Fourth in a Series >>>>> Application #2 from A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison and Extended Thoughts Thereon

Because humanity is such an infant in time, and the dialectic leading to the major scientific advances of the very late 15^th century to the 18^th century took so long to transpire, humankind in the year 2024 is now grappling with two major oppositional forces, that seeking to move toward a religio-spirituality compatible with scientific truth and that which seeks in vain but with great ferocity to cling to the mythical explanations of the prescientific age.  

Humanity is also working through a related struggle, between a force represented by people who understand that if humanity is to create Life that supports the best possible Existence of all people during this one earthly sojourn, then we must turn to cooperative endeavors and wise policy that constructs the best possible environment for sustaining maximally good health, the accumulation of strong knowledge bases, and common ethical values across nation and globe;  and that competing force, similar to that which clings to religious explanations of the past, seeking to retreat in defense old orders of cultural exclusivity and the protection of the interests of the few rather than the many, an approach that certainly for the many but often also for the few in power, leads to lives of ill health, abject ignorance, and inadequately developed ethical values.

There is, then, an enormous problem for humanity in not understanding humankind in the context of prehistory and history.

And there is also a daunting problem for humanity in not understanding the foundations of human behavior.

Ironically, she and he who grasps that free will is an illusion and therefore seeks to understand as fully as possible the circumstances of environment that drive human behavior, will come much closer to that which we call agency, free will, volition than will those people who cling to those notions as conventionally understood.

The most common path of existence proceeds in ignorance of those environmental forces that determine human behavior.  In any life, the environmental forces of family, religious institution, community, peer group, gender, economic condition, political system, and culturally promoted goals are determinative.  The question becomes, then, how well one understands the way in which the environmental circumstances of one’s life have, do, and will continue to shape the course of her or his one earthly sojourn.

Those who have no understanding of determinative environmental forces live as passengers on a rudderless ship on an ocean the current of which determines fate.

Those who have masterful understanding of determinative environmental forces live as captains of ships with rudders, unable to change the circumstances of temperature, wind, and current but able to make the best possible response in the moment that will have the best consequences over time;  and among such captains, those who embrace values seeking the best interests of all humanity will chart a course leading to the best possible future of all those aboard.

In charting our own best future, humankind must be as the knowledgeable ship captain, aware of all environmental factors determining Existence and interacting with those forces in charting a course ahead leading to the best possible lives for all humanity on this one earthly sojourn, clinging not to the illusion of independently exercised free will, but rather according to a close approximation of agency exercised in astute decision-making upon the best information available, upon ethical values promotive of the best outcomes for all of those in the human family.