schopenhauer
Every spiritually healthy human being has a natural, intrinsic and legitimate
desire and need to belong to a family and to a society.
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