Saturday, April 18, 2009

Into humanity

As we grow from embryo to old age we move from the ME to the mother to the parents, the close family, to the extended family, the road, the school to the town progressively acquiring knowledge and abilities that extend toward our fellow humans. This natural flow to include all humans and our environment is met for most of us by many walls as we grow into adulthood.
Some of these "bumps on the road" are of an individual nature, some are more structural. Among these it is structural hurdles particularly such as re
ligion, gender, races, social niveau, nationalism, corporate appartenance that can build unhealthy dependances as they feed on our strong need to "belong". 
Unfortunately we rarely do a full cost/value of this 
"appartenance deal" and one day comes the time to pay to feed the power of the few.
It is somehow reassuring that nowadays most of these structural institutions of appartenance have been striped of some of their coercive powers although they remain as thirsty. We condemn openly sexism, racism, and some type of favoritism although the way to the final goal is still far away in all countries. 
This leaves religion, nationalism and corporate appartenance.
 These three still need to be addressed because they are the only tool of abuse that we continue to tolerate in spite of the historical facts demonstrating they can lead to the open and absolute abuse that is war.
Let's start with religion. Let me take you through a table that will list the various aspect touched by religion and for which there is a positive
 (the value) and a negative (the cost). Let's throw time into the equation after which we will attempt to wrap-up this religion thing.