"Western Civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure - the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it - the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics - the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual - the humility of the spirit. These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea. If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to? Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God - more, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts? So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other? Is this unavoidable? How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of Western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?"
'The Relation of Science and Religion', Richard P. Feynman
Originally published by the California Institute of Technology in Engineering and Science magazine. Personally I would replace Christianity and the 'church' with 'religion', as this applies to many different forms and types of modern belief systems.
If one could really change the world in a long lasting meaningful way, it seems to me that a few barriers will always stand unless they are either a) stripped away ( which is unfortunately incredibly difficult with existing inertia and legacy frameworks and systems) or b) that of slowly replacing or superceeding that which is already there or appears to be working. Sometimes there is a slow and barely noticeable evolution; one that you don't notice until you actually stand back and see where you have come from, and other times there is massive paradigm shift that results in huge change by virtue of an idea, an invention or some catastrophic event ( which generally only lasts a short time in corporate or societal memory).
I posit that five basic concepts or issues are of utmost importance to how we think, live, learn and treat both our ecosystem and fellow sentient beings.
[ However, sometimes you find people have beaten you to it ;)
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/ )
a) mortality (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality )
b) scarcity (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity )
c) religion
d) education including information transparency and unfettered access to said information / knowledge
e) diet
So perhaps improvements could be made, or these concerns addressed by:
a) immortality - by constantly replacing or reprogramming our cells and fully understanding atomic / quantum interactions on molecular biology etc
b) nano-technological fabrication of goods and facilitation of services ( energy issues? ) and population control
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_control either voluntarily or involuntarily via governmental eugenics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics or Nature re-exerting balance via some form of mass infertility and hopefully preventing some form of
Malthusian Catastrophec) a sweeping new unified religion / belief system similar to, if not expanding upon
buddhism in its synergy with modern science, universal compassion and tolerance... or even a spontaneous new mass movement or group awakening /
Enlightenment which seems to be brewing due to accelerating global disillusionment
d) free ( as in beer ) universal education and wider topics of learning for younger generations, including digitization thereof and free access to the sum of all human knowledge including all global libraries, universities and educational publications
Current and historical:
e) go vegan or vegetarian for everyone and everything's sake, including your own sanity and health!
Why?A gross simplification I know, ignoring current governments, regimes, political beliefs, markets, famine, drought, poverty, pollution etc etc.. where to begin? So many issues, so many problems... one problem I have spoken about before is that of archival, storage and standardisation of information and protocols to access said information. One must always assume rebuilding from an apocalypse e.g. instructions included, including the instructions for the instructions.
