I am asking because we are becoming more convergent at the same time we are becoming more divergent. We have the power to build and destroy each other and ourselves. I want to know what we are doing today to ensure humanity exists for future generations at the same time the earth is changing/evolving.
About one in twenty Australians live overseas at any given time – among the highest ratios of expatriates to residents of any country in the world. Why do so many of us leave? How do we relate to the people and places and culture we leave behind? And why do we come back? Since becoming an expat myself (one of the 200,000 Australians in London) I’ve often imagined that our wanderlust says something about our national psyche. But what?
Although I was raised as a strict Irish-style Roman Catholic, after many years of deep thought, I am now an atheist, humanist, rationalist and sceptic, and have come to the conclusion that this is the most important unanswered philosophical question. I do not believe there is any need to postulate a creator, because belief in a creator god leads to the obvious next questions of who or what made god, and who or what made who or what made god, and so on indefinitely.
I asked this question because nothing seems to actually change or progress. For example, why are we asking how to legalise same-sex marriage? Shouldn’t we be asking how do we redefine marriage? Or how can a legal framework be less discriminatory? I am asking because I care, and you should too. We can make a difference, we just have to stop doing things in the way they have always been done!
Knowing ourselves seems to be the foundation for everything. It is important to question, and be critical of the thoughts, actions and beliefs that resonate with us. Such contemplation is crucial to continual self-development and sanity. Thus, madness can be partly seen as obliviousness, or in history it was highlighted as forgetting. If we forgot what had made us happy, are we mad?