Oneness

Departing from the last post, I want to continue a bit further about the idea of 'oneness' .
There is a concept of oneness in philosophy, which is an initial condition that is lost as you grow up: A feeling of serenity, of being at peace with oneself and the world around you. A mental equilibrium so to say. A bit like the acquired concept of shame for nakedness: it is not something we are born with, it is acquired in life while the concept of oneness is lost. That is not to say that these are exchangeable for any others than dedicated nudists ;)

A simple and fast method to find this serenity is to turn to a religion of some sort, although this is by no means a guarantee. A lot of people that are religious never attain serenity or any state of oneness. Such people ought to throw their religion overboard, or at least try and find this oneness some place else.
So you may not want to go the religious route to find this oneness, either because you tried and failed, or don't want to try. You may be one of the people who doesn't have this 'spiritual emotion' I talked about earlier, but which to satisfy can also create a mental equilibrium. However, like a castrate not feeling lust, an absent spiritual emotion can not be satisfied. In that case one must go another way to find this oneness, or invent some framework by them self that provides it.

What happens if one doesn't find this oneness can be seen both in history and in the world around us. Look at Hitler for example, who tried to solve the problems inside him not by looking inside but by projecting his problems onto the world around him and then trying to re-arrange it in order to achieve this serenity. The results, as they say, are history.
In present life we can see this in all kinds of ways: the school bully, the all-knowing, all-seeing neighbour that complains about everything, skinheads, religious extremists etc. And without knowing their personalities, I think we can see symptoms of this in people like Marc Dutroux, Wolfgang Priklopil or Josef Fritzl. Google those names if they don't sound familiar, although they should if you haven't lived under a rock for the past 10 years or so :)

In that aspect we could talk about a duty to one self and others around us to find this serenity, but in a self-conscious, personalised way. One can become a nuisance to others when not finding it, as illustrated by example above. This also includes, but is not limited to, a solid ethical framework on which to base one's actions and judge its results.
If religion is not a vehicle on which one wants to travel towards this goal, another vehicle has to be either found or created. This is of course more complicated because it involves reasoning and thinking as opposed to just accepting what one hears in the church, mosque or other religious institutions. It can, however, also be more rewarding. Think about a world where every single person is at one with themselves and feels this serenity. Not only would all crimes committed out of frustration (which are more numerous than one would think) be erased, people would be less prone to insult: our vanity is easiest to be hurt when, just beforehand, our pride was hurt!

It is often heard that 'one lives his life like a good christian' but never 'one lives his life like a good atheist'. What I like to do in this blog is to give some ideas on this, some food for thought, maybe provide some sort of framework and to stir in some contrasting ideas for good measure. That is not to say that I'll tell people how to live a good life: whatever that may be is a very personal thing and I don't feel I'm the person to go and tell anyone. Neither do I aspire a patent on truth, let the various religions bicker about that among them. When three dog's fight for a bone..
Of course I will also keep shaking the religious tree. So far, no nuts have fallen on my head, although undoubtedly some readers will dare to disagree ;)

I'd like to operate in rough lines along the Hegelian principle, which is a process defined by the German philosopher Hegel, to produce oneness in mind through three sub-processes:
1)Thesis: to take a certain view or opinion on a subject.
2)Antithesis: to oppose to the former and critically evaluate it.
3)Synthesis: to merge the results of the former two steps and come to a new thesis.

With step 3 we have thus come to a new thesis which can then be subject to the same process. In theory, by going through these steps and subjecting ones thoughts to an internal evolution, oneness in mind is achieved. One could say it is just an effective way to keep an (aspiring) philosopher off the street and in his comfortable armchair. May be, but at least during the time he doesn't find the oneness he looks for, he isn't a nuisance to anyone :)

Just to give a more practical hands-on idea of what I mean, we could discuss the topic of killing humans:
1) Thesis: It's immoral to kill other humans
2) Antithesis: It's moral to kill (other humans) in self-defence or as capital punishment
3) Synthesis: It's immoral to kill except in cases of self-defence or capital punishment.

The principles of self-defence or capital punishment can then be subjected to another instance of the process, in which we look on the morality of capital punishment. And so on and so forth.

Let's see if we can apply this process to the existence of God...