During my life I've had to experience extremely painful personal losses, material poverty, natural disasters and the onslaught of a ruinous tyranny that ravaged my country.
This is what really resonates with me. It's only in recent decades that many have moved away from religions, especially in wealthier countries. I'm wondering if it has come with a more peaceful and easy life. We likely needed religion and spiritualism in order to live with the hardships of life and to keep things in perspective. Death and hardships were something we faced almost constantly, so we needed to be able to face that, yet still remain kind and supportive of those around us. This is what our connection with religion and spiritualism did.
Interestingly, there seems to be a replacement for some in the form of "science". I've started to notice parallels with "trust the science" and "trust in God". For the majority of people, when they haven't studied science or God, then they don't truly understand and are required to trust on faith. Yet different scientists and priests have different interpretations and will preach things differently. So we are being asked to move our faith from one place to another and if we don't, then there is something wrong with us or we must be evil, depending on whose "truth" we are going against.
Absolutely, it's in times of hardship that we go back to this knowledge, when all other knowledges fail to provide understanding and make sense of what's going on. If we're not emotionally at peace, we can't explore anything. In ancient times, and for most of human history afterwards, this information was common in daily life. It still is to some degree but often under the guise of superstition rather than serious reflection.
You touch a sensitive topic that I'll probably develop later, this whole "faith in science" theme. If atheists, for instance, realized how much like religious fanatics they sound sometimes, they'd probably be appalled, hahaha. I think that a healthy mind should allow itself and be allowed by others to explore whatever wisdom and insight they find valuable, imposing a standard of thought and trust has been terribly counterproductive for our species over the centuries. I bet if we weren't educated out of our particular imaginations and discouraged from pursuing our talents since childhood, we'd naturally integrate any of these practices early on.
It is sensitive, isn't it! Even as I was writing it I felt very mindful about how it would be received and how best to write it tactfully.
Agreed, but this is also a tough one to call, as it's almost impossible to not influence children (and indeed other people) at all. We could probably go into another discussion again on that, though.