Conscious living
I would like to respond to Torch Pratt’s letter (Letters, Sept. 23, page 8) with a bit of hope.
It would seem that the human race is at a crossroads, because for the first time ever, we can see things not just from a global perspective, but a universal one.
That should help us to make future choices, but a glance at our history, reflected in the letter, shows we are flawed as a species, and not the masters of the Earth as we once thought.
I have been working in Taiwan on a project called “Hydrogen to Human,” which details the self-assembly of everything in the universe, which includes human behavior. Because we can look at all cultures on the Earth in real time, we can see which behaviors are common to them all.
Logic tells you this is who “we” are. The other behavior will have patterns that are the same, even though the behavior is completely different. This can also be used as evidence to predict what we will do in the future.
Take World War I and the current financial mismanagement in Europe and the US. You would think that with just a little bit of foresight, people would have sidestepped these problems, they were so obvious. However, we don’t see the obvious until the amount of pain we have to endure forces us to change.
Why? Because we are still very much animals whose bodies are a relationship between two interdependent partners, a mind and a body. Work from basic principles now, they never let you down. The mind floods the body with chemicals to make it behave in certain ways. This simply allows the mind to exist (that’s how DNA works, to just exist).
The body needs a control mechanism so it can exist. Because human beings have no bodily weapons, we rely on tool-making and cooperation to get the better of the animals we share the world with. We are programmed to conform, not to make calm logical decisions based on the current philosophical concepts of the day. We react to the chemicals in our bodies first and think later (test this the next time you are driving). As the only animal that can do the opposite of what the chemicals tell us to, why don’t we? It is very difficult to do, as any addict will tell you. When you fall in love, or hate, it’s all but impossible to react calmly.
The moneymakers and warmongers have learned to exploit this to their own advantage, another universal trait. Good education can teach the next generation what to do before the chemicals kick in: They can react to intelligent rules, rather than chemical ones.
The problems caused by over-conforming can now be clearly seen: Religion is now ironically the biggest threat to world peace, the banks who are supposed to safeguard our savings turned out to be the biggest thieves and looking from a universal perspective, humans on the Earth are a product of what DNA does, so we could go on reproducing like a virus until we kill our host.
We do have a choice, and that requires the number of people who are making intelligent choices to have more influence than those who make chemically driven reactions. Technology does not make anybody smarter: If you are making a mistake, you just make it faster. Good education with logic rather than emotion as an underlying principle gives us a tool to save us from our own DNA.
Peter Cook
Greater Taichung
More Taoyuan racism
In the light of recent news of racist incidents in Taoyuan County, you should know the Taoyuan City Government runs free shuttle buses in its various neighborhoods, but only for locals. These buses do not stop for Southeast Asian passengers and if one happens to get on, they are kicked off by the bus driver. My wife personally experienced this ugly situation.
This outrageous, sickening behavior seems incomprehensible in a civilized society, but has been going on for some years.
Locals also protest when non-Taiwanese ride supermarket or hospital shuttles, but in these cases, the bus drivers ignore the racist abuse of locals and let everyone stay on board. Not very pleasant, to say the least.
John Hanna
Taoyuan
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