What we are going to talk about today is tragedy and real hope. What is real hope? And how do you define real hope? We bring this issue up in light of the sorry state of today's planet and the increasing inevitability of a series of global disasters. By our calculation, by the year 2050, you stand an excellent chance of losing 3 to 4 billion of our fellow passengers here on spaceship Earth. Yes, it is that bad. Where we need to start climate change which is a subsidiary of the destruction of the biological foundations of life in other words if you solve climate change tomorrow which these people sure as hell aren't you would still have a existential crisis for life on this planet.
WHY ARE WE RAMPING UP THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE
WHILE IGNORING CLIMATE CHANGE?
Our leaders are feeling apparently that climate change in the global environmental crisis cannot kill us quickly enough and they have embarked on today the largest nuclear arms race in the history of planet Earth. If aliens are looking at us right now they would be rather puzzled at a species which is facing extinction (because of environmental issues) that is developing weapons which can exterminate all life on earth rather quickly.
THE GROWING THREAT OF BIOLOGICAL TERROR
And just in case we're not having enough fun relating to the Wuhan lab in China, we don't pretend to know where the coronavirus came from, whether it came from animals, bats, trees, whatever. We don't know. But the the issue brought up which has concerned us for a long time is the failure to have an international system of controls on biological warfare. The Biological Warfare Convention is a step forward. It's better than nothing but it does not prevent many people from developing the most dangerous kinds of biological weapons and with the invention of biotechnology, the CRISPR technology, and technology such as that, we now have the potential to develop super anthrax and super Covid and also lots of other good stuff like that. It is not illegal folks. There is this big to do about whether China was or was not pursuing so-called gain of function research and developing biological weapons in the Wuhan lab, we don't claim to know, but it is entirely legal for them to do so and we wouldn't be at all surprised if the US government, and a good part of the governments of the world, were developing a gain of function research, not only that with the development of CRISPR and the development of new technology, low cost high-technology and biological weapons, and engineering. We can now have the privatization of mass murder on an enormous scale where your local division of ISIS, the Islamic State, fill in the blanks, your local nutcase organization can get a rather limited amount of money and can start developing their own bio weapons for deployment. Yes sir. Right there in your community. Yes that is that is possible.
THE ROLE OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM IN PREVENTING GLOBAL PROGRESS
So we have an apocalyptic landscape in the real world and we have politicians claiming they're doing something when of course they are not. They are failing. They are not doing what is needed to be done and we have a very negative force in the world. American imperialism, which is making it very difficult for the world to come together. We're not saying that America is the root of all the world's evils in the from that if America is bad then China must be good. We're not going down that road, but American imperialism is a force that's completely out of control. It is American imperialism, not Chinese imperialism, not Russian imperialism that spent $8 trillion since 2001 on a global campaign of war and destruction that killed 2 million people and made 40 million people into refugees and so on and so forth. It is also American imperialism that produced the single largest source of greenhouse gases that are now up there in the atmosphere. Yes America is number one. You got number one in the production of greenhouse gases that are killing the planet, and now China has since surpassed America in the annual production of greenhouse gases, but it's important to give credit where credit is due and in terms of the total amount of greenhouse gases submitted and put in the atmosphere to kill the planet America is number one.
HOW TO DEAL WITH AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS?
WHAT DO THE GREAT RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD SAY?
Now let's deal with how people can or should try to deal with existential threats. We don't have a happy little solution for you out there listening to this lecture. We cannot guarantee that you are going to have a happy life. What we do want to talk about is reality, in history the reality of how people look at life. How do you come to terms with tragedy if somebody's just had their legs knocked off in a car accident? Is it worth going on? Is it worth going on living and so on and so forth? We don't claim to have answers for each and every individual person. What we can talk about is some basic beliefs, which those of you out there may or may not agree with. We believe that God exists. We believe that God is just. Now what we're not doing here is setting up a rating service on world religions. That one is better than another one or whatever, but what we are trying to do in a world conflicted with religious conflict is to try to put up some common values that the great religions of the world believe in down through history. And one of those common values is justice, that there is a sense of justice and that sense of justice is very important. It is connected to a long-term view of life, a view of life that goes out millions of years into the future. This goes back if you look at the walls of some of the Egyptian tombs, you see Osiris as the judge of the dead. This is a very old concept. And this is in Christianity, in Islam, in Hinduism, in many if not most aspects of Buddhism, in aspects of other religions. And we're not going to discuss all the different religions in the world. We are not. There is not time. There is a concept of life going on and life here being a a test so to speak.
RELIGION, THE STATE, AND RESPONSIBILITY
Now when we look at life, you need to understand a key concept in life is responsibilities. All religions demand responsibilities. And those responsibilities, by the way, are always connected to community, that the religion takes place in the context of community. Human life takes place in the concept of community. Now what do we mean by community? What we mean by community is the state. Is government. That is the essence of community. In America there's this lunatic dialectic between community and the state. This is lunacy. The reality is that community is the state. In America there's an attempt to go back to, "Oh well there was a time before big government and everybody relied on the church and that was great." Most people would not regard the Dark Ages as great. They really wouldn't. Let's just take that argument at face value. People like this are totally and completely ignorant of the most elemental aspects of Christian history. In the Middle Ages, in Europe, the church was a part of the state. You paid a church tax and many liberals in America are always shocked when they go to Europe to find even today in socialist countries such as as Norway, and Sweden, and even Germany, there is a church tax which is a legacy of all that as you can see. So the church was the state. There was never a time in history where there was a dialectic between religion and the state. Religion was integrated into the state. There has been conflicts between religion and the state. We're certainly going to say there have not been very unfair persecutions of religions. There have. But in the concept of human society, religion and the state have been integrated, and community is a part of that.
