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The Philosophy of the Open Hand |
What do concepts like Greed, Selfishness, Generosity and Selflessness have to do with reality? Not a lot. Reality exists and what is real doesn't depend on our behavior. The Earth will continue to orbit the Sun no matter what we do. But the Church of Reality is about more than just believing in what is real. It is about exploring reality and increasing our understanding of reality. It is about the relationship of the human race to reality and reality as experienced by humanity. That is what makes the religion of reality different from science. And because we as Realists have chosen to expand our understanding of reality, the way we organize as a society to do that together is important to the success of our mission.
As a religion we have accepted the exploration of reality as one of our missions. We know that in order to accomplish this we need to grow the Tree of Knowledge and increase the sum total of our collective human understanding. This is the way for us to evolve in the Sacred Direction. Since it is necessary for us to act as a community to accomplish our goal, it would seem that freely sharing information, generosity, and selflessness are the most logical strategy to achieve this goal. It is in our self-interest to be selfless. To that end, we adopt the Philosophy of the Open Hand as our way of living in a reality based community.
The Philosophy of the Open Hand is both for giving and for taking. It recognizes both our collective nature living in harmony with our individual nature. The individual gives of himself for the benifit of all and the individual takes the resources they need to survive.
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