The Humanity Paradox
Epicurus devised the now infamous Epicurean Paradox in which he attempts to demonstrate the incongruity of God’s traits. The expectation was that if God features are incongruous and an incongruous God lacks the essential capacity for existence that is, non-contradiction, God is proven to not exist. Which defies the oft-repeated claim one cannot prove a negative.
The point made here is if humans are rational why are they insane, or what I call apriotic. The system we are in, does not compute. There is no argument anyone can make, that can justify the system. To attempt it only draws our clearer the insanity of the system. The question is, if we are sane, why is the system alienating us from every possible solution. If we are rational, why are we losing faith not on in ourselves, but our ability to find a solution to the chaos we are in.
Man is the paradox.
If man is not rational, what is he? If he cannot reason, how can he build anything? If he is able to do science, how is it that he is not able to eliminate his social problems?
Once could remark that if man is rational and can eliminate his social problems, but will not, he is not rational as a rational person or race would want to eliminate problems.
If man wants to eliminate his problems but cannot, he is not rational for it is irrational persons who create problems but cannot solve or eliminate them.
If men do not want to eliminate societies problems, he is evil and technically insane and this system we are in was created to cause division so the rich and powerful could exploit the weaker. Evil people are not rational because there is no rational path by which evil can be justified.
The question is, what would a rational human being look like? It is actually easier to answer what an irrational person looks like. Or, perhaps we could look at rationality itself and see what happens to it to produce the irrational person.
This is easy to do if we understand all humans start out as dependents. We all mature physically. Up until this point reason does not factor into the equation because as a dependent being, one’s reason does not come into play, being a dependent one does not get to make choices based on reason.
We all mature physically, at least those who live long enough. But there is a watershed moment in people’s lives, because dependency is a real condition. However, it is not a sustainable one. We cannot all be dependents and indeed, dependency really needs to be limited to those whose needs are few. A child is a burden on its parents but a light one. When they mature, they stop being a light burden and become a serious problem if they do not mature into independent persons.
However, some do not and this gives us an insight into what irrationality really is, because a person who never acquires independence can hardly be deemed a rational person. Indeed, can we claim to be rational while remaining parasitic, because while a child is naturally dependent for its survival on its parents an adult who remains dependent on its parents or worse, the state, is parasitic.
We all mature physically. It was mentioned that not everyone matures spiritually. That is they remain dependents. So, there is a point where the child becomes bigger to the point where he or she could be self-sufficient but chooses instead to remain a dependent. This is the point at which irrationality enters the picture.
But it is a gamble. Parasitism is always a risk and therefore the parasite is always a gambler. A parasite is always dependent on the host and the host is always harmed by the parasite, so the parasite always puts himself in harms way through being a parasite.
This is what we see in this world. A group of parasites totally dependent on the community of spiritually mature persons, who are put at risk because of the parasite’s greed.
This brings us back to the issue of this system and the questionable sanity of it and the people who embrace it.
If we were going on a trip across the states in a wagon train, would we not shoe our horses to reduce the work or preparation? Anyone who did that would be considered irrational. It would not make sense to jeopardize the entire journey for the sake of putting shoes on our horses. This is however, the situation parasites are in. They create a large level of risk to save themselves a few hours of work.
But lets get to a rational system so you can see how simple it is. Imagine a community in which everyone worked. No other criteria need change. This could even be your community. The town could pass a law requiring every member of the town to work, unless not an adult or over a certain age. Even the disabled would be assigned work reflecting their compromised abilities.
This does not mean everyone receives a wage for occupying a particular position in a company.
A job is an activity that leads to the production of something of value.
What is needed to define work, is a defined fruit. We cannot be determined to work if we cannot determine that the work produces fruit.
That is, the work must produce fruit, but to determine that, the fruit needs a way to be quantified, as in the case of peaches. Work consists in picking so many bushels of peaches. If we add to the supply of peaces we have done work, if the supply declines then we are a parasite.
What is God’s is to be replenished. God consumed what belongs to Him through His creative work. Mankind is called upon to replenish the earth. Our very growth into adult hood puts a burden on us, that is an obligation we have to God.
We can look at the earth as the garden of Eden and we are the caretakers. Our work must add value to the earth.
God created the earth for us, but it requires processing. This means we have to work. If some work and everyone eats, everyone is worse off than if everyone worked. But the real issue is that the people who do not add value to the earth are producing no works of faith and no fruits of faith, so they remain unknown. God only knows us by our fruits of faith.
These are the fruits created as we work together. It is by this means that we build the church.
This brings us to the often-missed verses surrounding Matthew 18:18. The way we build the church binds us one to another. The fruits of faith build the church because when we work together, we become specialized.
We either do everything ourselves, or we specialize in some way and split the work up in segments. If we all do our share we produce far more through specialization that anyone can produce by themselves.
All progress comes from the mind of one man who rejects the assumptions of everyone else. All specialization is created by one person who seeks to produce more fruit, that is produce more works for a given amount of labor. This builds the church for the church is the value added to the world by the followers of Christ.
But what most of us do not get is this is not a random process, nor is it individual working under Jesus as freelance operatives. When the bible talks about us tightly fitted together, God means refers to the church as a being, or organism. We, as the church, are the bride of Christ. The bride is a being. As the church, we work together and the better we do this, the more value we create for the church. The more we grow.
The paradox of man is this, the more we look after ourselves and protect our self interest, the worse off we are. Man, to succeed must be charitable and by this is meant we need to live for others, this is the opposite of parasitism.
But what sort of charity are we involved in? Do we give a portion of our surplus to those with less or nothing?
That is admirable but how did you get the surplus? How did the charity case become a charity case?
To engage in charity in this world one must first engage in injustice. Charity is nothing more than the alleviation of an injustice. But why was the injustice performed in the first part?
If this world had equality there would not be the need for charity. But of course what we call charity is nothing more than a passive aggressive redistribution of the spoils.
True charity is found in specialization which develops and advances new ways of creating value for the world or producing the fruit of good works.
When we can produce ten or a hundredfold from the same vine or root, then we are being charitable.
Being charitable is advancing the methods by which we produce the fruits of faith.
This giving cannot be repaid or recouped. The person who invented a new machine or methodology is paid for his labor but one cannot actually repay him for all of the wealth produced by his new invention or method. So, this advance he created by rejecting how the world works and advancing new procedures, is the true charity. This is the only way out of the paradox. We have to advance charity and defeat the parasites.