Where did spirituality/religion come from, and where is it going?

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Raptor

That is quite the sweeping generalization. Also, do you think most people spend their free time being creative and innovative?

No of course not, they have a free choice, that is what freedom is about. If they are given the freedom to choose, they can be productive, creative, innovative or they can hang out and do nothing, but doing nothing can be quite boring. most people I know will do something at some point that is not just bumming out. And even if they want to bum out, then that is their freedom. In theory with the massive gains in productivity over the past century or two, it should not be a problem if some people who are not creative are free do be that. Some people may even focus on spiritual things or religion. This was done even before the productivity was as it is now - people fed their monks out of faith and because they were glad someone does that.

You're arguing as if working and being creative/innovative are mutually exclusive.

No they are not exclusive, but in the majority of cases they do not match up. Of course there is creative work that people do for money (though it always is rather restricted to some workplan made by someone else), but most work that people do for money is not creative in a sense that is fulfilling to the people. I think over 90% of the people have jobs that they would not want to do if it was not their best way to make money. That is not to say they hate their jobs - but given enough money (e.g. winning in the lottery) and not having to do this job - many people would do so. Some people of course like their jobs so much that they would keep doing them even if they had enough money otherwise, like the researchers of the 19th century who often were not poor at all but still did research instead of playing cricket all day. But really most jobs these days are not creative and I was argueing about this majority part mostly.

Uh huh. Let's see, the Boeing 787 cruises at speeds typical for an airliner (Mach 0.85), and it is far from being the largest airliner out there. But I guess that isn't really progress, eh?

Of course it is progress - of a certain kind. The kind that values faster & bigger. Industrial progress. What I said however was is that this is not the only progress there is - there can also be spiritual progress, a progress in happiness, a progress in social relationship. Sadly progress normally is used ONLY in the sense of industrial/technological progress. And this is wha tI think we do see - people focus so much on this kind that they have a Boeing 787 flying above their heads but divorce rates and mental health problems and the feeling of spiritual emptiness rise as well because these issues are not so much in the focus. Of course if a society puts more emphasis on a progress in these issues instead of technological progress, they will not progress as fast technologically. They may be happier or feel more spiritually fulfilled but not have a airplane with mach 0.85

Want to explain what it means to "listen to the natural world?" Nature is as much about competition as it is about cooperation/symbiosis, and the latter is arguably born out of the former.

No I dont want to explain as this was just an example of what people might value and regard as progress. You dont have to understand it to value it. If some indigenous people would say that this is what they like to do rather than build an airplane, then that is their kind of progress.
And of course there is competition and cooperation in nature. Sadly our society focuses mostly on the competition part and believes as you said that cooperation is based on competition, which is an ideology based on game theory and other models which are not really scientifically proven. Fact is that both exist and have their place in nature, but that cooperation is what is successful in the long term and this is what a society should focus on when it wants to exist long term. In competition, most participants loose - this is not the human model. We dont lay 10000 eggs and see which baby makes it, we care for a baby until it is much over 10 years old. So I think humans are more cooperative animals than competitive ones and a cooperative society can last much longer than one that is in competition within itself and against other cultures.

Also, you want to define "a speed and scale that is appropriate?" I really don't think you can speak for everyone in this world.

I dont claim to speak for everyone of course. Many people just love competition or at least they believe they have to love it as it is natural. If it is to their benefit or not, I personally think it mostly is not.
Appropriateness is not something that can be defined easily by numbers, it is more gained by experience. But there are mathematical descriptions regarding diminishing marginal returns on investment that may hold a clue as to what is appropriate. For example the relative gain in quality of life is much higher if you go from having no electricity to having enough for a light bulb for 2 hours than lets say going from having a full regular US home and adding another light bulb for 2 hours. The investment however is the same in terms of energy. See: Diminishing returns - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Clarke

Consider the stats: humanity produces more culture per day than they could over 10k years.

How do you quantify that? I would say "culture" is really hard to quantify, as it is not value free - a book from Goethe or Shakespeare may be more "worth" in terms of culture than 5 books of cheap romance novels, so simply counting number of books or hours of video cannot be a good measure. It only is a measure of the amount of unique data produced.