MAGA Month

 

Happy MAGA Month. How did we get here, and where are we going next.

Slap is food for thought. Take more at TakeSlap.com

The United States is a freedom platform for brave people. In the past, brave meant white and racist. Today, brave means diverse and inclusive. 

African primates

All humans are of African descent because humanity originated in Africa. You come from the lineage of the great apes (primates without tails). Chimpanzees and bonobos are your closest cousins still around. You had many closer cousins, but they all went extinct. Climate change and other natural selection factors wiped them out.  

The extinct primates between chimpanzees / bonobos and you include the homo habilis, the homo erectus, the homo neanderthalis, the homo denisovan, and many other homos. If you are "white" (beige colored skin), most of your ancestors spent millennia in Europe. 

European tilt

Due to the tilt of the Earth and the atmosphere, Europe receives less ultraviolet (UV) radiation than central Africa. In addition, Europe gets really cold necessitating that homos covered their skin with animal furs. 

The combination of less UV radiation plus covered skin during millennia in Europe, explains the beige color of "white" skin. You can think of melanin as natural sunscreen. For human tribes living in areas with higher UV radiation and exposed skin, evolution chose darker melanin. For human tribes living in areas with low UV radiation and covered skin most of the year. evolution chose lighter melanin. 

Don't worry about the color of your melanin. You are still human like everyone else.  

Storytelling primates

Besides being African primates in different shades of colored skin, what all humans have in common is that we are storytellers. We have an awesome power of imagination. By running images in our brains, we can develop all sorts of stories.

The common story is the standard version of "objective" reality that our primate brains project. We all perceive a mostly similar external or "objective" reality because we all have the same brain model or headset. It's like we are all playing the same video game with the same virtual reality headset. Our brain is the headset. Since we all have the same headset, we perceive roughly the same external objective reality. Presumably, other animals perceive a different version of reality because they have different headsets. 

Unlimited stories

On top of the common "objective" reality that we all perceive roughly the same way, we can create unlimited subjective realities. By combining our power of imagination with our power of communication, we can create unlimited and fantastic stories. 

We are so good at creating stories that we end up believing them. That is especially true if the stories were invented a long time ago by humans who are already dead, and we learned their uncorroborated stories as children. 

Repetition and learning

The human brain will believe anything that you feed it over and over again. Whatever is connected as true in your neural synapses feels true to you. Whatever is connected as true in our brains, becomes the truth for us. 

If you want others to believe your stories, you have to repeat them over and over again. The more you repeat a story the more you believe it, and the higher chances that others will believe it too. The younger your audience, the highest chances of believing. 

Young brains

The younger the brain is, the more "plastic" and receptive it is (neural plasticity). Younger brains are excellent at making the necessary neural connections to believe things. For example, if society forces a young brain to learn stories about supernatural gods, the children will believe them. 

If you repeat and repeat to a group of children that there are many gods around us, they will believe it. If you repeat and repeat to another group of children that there is only one god, they will believe it. If you tell them that the only one god is a lady, mother of all humans, they will believe it. If you tell them that the only one god is a guy, father of humanity, they will believe it. 

The patriarchy (men are better than women)

In our patriarchal system, where men have more power than women due to differences in physical strength, the prevalent and traditional story about an only one god is the god is a guy, creator and father of humanity. This story is repeated ad nauseam every single minute of every single day. In the past, they used to chop your head off if you did not believe it. No wonder why so many people still believe that story. It has been engraved in humanity by constant repetition and brutal violence. 

Children are essentially abused psychologically every day by forcing them to believe that story before they can discern for their own the difference between different type of human stories.  

Human Pride

It is what it is, and we should be proud overall of everything that we have accomplished as a species of storytelling primates roaming planet Earth. However, it is never late to test and check the usefulness of our stories. 

Stories are similar to habits. They either make you or break you. Believing god stories can be comforting and soothing to the human mind. It can also trap you into a loop. If you cannot prove whether a story is true or not, but you have to believe it to avoid being condemned, the story has put you in a bind. The liberating story is making you its slave. 

Utility consolidation

Believing in supernatural beings can be useful if it comforts your mind and soothes your natural fear of the unknown. Typically, the gods begin where human knowledge ends. Knowledge is unlimited, but your brain capacity is limited. Therefore, you will always find the ignorance realm where the gods begin. 

