arth. In what ways might intelligent extraterrestrials- on planets and non-planetary objects (such as ships, space stations, asteroids, moons, perhaps even stars, etc)- hypothetically develop and/ or embrace spiritual-religious systems that you yourself would consider to be pagan?
Dear Ashtara,
My view:
I must say I dread the idea of leaving Earth, except maybe for a vacation. I think we can not leave Earth without fundamentally changing who we are. A Pagan has a much higher awareness that we live in a symbiosis with our environment. We are not only spiritually connected, we are parts of the same being. What would a human hand be without the rest of the body. In the same way, what is the Pagan without his Earth environment. On a colony on Mars, I would feel like a hand put on ice.
This connection goes much further than people realize. For a long time people believed that when you take a donor heart out of somebodies body it is enough to to cool it down and give it its functional needs. Turns out that the heart needs much more love than that, you really have to make it feel at home, otherwise it quickly deteriorates. And a heart can not easily be put in another body, foreign parts are rejected. We see this principle everywhere in nature and society. But we also see that for greed this is simply ignored.
The empires send their slaves everywhere without being interested in their well-being. That is why they developed an ideology that happiness is not to be expected in life, but can only be gained in the hereafter through blind obedience to a supreme ruler and his appointed staff on Earth. And it is seriously affecting people and their happiness.
When people migrate on Earth they keep yearning for their homelands and so do next generations. Science is now discovering experiences of parents are collected in the genes themselves. But new generations also create new experiences that then again become part of the people. They learn to love their new environment.
But on a non-Earth environment there would be strong rejection to alien lifeforms. We would not fit in. So we would live in a highly artificial environment and bring a minimal functional part of ecology with us to keep our bodies working for our mission to succeed and please our overlords. Frankly it would be pure horror, a new chapter in the book that was opened to us by a dangerous megalomaniac thinking. In this thinking Man was not defined as part of Nature, but a being made in the image of a dictatorial creator, a power-hungry super being. Nature he only created for his offspring as a functional tool to keep him alive, and to with it what they wish. In this ideology other beings in Nature have no soul, no spirit, no real feelings, it are biological automata's created for man. That is why Nature has been exploited to the max and is further demolished as we speak, because only the needs and greed of man counts.
No Ashtara, I would never want to leave this planet, nor do I believe that creating an interstellar empire and Intergalactic wars will amount to anything good for mankind except bring warfar to the scale of destroying whole planets, and furthers degrading human kind. I think we should rather try to fulfill our true potential here om Earth first
Because Earth is deteriorating so fast that people are starting to dream of other planets as a new beginning or a better alternative. Take Avatar in which we see the Pagan mindset projected on Alien lifeforms. Of course when earthlings come along they start to brutally exploit this planet once again, but the natives fight a brave war to resist them, like Earth Pagans did before and still do to preserve their way of life. Of course in Avatar 2 the supremacists will come back and nuke the planet so they can get to the minerals, like they are burning the forests now.
No, I have no desire at all to live in an alien environment and would be severely unhappy. But yes Pagans would try to live in respect for that environment and its habitat, but real respect would mean to stay away. Bringing our lifeforms, like micro-organisms could easily cause a massive onslaught having no natural enemies. We see the same thing on Earth.
I read the Pope has given his scientists and scholars the task to find out how to bring the message of the Cross to alien lifeforms. They will probably do it in a similar way they brought it to Pagans. First they need to learn what real suffering is to appreciate the release and concept of mercy. That is what the Cross (the torture device) is for. Aliens need to learn fear for God. Suppose the aliens look like a can of worms. They will first cook them, use acid, cut them until the aliens understand the concept of suffering. Then they can accept life is to suffer and happiness only lies in the hereafter. It will take time to make aliens see their way, but it has always worked. Suffering is a universal language for feeling sentient beings.
Did you know that pagan traditions often did not have torture punishments and death penalty? They fined people, and the ultimate punishment was banning, if you were really antisocial. The Romans came along and subjected the Germanics and demanded part of their crops as tax even though these people lived on subsistence agriculture and had no surplus. But for as little as theft and not paying taxes they were hammered to the cross. So you can imagine that the cross became a real powerful symbol of Roman dominance, one they put on the highest buildings.
But no, a Pagan like me does not feel any inclination to be part of these further expeditions. I wish the aliens well.
