- Last Updated on:
- by:Wil Duis
Woe to you, oh earth and seaFor the Devil sends the beast with wrathBecause he knows the time is shortLet him who hath understanding reckon the name of the beastFor it is a human nameIts name is 3 21 12 20 21 18 5
The sausages of John and Mary
Soon after John and Mary fell in love, they decided to live together. Now John was a sucker for baked sausages which Mary gladly baked for him.
But pretty soon John noticed that Mary always cut-off the outer edges of the sausages.
Although John really liked Mary’s sausages, it puzzled him why Mary bought these, obviously high quality and expensive, sausages but cut off the edges before baking them.
So, at a given moment he asked Mary why she did that?
First (defensive) reaction of Mary was like: I don’t know!, but don’t you like my sausages
John reassured Mary the sausages tasted great and he loved both Mary and the way she bakes sausages, but he was just curious why she cut-off the outer edges.
Mary, now reassured by John’s words, told him that she actually didn’t know!
So she told John that it was her mother who had taught her to bake sausages that way and that cutting off the edges was just: ‘a part of the recipe!’
Mary just baked sausages like her good-old mother had told her.
John, now intrigued with the question why someone would design a recipe for baked sausages with cut-off edges, asked Mary’s mother why sausages should be baked this way.
But to his surprise, Mary’s mother reacted pretty agitated on the subject!
“Off course you should always first cut-off the edges before you bake sausages!”, is what Mary’s mother stated fiercely.
A statement that obviously dis-encouraged any further questioning.
So they only asked her who had taught her to bake sausages like that, which was –off coarse- her own mother.
John and Mary, now determined to get to the bottom of this one to get the nitty gritty details on this, decided to visit grandma. And so they did.
When Mary told Granny about her cutting off the edges of sausages, Granny replied:
“Oh my god, are you kids still baking sausages in that tiny 5 inch pan!”
Moral of this story:
We often do the things we do, just like how we were told or taught, without knowing why.
We act in the way we are supposed to act, as defined by our culture.
In many situations, this is completely harmless like in the sausages example, but we also see (for example) female circumcision, which is nothing less than female genital mutilation.
So, next time somebody tells you we should respect (any) culture, please remember the sausages.
A very important topic we should never forget is the fact that cultures are not physical, they are not based on something objective.
Cultures are made up from stories we are supposed to believe and act upon them as if they are real but they are not.
The Pitfall:
As mentioned in the topic on the hybrid creature, we humans are social creatures.
Creatures that, once our basic needs on the lowest levels on the Maslov pyramid are fulfilled, have a need for social connections with other people.
Along with our ability to speak and self-awareness of our communication, we have surpassed our basic animalistic nature.
This has made us what we are today.
BUT…. Unfortunately we have not managed to establish some sort of unified culture.
Instead we have created thousands of cultures with subcultures within them.
It does not matter where you are born or even when you were born.
You were born, raised and educated within the system of laws, rules and expected behavior of your direct environment.
So, if you were born an Eskimo , you will become an Eskimo. If you were born a Muslim, you will become a Muslim.
Escaping from this trap, is not always an easy task to perform and in some cultures it can even be life-threatening to leave the flock and do your own thing by following your heart.
Cultural Identity:
What many people fail to see is that they share a bigger portion with other cultures than the portion that is unique. Yet it is this small portion that provides your culture its identity.
Example: Religion
As already mentioned on our definition page, we have 3 main religions, based upon the worldview of abrahamism.
They all share common grounds.
Christianity shares not only the Old Testament with Judaism and Islam, but also other cultural elements like the Jesus Christ person.
Both Islam and Judaism acknowledge the Christ person, but they do not acknowledge that he is the son of god/allah/yahweh and dispute the New Testament where Jesus is said to have died on the cross and resurrected after 3 days.
These stories as mentioned in the New Testament, they make Christianity unique and provide Christianity its identity.
The same goes for Islam and the prophet Mohammed. Without Mohammed there is no Islam, but Islam is much more than just Mohammed.
