It’s more like, “Can humanity save nature?”

Unfortunately for this planet, people have been exterminating much of nature since the Industrial Revolution with its smoke-belching factories. We paved over so much of the grassy lands of the world, poured poisons into the waters and air, and have driven many species of animals to extinction. But even before that, we were creating deserts by overgrazing our herds and disturbing the land in other ways.

Since it appears that so much our our approach to nature is to tame and exploit it, why would Nature even want to save us if it could? We need to respect nature first and then maybe it will save us with its bounties of foods and everything we need to thrive. If we don’t respect nature, we will be extinguished from this planet. It will reject us in a roundabout way.
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Other life forms may survive our toxic relationship to nature. Perhaps they will evolve to be more intelligent in their approach to their environment next time around. They might observe Nature and seek to understand the profound lessons all around us displayed in the beauty of the world.

Most people don’t really care about Immanuel Kant nowadays and he is considered to be irrelevant. Part of the problem is that his language is difficult. He creates his own terms and defines them. So it requires a commitment on the part of the reader to care enough about his terms and learn them. Then to go on and decipher his philosophy.

But actually, Kant is a genius, a brilliant thinker, who has much to offer anyone who is trying to figure out why should we be good, how can we be good, what is good, and is there such a thing as evil?

I doubt that many people think about picking up his Critique of Pure Reason for fun weekend reading. No one is going to take his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals to the beach for a leisurely day of reading in the sun.
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Therefore, he is relegated to university studies and often thrown in with other philosophers as a historical example. But he is still has so much to offer. And it is intellectually satisfying to delve into the workings of the mind of a genius.

Fear is not a strength under any circumstance. It is always a weakness. Furthermore, the Soul does not comprehend or even recognize fear. The Soul lives in an atmosphere of love and peace. Fear is strictly a function of the human mind.

You might defend fear and say, “We need it or we would do stupid things and not survive.” No, it isn’t fear that keeps us from doing stupid things. It’s knowledge. We know that if we jump off a 10-story building, we will crash to the sidewalk. It isn’t fear that is preventing us from doing it—it’s knowing what will happen when we hit the ground.

I cannot think of one instance where fear is equivalent with strength. If we are in a dangerous situation, fear can cloud the mind in panic and we can make the wrong decision. Fear makes our lives miserable every day. Even when things are going well, fear will creep in and tell us, “This is just too good, don’t relax and get comfortable, the storm and loss are coming soon.”
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We are the only animals on the planet that live in almost constant fear of something happening in future. This is because we are the only animals who can formulate ideas about the future. And that is because we have a special kind of mind, one that uses fear as its fuel or food. So, actually, fear is never a strength of the Soul, or even an attribute of the Soul, and it is always a destructive weakness to humans.

Yes, fear is the root of all suffering. I discovered this when I gave birth to my daughters. I saw that what gave pain its unbearable aspect was fear. If I detached myself from the fear and just experienced the strong sensations, I was able to handle it. The women all around me were screaming out in misery and fear. I stayed silent, observing that if I removed the component of fear, I was OK.

If we take all unhappy emotions and sensations down to their roots, we will see that it is fear, not the actual sensation that is the cause of all the trouble. We slam our finger in the door. No one will deny it hurts. But if we start picturing a broken finger, how impaired our action will be, the expense of going to a doctor, time off from work with possible financial consequences, being sidelined from fun activities, then we add even more to our misery. Now we are entering the territory of suffering.

If we take away all the fearful thoughts and just experience the pain for what it is: The body’s perfect warning system that something isn’t right—then we can deal with it. We can take measures to heal it, to ease the pain, and to learn from the whole experience. But if we descend into fear, not only will the healing process be delayed (due to the secretion of stress hormones) but the pain will be accentuated.
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Suffering is prolonged misery. If we are fearless and trust the process of life, we will still have the ups and downs that are normal—but we won’t suffer through them. This is a function of the Soul and not of the ego-mind, which is a fear-based entity whose natural milieu is worry and fear. It thinks we need fear to survive and therefore we are doomed to suffer if we listen to it.

Actually, the quote is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

This may sound good on the surface. A dying flower may look sad to some and to others have a certain kind of beauty. Some people might think it is bad that flowers have to die at all. Others think that their very ephemeral nature makes them even more precious in their beauty.

But when it comes to human behavior, we must have standards of what is good and bad. Cruelty, brutality, bullying, child molestation, and all manner of torturous behaviors are not good and cannot be justified by simply saying that “good” and “bad” is merely in the mind of the individual.

Intentional cruelty that damages another living being and inflicts physical and psychological pain can never be called good, no matter how many mind games we play. We can play clever semantic games and twist the language around so that nothing means anything anymore. But we are fooling ourselves if we believe that there is nothing right or wrong, good or bad.
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The karmic consequences of intentional human debasement are severe as well. Let’s not play intellectual games with moral relativity. There are things that go beyond the human mind and its limited thinking capacity.

Objective reality does not exist.

You may say, “Oh yes it does. If I smack my toe against a rock, it hurts and no one can argue with me about it.”