A few thousand years ago, the Jews consolidated all gods into one god. That is a shame because it limits creativity and traps all humans into a box. To make matters worse, the story is that the only one god is a guy, a father instead of a mother. 

The more the merrier

If believing in god is "good" and comforting, believing in many, many gods should be totally better. Consolidating all gods into one guy was lame. If there was a need to downside and consolidate because polytheism was too complicated, it would have been preferable to consolidate all gods into a couple, a male and a female. 

Unfortunately, the manly story of a one male god was invented millennia ago when women were a property of men. The men who invented the only one god story did not share godly powers with women.  Those men of the past assigned all godly powers to themselves by making god to be a guy. 

Too late for change 

Today we are stuck with the one god guy story. No one is creating new stories about gods because no one would believe prophets these days. If someone were to claim today to be hearing from supernatural creatures, society would label the person as a liar, a lunatic, or both. 

Back in the days when humans invented religious stories to rule the masses, people were more ignorant. Societies were also extremely unfair and violent. Those taking the risk to deviate from the official religious dogma would risk facing the death penalty. Women were stoned to death. Villains and lunatics were crucified.

MAGA Month

Today we complain about MAGA month, and how a "Christian American Taliban" movement has been scoring political points recently thanks to the conservative super majority in the U.S. Supreme Court. Those are first world problems in comparison to how humans used to live in the past.

The best part of human history is that it is in the past. When we are smart, we learn from history to avoid making the same mistakes. Through endless trial and error, we keep making progress. It is time to get more active in the sports of politics if we want to continue flourishing and prospering in America.

Founding Fathers

The founding fathers were white men of their times. They were not perfect. They leveraged slavery and genocide for their greedy American project. The Constitution did a good job in preventing that the new American nation would fall into the tyranny of a monarchy system. But of course, the Constitution is not perfect either. 

By learning from the horrible terrors of European history--a horrific game of thrones bloodbath--the U.S. Constitution adopted a concept of separation of powers and internal checks and balances to prevent a monarchy in the new land. The Constitution, however, is silent about airplanes, abortions, TVs, transgenders, computers, social media, smart phones, artificial intelligence, and countless of other things. 

Constitutional Interpretation 

There are two options when it comes to interpreting the Constitution: the literal / conservative way; and the implicit / progressive way. The current super conservative majority of the Supreme Court prefers the literal way. You do a word search. If a right is not mentioned, then it is not protected by the Constitution. If it is mentioned, you examine precedent, history, and tradition. 

If we are going to interpret the Constitution just doing a literal word search to find a right and interpret that right based on history and tradition, the Constitution is useless for anything other than avoiding the tyranny of a monarchy or dictatorship in America. That, of course, is crucial and always relevant. 

Deliver us from kings and dictators

As we know Trump tried an unconstitutional mini coup last year on January 6th. Without the Constitution, we would be turning into Venezuela under a Trump dictatorship and oligarchy. Trump would be enclosing our country within walls and distancing us from global trade. Trump would weaken  NATO to allow Putin to take all of Europe. Gasoline prices would be as cheap as in Russia, Iran, or Venezuela. Women and other political minorities would be oppressed. Don Jr would be looking to inherit the throne after his dad. A second civil war would be brewing fast. 

Fortunately, the Constitution saves all of us from the nightmarish scenario of having Trump as the MAGA king of America. Therefore, our first duty as Americans is to pledge loyalty and allegiance to the Constitution. It's the document saving us from Trump or any other dictator wannabe. 

Where do we go from here.

Now, loving and treasuring the Constitution is not enough if it will be read literally. Using word search in historic texts will not help much in solving new and future problems. The solution is massive political activism. That is what the Supreme Court is advocating for. That is what will save our Nation.

Massive political activism is where we go from here. The conservative majority of the Supreme Court is awakening the giant of diversity and inclusion in our country. The Supreme Court wants women and minorities to get active in the sports of politics. 

Diversity and inclusion

We can do it. Yes, we can. Politics is a sport like any other. Every sport that used to be played only by men is played super well by women today. Political minorities are also overwhelmingly dominant in most sports. That is the future of American politics as a sport. 

It is time to strengthen American democracy by increasing the diversity and inclusion of all politicians, staffers, and supporters. Racism does not stand a chance against diversity and inclusion. We are stronger together. We are more together. Diversity and inclusion will prevail. Bet on it.

Food for though. What do you think?

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