In Accompany With Fundamentalist, Religious, Realistic People !!

Alright, I've been thinking about this for a while...how to approach the subject.

Before I do, let me throw a few things at you, so you know where I'm coming from:

·         I'm not an atheist but believe on realistic approach towards the issue , but you knew that right? I don't like being linked with atheists because saying you're an atheist creates all sorts of connotations, the most obvious being "You're stupid for believing in god". But, many people admit that mainstream atheism (or at least the perception of it) is that it's combative and evangelical.

·         Science and reason is a starting point, and a means. It is not the endpoint, or an end in itself. So I tend not to get hung up on it, or get in arguments with people over science vs. religion. Particularly if the spiritual/atheistic person isn't intelligent enough to understand the argument. Fundamentalism, either scientific or religious, is a problem. The left has the same problem, identifying anyone on the right as stupid, uncaring, and wrong-headed.

Confirmation bias and systems-thinking orientation, I have 'rational/scientific' friends. I have conspiratorial friends. I have political, postmodern, and spiritual friends. All these friends look at the world though a set of lenses (their system of understanding), however I don't really have any friends who are able to employ more than one of these systems.

Funny thing is that all these people are convinced that they're right, and that their way of understanding the world is the one true way.

Problem is the world is full of people, with all these different knowledge systems. And those systems guide their behavior. If you want to understand why someone does something, you need to understand their motivation, and how they look at the world. Unfortunately, not many people are doing this. And for those who CAN do this, seldom have they weighed the pros and cons of the other knowledge system. They’ve only looked at it from their own knowledge system, to find the holes to attack, so they can feel confident and secure in their belief that their own knowledge system is the best knowledge system.

REALISM – WHAT IS IT EXACTLY?

Well, it was weekend and it was best time for all of us to study new philosophies. Well, searching through Wikipedia about political philosophies, there was a eye catching word called Realism!  To sum it up, A Realism is a political philosophy based on various premises. The first is that a world should be seen in terms of relative power. The theory applies both domestically and internationally, focusing on the individual and the state respectively. Realism asserts that all states and individuals are to work for their own self-interest, and that since there is a scarcity of resources in the world, there will be conflict. This leads to the premise that the basic state of affairs in the world is anarchic. War is inherent in the nature of a nation-state, according to Thomas Hobbes.

The world is a battle-zone, with each party acting to protect itself, increase its power base, etc. Along with this is an idea that connects to the notion of relative power: one can only increase one’s power by decreasing that of another. Morality is virtually non-existent (according to the realist doctrine). ‘Right’ or ‘good’ is defined by self-interest. If a certain action will give you a ‘leg up’, so to speak, then it is justified, and not only can you carry it out, but you should.

Some call realism a closed theory, saying that it can refute any action of apparent selflessness simply by saying that there must have been some ulterior motive behind the deed. To confirm this requires an in-depth knowledge of the functioning of the state, its officials, their intentions, etc.

Famous realists you may have heard of:  Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, St. Thomas Aquinas, Rousseau, Woodrow Wilson