Br6 O Great Men! O Great Intellects!
As we come to the end of our life, do we understand that our personality, our self, our consciousness then also comes to an end? To a full stop, a complete blank as far as we personally are concerned? Can we now face the fact that our only after-life is already living elsewhere, transplanted through the lives of our children, if we had any, and in their children, and their children's children?
This life is a testing ground for the whole human race. There is no second chance - no after-life in which to set about putting right what was wrong. When we die, leaving this world in the state it is in, we could be said to be carrying out the Christian prophecy of hell - but it is hell on Earth to which we have condemned our offspring.
It is probable that our grand-children shall live in a drug, drink and competitive-exam-related monotony, and shall go on to struggle or triumph in the money-related rat race. It is with our connivance (probably unwitting) that the drugs and alcohol are produced and supplied, and the exams and rat-race imposed.
How will we feel, when our time comes? Shall we feel proud of the money we made, the status we achieved, the property we accumulated? Or shall we feel ashamed that the world we leave to our descendents is even worse than the world we were born into, left to us by our ancestors?
Do we understand that it is our intellect that makes us uniquely human? Do we understand that it is this intellect which enables us to understand, and which gives us the gentle power to act on that understanding?
We are our intellect, a faculty whose function is truth. To fulfil our intellect is to take true responsibility. To envisage a world completely changed for the better is not a Utopian dream. Imagining an ideal world, and determining on it, is not a naive and immature thing to do. It is our true responsibility.
List of Branch articles, in no particular reading sequence:
PREVIOUS :1. The Nature and State of the Human Race: 2 : Truth - No-Go Area : 3. Facing Yourself: 4. Explaining tne Mind : 5. Moral Mind :
CURRENT :6. Great Men :
REMAINING : 7. Comment Pinker : 8. The Way We Think : 9. Sanity for Humanity : 10. Evolution of Mind : 11. Free Thinker View : 12. Reality : 13. Understanding Consciousness : 14. Bottom Line : 15. Brain-Mind Relations: 16. Open Letter to Philosophers : 17. The Mind and Philosophy : 18. Self Twixt 2 Minds: 19. The Holographic Dimension:20. Transhumanism Transcended: 21. Mind, Will and Self
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