In Politics, Morality, and Spirituality (which I just realized, unfortunately, that when acronimized is P.M.S.) I wrote the following…
Now, humanity faces its greatest “Evolve or Die” moment yet. Up until the 1950’s, it had always been about whether a particular society or subset of humanity would survive the unmerciful ravages of evolution. When we acquired the capacity to wipe out all of humanity either through Global Thermonuclear War or now, befouling our atmosphere to the point where the earth is unsuitable for human life, evolution had always been sort of local.
Now all of our eggs are in one basket. And since we have managed (so far at least) to evolve far enough to not have actively killed ourselves, we will see if we can evolve enough to not passively kill ourselves. In the nuclear evolutionary exam, all we had to do was NOT push The Button.
In our current test, we have to evolve far enough and fast enough that we can learn to use foresight and actually cooperate to not kill ourselves. The medium for that will at least include politics.
But it will also involve evolving a new morality (since a large scale agreed upon morality is basically non-existent, having been most notably disposed of during the Bush Years) that we can all agree is valid….otherwise, it will just be more head bashing by whoever is greediest for the remaining resources on the planet.
Up until now, our mostly regional religious beliefs have furnished us with the morals that protect society in general from the worst excesses of the brutality inherent in humanity….to the extent anything has.
But as the planet has shrunk, now our various moralities and religions are at war with each other. And as they war, the planet dies.
In order to solve this problem humanity is being forced to evolve a new shared set of morals, which must necessarily be based on a new shared spirituality (Though I doubt that is the right word.)
If one even casually studies the root texts of the worlds religions and moral systems, it becomes obvious very quickly that there are many more shared realities than conflicting ones. In fact the deeper you go past the imposed dogma of later generations and organizations….there are indeed very few actual differences in the moral codes presented therein.
Most notably, in my opinion, (and I freely admit that I am no expert) is the current nexus of warfare and religious persecution. As far as I can see, there is actually little of “Sharia law” in the Koran, and what is there is one thing…and what is being passed off as Sharia today are nearly all later interpretations. Interpretations made for the most part by both Christian and Muslim men who are trying to use, as is the age old tradition, religion to politically control the masses. Or even to take them to war against each other.
Yes you can find sections in both the Koran and the Bible (and many other religious tracts)that can be interpreted as being hateful, or urging violence and war, etc. But the message of both books, indeed all or nearly all “holy books,” is that it is Peace and Love that are to be valued, that should be striven for. Peace, Love and the Creation of beauty are the highest functions, the greatest aspirations of Human Kind……and the root of every, if not all, religious and philosophical work of note is some variation on “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”