Everyone has their burden to bear

what is it they have?

Ignorance.

They are simply unaware of the answers to questions their experiences have never beckoned them to ask. Hence, they believe everything is fine, and therefore have hope.

They also usually have a nice wall of cognitive dissonance to protect them from thinking about things that aren’t fine, and constructs that dissuade them from asking questions whose answers they wouldn’t like… were they to feel compelled to ask them.

Your (our) weakness is actually a form of self-sacrifice. We courageously confront the questions that might not have good answers. We thrust ourselves headlong into the abyss… because someone has to ask… someone has to know… even if it costs us everything.

Knowledge is powerful, and some knowledge is quite dangerous; not just to others, but to the wielder.

When we find truths which are unacceptable, which cannot be changed, or could only be changed in the case of implausible requirements being reached… we realize we’re “stuck with it,” and that factor tends to break people who understand that no amount of hoping and believing hard enough will fix it.

I was thinking about “why religion?” The other day… and i started to consider that maybe they all knew it was not about gods and devils and supernatural things… but rather, that simply believing, even when it goes against reality… is sometimes the only way to motivate shattered people into action. It’s not about whether the beliefs are accurate or true; it’s about the act of believing, itself… so that you can remain motivated to work toward your goals, instead of falling apart and stagnating in your own despair over what cannot be altered.

The reason people embrace religion, is not necessarily because they think any god exists… but rather it is because we need something to believe in, or we’ll stop trying to do things that answered questions tell us we cannot. We need to believe we can do it, or take it, or make it, or that something good will come of our efforts… or we will stop… and stopping not only habituates us into manifesting our own miserable demise, but it also tears apart “the fabric of society,” and on a large enough scale, could even result in the end of the species… and astronomical amounts of suffering, on the way out.

So… what “those other people” have, is belief, and the strategic ignorance it affords. They don’t want to lose that belief, which is why they, and their organizations, do not like asking or being asked, certain questions.

What they don’t have… is the answers they know to avoid finding… which are many of the answers we have grasped.

We are in the middle of a “shift in consciousness” in these times, and we are trying to find A) where to go from ‘here’, and B) how to get there.

As Alex Jones would say: “There is a War on, for your mind.”

Knowledge is power; with great power, comes great responsibility. Responsibility… can be quite onerous. Suffering drives otherwise good people to become bitter. The suffering from the power of knowledge in this realm, does indeed seem like “corruption.”

So… upon acquiring the knowledge, and thus, the power of this knowledge, and thus, the responsibility of enduring and coping with the power of its corruption… we find ourselves overwhelmed and conflicted… unable to motivate ourselves to (or even discover) the proper actions and ways in which to proceed… because we have lost hope that there is anything to believe… and cannot believe there is anything to hope for.

‘They’ don’t have this burden. They have a barrier against it, and would be unwilling to invite this responsibility of this power of this knowledge. The interesting part is that they don’t always know why… but they don’t need to know that, as long as they stay protected from this realm of awareness.

As an atheist (an anti-theist, really), i have begun to see religion, not as a cause of the world’s problems (which it arguably actually is), but as some clever people’s attempts at a solution. But in this day and age, it’s time for us to evolve a new solution, because religion is not really compatible with this world, anymore. It’s too easily discovered as “false.” We need something new, that people can believe in, without forcing themselves to ignore reality. I have no idea what that might be… but i think it will be up to people like us, to figure that out.