William Robert
September 16th, 2006, 06:17 PM
Please patiently take the time to carefully read through the entire essay, it is truly thought provoking.
http://www.new-enlightenment.com/saving_remnant.htm
In each era, small groups of advanced thinkers have pushed humankind forward, revealing what persons are capable of, while battling the forces of degradation, ignorance, and indifference. But the ongoing struggle against oppression is ultimately insufficient--as one form of tyranny replaces another in historic succession. Humans must at last attain the understanding and capability that will enable them to create a higher social order.
The only viable way for this to occur is for an advanced group to constitute itself as a "saving remnant" that will leaven the larger culture with its higher knowledge and power, creating a commonwealth.
From time immemorial, humans have been dominated by small despotic groups characterized by ruthlessness and depravity, with a benevolent leader here and there thrown in for good measure. A somewhat progressive industrial capitalism that came into dominance in the eighteenth century has devolved into a baleful vulture capitalism and a positive but flawed American democracy has now degenerated into a barbaric totalitarianism.
As people have been mentally conditioned in autocratic social control and interaction, "the struggle of all against all," the knowledge and capability relative to effective group solidarity and decision-making has essentially been lost.
Oppressed people can lose consciousness of themselves as real persons with authentic power or as members of an oppressed class. If tyrannized people do not learn to think for themselves, they remain mere pawns of the ideology of the ruling class.
http://www.new-enlightenment.com/saving_remnant.htm
In each era, small groups of advanced thinkers have pushed humankind forward, revealing what persons are capable of, while battling the forces of degradation, ignorance, and indifference. But the ongoing struggle against oppression is ultimately insufficient--as one form of tyranny replaces another in historic succession. Humans must at last attain the understanding and capability that will enable them to create a higher social order.
The only viable way for this to occur is for an advanced group to constitute itself as a "saving remnant" that will leaven the larger culture with its higher knowledge and power, creating a commonwealth.
From time immemorial, humans have been dominated by small despotic groups characterized by ruthlessness and depravity, with a benevolent leader here and there thrown in for good measure. A somewhat progressive industrial capitalism that came into dominance in the eighteenth century has devolved into a baleful vulture capitalism and a positive but flawed American democracy has now degenerated into a barbaric totalitarianism.
As people have been mentally conditioned in autocratic social control and interaction, "the struggle of all against all," the knowledge and capability relative to effective group solidarity and decision-making has essentially been lost.
Oppressed people can lose consciousness of themselves as real persons with authentic power or as members of an oppressed class. If tyrannized people do not learn to think for themselves, they remain mere pawns of the ideology of the ruling class.