Maybe the tree of knowledge of good and evil isn't about the sudden awakening of man, but the birth of discrimination as a meme, from which man started going around labeling whatever doesn't match their opinion as evil?

Why world peace is impossible is very simple : we have all been brainwashed beyond being able to let our children really believe that the "enemies", the "criminals", the "terrorists", the "deviants", the poor, the foreigner, the "opposition", and the "uncultured" are exactly like us and are just as deserving of what life has to offer as ourselves.

***

Religions are man made. Cultures are man made. Politics are man made. Crimes are also man made. There is no such thing as crime in nature. By creating the idea of crime, we create a "society" and an "underground society" that cannot agree. Not that I support antisocial forces, but both society and underground society are part of a bigger picture.

For me the issue is beyond religion, nationalism, race, language, culture, history, and goes down to what we think collective living and societies are, spanning all forms of identity.

*** 

Selfishness is a key feature of our biology. So is empathy. But these two are not contradictory, but bound together by self-(less)-ness.

If you spread your sense of identity, your "self-ness" beyond your skin, beyond your kin, selfishness becomes essential for the survival of the Whole! In this light, heroes are simply superhuman-ly selfish people!

The beautiful thing about this model is that, when something goes "wrong", there is no need for punishment, no need to define Crime, because the Whole is in pain together. 

Live

When everything around you has become measurable, scientific, and predictable, you know that you have stopped growing and started dying. Growth is always full of chaotic power, brimming with uncertain possibilities, and a refusal to be bound and tamed.

Reading

Why do you read, if not to live lives you cannot live, that your understanding of the mind be widened, that your capacity for compassion be deepened?

Pain

Pain is the struggle against death. It is the same pain of growing up. It is the same pain of growing old. It is the same pain you fear when you have substituted that pain with shrewdness and wealth, when you forget that the struggle against death is never over. No, it is not over. It is only over when you have learnt to breathe that struggle like air. It is only over when death overtakes you and leave you nothing to struggle against.