Comments by "Jack Haveman" (@JackHaveman52) on "World History"
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@bennyandersen742
Maybe I'll have to be simpler in my presentation. I even stated that it doesn't mean that God exists. I said, and I thought it was quite clear, that it was a story of the human condition. A narrative to help to explain human nature.
Our ancestors were not a bunch of dumb, superstitious clods. They were trying to explain their own behaviour through narratives, as metaphors to life. Even the concept of a supreme being is a metaphor to truth and perfection, one to aspire to.
Read my last comment again. I said that Adam reflects the human nature that is in all of us. That inexorable nature to get things wrong even, as in Adam's case, when he had only ONE thing that he was forbidden. If he couldn't do that one thing, how are we ever going to do it with all the things that can go wrong in our lives. That's the lesson of Adam and Eve. They're us. That's what that story is trying to tell us. We should aspire to seek truth and perfection but understanding that it's an impossibility to achieve. When one believes that those attributes have been achieved, that person will feel that they have achieved superiority, which includes all the horrors that go along with the need to impose that superiority on others. Religious people do it all the time, as do academics and politicians and it can be socially devastating.
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@bennyandersen742
I made a choice, as a teenager, not to do my school work and I quit before I graduated. No sociocultural, physical or psychological conditions forced me to do it. I wanted to have fun. My brother, 2 years younger, was the opposite. We both made choices. Later, I realised that having fun was good but I wanted more. I quit drinking, took on another part time job, finished highschool and went to college. Part way through college, I changed courses because I decided I didn't wasn't as interested in that field as I though. I made a different choice. I worked extremely hard, at times only getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a day. I didn't have to. I CHOSE to. Those choices were rewarded.
I could have stayed as I was but I chose not to. I chose not to take that easy route, thinking that there were no options, that I had no control of my destiny. That's a self fulfilling attitude and will get you exactly what life doles out to you. In other words, I didn't wait to see what life had in store for me. I made it happen.
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@bennyandersen742
I realise that there are forces that work to form a pattern of life. Almost all the people that I was hanging out with, when I was young, are still doing what they were doing back then. Why did I choose not to continue that pattern? There are lots of reasons. Do you think that I wasn't tempted to take a night off from work and go partying with my friends? Lots of times...but I chose not to. When a buddy called and said that they were going to go camping for the weekend, it would have a great to go but I said no. I was in the same place in life as they were, at one time, but I chose to leave it behind. I still had to do the things that would change my life. I wanted to travel and so did my friends but NONE of them have gone anywhere because they didn't change their lifestyle. That was their decision. Just like I didn't want to become an accountant and changed to a civil engineering course. I could have stuck with what I started with but I chose not to. Now all those original classmates are somewhere in the financial world and I worked in construction and worked outdoors. I knew that I liked the outdoors but had I not chose to change my field, I'd have worked in finance for 30 years.
Choice is still an important aspect of our lives. If it wasn't, I'd still be sitting at home waiting for life to happen, swilling beer, instead of making life work for me, as best as I possibly could.
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