This Weblog's Hypothesis
Each of us can only deeply testify about religion in term sof illuminating where we come from. As a mathematician, my mapmaking friends and I try to keep space open for asking questions about truth, about how and what goodwill connects with the future. Goodwill seems to me to be about truths that are contextual for sustaining communities - some of these greatest truths will need to connect humanity if we are one species, many others will permit nuances relating to that community's diversity and most urgent developing needs.
I love what I understand of Gandhi's idea that all religions potentially lead to the same uniting truth - god is truth and truth is god is quite a cheerful value for a human being to revolve their life around. The golden rule of relationship reciprocity stated in various ways but eg do unto others as you would wish done unto you and yours seems vital to me, as does a systemic version which asks you to map connectionn s (not separations) of your actions through time. What consequences will they compound?
As a methematician, I will never know any single religion as deeply as those who live religious lives. Oftentimes, this makes me lurk in discussions which praise the R-word. Yet for the last 22 years I have been telling stories with fellow networkers on why I believe our current generation globally faces the greatest challenges humanity has ever been confromted with all at one time, and all over the world. Networking connectivity requires a different order of governance of trust than when every nation's actions had little impact on people on the other side of the world.
So here's a post I have just sent out to one of the most cross-culturally open networks I have ever discovered worldcitizen group. We invite people to tell me or us where 2 great action debates may be going on - both of which seem to me most likely to be answered in ways that would satisfy me if we could tap into the most human experiences of every religion that has survived the test of time in sustaining hope, faith and love.
There are a couple of ideas that I would love to debate with a sub-network of
worlcit if anyone feels as passionately about them as I do, and once we have
worked out any actions we could report back
If either of these ideas feel like an issue that grabs you, do contact me at
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk unless you feel they are already general discussion
topics in which case of course tell us all...
The world's most valuable people 2.0
Idea 1
Much of the Western world's media publish annual league tables of wealthiest
people. I would love to see the other valuation of world's most trusted people
(those whose social networks multiply the most or deepest followers -
disciples around saintly type actions that most of us from any creed can stand
back and see were desperately needed to empower or enlighten huge communities
of people as well as how all beings interact with civil emotional
intteligence). By seeing the list we might find that these people
were "religious" with the small r (of hi-trust and truth-making and urgent
contextual innovation around a life critical right or need). My guess is that
before mass media people's reputations only crossed through generations if
they stood up for practices that cheered humanity's sustainability (compared
with a vicious ruler whose praise (people's devotion) evaporates quickly after
his death). WE might find that from every diversity, we are pretty much united
around what people most desperately need help from. It would be great to have
an all time league table of hi-trust people representing every different
culture. WE could include secular as well as religious folk. If I were to list
the heroines and heros I'd trust to be practically competent wherever there
alumni still congregate as well as Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Florence
Nightingale and David Livingstone come easily to my mind...
If the world of humanity is to reach the 22nd Century, then the model I
personally believe (since this bookmark's 1984 text) in unites global villages
http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html
- a framework where their economics and social visions multiply each other's services to all people making the most difference from being alive. To achieve these we will need 2 opposite dynamics. A short list that all global vilages believe in. My shortlist of universal trust-flow beliefs would include:
the supreme right to peaceful revolution (the challenges we face to make poverty history or to become world citizens not just separated by short-term national agendas) are revolutionary, but Gandhi's 0 1 2 extraordinary cultural creativity was peaceful revolution concepts for all beleivers to enact (my father and our scottish heritage spent most of his life renewing the word entrepreneur - coined as in the taking back of liberte to prodice and freedom to demand of the French Revolution (not entirely peaceful if you were a king!) - today we are not entirely sure we can give global economists a peaceful ride but then you'd need to understand the 200 year old story of socttish people being told by english accountants that sheep were more valuable for Lords to raise than people http://clubofarran.blogspot.com)
transparency - Raj (see recent worldcit dialogues) mentions what I believe to be one of the biggest transparency crises in religions through the ages; religions seem to me to go
wrong when an individual leader of the faith many generations of from the
founder starts closing the doors on whom the religion is for; instead of
helping serve the weakest around us, the religion spirals off in ways that
seem to me to be the opposite of the prophet's intentions. I think we need to
collect stories showing how this happens and not isolate any particular
religion becaus it has happened to so many truth-seekers over time. As Raj
says, how do you keep people in the shop is one reason. Another in ancient
times is where the leader of a place chooses a religion because it will be
easiest to socilaly control with. When I visited the Ukraine, I was told that
this country's history has suffered from repeat instances of this.
