Pro Commerce

The old religions and the new ones

Observation leads to the following: all the gods and god-like views of traditional religions found around the world are  unrelated to anything uniform or universal.  Yaweh, Jesus, Allah, Confucius and Bodhisattva are radically different in general and in their particulars. Individuals have different views of god and within religious groups individuals only have clusters of ideas they agree upon.  Traditional religions are only statistical clusters of people with similar religious ideas.

That is not true of the two great new religions.  

First, there is the new religion of global human caused apocalypse.  This religion, which is now the biggest religion on the planet, has extraordinary cohesion among its believers.  Nearly all the believers, billions of them, believe an environmental apocalypse is on the near horizon.  This apocalypse deals with the planetary atmosphere and the apocalypse would not exist if humans were not emitting carbon dioxide in excessive amounts. Most believers in this new religion consider non-believers to be wrong and maliciously wrong.

Second is the other great new religion, Fundamentalist-modern-Leftism, that believes that modern government can make humans into better people with laws, regulations and penalties.  In the past century, the Nazi’s, Russian Communists, Chinese Communists, Cambodians, North Koreans and Cubans killed tens of millions of people trying to make better human beings with modern government power.

While killing members of their own society is less in fashion with this Leftism religion, there is vast uniform agreement that modern government should be used to improve human behavior and living patterns.

The great surprise about these two modern religions, in comparison to the older religions is that their adherents focus their beliefs and efforts on converting government to their religious views.  Both religious groups, like all religions, deny any data or evidence that could change their minds.  They are singularly homogeneous in their belief systems.

Looks like we will be living with these two new religions for a long time.  I see no evidence that they are dying off.

Brain freeze

Over the years and in a variety of blogs I have tried to answer the question of why so many people I know are still juvenile Marxist thinkers.  Even late in life.

I finally answered the question for myself by remembering a hippy meme about the 100th monkey. The meme was spread by a friend of mine, Lyall Watson.  The story said that monkeys in Japan near Kyoto figured out that rinsing raw potatoes make them more tasty without the dirt on them.  That after 100 monkeys learned this, all the monkeys in Japan knew it.

It was total bullshit based on bad research.  I turns out that only the young monkeys learned to rinse the potatoes.  This did spread to other monkey troops as they came in contact with each other.

But mature monkeys never learned to rinse potatoes.

Therein lies the point that I used to reach my conclusion about human thinking.  New learning and new thinking doesn’t occur after we reach adulthood.

I have placed homo sapiens adulthood at roughly age 23.  After that our brains are hard boiled.  We can solve problems but we can’t form a new view of the world or synthesize new ideas.

Of course there are exceptions.  There are people who can have new thoughts after age 23.  I have estimated that this occurs in one person out of every 250 people.  Not many people.  But a key few.

So along comes some brain research on animals that confirms my observation.  Here it is.

Now we know why so many people around us still think like Lefty Peacenik teenagers.

 

Huey Newton

This is part of my series on people and events in my life.  This is the most surprising.

Between 1971 and 1981 I spent time with Huey at least a dozen times.

The first time we met, I was introduced to him by Dick Baker Roshi the abbot of San Francisco Zen Center.  They had become friends because Huey had practiced zazen while in solitary confinement in prison and wanted to learn more about it when he got out.  They were friends.  Dick was a close friend of mine.

We met in a top floor apartment of an expensive apartment building with a view of Lake Merritt.  The apartment was paid for by Max Palevsky, a rich patron who also funded the magazine WET by another friend, Leonard Koren.

The apartment was rather stark with the smell of men’s gym shoes.  There were a few giant black guards hanging around and several weight lifting bar-bells lying on the floor.  The only two things I remember from that visit were that Huey and gang never carried guns, they were carried by women followers who were usually on the opposite side of the street and could be thrown to the guys if needed.

I also learned that Huey never had trouble smuggling audio tapes out of solitary for his weekly training sessions with his supporters.

At one point I arranged for Huey and his gang to have an office near the San Francisco Zen Center in hopes of spending more time with him.  He was virtually never there.  San Francisco just didn’t feel right to him.

Huey was a kind gentle, sweet man.  Humble in every way.  Brilliant in conversation, with a deep understanding of any subject we discussed.  With me, Huey was a wonderful man.  Definitely a man of courage and strength.

Sometime late in the 1970’s or early 1980’s he was working on his PhD at U.C. Santa Cruz and he had a great interest in biology and genetics.  A subject we discussed intently.  Huey was literate and very competent in the world of academia.  Our quiet discussions went on for hours.  Just the two of us.  Just the two of us, many time.

One recurring subject was his favorite mother figure.  I forget her name.  She was a member of Glide church where I was business manager.  She dropped into my office periodically to update me on Huey’s doings.  Huey loved her.  She was about 65 when I was 40 and  Huey was in his mid thirties.

Huey was a kind man, a wise man and a gentle soul.