13 studeni 2020 ~ 0 Comments

JESUS OF NAZARETH Securing the life and creating togetherness

The Homo genus, to which today’s species Homo sapiens belongs, had undergone the biological evolution, during which our ancestors have continued to live in communities. Homo sapiens had inherited the living togetherness. At one stage of our species’ biological evolution the brain of our ancestors became so developed, that it made them capable of symbolic, conceptual or abstract thinking. Humans subsequently developed concepts of space and time. They also became conscious of themselves and of the world surrounding them. In addition, they have acquired a concept of purpose. The slow biological evolution was amended by the rapid cultural evolution. Cultural evolution is driven primarily by the use of human brain or human mind and not by the appearance of gene mutations. Homo sapiens even became capable of changing circumstances or living environment. Cultural evolution enabled our species to direct to a considerable degree its own further evolution. For instance, our species can intentionally and purposefully abandon the selection within itself.

Therefore, the future evolution of our species can continue by adapting to circumstances without selection of individuals. Homo sapiens was continuously changing both itself and the entire system of life on the Earth. In the most recent centuries, capitalism fiercely accelerated the changes in our species and in the world in which the species occurs. In the present situation, when the Earth is overheated and its climate thoroughly deranged, our species must carefully and purposefully adapt to the current, ever-changing conditions. Our species must continue to adapt but it must also abandon selection within itself in any form or shape, since as such selection hurts many human beings, who are conscious of their suffering.

Since the beginning of civilization our species has undergone an evolution without adaptation but with selection within itself. Our species has had a master in the form of political power and it was doing what its master commanded and not what it had to do or what suited it. In all past and present civilizations social differentiation brought to individuals either survival and life, or disappearance and death. In all civilizations, including the Roman one, members of our divided species became subjects to local rulers. At present human beings are subject to capital and the free market.

The strategic political idea of Jesus of Nazareth that is usually known as the Good News or Glad Tidings or the Gospel de facto outlines the way and means our species has to use for adapting to the adverse circumstances that civilization has imposed on us. Jesus of Nazareth also told his listeners, that people have to change themselves, their attitude to life and their behaviour. Men have to “mutate culturally” and transform themselves into different human beings. Their lives will be dedicated to the creation of a world without civilization and without submission to the political power, which was extracted from the earlier primitive or original communities.

Jesus of Nazareth called his first followers “little flock”. They were the seed-bed of his counter-evolution or of the re-enacted cultural evolution. Jesus used to dispatch two-by-two of his early followers to spread his glad tidings but also to recruit new followers. Jesus was creating a new species. Jesus’ Good News has planted in our cultural species and in Jesus’ native community a new stock of people, who finally adapted to prevailing circumstances as a new cultural species, which I call Homo consideratus (considerate man).

Jesus’ idea that people could on their own build the living space, Lebensraum, in which everyone could have a full life, seemed to be very powerful and attractive. It had prompted numerous people to change and improve themselves, and their attitude and behaviour. Jesus’ words, his activity and his deeds have led people to make themselves worth of participating in the new, living, willingly accepted communal life. The new human togetherness had to replace the artificial, empty, virtual and futile communality, which was offered to peoples by their respective religions or imposed on them by the guardians of public morality. Life for all, in living togetherness and without social or life divisions was an attractive and plausible possibility. The most attractive was Jesus’ idea that peoples themselves, without interference of political powers, could manage their own existential affairs: people are capable of establishing a new, better world on their own. Jesus’ Good News was a very simple issue. People had understood that the price for participating in such a grand, splendid and marvellous undertaking is just a personal conversion: swapping selfishness for generosity, rent for work, greed for mutuality, self-centredness for solidarity. Their participation in the creation of the new world of renewed living communality, which civilization had discarded, brings to people a rtrue experience of humanness and the satisfaction with one’s own life. One must have a purpose in life. Jesus offered a purpose and a hope in the current, earthly life.

Cultural evolution comes from the useof human mind. However, from the ascent of civilization human mind was under control of the established political powers, which in governing people use physical force, arbitrary laws and obligatory religions or other ideologies. In order to establish the new world Homo sapiens has to take over the control of human mind with the purpose of directing its future cultural evolution. Cultural evolution will start from the present conditions on the Earth taking into account the needs of our species. The creative use of mind does not stand either force or licence. It will be directed by consent. The species has to act for its own good. Jesus of Nazareth had advised on exactly such approach: people themselves can and must establish a living regime that suits their needs and is based on the prevailing conditions, our species is capable of changing and improving. Our species has to return to the cultural evolution, which was running smoothly before the advent of civilization. The species has to carry out its counter-evolution, which will remove selection from our species and warrant a collective adaptation to circumstances.

Jesus once said to his disciples: “Does a person gain anything if he wins the whole world but loses his life? There is nothing he can give to regain his life.” Rightly so, a person has nothing else except his unique, short, occurring only once and unrepeatable life. It happens in every species of life: relatively short life of individuals enables the species to last long. (All species would have been extinct if their individuals had lived much longer than they live now. Homo sapiens as a species incurred immense social problems because of its recently acquired additional longevity.) People should use their short life for the good of our species and to the benefit of their neighbours. That is the only way for humans to experience humanness and to become satisfied with their own lives. The use of life is a critical asset of every human being.

In his speeches or sermons Jesus of Nazareth often used parables to appeal to the residue of image thinking in his listeners. His parables were always related to the natural processes people were familiar with and not to steady states. Once he said: “Kingdom of God is like this. A man scatters seed in his field. He sleeps at night, is up and about during the day, and all the while the seeds are sprouting and growing. Yet he does not know how it happens. The soil itself makes the plant grow and bear fruit; first the tender stalk appears then the ear, and finally the ear full of corn. When the corn is ripe, the man starts cutting it with his sickle, because the harvest time has come.”

Jesus of Nazareth carried in himself a strong current of life, which he tried to transplant or replicate in his disciples and his listeners. For Jesus, life was the only real value in the visible world. Jesus thought out a system of conviction for our entire species, the system all people can willingly and gladly accept. It is the only system, on which human living togetherness can be established. Without human solidarity the precious and critical tasks that have befallen our species cannot be undertaken and carried out.

Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly succeeded in his endeavour. The populace in the vast Mediterranean world has accepted his idea of return to human solidarity and mutuality. He had succeeded, because he established a movement and not an institution. An evolution needs just a movement and a revolution needs an institution. As Christianity in due course started to exert political power, it split into two streams. The mainstream Christianity built an institution and became a religion capable of serving the Roman Empire. The adherents of Jesus’ Good News withdrew to the margins of the Christian community, as they could not “live according to Jesus’ ideal”. By the mid fifth century both the Empire and the imperial Christianity collapsed.

The field became clear for the revival of the Christian forces which were steadfast to Jesus’ idea of the Good News. The Benedictine reform implemented “by example and not by preaching” renewed the broken European agriculture, integrated all newly arrived barbarian peoples and tribes, created one system of conviction for entire Europe and established an unprecedented level of solidarity and mutuality. Europe was reborn. It created material abundance and cultural progress without having a central political power. It was a unique example in the history of our species. Europe was ruled by consent and became the cradle of parliamentarianism.

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