Once we have this short list, the global village model's opposite dynamic is
to say as long as all global villages' governing structures hold true to these uniting values for humanity, its a basic need of a community to experiemnt with iots own values, right for its time, its specific combination of development challenges, its own experiments with the truth. Gandhi, with his ashrams, provides one of the greeat rural vilage models but I cannot see how these can be imported into the 21st Century's biggest cities. They provide clues but not all the work we need to do- for example I belive no citizen group is free unless we can all help each other retake enough public media where conversations are promoted around questions the peoples want to ask not communications government or big business want to provide image-laden answers to. Londoners (indeed all British citizens) would like to help any city group visualise the difference that can be freed up if you have a world service public broadacster like the BBC could be and if you don't. One of those basic human rights I try to help connect local experts in is clean water. Many of them come from countries where there is little publically owned media. In empowering the people to stand up for clean water, they have to find another channel. In for example Brazil's case it tuirned out to be the catholic church with its 7000 local parishes which bravely named 2004 as the Year of Water, and permitted secular leaflets on what people need to communalise to get clean water preserved.
Sorry if this was long. But I hope both examples show that humanity needs to
embrace the truth-opening social spaces dynamics that religion can linkin 6
billion beings to - whether or not each of us is Religious in the capital R
sense of the word. Both Religion and Media need their mediation values enhanced and their one way commands over people reduced. I love to see people being encouraged to ask questions about the truth, I hate to hear any top monopolising facts about truth. I guess that's wht mathematicians are brought up with creeds such as: there are liars, damn liars and (numbers) statisticians.
chris macrae
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
http://valuereligion.blogspot.com co-editors welcome
Each of us can only deeply testify about religion in term sof illuminating where we come from. As a mathematician, my mapmaking friends and I try to keep space open for asking questions about truth, about how and what goodwill connects with the future. Goodwill seems to me to be about truths that are contextual for sustaining communities - some of these greatest truths will need to connect humanity if we are one species, many others will permit nuances relating to that community's diversity and most urgent developing needs.
I love what I understand of Gandhi's idea that all religions potentially lead to the same uniting truth - god is truth and truth is god is quite a cheerful value for a human being to revolve their life around. The golden rule of relationship reciprocity stated in various ways but eg do unto others as you would wish done unto you and yours seems vital to me, as does a systemic version which asks you to map connectionn s (not separations) of your actions through time. What consequences will they compound?
As a methematician, I will never know any single religion as deeply as those who live religious lives. Oftentimes, this makes me lurk in discussions which praise the R-word. Yet for the last 22 years I have been telling stories with fellow networkers on why I believe our current generation globally faces the greatest challenges humanity has ever been confromted with all at one time, and all over the world. Networking connectivity requires a different order of governance of trust than when every nation's actions had little impact on people on the other side of the world.
So here's a post I have just sent out to one of the most cross-culturally open networks I have ever discovered worldcitizen group. We invite people to tell me or us where 2 great action debates may be going on - both of which seem to me most likely to be answered in ways that would satisfy me if we could tap into the most human experiences of every religion that has survived the test of time in sustaining hope, faith and love.
There are a couple of ideas that I would love to debate with a sub-network of
worlcit if anyone feels as passionately about them as I do, and once we have
worked out any actions we could report back
If either of these ideas feel like an issue that grabs you, do contact me at
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk unless you feel they are already general discussion
topics in which case of course tell us all...
