On Being Civilized vs Nihilistic and religion
With all the knowledge and videos I take in, I feel like I am getting a better and better understanding of how the world works. I now have a different understanding of religion and the origin of the concept of God than I did a few years ago, and I think this new understanding makes more sense. My currently trending word is “civilized”
We are animals by nature. We would be nihilists by nature if we grew up isolated from humans, in the jungle. Since nature has made us that way, I would think “what is wrong with being a nihilist?”. Joker was a nihilist in the dark knight movie. He wasn’t a planner, he just did things on a whim, did whatever came to his mind naturally. What is wrong in following our natural instincts? If naturally, a man want fell in love with another woman while being married, if he has an affair with that woman, he is just following his natural instincts – the way nature made him.
The answer is – Because we as mankind (humankind), in contrast to apes, have so much higher in intellect that we can choose to ignore the natural instinct and do something else!
The early man (from the time of the origin of Homo Sapiens, about a 250k years ago), probably realized that upon ignoring the natural instinct, there can be something else to do that could be favorable to him in the long run. This “something other than the natural instinct” can be favorable to your group in which you hunt and live. Then came the discovery of agriculture about 11k years ago due to which people could focus on other things than collecting food everyday and could settle in one place. Eventually we began doing more and more things that an animal wouldn’t do. Doing these things progress mankind as a whole and also gives benefits to individuals, such as not having to focus on food hunting everyday for yourself. Eventually, people developed a set of guidelines to follow that would help in advancing their settlement as a whole even though some guidelines may restrict an individual’s freedom to follow some of his natural instincts. These “guidelines”, obviously were based on their then current “way of life”.
At the same time, to explain un-understood phenomena like lightning, rain, birth etc etc, people came up with the idea that higher beings must be controlling those phenomena. Now, someone probably wanted to advertise these guidelines with the intention of doing good for the society. His own settlement would be following these guidelines, but how can he spread it to others? How could he convince other settlements to follow it? Some would get convinced but the majority of the world does not see the big picture and so does not understand the long term advantage. btw, this “someone” is a placeholder for either one person or a group. So this someone could have used the concept of God to sell his ideas. If he himself made 50% sense, the other 50% could be covered up under the name of God. These guidelines are nothing but religion. Over the years, such guidelines passed down for years with modifications and new clever people preaching their modified versions, thus forming new religions and prophets. Also over the years, guidelines should ideally change with changing technology and progress. Perhaps newer religions incorporated some of such changes.
Bottom line: Following these guidelines that help in the overall progress of society is the definition of being civilized.
To answer the initial question – what’s wrong with having an affair outside marriage since you are only following your natural instincts – if you are a nihilist, then there’s nothing wrong. But you can only either be a nihilist or civilized, not both because they are opposite ways of living life. Nihilism and being civilized are two nodes on the same level.
If you have grown in a country among the human society, then you have grown up enjoying the advantages of civilization and have also been taught to be civilized. So having an affair outside marriage is wrong w.r.t the idea of society in which one lives in. You have to use your human intellect to curb your natural instinct I.e. be civilized, in order to be consisted with the society which is for the purpose of advancement of humankind.
I feel great to have realized the significance of “being civilized” and be able to contrast it with nihilism. What I explained above is consistent with this video from PragerU –
All this new understanding makes me revise my position on religion. Religion could be separated into two things – Way of life, and God. I subscribe to the way of life*, but not to the idea of God. Moreover, as a civilized human being who understands the merits of being civilized, I don’t need to believe in a God to follow the guidelines as his commandments. eg. I understand the advantage of not murdering someone, so I don’t need a God to tell me not to do so.
*Regarding following the “way of life” aspect of religion, some guidelines would be outdated. They could either be not necessary or could have better, updated alternatives to follow. So, I wouldn’t follow any one religion’s ALL of the guidelines entirely. I would try to understand the original purpose of that guideline and check if there’s a better way to do it or check if it is even necessary for the progress of the current society. I wish someone or some institution had done this task of scrutinizing all religious guidelines, understanding their original purpose, updated or discarded them to create a new set of guidelines for our current world. It’s the 21st century! I’m surprised that this does not exist yet! We need to teach the people that the civilized guidelines (way of life) should be followed because of the merits of being civilized and not because of an outdated concept of god commanding people to follow them.
Corollaries and tangential topics to research
2) Since humans have the option of being healthy by eating only vegetarian food and because humans feel sympathetic towards animals, should a civilized person avoid eating meat?
3) Why do people get married?
The article explains that the institution of marriage exists because it is beneficial for the society. But why and how exactly is it beneficial to society? Is a monogamous marriage more beneficial or a polygamous marriage more beneficial to society?
These questions are tough to answer. But perhaps, the best answer automatically evolves over time. This is an assumption. Under this assumption, I would say that “monogamous marriages”, as a way of life, evolved to be the most beneficial way of life for society. Could research more on this assumption and other possibilities.
