Posted at https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/4578211154898336570,
December 3, 2024
This is the first of a series to propose possible pursuit of
human being, a civic practice among humankind. I hope it will become a book.
Key words and phrases
actual-reality
choices
comprehend and intend
accommodate chaos
doubting belief
evidence versus mystery
erroneous tradition
habitual failure
human being (the practice)
necessary goodness
necessity and desire
physics and its progeny
reliable responsibility
statutory justice
Introduction
Not every chemical engineer gets a message like the one I perceived
from my 1966 Senior Seminar at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I paraphrase
the message, “Our Chemical Engineering Department authorizes you to practice
chemical engineering (ChE). Among equipment-designs you aid, there can be no
blow up (harmful incident).”
I served one company for 35 years in nearly 20 system
designs and none has blown up, these 23-years later. For example, in reviewing
safety-provisions for 200 global-shipping containers, I examined ChE parameters
for overpressure relief design, hoping to find excess conservatism I might relax,
in order to accept existing, small devices. It was necessary to either replace
the 1” relief valves with 2” devices or risk possible property loss and perhaps
personal injury to the public. After confirming my findings, my employer
replaced the insufficient relief valves at substantial capital cost.
ChEs learn to think of analogs, as in electrical potential
is analogous to hydraulic head. In my ninth decade, I purse and promote the “no
blow up” analog: “don’t accommodate chaos” in personal living.
As a young man, reared by competitive Southern Baptist
parents and community, I knew not how to handle falling in love with a
beautiful, serenely-confident, Louisiana-French-Catholic woman and elementary-school
teacher. All I knew was that I imagined rearing children and grandchildren who
had not suffered competitive parents. Stubborn in believing the good-intentions
of each person, including myself, I failed at least the first part of my dream,
losing our son to an auto accident at his age 19. I was uninformed that the
human body takes 25 years to complete the wisdom parts of the brain and took
for granted that he would survive risks I had taken at his age. It takes a few
years beyond 25 for wisdom to become evident to the self. I want to share my
experience – horror -- in order to lessen frequency of such needless loss and
grief among humankind.
Bemusement with mystery is at the heart of the matter. One
couple is insufficient to end competitive mystery, so Homo sapiens accommodates
an evil: competitive religion could not care less that it uses mystery to bemuse
families. But humankind may and can discover, accept, and establish civic
integrity and still preserve personal preferences respecting mysteries. Having
an opinion about mystery is not unlike choosing a favorite symphony, or rock
group, or sports team. However, too often, adolescents drift into the parent’s
religion without considering personal intentions regarding mystery. And
Education Departments discourage comparative religion courses, electing to
defend/promote a local belief. For example, traditional Americans think of
civic integrity as agnosticism if not atheism. In civic integrity, each person
admits to self, “I cannot describe or specify what constrains the consequences
of human choices”. Acceptance of actual-reality is one way to be humble.
Before meeting the woman who performed her part to fulfill
my family dream, I thought I was meant to be single and had embarked on a
life-long study of 2 questions. First, what does it mean to be born a human
being? Second, what does it mean to be born a United States citizen?
This book will present my responses.
Invitation to dialogue
I write in my words, phrases, and grammar,
hoping to be accurate, precise, deep, and clear; avoid misleading clichés, for
example, writing “civic integrity” and dismissing “common good”; include a
glossary so readers may clarify words and phrases; will not knowingly
plagiarize, yet take no responsibility for determining who first thought an
idea or phrase. For example, someone castigated me for writing “leap of faith”
without citing its source; I cannot cite what I do not know. The Internet is
available to everyone, and there’s no need to claim better search skills.
Footnotes share pivotal reports, erroneous as they may be. I think my free-use
of hyphens increases clarity and precision to my opinion. I write opinion,
because I do not know the ineluctable[1]
truth. I hope readers comprehend my opinion and propose improvements I may
choose. I write to learn possible improvements.
Human being (verb)
The human infant may have the opportunity to acquire
comprehension-of and intention-to humankind’s purpose, which is to pursue
necessary goodness. It takes a quarter century of liberal, civic, and service
education to acquire comprehension and the intention is not likely with existing
Education Departments. Human education
is imperfect in 2 ways.
