@punishmenthurts Jeff...
"that they are in control of their environment and they could stop creating themselves as this and create themselves as anything they wish"
I traveled to the Middle East to study this attitude, that you can invent Heaven out of thin air where everything is as your egoism desires. I consider it a form of #egomania
In the real world, reality, there are nuclear bombs ready to launch in under 60 minutes to wreck the world. There are people burning trees and petrol heating up the world. There are people killing off all the plants and animals.
Sure, you can dig a hole and hide from the world, but it's a self-centered view.
I think we now have airports and Internet to share and compare notes with most of the world and we have a common set of problems;
1. War
2. Hate
3. Out-group behaviors and choices
“Hitlerism was a mass flight to dogma, to the barbaric dogma that had not been expelled with the Romans, the dogma of the tribe, the dogma that gave every man importance only in so far as the tribe was important and he was a member of the tribe.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, published 1955
"Most people can't stand up for their convictions, because the majority of people might not be doing it. See, everybody's not doing it, so it must be wrong. And since everybody is doing it, it must be right. So a sort of numerical interpretation of what's right. But I'm here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Eternally so, absolutely so. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it's wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong. It's wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it's wrong. It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It's wrong in every age and it's wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. " - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. February 28, 1954
...
These are well publicized, in every public library, I think we have been stuck not facing up to the equations we have known after TWO world wars in a row. And #MutuallyAssuredDestruction has not in any way addressed these 1954 / 1955 equations.