Today, we have iPhones, laptops, the internet, sufficient food for most of the planet’s inhabitants, advanced medicine, etc. We have achieved impossible and marvelous feats, like putting a man on the moon. The world is richer today than it has ever been, and by any measurement, we are living our best time ever.
However, despite technological advancements, the world continues to face numerous challenges, where freedom and prosperity have not yet been achieved in many parts of the world. In fact, we have already reached a plateau, and we have started a decline, which has become evident even in many developed countries. This situation lies in our nature, how we react, and how human beings ultimately behave. Only by changing our ways can we keep on moving forward.
In the history of mankind, this age of technology, prosperity, and information is but a sliver of time in our whole timeline. For most of our existence on the face of this planet, dreadfulness has been the norm. War, genocide, illness, famine, human rights violations of all kinds, ignorance, injustice, and low living standards (at least compared to today’s standards) were our everyday staples. More than once, I have imagined getting in a time machine that takes me to any time period in the past. My reaction has always been the same. How long will I last before I commit suicide? Just the thought brings me chills!
Why so cheerful, you might ask? …Because, unlike most people, I understand where we are coming from! And it is not pretty. If man has lived for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, why have we only now achieved this level of development? What have we been doing all this time before our present-day reality? Well, it has all to do with our raw nature and with our tendencies. For instance, there has been only one Einstein, but there are millions of Hitlers. They just have not had the opportunity of being such (dictators, murderers, megalomaniacs, etc.), but they are still out there in great numbers, nonetheless. Our tendency is not one of going up, but one of going down.
Our natural mentality is one of subjectivity, irrational thinking, ignorance, blind faith in absurd ideas, rejection of the truth, and imperfect information processing, which fostered abnormal mentalities, deviant cultural traditions, and perverted beliefs. These kept people in the dark for most of our history. Therefore, we need to train and educate our mentality and thinking process to obtain objective facts, get rational conclusions, and achieve the truth.
The consequences of our ignorance and lack of knowledge, inability to grasp objective facts and the truth, and imperfect ways of thinking have translated into a terrible existence for most of our history. For instance, ancient Romans used the metal lead to sweeten their wine. If only they knew, they were poisoning themselves with lead. Or the fact that people had a better chance of dying if they went to the doctor than if they did not. The doctor’s treatment probably killed more people than healed them.
Even today, some religions have kept medieval laws that are unbelievably irrational and abnormal. For instance, I have heard of women who were raped in some places of the world, and the religious judicial system punished them for adultery or for having sex outside marriage. What the hell!… So, in these places, if a woman is raped, she keeps it a secret, so as not to be punished by the law again for being raped. You probably already guessed what religion that might be. Yes, it is the one that beheads you if you dare to contradict them. And what do the people belonging to such a religion do when faced with such blatant abnormality? Nothing, they remain faithful believers.
I do not know about you, but all those perverted priests molesting children, who were protected by the Catholic Church, is more than enough for me to entirely reject that Church, but incredibly, that Church still has over a billion believers in its ranks, regardless of the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc. Will God reward such loyalty to those faithful believers? The previous examples are evidence of what is naturally wrong with our mentality.
Therefore, what allowed this technologically advanced sliver of time, arguably about 150 years old, has been a progressive change in culture and mentality in parts of Europe brought by a combination of different historical events. If I look back in time to these events, the first significant cultural modifier in history with worldwide implications started with the teachings of a Jewish Rabbi born in Israel 2000 years ago. The expression “human rights” exists today exclusively thanks to this man. And that is just the beginning of what this man’s teachings did to modify the culture of the world, most significantly in Europe first.
Note: Those who do not share a Judeo-Christian perspective of the world should put aside their pride and false beliefs, since I will explain next why they irrefutably need to thank Jesus, for they are not living a dreadful existence anymore, and also for their iPhones and laptops.
If anyone points out to me that Christian Europe was a disaster for the first 1500 years after the coming of Jesus, I will say they know their history. The Catholic Church and its teachings, in my opinion, did nothing for the advancement of the world, to say it mildly. And although the Protestant Reformation was far from perfect, it still paved the road for the freedom of thought to finally understand and positively assimilate the teachings of Jesus in the culture of parts of Europe and the fabric of European mentality. It is worth mentioning that these European countries, which initially assimilated Jesus’ ideas, have been leaders in human rights, technology, justice, freedom, and economic development for many decades. Biblical teachings acted as cultural modifiers, counteracting the prevailing poisonous Catholic mentality of the time, which allowed the time period that we know today as the Enlightenment.
What we know today as the Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, was a European intellectual movement with far-reaching consequences, formulating a worldview and mentality concerning reason, god, nature, humanity, science, philosophy, and even politics. Essential to this new mentality was breaking with tradition and the past, the pursuit of validated knowledge, the use of reason to reach the truth, the power of man to understand its universe, individual liberty, and attaining knowledge, happiness, and freedom.
The Scientific Method was a product of the Age of Reason. The Scientific Method can be understood as the mental process required for investigating, researching, and approaching science and the acquisition of knowledge. The basis for the advancement of science and technology in Europe was the Scientific Method, but most importantly, this new mentality in Europe that we know today as the Age of Reason.
Note: Many of the ideas of the Enlightenment were taken to North America and were implemented there, even before they were put into practice in Europe. These ideas heavily influenced the Founding Fathers of what is known as the United States. As a consequence of the Founding Fathers adopting this new mentality, for a time, the United States even achieved the status of the only superpower in the world. The results of the mentality of the Age of Reason in the United States are obvious to everyone in the world, except for those religious extremists who prefer to follow their raw natural mentality against reason and truth. But in reality, we all have in our nature some of that abnormal mentality in areas of our lives, although it is so intrinsic to us that we do not realize it. Nonetheless, that is the reason why, for most of our history, we lived in darkness and ignorance, and why we have already started a decline.
The advanced educational system adopted by many countries of the world has trained countless people to think more smartly and rationally than their natural ways allowed them before. But in many cases, education only molds people in specific areas of their lives, not in their total spectrum. As a consequence, often our lives are still imperfect.