First, both
parents and community have limited knowledge in a world that researches to
discover but does not articulate reliable responsibility to necessary goodness.
Humankind steadily advances without fanfare. They exponentially discover
unknowns and ineluctable evidence to knowledge. Yet cultures, nations, and
parents are 1) still in diverse learning processes and 2) cannot foresee the
future world their youth must navigate. Knowledge that parents deem essential
to their child may be obsolete by the child’s early adulthood. Grandparents may
share experiences and observations for their children and grandchildren to
consider, so descendants may avoid past mistakes, but adults ought not attempt
to impose erroneous tradition. This book seeks to end the tradition of parents
sharing error with their offspring unto the third generation and beyond.
Second, no infant
is born aware of their unique abilities, and few adolescents embrace their opportunity
to comprehend and intend to practice human being. Many are born to cultures
that are unaware of human being. Comprehension and intention to human being is
rare if not non-existent. But civilization can reform.
Two forces impact the individual’s potential to pursue human
being: necessity and desire. The individual may efficiently perform their
daily responsibilities and faithfully pursue possible joy – may work and perceive
happiness – may live and achieve goodness. Responsibility requires intelligent
work, and joy comes with trust-in and commitment-to reliable goodness. It is
possible for an individual to discover and accept efficiency and reliability.
Maybe some people do. I think those who do both accept the laws of physics, and consider
goodness is their self-interest. Physics constrains the consequences of
personal choices to act.
If an informed person comprehends human being and during the
first quarter century accepts the intention, it takes another couple quarter
centuries to add experiences and observations on which to perceive progress.
The mature human-being may imagine living perfectly – never repeating a mistake
whether experienced or observed. A thoroughbred horse stands in about an hour,
finds food in about 3 hours, and peaks in 4 to 5 years. A mature person stood within
a year, ate independently in 3 -7 years, and peaked in 3 – 4 quarter centuries.
Humankind may and can accelerate the education of its youth by lessening time
spent on mystery.
The laws of physics and its progeny
Something constrains the choices a human-being can and may
take, and I think it’s the laws of physics and its progeny, or simply physics.
First, no
considerate individual chooses physical threats to their life. For example, few
attempt to weather a Category 5 hurricane without protection. Humankind
continuously researches to discover variables that control actual-reality and
how interconnected physics influences action unto either the negative or the
positive. For example, nuclear reactions may be designed for war, or to produce
energy, or both. Second, undiscovered
actual-reality accommodates imagination on which humankind may create and
sustain mysteries. For example, before humankind discovered that the sun is a
nuclear reactor, many cultures believed the sun was a supernatural,
other-worldly power. Self-interested persons do not choose mystery over
discovery.
Existing yet unknown laws of physics facilitate imagination
on which persuaders may attempt to subjugate believers. For example, the first
person who attempted to fly like a bird perished nearly 2900 years ago[2].
But today, humankind takes jet-propelled space flight to explore “the heavens”.
The individual who waits for discovery is rewarded for doubting belief in
mystery. Motivation and inspiration to goodness empowers the individual more
than belief in mystery, or spiritualism. Humankind benefits, too, when beliefs yield
to goodness.
Physics
does not alert the individual to select either the good, or the bad, or mystery
in choosing to act or not. Often people allow the group they associate with to decide
for them. People group themselves on those 3 options. I class the 3 types of
citizens either civic, or vulnerable, or evil, depending on justice. Fellow
citizens among the vulnerable include the needy, the unwilling, the criminal,
and the spiritual. The civic citizens earn means, in order to pay for both
their way of living and for public justice; they aid the needy, nudge the lazy
to embrace goodness, penalize the criminal unto possible reform, constrain
repetitive villains, ask the spiritual if they are certain, and aid the
elimination of evil people. Means entails physical, psychological, and monetary
wellnesses. Goodness requires the pursuit of statutory justice -- written law the
civic-citizens amend when injustice is discovered. Civic integrity is grounded
in experience and observation, in order to not repeat past mistakes, personal
or not.
Acceptance
Humankind may and can accept that physics does not
accommodate utopia, wherein every individual both provides and receives peace. In
actual-reality, every person is subject to necessity and desire and balances
these forces in their unique way – according to ability and education. A civic
citizen in a criminal family may choose goodness. A criminal living in a civic
family may betray humankind. The spiritual person may accommodate the civic
individual. To practice human being, a person pursues civic integrity.
