Here is one that I would like you to critique/discuss:
Good things must be mandatory until a point when enlightenment teaches us that they were in fact inevitable.
Re: Making profound statements
right off the bat, sounds like something bush said about waterboarding.
in any case, this makes the perfect opening line for a dogmatist to start his laying his ground with - do this because it is good, you just don't know why yet because your thetan levels aren't high enough yet.
Re: Making profound statements
Yet what may be enlightenment for one may be ignorance for another, don't you think?
Re: Making profound statements
Peace queer and IceSoul
Thanks for your comments. queer ... I would have been in dismay had you decided to provide a soft blow. Yes, you really hammered those words out. A bit of profundity from queer I see. My statement was actually not a preach it was someone telling themselves that this would be the case. I don't think you've bothered reading the end few words, because you would have questioned that I have made an intuitive leap, which I have, but that was the discussion point.
IceSoul
Enlightenment is a subjective term, it is only enlightenment for the one who experiences it. So the statement is only addressing one person at a time. But I would like other to contribute to the discussion before I say anything else.
Re: Making profound statements
Here is one that I would like you to critique/discuss:
Good things must be mandatory until a point when enlightenment teaches us that they were in fact inevitable.
Ah, I REALLY like that statement!
The problem is determining what that good is. Sometimes, we can go overboard with the idea of 'good' and include cultural aspects to it, that only limit goodness.
If we can come up with a very basic definition of 'good' (like not hurting, deceiving others, charity, compassion for others etc), I think this is the way to go.
I understand enlightenment as that (psychological) place where you care about others, regardless of your relationship or distance to them, when you're grateful for everything that you have, nothing is holding you back because you have let go of all those limiting beliefs- because in the end, they don't matter. A continuous sense of peace and serenity, even in the face of troubles.
Re: Making profound statements
Thanks for your comments everyone ...
Here is my thought process when I came up with this statement.
When we are children we do not know the difference between what is harmful and what is not. We are directed to safety by our parents. They make it mandatory on themselves to lead us to safety. In parallel we learn for example that if we let people who are ignorant to continue doing their ignorant stuff such as human sacrifice for example then they will never learn about the other options. In order to provide people other options we need to make the information available to them. We want to encourage people "why" it is important to be "caring", "proactive", etc. However, if we make it a requirement on people to listen to us about our message then by doing so we are contradicting our main aim, which is to breed proactive, caring and voluntary acts in people.
In order to encourage voluntary acts of kindness we need to at least mandate that they give audience, if we have responsibility over them, such as our children or our staff who work below us. After they give audience then they will learn 'why' being voluntary is important and hence they will behave likewise, but without mandating them to attend the 'lesson' some may come and others may not and hence the same 'learning' will not be present.
Learning results in enlightenment and that enlightenment teaches us that by being all those things we will ensure a path of goodness to develop. We tell people to do good and in time they will realise the implicit benefit in good and start to impose that rule on themselves.
We must hence mandate goodness in society - i.e. set laws in place and adhere to them until society comes to a point when it does not want to go against the law. The law will always be there, but the enforcement of it would be less legislative and become a thing which is drawn from the ethos of every person.
We say good things must be done - this leads to people saying "we should do good things" - this leads to people saying "we will do good things" - this leads to people saying "we are doing good things" this will bring rise to the notion that enforcing good is not as good as allowing good to flourish since the former means that people are doing good not necessarily out of will but out of fear of consequence, the latter is that people will do good out of a sense of goodness to be enjoined. Another example here is about vengence, although it is allowed it is better to forgive and that draws parallels with the idea of enforcement vs encouragement.
Further enlightenment tells us that 'goodness' is not a human undertaking, because it is a result that we experience which is absent from (our) control. We hence attribute all good to God as per scripture (i.e. Qur'an) and arrive at the conclusion that goodness is one of the manifestations of Qadr. Qadr is the Arabic word for Predestination - or inevitability. This creates the premise for my statement above:
Good things must be mandatory until a point when enlightenment teaches us that they were in fact inevitable.
"Whatever happens, happens for the best"