But what happens to that pain when you are asleep? It goes away until you wake up again. This means that it is subjective and is not permanent. Furthermore, you cannot put your finger on the pain. You can only feel it and rate it according to your own scale of pain.

If you are a masochist, you will think the pain is fulfilling. If you are prone to anxiety, the pain may be intensified by fear. So even the pain that we think is real and objective is subjective and depends on the individual.
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Even the rock we stub our toe against looks different to different species or is invisible to a blind person. If we examine the rock on a sub-microscopic level, we will see patterns of empty space, particles and waves that bear no resemblance to a solid rock. Therefore, there is no objective reality.

​People with personality disorders do not understand the meaning of peace of mind. Peace of mind comes from a deep experience of satisfaction that abides, actually, beyond the mind. In a sense, no one’s mind can be at peace because it is an automatic, repetitive chatterbox whose intention is survival, not necessarily peace or happiness. But Narcissism is a particularly strong manifestation of the ego-mind.

The problem with personality disorders such as Narcissism and Borderline is the lack of insight that is needed for change and growth. This means there is a certain lack of self reflection that is a precursor to peace of mind. We need to have insight into the way the mind operates to be able to change its course. Narcissists do not delve deeply beneath the surface in this way. They are more interested in immediate gratification of their primary desires for praise and adulation. They also shift the blame onto others and nothing is ever their fault.

Impressing strangers is more important to Narcissists than being good to those who are near and dear. They restlessly seek praise from random people they just met, while simultaneously treating the ones who actually care about them like trash (except when they need them for something). So peace can never be found. Strangers can give you praise. But they are strangers after all and go home after the performance is over. Meanwhile, Narcissists have burned their bridges with the ones that stood by and loved them.
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Finally, Narcissists feel a void inside that must be filled with illusions they create. Instead of seeking the fountain of tranquility within, they look outside for the next feeding. They try to build a facade that will be lovable but they know it is fake and therefore can never feel truly secure or at peace. So, like the rest of us, if we are constantly driven by the frightened, greedy little mind, Narcissists will never find peace.

Being materialistic is delusional. Material things come and go. They do not last. They rot, burn, crumble away, get lost, get flooded and swept away. Time corrodes all material things and wears them down.

Therefore, we are kidding ourselves when we devote our lives to acquiring and stockpiling all the material stuff we think will make us happy. A shiny new object might give us a temporary thrill but even that can get tarnished, stolen, or just lose its novelty. It might make us feel good as others admire us with our fabulous toys.

Material objects can be beautiful. They can be symbols of creativity and ingenuity. They can be inspiring and uplifting, as are great works of art. But they are not permanent.

So why devote our lives to something that is not even permanent? Because we are frightened creatures, afraid that our death renders everything meaningless. We seek meaning in material things that offer amusement, entertainment, ego gratification, and satisfaction of our drive to acquire more, more, and more. These things distract us from the horrible thought that one day we, like everyone else, will die.
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Not knowing who we are as Eternal Souls leads to a world that spends its time frantically pursuing stuff that doesn’t last. When we discover who we really are, we can still appreciate material objects, our own miraculous bodies, and all the beauty of the world. But we know that these things are not real because they do not endure. Only our fundamental Souls are eternal and cannot be destroyed.

We are the only ones that can give meaning to our lives. It is not a matter of “should.” It is a matter of “that’s the way it is.”
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Other people can tell us what they think the meaning of life it, but that is just their opinion. If enough people agree and they write about it and put it in a holy book, then it becomes The Truth. This makes it very easy for people who do not want to think for themselves or simply cannot do their own thinking. They can just follow some doctrine that they have been brought up with and that is good enough for them.

But without meaning that we bring to life, we are just like ants or bees, going about creating and destroying in our little hives, mindlessly going about one mechanical task after another. In the end, our lifeless bodies are tossed aside to make room for the next generation of insects. And what was the point, besides the furtherance of all the lifeforms on the planet?

Some might say that life has no meaning at all. “It just is” and we try to make sense out of it by assigning meaning. We intuit that there is too much pain and suffering in life for it to be completely meaningless. And so that is part of our quest as humans. To find our own reason for why we are on this planet. No one can do this for us. We must do it for ourselves and that is what makes life a growing and learning experience of constant change for the ones who dare.

I would not say that Confucianism is similar to Enlightenment philosophy, because Confucianism came first. It was an influence on the Age of Enlightenment after the Dark Ages. During the Dark Ages in Europe, people in general were not considered to be of any real importance, unless they were part of the ruling or priestly class. Unfairness and inhumanity were the order of the day, with widespread ignorance held in place by exploiters of the people.

Then the human-based ideas of Confucianism began to take root as European travelers returned from China or Chinese made their way to Europe. They brought with them the Confucian idea that that people are the foundation of the country. Confucianism brought the idea of “Governance with virtue” instead of by force.
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“Governance with virtue” means that men of great virtue and talent are elected who will cultivate mutual trust and promote universal understanding. There will be nationwide education for everyone without distinction. Confucianism destroyed the idea that reading and writing were for the privileged few. Therefore, it underplays Confucianism to say that it is similar to the Age of Enlightenment. It is the foundation of it.