Most people, following tradition, seek a higher power to
accomplish what they are neither educated nor committed to do. How did this
human condition – habitual failure -- emerge? Would most individuals prefer to
manage necessity and desire, regardless of the unknowns? Could Education
Departments inculcate human being rather than train workers and indoctrinate
inhabitants? What if Education Departments persuaded most youth to comprehend
and intend human being as a self-interest – to constrain chaos in their way of
living – to order necessity with goodness?
The origins of goodness, badness, and evil
Primitive humankind likely died young due to ignorance exceeding
ours. They perceived desire as spirit and assumed other species had spirits,
too -- even things had spirits (animism). As humankind discovered necessities
and desires over perhaps 7 million years, awareness increased and mutations, at
least one, developed fast synapses and neurons to accommodate exponentially
increasing information. No one knows the technological and psychological limits
of the recent species, Homo sapiens, about 200,000 years old. However, Homo
sapiens cannot defy physics.
Space explorers plan a colony on the moon or on Mars in the
next quarter century. However, nations have not, during the recent 10,000
years, accepted the responsibility to rule to goodness on earth. Why?
In
Mesopotamia, beginning soon after humankind’s first writing and grammar,
Sumerian kings, polytheists negotiating treaties between city-states, perceived,
if not accepted, that only humankind may and can rule on earth. About 4100
years ago, the partially recovered Code of Ur-Nammu stated, “I eliminated
enmity, violence, and cries for justice”[3].
Their laws address murder, robbery, slaves, family, adultery, divorce, sorcery,
injury, lying, and contractual failure, as domestic constraints. The objects of
the laws are evidence of both the chaos that existed and Sumer-kings intentions
to reform. The 3800 year old Code of Hammurabi, Sumer’s conqueror, protected
the home, widows, and orphans.[4]
At least in Mesopotamia, some of humankind
accepted that only humankind may and
can constrain enmity and violence among humankind.
But Sumer’s enemies did not collaborate for civic order.
Innovating mystery resists taking responsibility
A
Semitic-speaking people in Mesopotamia opposed killing humans for blood-sacrifice
to mysteries and departed Sumer (Sumerian speaking). The Semitic-speakers preserved
blood-sacrifice killing animals and birds. A Semitic-speaking writer neglected Sumerian
law codes yet captured the overall political suggestion with a brief statement
in Genesis 1:26-28, here in the New International version:
Then God said, “Let us make
mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may
rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the
livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move
along the ground.”
So God
created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he
created them;
male and female he created
them.
God blessed them and said to
them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and
subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over
every living creature that moves on the ground.”
The writer images the God, anthropomorphically as both male
and female and as both “us” and “he”. Humankind may and can rule the other
species, procreate, and ought to subdue the earth, like the God would. The
writer neither addressed how
humankind ought to rule and subdue nor imagined exploring space 3900 year later.
As Sumerian law codes suggest, necessity and desire encourage humankind to
pursue goodness.
The
literature that follows Genesis 1 expresses the consequences when humankind
dismisses opportunity to eliminate
“enmity, violence, and cries for justice”. The writer of Genesis 2 refutes the
Genesis 1 report that man unites to woman to “be fruitful”, taking woman from
the first man’s rib to provide him a helpmate. A second God is further
anthropomorphized, visiting people. In Genesis 3, the couple each chooses to
invite consequences of bad choices. The consequences are bad.
Subsequently, no civic faction in the West has developed
Education Departments to teach youth to comprehend and intend human being – the
Genesis-1 practice of pursuing goodness. Badness represses goodness and
accommodates evil. Avoidance-of and resistance-to Genesis 1:26-28 reaps chaos
to individuals, families, cities, counties, states, nations, and humankind. It
preserves mystery despite discovery. For example, discovery that the sun is not
a deity did not lessen deity-constructs. Why has chaos prevailed while
technology excels? Why isn’t goodness successful?
Competitive monotheism: 3 developments
In Mesopotamia, diverse peoples bargained with their deity-constructs
for favor. Sumerian law codes lessened both animism and human killing to
provide blood sacrifice, but each city had a patron deity, intended to protect
them from invasion by alien peoples. Civic responsibility to necessity could
not accommodate the undiscovered – the mystery. Bargaining with deities
continued.