The world's most valuable people 2.0
Idea 1
Much of the Western world's media publish annual league tables of wealthiest
people. I would love to see the other valuation of world's most trusted people
(those whose social networks multiply the most or deepest followers -
disciples around saintly type actions that most of us from any creed can stand
back and see were desperately needed to empower or enlighten huge communities
of people as well as how all beings interact with civil emotional
intteligence). By seeing the list we might find that these people
were "religious" with the small r (of hi-trust and truth-making and urgent
contextual innovation around a life critical right or need). My guess is that
before mass media people's reputations only crossed through generations if
they stood up for practices that cheered humanity's sustainability (compared
with a vicious ruler whose praise (people's devotion) evaporates quickly after
his death). WE might find that from every diversity, we are pretty much united
around what people most desperately need help from. It would be great to have
an all time league table of hi-trust people representing every different
culture. WE could include secular as well as religious folk. If I were to list
the heroines and heros I'd trust to be practically competent wherever there
alumni still congregate as well as Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Florence
Nightingale and David Livingstone come easily to my mind...
If the world of humanity is to reach the 22nd Century, then the model I
personally believe (since this bookmark's 1984 text) in unites global villages
http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html
- a framework where their economics and social visions multiply each other's services to all people making the most difference from being alive. To achieve these we will need 2 opposite dynamics. A short list that all global vilages believe in. My shortlist of universal trust-flow beliefs would include:
the supreme right to peaceful revolution (the challenges we face to make poverty history or to become world citizens not just separated by short-term national agendas) are revolutionary, but Gandhi's 0 1 2 extraordinary cultural creativity was peaceful revolution concepts for all beleivers to enact (my father and our scottish heritage spent most of his life renewing the word entrepreneur - coined as in the taking back of liberte to prodice and freedom to demand of the French Revolution (not entirely peaceful if you were a king!) - today we are not entirely sure we can give global economists a peaceful ride but then you'd need to understand the 200 year old story of socttish people being told by english accountants that sheep were more valuable for Lords to raise than people http://clubofarran.blogspot.com)
transparency - Raj (see recent worldcit dialogues) mentions what I believe to be one of the biggest transparency crises in religions through the ages; religions seem to me to go
wrong when an individual leader of the faith many generations of from the
founder starts closing the doors on whom the religion is for; instead of
helping serve the weakest around us, the religion spirals off in ways that
seem to me to be the opposite of the prophet's intentions. I think we need to
collect stories showing how this happens and not isolate any particular
religion becaus it has happened to so many truth-seekers over time. As Raj
says, how do you keep people in the shop is one reason. Another in ancient
times is where the leader of a place chooses a religion because it will be
easiest to socilaly control with. When I visited the Ukraine, I was told that
this country's history has suffered from repeat instances of this.
Once we have this short list, the global village model's opposite dynamic is
to say as long as all global villages' governing structures hold true to these uniting values for humanity, its a basic need of a community to experiemnt with iots own values, right for its time, its specific combination of development challenges, its own experiments with the truth. Gandhi, with his ashrams, provides one of the greeat rural vilage models but I cannot see how these can be imported into the 21st Century's biggest cities. They provide clues but not all the work we need to do- for example I belive no citizen group is free unless we can all help each other retake enough public media where conversations are promoted around questions the peoples want to ask not communications government or big business want to provide image-laden answers to. Londoners (indeed all British citizens) would like to help any city group visualise the difference that can be freed up if you have a world service public broadacster like the BBC could be and if you don't. One of those basic human rights I try to help connect local experts in is clean water. Many of them come from countries where there is little publically owned media. In empowering the people to stand up for clean water, they have to find another channel. In for example Brazil's case it tuirned out to be the catholic church with its 7000 local parishes which bravely named 2004 as the Year of Water, and permitted secular leaflets on what people need to communalise to get clean water preserved.
Sorry if this was long. But I hope both examples show that humanity needs to
embrace the truth-opening social spaces dynamics that religion can linkin 6
billion beings to - whether or not each of us is Religious in the capital R
sense of the word. Both Religion and Media need their mediation values enhanced and their one way commands over people reduced. I love to see people being encouraged to ask questions about the truth, I hate to hear any top monopolising facts about truth. I guess that's wht mathematicians are brought up with creeds such as: there are liars, damn liars and (numbers) statisticians.
chris macrae
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
http://valuereligion.blogspot.com co-editors welcome
posted by ... at 5:03 AM
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