Home Superstition

Our world is at constant war with itself and the things that it constitutes; ravens catch mice, winter kills autumn, the sun descends and darkness surrounds us. According to the philosophy of idealism, all physical appearances in our world are manifestations of abstract ideas that can be torn apart or combined into endless formations and shapes. Like the guitarist balances between different chords and the painter uses white on green colour to give birth to trees with his brush, we're able to create new things out of the old and replace something corrupt with a working idea.

What this means in simplified terms is that for there to be actual change, conflict needs to arise between two different ideas. If for example a family of four mice fail to find a hiding place in the forest before dawn, a male raven immediately gets the chance to fly down and satisfy his appetite. Similarly, winter marks the time of year when bears fall into hibernation, while the spruces become covered by snow, barely able to recover in the coming, lively summer. In our natural world, everything works by function - and conflict. The pure mechanical purpose of this is for nature to weed out the less healthy and replace it with something better; one idea getting in conflict with another, and only one may survive.

Darwinists call this 'natural selection' but in modern society we instead use the politically charged term 'inequality'. Ever since the European people traded their idealistic beliefs with materialism, the view on natural selection quickly changed and became demonized. The modern belief is that only our physical world is real, and as a logical extension of this, that the material existence of the individual is the centre of the universe. From this point of view we understand that it is a social taboo to hurt or kill a human being, which leaves the less fit out of the equation of natural selection.

While the above is philosophy, here is a simple example that any individual will be able to understand: assume that we possess four dogs. We have a dog race coming up and we need to find the fittest dog as our competitor for the grand prize (world peace, gay rights, free cable TV, minority votes). In order to find that special dog we're looking for, we somehow need to test them. This could mean we let them loose at the backyard and watch them run around the house four times, in order to see who'd be the fastest and most enduring of them all. This is a good example of natural selection in practice: there's no way to cheat and certainly no point in going "hey, this is not fair", as the race itself is built on the concept that one dog ultimately must be faster than the others.

A modern dog owner would instead say that this is a crime against justice, and a fascist way of comparing dogs and trying to find some superior animal to weed out the weaker ones. In other words, it's inequality. As soon we as individuals realize that not everyone can become carpenters, authors, painters, composers, or politicians, we turn our materialistic view up side down and convert it into superstition. As seen from horror movies, the evil witches and devils are able to control weather storms, move physical objects with their mere will power, and destroy the whole human race by simply farting a certain key melody to "God save the Queen". What characterizes these horror monsters, is the ability of the mind to deconstruct, move around and control physical things in our world without constriction of laws such as gravity - the subjective mind is God and the objective body is the obeying priest, following every wink from the Lord.

Our modern society works exactly the same way when facing material danger or 'inequality': we create a symbol, a token, representing something universal that all people are able to associate with - a way of letting all people say: "I'm as good as you because we both share the same basic value". Think about it for a moment, how many people in your social circle are fit for leading others and taking full responsibility for their actions when something goes wrong? Not too many, right? According to democracy, all people are able to lead and think independently - yet reality tells us that perhaps 3-4 % of a population are true leaders. How is this solved? By voting. A vote is a symbol of the ability to lead within democratic states. What's good about this particular vote, is that anyone can use it, regardless of intelligence, moral character, knowledge, experience or ethnicity - anyone can vote, even a moron. By disregarding the inherent variation within individuals, modern society creates a group of people united by a social or political construction, which means all individuals within that group will be considered 'equal'. If this is the case, conflict in the form of natural selection is no longer needed.

When you see it this way, you finally realize that most of our society is built around the concept of replacing inequality with a universal token. People from different cultures that carry a specific set of ideals, traditions and values, are brought to Europe as firework for the native working class -- here's your new multicultural neighbour. He's working 8 hours a day, watching "Seinfeld" and consuming hamburgers at McDonald's 4 out of 7 days a week - he's now an American/British/Swedish citizen, just like you. Record stores are filled with mass-produced pop music, made to entertain the crowd in between all work and television and politics; "this one has a funny sounding melody, I think I like it." A beautiful forest outside your house with birds, rabbits and deer is razed to the ground and turned into a fast food store for hungry business men: "what, there're still two trees left at the back, what are you complaining about?"

As soon as we find a difference between two things that offend us, we give each a token, religiously declaring them equal, and if anyone points out this is insane, we start crying and screaming because our self-importance has been hurt. We comfortably attend democratic meetings and address our important questions regarding the failure of multicultural integrations, preservation of freedom of speech, and how many light bulbs we must turn off at work to prevent an upcoming climate change that may very well cause another ice age on this planet. If someone mentions that it's impossible to have two different cultures remain distinct within the same society, that "freedom of speech" is valid only for those who do not oppose the current regime, or that light bulbs matter less when our population and consumption levels are rapidly increasing without restriction, we group ourselves together, hold up our sacred symbols (vote, SUV, cross, credit card) and curse the protestor for representing a symbol of the opposite camp (fascist, idealist, nationalist). Sounds a lot like your average horror movie, doesn't it?

Okay, so we're supernatural thinking beings in this modern age and we're afraid of competition and inequality - what's our solution? Should we go back to the Stone Age and live in caves, ready to club down anyone that looks stupid, ugly or generally defective? Perhaps not. The idea this author is trying to convey is an understanding of the mere essence of why natural selection even exists. If we care more about quality than quantity, we can look past all of our unnecessary symbols and perceive reality on a much more sensible plan, and applying that to our society. If we want a stable and healthy government, it's perhaps a better idea to let the political leaders manage the state affairs and let the rest of us focus on work - when it all comes down to it, we're as clueless about how to actually solve our multicultural failings and climate changes as much as I'd be totally lost if told to build a nuclear warhead or asked to explain how to remove a defective kidney during an operation. We're all unequal, but our variation in ability makes us useful for society as a whole.

Natural selection is indeed a ruthless system, but at the same time it can be forgiving if seen from a larger perspective. The family of less fit mice died today, but their stock as a whole will live on tomorrow; the sun will continue shining down on our planet some billion years to come; and the stars in the sky will appear brighter on winter nights and guide us through hard times in life. If we can get over our personal fears about the things in reality that make us uneasy or uncomfortable, there will be no need to create a new, subjective world inside our minds where challenges and competitions are but a dream from an ancient past. We can't all be good runners, excellent mathematicians, brilliant composers or competent political leaders - and between two painters and two swimmers, there has got to be a difference that separates them and makes them unique. Being 'unique' in a society where your credit card is your cultural identity is not about being special, but fooled by the system. We're governed by our own imaginative illusions and the day we wake up to find that the world around us is falling apart is the day we realize that there is no way to escape the eternal laws that regulate our environments. Therefore, praise competition, praise difference and inequality, praise reality and make it your token, your symbol of what constitutes a healthy society.


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