On Being Generous

Hi! Happy Monday!



Occasionally people in my position in society who are advocating for social change will promote kindness. Be kind. But what does that mean? I'd like to explore being kind in one particular form: being generous kind.

Kindness of generousity means always seeing some goodness in everyone no matter how hated a person might be. I suppose one example of would be nuns who minister to prisoners on death row.

Here is an example I posted in  yesterday's post:

"A reasonable person adapts themselves to their environment. Therefore all progress depends on the reasonable person."
- George Bernhard Shaw

The original quote used "man" where I replaced "man" with "person". Times change and language changes in real time. When Shaw used the word man then it was understood to mean anyone. Not so today.  I translated old English to new English for the same reason  a quote in Spanish would need translating into English: to convey meaning

What I did not do is cancel Shaw. I did not research Shaw to determine if he was a sexist pig. He may very well have been sexist but I choose to be generous kind. I can only imagine how much time is being wasted today with researching people before referencing them. Let's be kind to each other and not impose such wasteful time sinks. To me the right approach is to translate from old to new English and be generous to the person citing the reference as having no hidden agenda and further be generous to historical figures.

Why should we generous to historical figures? First because they are dead. They cannot defend themselves to provide context or nuance. Second is because free will doesn't exist. We are all a product of our environment. I have no doubt that if people like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson were born today then they would not own slaves. Which brings me to the thought experiment regarding baby Hitler. If one could go back in time then would you kill baby Hitler? This thought experiment is rooted in ignorance of free will. It doesn't exist. Just change baby Hitler's environment and he will be different just like we would all be. Just bring baby Hitler back with you to the present or find the country most like our modern time, say the Jane's in India, and move baby Hitler.

I love everyone. That means I want the best for everyone and have empathy. I was born with this condition and in part rejected religion as a child and became a child atheist because all religions lay claim to an exclusive domain over being a good person and that is evil. That is how I thought as a child. I rejected one of the most dominant environmental factors of life as a child. This is rare. Atheists represent only 3-4% of America and a much smaller subset of that 3-4% do so from birth.

And yet even so I was a trained bigot. When I moved to California from Indiana at the age of 22 in 1984 I thought my empathy made me bigot proof. Ha! I soon found out I was homophobe and transphobe. I had internalized my environment unwittingly. I was also far more the sexist then I imagined. I went on a ten year campaign to eradicate these bigotries from my character. Me, the free thinker who rejected the religion as a child  was still the product of my Indiana upbringing.

We do not have free will. We have limited free will. We are all conditioned by our environment. I am a free thinker which translated means my limited free will is far less limited than yours. From my perch this difference is stark. The limits most people have are intractable. The limits were set during childhood, a prison not of their own design. Fifty percent of humans live and die with the religion they were born into and this makes me cry. Religion is a horrific free will limitation.

I am generous kind. I want the best for everyone no matter the limits on their free will. Dead people are gone. There is no reason to have feelings for nonexistent people, dead or fictional. We can learn though. George Bernhard Shaw may have been a sexist and a racist. I don't know. I do know the idea about reasonable people using reason to adapt to unreasonable conditions is human nature. Take that idea with you.

Does being generous kind apply to public statues? Should we just honor General Lee for his military accomplishments that he willing pursued and set aside racism that was his upbringing?

I submit to you that this is the wrong perspective. Heroes are unhealthy. Don't have them. A healthy society has no heroes. Worship of any kind is unhealthy. Tare all heroes down. Hero worship is just god worship proxy.

Condmening dead people is pointless. Teaching history is not. Humans are generating histoy today at rates exponentially greater than pre-printing press times. All the lessons from days of yore can be found in events going back no further than five years. We should be teaching history in school as current events so as to set environmental free will limits of children to today's values and sensibilities. Holidays should be remade to current events each passing year. If we want to end free will limits of the ancient past we need to stop teaching that history to children. Leave ancient history to the ancient living people older than fifty.

We should tear down all ancient symbols if we want to upgrade society's free will limitations to the history being made in real time today that dwarfs the past in volume by factors of population size multiplied by increasing rates of both travel and communication. To whit, ancient history is redundant to the point of being meaningless and worthless.

Be generous kind. We all have limited free will. Some people are active bigots. These people should be called out and canceled. Can I as an atheist cancel every religious person for their religious bigotry? Think about that the next time perhaps you are thinking of canceling someone. Is their bigotry willful or not? If not then are you not just being a bigot against others because of who they are rather than what they want to be? Attacking ideas knows no limits and is not hateful.

Side note.

How long does language take to change? When should I translate old to new? Consider this. The Declaration of Independence states all men are created equal. The US Constitution written at that time states a government of the people by the people. Even in 1776 this conversation of the word "men" representing everyone was taking place and was updated to "people" in the Constitution. This conversation has  been going on for hundreds of years. Translation then is up to you. Free will it.

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Cheers!

Benefit of cooperation replaces rule of law!

Freethinkers unite!

Freedom!

Party On!

Let's get cracking!

Voluntarily Reject Demagoguery!

Politics as Science!

Demand Irreni World Scale!

Anti-theism is feminism!  

Think disruption!

Empathy for all!

Moral relativity: think it, breath it!

Prove it or lose it!

Conversations equal consensus! 

Welcome to the 21st century!

Scale your empathy, scale the world! 

Find your tribe!

Be sexy people!

The future is coming! 

Innovate at a rapid pace!

Slow speed ahead!

Well come! and well met!





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