"The world we have created is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking"." Albert Einstein.
"The battle for the world is the battle for definitions." Thomas Szasz 1920-19
Unity is Possible. But not without our collective mental health. Yet our mental divisions are increasingly polarized. Name calling, increasing anger, and hate (a highly contagious mental virus) that is likely to escalate into violence. In the context of 'space ship earth" 'Earth, we have a problem!" And we have yet to identify a cure given that local, national, and global level of divisions are accelerating and we keep thinking democracy is the answer. Remember that Hitler used democracy to gain power.
There has been more conflicts in the last 20 years than at any time since WWII, plus 20 fewer democracies.
Humanity stands at this intersection of insanity and calamity. One path is leading to increasing hopelessness, despair, economic debt, and environmental deterioration. The other - to unprecedented death and suffering or human extinction.
A third path is possible. But it will require merging our minds (cognitive science) and hearts (religious faiths) to comprehend what is possible - if we would just change our minds and accept our species irreversible universal interdependence.
What connects our genetically sourced creative intelligent minds to our compassionate hearts? Sex (and now some science techniques) enable our genes (DNA) that enable our biological hardware to be passed on to our offspring. Mental memes (concepts, context, tools, ideas, language, words, and phases) are our social/cultural software. These are passed along globally to minds everywhere via our travel and technology.
The passing of memes from our mind to our inner being depends on our motivations (mental, physical, spiritual). Every life form is genetically engineered with two fundamental drives. To survive and thrive. Then most minds are motivated by 'life after death', wealth, health, power, love, comfort, avoiding stress, tribal superiority, being right, being liked, looking good, feeling good, protecting nature, happiness (however they define it in their mind), or their legacy
We now urgently need our hearts and souls adoption of a meme motivation that will mesh our biological being with mental sanity. Uniting humankind's genetic capacity for cooperation, coordination, and compassion to the Golden Rule - empowering us to engineer a world where all people can flourish.
If we prioritize people's mental health first, we can unite humankind to survive and thrive. With our mind's primary motivation united our species stands a chance of creating heaven on earth. Divided we will continue down our current path of perpetual hell on earth.
It is entirely within our God given agency to mentally chose this path of unity. Instead of our current mental priority of maintaining the protection of national sovereignty above that of unalienable rights of people and nature. Our mind's need to be right about learned concepts that generate hate is literally killing us. Wars, genocides, assassinations, mass shootings, poverty, lack of justice or compassion.
It takes only seconds to adopt a mental meme. But it requires overcoming some of the personal and/or political truths that our minds have been indoctrinated with by people we love, admire, and respect.
It was after the creation of nuclear weapons (and more forms of WMD after that that some people then understood the greater Truth. And in 1948 50+ nations created and endorsed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Since then nearly everyone has a different opinion about the validity of their truths - yet everyone's health and survival depends entirely on objective Truths. Like gravity, the golden rule, and a child should not die before their parent, a healthy and sustainable environment. These are vital to best ensure human safety and to minimize the consequences of ignoring these fundamental principles.
The most urgent question is can we do this while we are overwhelmed with multiple distracting pressures. Our minds make it easy and fast to find excuses and the faults of others. Finding forgiveness and love all others is much harder.
Meme adoption begins in our mind. And we easily forget that our mind is not who we really are. Our mind is full of various identities. It originally evolved as a problem solving tool that adopted a variety of identities that assisted the growth and unity of the family and tribe. Some identities were based on biology. Many others depending on where we are, what we had learned, often changed in our minds. Or we defended them to the death of our body. Worse, we mass murdered others who had different mental identities because we came to fear or hate - maybe because of injustices (real or perceived) to our tribal identity.
Who we really are is humankind. The human family. Usually, looking into someone's eyes you can feel it in your heart. If you can overcome your hate. Then who you truly are is human 'being' not a human 'thinking' with time you have left on this planet. What legacy are you truly committed to?
What follows are simple concepts and contexts that would
be valuable to learn early in life. Most humans only live about 20,000 to 30,000 days. A wise person would want to make the most of those days.