Take away Jesus/New Testament and there goes Christianity.
The same goes when we zoom in to the next layer.
When we checkout Christianity, we see there are several versions of Christianity like Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and many more.
Each of them is slightly different from the rest, but they all share the vast majority of cultural elements and only the small part where they differ, provides them with their legitimacy.
And it is this legitimacy, this right to exist, this small part that makes them unique and which becomes dominant.
This is the part that gets all the focus and attention and we want to defend and fight for, when needed.
Once we see and understand this, we start to see that this cultural identity can be found almost anywhere in human civilization.
We see it in racing sports like Formula 1, Rally Cross , Truck Racing, etc.
We see it in Formula 1 racing ( RedBull versus Mercedes versus Ferrari versus whatever)
We see it in Heavy Metal music like Speed metal, Death metal, Power Metal etc.
Another interesting thing to mention is that although different flavors have a tendency to compete or struggle with each other, they join forces when the higher level group is criticized.
Shiite and Sunni Muslims who frequently clash (if not worse), they will join forces when they feel criticized or attacked by Christians.
Just like Muslims and Christians will join forces when criticized by atheists.
Cultural Indoctrination:
As a member of your culture, you are expected to behave and act as defined by your culture.
Remember that culture is mainly build up from traditions, inherited from earlier (and sometimes ancient) generations.
This expected behavior will result in peer pressure that may not always be in line with what you as an individual want or agree with.
Despite of these personal and internal conflicts between your culture and your inner self, most people just follow the flock and suppress their personal thoughts and ambitions. This frequently leads to psychological problems in the long run.
But there is a far more bigger problem!
The peer pressure from your culture usually does not like group members to think for themselves.
In the Netherlands, where I reside, we even have a saying that states:
” Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg“.
Translated in English: ” Just act normal, that is already crazy enough”
It is only from the 5th level of the Maslow pyramid (the need for true knowledge) where you can start to let go of your fears of what others might think of you.
And since the vast majority of humanity is (far) below this 5th level, humanity is an easy victim for those who are really in power.
Controlling the masses:
Those who are really in power (by whatever name you want to give them), they are not only pure evil, but they are also very shrewd.
They know that when you want to control and dominate humanity, you should make sure they stay on the lower levels of the Maslow pyramid.
They should certainly not go towards the 5th level and up.
They know very well that fear is the key to get the flock wherever you want them to go/stay.
Just scare the shit out of them and you got them where you want them to be.
BUT
The flock should not be aware of the fact that they are manipulated.
So to achieve this, they use loads of mind control techniques and cultural indoctrination.
They know that when you can manipulate the direction of a group, you indirectly direct the persons belonging to that group since they have a tendency to follow the group and most persons do not want to become an outcast. If this group is very large (like a nation) or an ideology (like capitalism, socialism or whateverism), you can even have millions of useful idiots or cannon fodder at your disposal.
They know that when you design conflicts (or even wars) between all these cultures, they will battle among themselves.
The Romans already had a term for this and they called it: ” Divide and conquer”
And as long as they battle among themselves, they will not see that the real battle is not on a horizontal plane but on a vertical one.
Cultural Diversity:
When we look at all our different cultures from a more mathematical perspective, we can see them as vectors which are not only varying is size and strength, but also in direction.
If we take the mathematical sum of all all these vectors, they wind up close to zero.
And this is also what we see happening on our own planet:
Hundreds, if not thousands of cultures and sub-cultures in all kind of sizes and all believing that they are moving into the right direction. Even when neighbouring cultures are moving into the complete opposite direction.
The result of all this, is that we put an enormous amount of time, money and energy into an efficiency and effectiveness that is close to zero.
If we were only able to escape from our cultural indoctrination and start working together as the one single human race that we really are, we can achieve goals that now sound utopian.
Once we understand these dynamics between cultures, sub-cultures and deeper levels, we can use this knowledge for either supporting humanity towards the higher levels on the Maslow pyramid and realize world peace
OR
remain a victim
What do we want?
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