The driving force behind the Hypatian society is not limited to just this country, but rather to all of humanity and as such there are things in different regions of this earth that have safeguards to protect against some of the faults that allow humans to harm others, but no society is devoid of all faults.
In this discussion all people with a job that allows them to define the limits in a society, control the actions of others in a society, or make the rules for a society will be known as politicians. This would include any position in any subdivision of a planet including the planet as a whole.
We know that the 8 conditions listed under Why Hypatia:
Politicians and those with a political position are allowed to commit atrocities with impunity.
Not punishing the politicians minions for the atrocities they commit.
Not punishing politicians and their minions who defame people for unrelated actions that they wish to hurt.
Rewarding those with power and dismissing those with no power.
Women treated as less than men.
People with ambiguous writings from their gods/philosophers to direct society.
The destruction of the past to enforce an arbitrary view point.
Treating people as lesser because of a birth condition
are our major concerns, but they are not all we must overcome.
We also realize that everything that everybody does, as a group anyway, is done with the population being distributed on a bell curve. In other words even though females tend to be helpful and wish to preserve things there are those that are that way to a fault and there are still those that have absolutely no mothering instinct in them. So when we talk about human beings or any subgroup we are talking about the center half of the bell curve and not the extreme ends, and this applies to males also.
There are several other factors in this mix and one of those are the evolutionary characteristics of males and females. Females operate pretty much on the notion that they have to ensure the survival of their children and correct them when they make their errors without doing harm to them. Since they are the primary care giver for children they must be able to withstand considerable verbal abuse from their loved ones (children can really be mean since they have so few abilities other than raw anger and its opposite – absolute love). Then women apply these generically throughout most things they do in life.
Males on the other hand have an instinct to “get rid of” anything that they would consider harmful and physically protect others in his “group”. And by get rid of we include killing. Their major objective is to make it physically safe for their progeny.
And within both groups there is an extremely strong instinct to reproduce. History has shown us that the female tends to want a male that is assertive enough to protect her and her/his children without doing harm to her or her children. And thus males have evolved to be assertive and this assertiveness is not limited to just their interactions with females. It is well known that many assertive males attempt to dominate their subordinate males either through verbal, physical or sexual abuse. This practice still goes on even within the major religions of the world. Look at Catholic priests and young men, as well as Muslim leaders and their recruits.
History has also taught us that by and large the majority of societies have been patriarchal. In other words, run by men. And while this method was fruitful while people lived in a primitive state it is not fruitful anymore. It would be nice to say that we can just abandon the patriarchal society and go to one that is a combination of male and female characteristics but we must realize that males that desire power are still driven by this assertive characteristic which has been bred into them while females tend to be a lot less assertive, so getting women to participate fully in the process will take effort on everyone’s part.
I wish to point out that it is beyond doubt that religion has never managed to bring humanity together. And all the major religions are major religions not because of their empathy towards their fellow human beings but rather their willingness to use brutality against their fellow humans to achieve their goals.
Religion, since animism 300,000 years ago, has proposed over 2,500 gods to mankind none of whom have ever managed to bring peace to humans as a whole. Of the religions/philosophies that remain the two major factors that have prevented religions from bringing mankind together are the fact that they self limit themselves to “their tribe” and their writings are so ambiguous that they fracture into subgroups and become untenable to those outside the “tribe”.
And since every major religion proclaims itself to be the one true religion and they all have mandates to convert everybody to their religion in order to “save their souls” it is not even reasonable to consider that they will ever bring peace and understanding to humans.
Unfortunately atheism has been around for the same amount of time and has not been able to bring peace to humans either. They may claim that they are peaceful people, and present societies that are more atheistic are in fact more tolerant, but they represent a mere 10% of the worlds population and have no guiding principles upon which those that want/need guidance can look to. Atheists do not seem to have figured out that not everybody wants to, has the time to, or can determine and promulgate what’s right or wrong on their own. Atheists have also had 300,000 years of opportunity to provide simple guidance and have failed to do so.
So what does atheism have that religion does not that would enable it to make humans live in peace? The only advantage atheism has is that it is science-based and science changes when there are facts that say it has to change while religion is stagnant and relies upon a non-changing dogma.
So the one route possible to bring humans together is to provide the fundamental needs of everybody and make everybody equal according to their abilities.
So how does the Hypatian society plan on meeting the goal of bringing all of mankind together? To start with we are proposing a simple set of 21 rules that everybody needs to live their life by. Second, we wish to encourage non-theists and everyone else to engage in more charitable activities and social gatherings within their society. And finally we wish to promote “open” science, and oppose “settled” science as well as those propositions in science which inherently oppose the “authority” or “persons of authority” which is an extremely important part of the scientific method.