Perhaps from Sumer’s city-patron tradition, competitive
monotheism emerged, and a faction of the Semitic-speaking people who fled Sumer
believed, 3700 years ago, that a deity might favor non-human blood-sacrifice.
Semitic-speaking Sarah’s grandson, Israel descended. Israel’s
Deity would grant favor on obedience to laws given. Israel’s nation repeatedly
failed and sought renewal through blood sacrifice. But 1900 years ago, Israel pursued
goodness by continually improving the given laws, leaving blood sacrifice to
history. Nevertheless, Israel still looks to their Deity for judgement. Intentionally
or not, Israel would reverse Genesis-1 responsibility to the Deity. In other
words, mercy regardless of repeated erroneous behavior cannot be attributed to justice.
That is to say, constructing a just Deity is a choice. If Israel will choose to
pursue necessary goodness on earth, they may re-consider Genesis 1:26-28.
Generations
later, a precocious Aramaic-speaking political philosopher, Yeshua[5],
was born to a Jewish couple, Josef and Miryam, in Nazareth of 2000 years ago. Yeshua
grew to young adulthood, impressed both government and church, and improved Israel’s
law. A small faction of Jews perceived Yeshua fulfilled various thoughts and
prophecies in ancient literature, and projected Yeshua onto those ideas. A
faction projected Yeshua as Israel’s messiah. Falsely accused, Yeshua was
executed. Given the chance to defend himself, Yeshua said he came “to
testify to the truth”[6].
The execution occurred just a few decades before Israel stopped practicing
blood sacrifice, in 70 CE. But competitive mystery prevailed.
Just 3 years after Yeshua’s execution, Paul, formerly a lawyerly
Jew, declared himself the-lord-who-was-sent-to-persuade-pagans to pursue Yeshua
-- not to influence order for living, but to save spirits for favorable
afterdeath[7].
How a person became elect was a mystery. Paul negotiated with a small, Yeshua-sympathetic
group of Jewish leaders for exclusion of some parts of the given law, obtained
a compromise then went his arrogant way. The consequence is competitive
Christianity with about 10 institutions and 45,000 sects. Yeshua affirmed[8]
Genesis 1:26-28. If Christianity will choose to pursue necessary goodness on earth,
they may re-consider Genesis 1:26-28.
Returning to the Semitic-speaking group that escaped Sumer 3700
years ago, Arabic-speaking Hagar bore Ishmael, who promulgated the Arab
lineage. Genesis 16 treats the Arabs harshly. Muhammad, a direct descendant of
Ishmael, disseminated Arab revelation from 610 until 632 CE, when he died. Muhammad’s
recitations were recorded by scribes, who returned to their towns to develop
literature. In 650 CE, Caliph Uthman directed a collaborative Koran.
Authorities continually improve multiple texts. If Islam will choose to
pursue necessary goodness on earth, they may re-consider Genesis 1:26-28.
Israel, Christianity, Islam, and competitive cultures that
descended from ancient Mesopotamia may and can collaborate to apply Genesis
1:26-28, in order to rule to necessary goodness on earth.
In summary, humankind, some 7 million years old, developed
increasing capabilities, and beginning 0.2 million years ago, Homo sapiens have
brains fast enough to process evidence versus mystery and choose to act or not.
With the inventions of writing and grammar, 10,000 years ago in Sumer, kings
developed intentions to constrain chaos on earth rather than remain dependent
on mystery. Necessity and desire drive discovery and encourage goodness.
However, some groups choose to preserve mystery rather than wait for discovery.
Consequently, humankind is divided on reliable-responsibility versus hope. If humankind
will choose to pursue necessary goodness on earth, they may consider Genesis
1:26-28.
In the next part, I will clarify the timeline and
geopolitics of the developments in Mesopotamia and surrounding lands – the ancient
Near East.
Posted December 3, 2024; edited December 4
[1]
Together; unavoidable, unchangeable, and irresistible. See Merriam-Webster
online.
[2]
https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/classic/ten-bungled-flight-attempt.htm.
[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshua
[6]
John 18:37
[7]
That vast time after an elect-person’s mind and body stopped functioning
[8]
Matthew 5:48 and more
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