Just think for how long humanity was controlled by mystical, magical thinking - the diseases and suffering that led to. We managed to survive, but just barely. It wasn't pretty.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
So much of what we are currently seeing as far as human suffering and misery comes from diseases that should have been preventable but were not.
There is no short and easy road, no magic cure for those ills which have afflicted mankind from the dawn of history.
I am afforded a bit of easy wonderment in relative comfort as to how humans have lasted so long. Climate- and geography-wise, the planet seems to have little use for us.
Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good.
Could that have been what happened to the human race - a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years?
The human race survived the Inquisition. We can survive. It's like the Anne Frank quote: 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good at heart.' Given what happened to her, it's one of the miracles of the world that she said that.
The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
Imagine the possibilities if humanity banded together before disaster struck to relieve everyday suffering worldwide.
For thousands of years, we did have death surrounding us, and we did have people die in the home. You would take care of your own end. You would do ritual processes, and you would be involved in it, and that's been taken away in the Western world.
I wouldn't have really committed myself to any kind of spiritual lifestyle, I don't think, if I had not endured great suffering. I think that's the case with a lot of people.
No opposing quotes found.