The Vajra Parrot Squawks!

We have a tendency to complicate or sublimate phenomena we don't understand by making them more than they really are and not accepting them at face value. It's ingrained in us, our culture and even the way we express ourselves and interpret things:

- The Mother Theresas of this world are described as compassionate angels.
- The joy experienced at meaningful events can be decscribed as heavenly.
- The Exultation felt in church or temple is god-given.

Whilst being pleasant sentiments, we really don't have to spiritualise or sublimate everything that's meaningful or which moves us. It's actually not helpful nor, ultimately, responsible.

Kindness is kindness. Compassion is compassion. Kind and compassionate human actions are just the kind and compassionate actions that humans do: they are natural to us.

Likewise, indescribable joy is indescribable joy. Exultation is exultation. Mind states are just states of mind: they are natural to human beings.

Everything we do or experience is natural to us. Just normal.

In religious thought there is a tendency to think that kindness and compassion, or joy and exultation are somehow 'other'; that we poor, limited creatures are so bereft of goodness or ability or emotional maturity as not to be the authors of our own behaviour or mental states, which are trickled down from above by kindly forces (whatever these may be).

I watched a documentary recently about ancient cultures, in which one 'alternative academic' posited that aliens must have been involved in the building of the pyramids. Why? Because 'man' could not possibly have done it on his own.

What does this say about this person's idea of 'man'? Actually, it speaks
volumes, and infers that humans are beset by weakness and inability, and have a fundamental lack of 'what it takes' to accomplish big, complicated and seemingly inexplicable things. Not very positive, really, is it?

Truth is, humans did build the pyramids. How? I'm not sure, I'm not an archaeologist, but I know that humans possess the ingenuity, strength and skill to accomplish incredible things. They did 4,000 years ago, we do now.

I also read a particularly fatuous article online which carried the bold claim that 'Early humans showed compassion'. I mean ... duh! Do we really need a scientist to inform us (through analysing how an infant was buried) of this rather obvious fact; is this information even something we should be amazed at? Of course early humans showed compassion: they were early humans; 'early humans' were still 'human' ... and human beings show compassion! It is natural to us. It's not the stuff of incredulity. Nonsense like this is like robbing us of our birthright if you think about it.

Take statements like "Man couldn't have set foot on the moon without the God-given intellect and aptitude to do so"; does this not sail us down the river and sell us short? Of course, the process also works in reverse, and very negatively, where very bad behaviour or phenomena are rejected as being part of the natural condition and must be caused by something else, even evil spirits. Is this not also robbing us of our humanity?

The spiritualisation and/or sublimation of this wonderment at basic human ability, action and experience gives rise to a disconnection between us and our real nature, ultimately with the very ground on which we tread. It causes a subconscious rift, undermines our dignity as human beings and, more importantly, our responsibility as free moral agents.