Synthesis 1.0

By Wayne Brown
July, 2013

At the risk of over-simplifying, every so often, we should attempt to identify a few broad concepts that seem to sum up the priorities of a wise person.

  • Compassion. Perhaps the best word for "love" or agape in the Christian sense (1 Cor 13) and a common thread of all religions. Among other things, compassion allows us to escape the prison of our own lives and destinies. The term includes such things as tolerance, which seems to be essential to creation of a peaceful and law-abiding society and for support of an open dialogue on all issues, which is the essential condition for progress of any sort.
  • Enlightenment. In some religions, most notably Buddhism and Hinduism, enlightenment is put forward as the main goal of life. I think this can easily broadened from the traditional inward-looking mystical journey to including the Scientific endeavour: learning everything about everything. Most important is the acquisition of skills of broad applicability, such as Mathematics, along with broad familiarity with the Human species -- history, anthropology, psychology.
  • Skepticism. This is the overall insistence on the primacy of experience as the foundation for or internal model of reality. It rules out almost all of "religion" and places constraints on our projects of enlightenment. 
It should come as no surprise that many of the issues that occupy our days days don't make this issue. These include religious ritual, sex, power, money and status. Collectively, we may borrow a term from Hinduism and call these popular distractions "samsara".

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