The 21 rules provide something that if enforced will give everybody equality in the political theater as well as guiding them to be good people towards others and living a healthy life. It is deliberately not very long and not full of explanations about the meaning of what is written for the very simple reason that there is no way to account for every possible scenario in every possible life on earth or elsewhere. But one can say that no matter what you encounter if you use these 21 rules you will be a “good” person both in the political arena and on a personal level in your interactions with other people. This will provide those that do not have the desire to engage in lengthy philosophical discussions as to why “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is not a good saying for everyone, especially the sadists, masochists, and power seekers .
If enforced, the rules would have prevented many if not all atrocities humanity has brought upon their fellow human. And herein lies one of the biggest problems, how do you enforce these simple rules? That is part of the function of the next thing we wish to encourage non-theists to do.
The second thing we wish to encourage is more charitable activities and social gatherings within society. These are related because if you are known primarily for your assistance to those that need help then people will look upon you with a semblance of respect for both your work and your words – something the theists understand. And if you can get your word out you can start convincing people that this is a much better way to interact then with force, oppression, or dogma. But if you set at home at your computer and write entries on atheist websites you are doing nothing but patting your fellow non-theists on the back to make yourselves feel better.
This does not get your word out there to the public. Ask many of your religious friends how often they go to an atheist site to have a discussion? Probably not very often because they really don’t want to spend the day arguing and getting antagonized by being put on the spot as it were. Whereas in a social setting where everybody involved is helping there can be more dialog where you can promote your ideas without being threatening.
And when you’re in a social gathering promote yourself, do not demote the others, unless the specific function of the social gathering is to challenge or criticize or question different beliefs. In those cases you can lay down whatever you wish, as the others also have the right to lay down whatever they wish. I think it is easiest to understand this because we all understand that people that call blacks niggers do this to make themselves feel better by demoting the Blacks instead of promoting themselves. In other words they do not raise themselves up but rather they just push others down and they stay at a lower level themselves because they are holding the others down. When you are in a mixed group you will gain points by promoting yourself and lose points by demoting the others! It’s really that easy!
Do not take this to the extreme though. If you are in a social group and someone from another group demotes you, it is perfectly acceptable to answer their challenge as best you can, even if that includes demoting them, but never let it turn into a pissing contest either. And never start the demoting cycle.
Atheists seem to have the attitude that we don’t have to go out and deal with the prejudices of others. And that attitude seems to be more of a poor me I’m oppressed attitude than anything else. It is also the attitude that the Helenese took towards the early Christians. Looking at websites over the years it is pretty obvious that atheists believe they don’t have to do this because they are in a group that is more intelligent and better informed than those that are “religious”. Although as a group our measured intelligence is greater it is not significantly greater than religious people’s. Remember though, there are religious people that are more intelligent than most non-theists do to the bell curve distributions of humanity. Our group as such should just face the fact that we need to present our view not only on the words of our most noted speakers but also on a personal basis without being overly pushy, or as our last 300,000 years has been, extremely timid.
The one truly hard thing to do is get equal enforcement in the political arena, including the police and other law enforcement persons. This is not something that can be accomplished without the majority of society realizing that the mistakes these people make and get away with are the same mistakes we make and get convicted of. Their political connections/badge should not and cannot be allowed to let them make the same errors we make and get convicted for while they go free.
Our final objective is to promote science with the understanding that there is no “settled” science. Unlike religions which have nebulous “absolute certainties” we need to let those that really have no interest in science know that those of us that do will not become dogmatic about it. Along with this science should encourage those laypeople that do have an interest to keep track of what they are interested in and letting their fellow citizens in on what they have learned. It should also be the practice of answering challenges with the understanding that the truth of a fact has nothing to do with the messenger.
The second science related thing we have to do is get the politicians out of science, and try to find a method for governments to promote fundamental research science based both on economics and the most fundamental unknowns in science.
At present science is creating a long-term festering problem by having its representatives call people names. I’m talking specifically about people like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson calling people names (deniers, flat earthers, etc). This is so hypocritical when you consider that these same people are supposed to be promoting logic and logical arguments. The first thing you learn in logic is that you do not attack your opponent (ad hominem), you attack your opponents argument. When they engage in name-calling it becomes so obvious that they cannot make the argument that they must rely on pure emotion in an attempt to make a scientific argument, a sad situation for the average person and a truly deadly one for a scientific spokesman.
And finally in the scientific arena we must oppose attempts to paint those that oppose “authority” as bad. One of the greatest scientific and political problems are the fact that there are a lot of people who will not oppose authority just because it is authority. This attitude has allowed many a small error to compound into mass killings and scientific falsities. Both scientifically and politically it must be recognized that opposition to authority is vital to the health of both.
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