popeye1945 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 22, 2022 12:45 am Conscience isn't mystical. It is psychology but not the psychology limited to secularism but is universal in scope.quote
My gut feeling is that humanity as a whole is not ready for it. This is why the question of the thread cannot be answered. It requires respecting the entire cycle of life rather than arguing small segments. But as long as we have the Einsteins, and Simone Weil types, they reveal the psychological path leading to conscious evolution: from the secular to the universal if only for individuals if nothing else.1954
“We will be destroyed unless we create a cosmic conscience. And we have to begin to do that on an individual level, with the youth that are the politicians of tomorrow…. But no one, and certainly no state, can take over the responsibility that the individual has to his conscience.” Albert Einstein
Nick,
Ok, conscience is psychological, which necessarily means subjective, but it is not to be secular but universal, how is this subjective property to become universal yet not secular? Where does the meaning inherent in conscience come from? Conscience arises I believe from an identification of the self with others as self, thus compassion arises as conscience. You seem to be hinting that the source of these things is other than humanity itself----no? What is this universal quality and how does it manifest itself. I believe you previously inferred that conscience is or should be objective but it could only be made objective by a conscious subject bestowing said conscience upon the physical world which is in itself meaningless. All right lets assume that the subject is to acquire universal conscience what does that mean? A path leading to conscious evolution inferrs a methodology, what might that look like? Responsibility to one's conscience inferrs compassion for one's self, if in doing so, does that involve a larger concept of self incorporateting humanity in general, thus a universal conscience of the individual?
I begin with the premise that humanity exists and functions in what Plato described as the darkness of Plato’s cave attached to the shadows on the wall so incapable of experiencing and reacting to reality. We are asleep in Plato's Cave. So the human problem isn’t learning anything new but how awaken to what already exists. Consider how Einstein describes conscious human potential.
We are caught up in being a part of a whole and defending the part while oblivious of the whole we are a part of. It is the preoccupation with the self that causes this delusion and prevents us from the experience of conscience which is really feeling the value and necessity of the whole. That is why Einstein defines the value of a human being as freedom from the conditioned self."A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." - Albert Einstein
If humanity as a whole is ever to consciously evolve it will require freedom from the indoctrinated self and begin to feel the wholeness we are within (conscience) in which everything is related and our obligation to it.
And if they don't get that "bang" out of it, they would both obviously be terribly disappointed.