In my struggle to resist America’s decline, I doubt liberty, preferring responsible independence. It seems obvious that humankind has not the liberty to doubt, let alone question, the laws of physics. Rather it is human duty to discover physics and apply it to the good. Humankind may and can earn independence from ever present bad, which does not respond to reason. How has the present dilemma come into existence?
All
animals learn by retaining memory of sense impressions, like pictures without
grammar. The power and authority of the individual human being seems limited
only when death terminates education and discovery. Research on tool making
touches humankind 3.39 million years ago[1]
and the inventions reflect thought, whether individual or collective. “Over the last million years or so,
people evolved the ability to learn from each other, creating the possibility
of cumulative, non-genetic evolution.”[2]
The capacity to develop thought on par with today’s people evolved “300,000
years ago [and] within just the past 12,000 years, our species, Homo
sapiens, made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings.”[3]
Travel for trade had already begun.[4]
Religion emerged more than 50,000 years ago.[5]
Sumerian kings invented law codes[6]
and the “first systematic grammar
of Sanskrit originated”[7] some
5500 years ago. Grammar is essential to develop human being (verb).
The
Sumerian law codes empowered civic citizens 5500 years ago to constrain
dissidents and rebels to the good and eliminate villains and alien killers.
The civic culture would neither originate nor accommodate harm to or from any
person or society. The Babylonians conquered Sumer and issued the Code of
Hammurabi, which added innocence until guilt is proven.[8]
In the West, the Greeks and Romans connected Mesopotamian law and facilitated
segue through German law and French law to British common law.[9]
The 13 English colonies in America declared independence and with aid from
France and Spain defeated the English in 1781. In 1787, in Philadelphia,
signers issued a religion-free Constitution, framed for ratification by the
people in their states. The 1787 Constitution improves the ancient Sumerian,
monarchical law codes to rule by the people “to ourselves and our Posterity”.
Individual and civic independence would empower the good in a world of bad.
Essential
to human being (verb) is the opportunity to develop your unique person
according to responsible private preferences. Without this provision, humankind does not exist. The choices are grounded in potentials:
personal aptitude and public need for developed skills. As a youth, I studied
both the violin and the piano. I had better instruction in violin and continued
through high school. I had keen interest in sciences, building a tesla coil and
producing ozone with it. I distilled bituminous coal into light and heavy
fractions. In college, I sidelined music, chose the chemical engineering
curriculum, and finished with honors. Along the way, I increased prior
fascination with American literature but put it aside until after graduation.
As a senior-elective credit, I chose “The Philosophy of Science” and benefited.
Senior seminar instilled in me the intention that nothing I would help design
could blow up, risking public injury. I’m the only chemical engineer from my
H.S. class of 110 students. I served one company for 35 years and nothing we
designed can blow up. With a B.S., I rose to R&D Advisor before retirement.
During the experience, I rejected opportunities for personal intimacy, because
I felt they risked my autonomy. The public honored my independence.
Thus, for
my career, starting with polylogism limited by my education, I chose “one
logic, one truth, one path of thinking”. The outcome verifies my choice. But
the key to my appreciation is the civil culture in which I was reared. There
was no “race, gender, religion, nationality, language,” or something else to
prevent safety. Every citizen I encountered had civic integrity and took
seriously their obligation to preserve security. There was evil in town, and the
people I encountered protected me. My hard-earned college money was not
threatened on any front – not at stores where I shopped, not at campus events I
attended, not at coffee shops with late 1960s local protest singers. Guest
speakers appeared and spoke. Someone could present the case that a+b = a+b’,
where b’ = b+1. But a country boy could present 2 apples and 2 oranges and ask
the speaker how many fruit were there: only 4. I am grateful and want today’s youth to
enjoy slimilar opportunity.
So what
went wrong in only 58 years? I think both believers and non-believers realize
that monotheism is its own polylogism. The seminary trains the priest to
present doctrine about a mystery. There’s so much dogma the believer cannot
grasp the message and settles for what he or she imagines. Listeners depart,
reluctant to express what they imagined. The event turns mystery into chaos the
believer can escape by turning to a competitive monotheism. It never occurs to
the believer to be humble to the God, whatever it may be. Thus, monotheism
preserves its power over people who believe. The public is awakened to this
ruse, no longer wants to fund it, and doesn’t know what to do about it. Can
anything good come from monotheism? I think so: acceptance.
The Sumerian
political philosophy asserts that humankind may and can independently rule to
the good on earth. This physics-affirmed assertion is primitively expressed as
creation in Genesis 1, CJB and NIV; first, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Then, in
Genesis 1:26-28 the earth gets an independent ruler: humankind – Homo sapiens. Humankind has the power and authority to
rule to the good on earth. Semitic-speaking people in Mesopotamia recorded
these ideas and need not be faulted; everything that happened brought us to
today’s opportunity. One man in history, Yeshua of Nazareth, a Jew, studied the
literature of his time, commended Genesis 1:26-28, and improved colloquial law
codes. Statutory justice pursued by the law codes requires humankind to
constrain the bad and eliminate evil in order to promote the good. There is as
logic, a process, and intentions humankind may and can accept without
objections, in order to thrive rather than merely survive. Perhaps the
responsible good humankind and its posterity may and can achieve is the God.
The
opportunity is to reform rather than to destroy. I regularly participate-with and
contribute-to my church, in order to facilitate acceptance of the God without
objection or imposition, pursue Yeshua’s civic influence to the good, accept
the power and authority to develop human being, and encourage civic citizens to
share their views. I listen for the chance to improve my opinion. I also vote
in local, state, and national elections, hoping to direct my tax contributions
to my self-interest: independence rather than liberty; responsibility more than rights. I pursue the ineluctable[10]
truth.
I
appreciate Jeffrey A. Tucker[11]
for motivating this essay.
Copyright©2024 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved.
Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this
paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included.
[1]
Online at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/becoming-human-the-origin-of-stone-tools-55335180/.
[2]
Online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781880.
[3]
Online at https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens.
[4]
Online at https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/scientists-discover-evidence-early-human-innovation-pushing-back-evolutionary-timeline.
[5]
Online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_religion.
[6]
Online at https://www.worldhistory.org/Code_of_Ur-Nammu/
.
[7]
Online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar.
[8]
Onilne at https://www.history.com/news/hammurabi-code-legal-system-influence.
[9]
Online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history.
[10]
“Ineluctable” entails the combination unavoidable, unchangeable, and
irresistible.
[11]
Online at Polylogism
Is the Root Problem | The Epoch Times, May 13, 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment
I want your opinion and intend to respond.