The first? Everything in the known universe is made up of systems and structures. And these are founded on fundamental principles. Think of them as "the Laws of Nature and of Nature‘s God, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence or the Golden Rule at the foundation of every religion and indigenous culture before religions.
These are self evident truth to your mind your pathway to solving humankinds problems.
There are wise souls who orient their life or profession around unambiguous
words. Scientists, military people, engineers, mathematicians, accountants,
and medical doctors. And others who dedicate themselves of professions that rely on ambiguous words to gain or maintain power - religion, politics, or money.
The origin of the human mind maybe 100,000 years ago was
a spectacular breakthrough for life enhancement. Its sole purpose was to solve
problems. And with it - amazing creativity.
We can spend our lives, using our mind for several things. Solving problems, defending concepts, figuring out how to keep power/wealth. finding blame, love, or figuring out WTF just happened - and reacting to that. Or just thinking about how we feel spending most of our time in our head seeking comfort.
Unfortunately, in the 1940s a group of engineers figured out how to create nuclear weapons. At that moment some like Albert Einstein realized we are the human family. And many of our mental constructs of nationality, religion, race, created dysfunctional political systems that we still believe can work. This is our greatest collective mental illness. A viral infection that leads monkeys who would normally just fight each other- to be an advance primates capable of mass murder. The MAD insanity of Mutually Assured Destruction or our Species suicide.
What what can we do to spread the meme of keeping all people and nature healthy to all humanity?
The most important thought you need every day is don’t believe everything you think. Wake to the reality you step into - with others in your family, community, environment, city, country, and world. A world changing so fast that neither our mind or our government can keep up with what is needed to ensure sustainability.
The great news...there is an agreed upon, affordable, and achievable plan. It was created in 2015 as the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Until
humanity unites in achieving these ASAP we will see nothing but more chaos,
confusion, polarization, wars, genocide, environmental destruction, pandemics,
and truth decay.
Life on this planet is the most complex and complicated system in the universe. Our immune system plus the immune system everything living thing around is second. The third is the human mind. If it fails to adapts to our reality, a failed peace movement and our national and global governance systems - our species will lose at every turn.
The evolution of weaponry will not stop. The evolution of government is stalled. It’s the evolution of our mind that needs to accelerate and transform back into its original mission of surviving and thriving. Not beating others into submission or obliteration.
This is so simple! Religious texts have framed it as the golden rule. Yet only a few religions consistently do this. Even indigenous cultures before religion had this wisdom, but they also often failed to practice it. But it is hardwired into our DNA to cooperate and coordinate in engineering a world around us for the sake of our children and their offspring. Anything less and we are idiotes. As Dennis Patrick Slattery calls the "hardening of the heartaries" it blocks our "natural inclination" to be relationally and rationally compassionate. "Courteous" rather than "confrontational".
The persistent slaughter between Hamas and Israel is the perfect example of a religious mental construct. A belief that a holy scripture is a real-estate manual that justifies profound hate and genocidal mass murder of others who are fundamentally biologically identical.
Both sides have rational justifications but their leaders lack the heart in abiding by the fundamental principle in both of their religious doctrines - the golden rule. Instead their mind cannot let go of an 'eye for an eye'.
In a book entitled Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (2023), the author, Dacher Keltner and his neuroscience colleagues, identified “eight fundamental life experiences common to people around the globe, in whatever religion, language, ethnicity they were part of. Slattery cited their work in a January 2025 op-ed for the Herald-Zeitung.
Responses came back in 26 different languages. Within 2600 narratives they gathered, all responded to the same definition of awe: “Being in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends your current understanding of the world.” And what brought on that feeling of awe “was other people’s courage, kindness, strength or overcoming.” The researchers called this their “moral beauty and goodness of intention.” I believe it is evidence of our mind's genetic similarity.
How do we awaken it?
https://www.gdpexpert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/UN-SDGs-17-With-169-Targets.pdf
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