HOW DOES LIFE HAVE MEANING?
So looking at the world today in the face of Apocalypse, how does life have meaning? Life has meaning in terms of how you, the citizen, deal with the coming disaster. What are you doing? We are not going to get into, as I said, recommending one religion over another religion. We personally admire Islam, the classical version of Islam, not the Saudi Wahhabi version of Islam. And though Islam needs to reform itself in terms of its treatment of women today and in a number of other issues which are very controversial and wer'e not going to get into. We are not going to say you should adopt Islam and you should not adopt Christianity and so on and so forth. There are basic moral values in Islam and Christianity and Buddhism and in Hinduism that do relate to a spirit of community.
MEANING COMES FROM RESPONSIBILITY
WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO STOP THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LIFE?
Now an essential question in today's world, which did not affect previous generations, is the issue of the biological foundations of life. Other societies throughout history have created environmental disasters, so that's not new. But never before had they threatened the biological foundations of life itself. So the number one issue for any moral people is you could ask what are you doing to stop the destruction of the biological foundations of life? So you see responsibility relates to politics. It relates to what are you doing in terms of politics and that's not an easy thing to answer.
WE ARE ALL LINKED IN A GLOBAL WEB OF LIFE
Now another responsibility involves cooperation on an international level. We are all links in a chain. We're not isolated countries. There is no America first, no China first, no Brazil first, Mexico first etc. Those are lunatic delusions. We are linked together in a global economy and that's just the way things are now. This is not the world's happiest situation. Cooperating with everyone means cooperating with governments who are frequently tyrants war criminals so on and so forth. But there's a greater good of the need to cooperate. And one thing we don't need is a country as morally bankrupt is America running around trying to shove its version of human rights down everybody else's throat. That's a big problem, yes, it is that's a big problem. We are totally opposed to issues like torture which America, by the way promotes, but which should and in a moral world be aboard by all the world's people and so on and so forth so we are not concerned about human rights. There is a larger issue of if we don't cooperate on an international level, we are not going to exist and that also means getting a grip on the arms race and means getting a grip on the biological arms race. If Covid taught us anything that would seem to be a priority but no one seems to have learned anything about this. Our world seems more bitterly divided than ever
THERE ARE NO RIGHTS WITHOUT RESPONSIBILITIES
So we go back to where we started. What is the issue is hope for an individual person, the issue of hope for you today is the same as it's been since the beginning of time in history. It's not an issue of rights. You don't have rights. There's this whole idea from the 18th century in Europe that people have rights. Here's the way it really works. People have responsibilities. All the great religions of the world point out responsibilities. You have an obligation. Dharma in Hinduism and again we're not endorsing or not endorsing all these different concepts but we're just making some basic points. Moses did not come down with the Bill of Rights from the mountain. He came down with the 10 Commandments, the obligation of what you have to do and so on and so forth. All religions talk about responsibilities. You can't have rights without responsibilities. This is a delusion. You don't start with rights, you start with responsibility and insofar as people fulfill responsibilities they earn rights. That's the correct way to look at it all. This is a question of rights and responsibilities and getting the proper balance.
So you need to think of how are you helping other people, how are you building at trying to stop the political dynamics of what is coming here. You see, the issue is the state, the issue is government, the issue is politics. Ralph Nader came up with a great response. Some kids told him that they were not turned on by politics. Nader came up with a great response. "You may not be turned on by politics, but that's not going to prevent politics from turning on you." Indeed, that is so true because you can't run away. You can't run away and all around the world, particular in America, you see governments...as American imperialism collapses...it's becoming more and more desperate... particularly at home. And there's a bipartisan agreement to restrict civil liberties and crush civil liberties and crush dissent. The liberals and conservatives hate each other's guts but they do agree on that they should curb them. Some brave people were fighting this but in general there is a consensus that we should move towards a totalitarian state. They swear up and down they're not doing this but that is what they're doing.
So you have to look at the issue of responsibilities. That's the issue and how you participate in that.
THE BIG PICTURE
LIFE GOES ON AFTER DEATH
We don't have any clever little concept of successful living and so on and so forth. Indeed when you look at the death toll that's coming your life may be on the losing end of that business situation. Your life may be turned into a nightmare. It may already be a nightmare. It could get worse and you could end up being a totality. For you, the great videogame of of capitalist life or whatever system you're living on, it could be game over you. You just didn't luck out, okay. So what to tell you? That you're going to be able to avoid that? You can't run away. So you have to participate. In many ways this goes back to the concept of stoicism, that you serve at your post and you do what is necessary and what happens or doesn't happen to you is not the end result. It is not the be-all and the end. No serious system of religion and philosophy suggests that it is trying to build a just society here but very important, life here is a very short phenomenon, and it is the karma and the dharma of where you end up on the system of the samsara reincarnation so on and so forth. Heaven and hell. Where you end up is the frame of reference. So you need to get your mind around that concept. Not that listening to this lecture or buying a book is going to be a clever little thing that can help you. We don't say people shouldn't try to survive, but you need to think in terms of the larger picture because big troubles are coming and it's not a guarantee. There is no guarantee in the world religions that you might not end up being a martyr. The question is if you're going to die what are you going to die for? What are you leading your life for? Are you leading your life in a logical manner to gain heaven if you're a Muslim or Christian? Are you doing whatever you need to do in order to gain advancement in the cosmic landscape of the Samsara when you are reincarnated? These are realities and we shall discuss more of this in future lectures.