I once read a story about why so many ‘Prophets’ came one after the other, over the years, to the people of this world as we evolved as a species. The author, a believer in monotheism, speculated that the message was always the same and that the imperfection that resulted in the need for reiteration, rested in a combination of humanity’s requirement for constant guidance on the backdrop of our innate desire to rebel and revert to behavior that drove us away from our “purpose” as human beings; a purpose enshrined in the ‘Golden Rule’ whereby treating each other the way we would want to be treated would collectively ensure our harmonious survival here.
The story was about early humans forming clans, having petty arguments and reverting to animalistic tendencies; it was about us creating laws and language; it was about us steering away from a belief in a mono-creator where these ‘Prophets’ would be our wise men sent to guide us to enlightenment and serve as our sages.
They would eventually die and we would continue to falter until the next one would need to be sent. This Prophetic cycle concluded in Moses, Jesus and Mohammed eventually codifying these guidelines successively into ‘The Books’ in hopes that the future of humanity would have a reference to revert to in order to stay true to the Creator’s experiment – an attempt, albeit naive, possibly to put humanity to the final test; an autonomous journey into evolution towards our purpose of living harmoniously with each other. Maybe it was simply just an abandonment of the experiment altogether, letting our innate nature force us to spiral back to devolution and hopefully extinction save those that used ‘The Books’ as they were meant to be used.
Some of us, inclined enough to accept the challenge and prevent devolution into extinction, need not look further than the thin layer of skin that covers the majority of our being and realize that the difference that sets us apart is overwhelmingly minor compared to what classifies us as the same.
The World would certainly be a less colorful and boring place if our outsides were as similar to each other as our insides, but instead of appreciating this gift of diversity and celebrating it, humanity decided at some point that a fraternal competitive team based approach would better serve its Creator’s purpose.
We created these fraternities by dividing ourselves with borders, by dividing ourselves by the color of our skin, and we took the purpose of our existence; that single reiterating message, and bastardized it by peppering it with rituals and calling it religion to find yet another reason to continue dividing ourselves. Amongst us will always be the Alphas that have leveraged these divisions to ensure their darwinistic survival by pitting us against each other, yet creating another challenge for us to attempt to evolve as a humanity.
Our respective fraternities fill us with arrogance and sometimes even self-pity. This arrogance or self-pity takes its shape in nationalistic tendencies where man-made borders divide a people from each other with imaginary lines. It takes its shape in a pride of a shade of the layer of skin that we were born with. And it takes its shape in a blind belief that MY rituals better serve the Creator and therefore the glorious infinite and unproven Unknown belongs only to ME and MY fraternity. This sentiment is the antithesis of our purpose as a species and further proves the inevitable devolution.
Having an outside looking in approach to our existence by balancing our presence with the constant reminder of our mortality in absence of a supposed existence beyond this one, allows us to focus on how our individual existence aligns as near as possible to the purpose of our being here. Couple this notion with the understanding that the only existence after death that HAS been proven, is the immortality of a legacy each one of us leaves during our time here and achieving a heavenly legacy then suddenly becomes quite simple – it starts with and ends with an intention of leaving each interaction, purposeful or otherwise, in a way that one would want to be treated by their interactor.
It assures our survival and bankrupts the divisive forces. It humbles our need for arrogance and justifies the experiment that is us.
There is certainly a lot to learn about this issue. I like all of the points you made. Elinor Matt Cynthea