Gruntle Me!

To follow on from Religiosophy: I’ve coined Logicity!
Further deliberations have led me to the determination that the West’s religion(s), and most likely the East’s too, are based in Logic, action-therefore-consequence underpinning all human activity.
Islam, today’s mid-eastern poison, blinkered by Muhammad’s Qur’an, posits “there is this, and there is that” with little or no connection. How, then does creation come about? Why, indeed, is there death? age? decay? Where, indeed, is any progress? Is life nothing but eternal sameness? Certainly the Islamic world is unchanged from 600 A.D. – stagnant. That stagnation has led to Islam’s leeching of Western technologies (accelerated by Eastern co-operative competition and developments) as weapons, continuation of Islam’s hatred/envy and raiding of the Silk Road traders to this day – demanding, extorting! a ‘fair share’ of the wealth of that black stuff below their feet, useless to them until Western discovery.
Earlier ages observed and named, but little else. Persian (pre-Mohammad) Zoroastrian philosophy and science were Islam’s early conquest and destruction, but not before naming most of the stars observable to the naked eye (why do they have such weird names? was one of my early questions: they’re Arabic!) and giving us advanced mathematics, both of which made their way West (by the Mediterranean-trade extension of the Silk Road – the Spice Road). With the concept of zero being not ‘nothing’ but a valid digit, the resulting (Arabic number-symbols again?) decimal system obsoleted the cumbersome Roman numeral system, and al-gebra stretched minds to even greater Calculus, Greece contributed geometry/trigonometry (3-dimensional maths) …
Lately, computer systems are prevalent and, being unambiguous, their logic is yes/no, 2 states hence ‘binary’, with all counting and decisions clear-cut if complex. The West has progressed exponentially in material matters by this (and the East has caught on and contributes). The Mid-east lags and purloins, as it has always, contributing nothing but strife (Islam’s sects can’t even be at peace with each other!).
Christianity has its Laws (thou shalt not). These are merely means of avoiding undesirable results/reactions, a logical development of asking “why does this hurt?” or “why is this misfortune my lot?”.
Buddhist precepts are pretty much the same, but ideals to aspire to rather than laws, and practical means toward those ideals, BUT go further: inverting the point-of-view. Just as Newton later posited “for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction”, so the Buddha said “THIS WORLD OF CAUSE-AND-EFFECT (Samsara) MUST ALSO HAVE AN OPPOSITE” – a logical assumption: Indeed if there were not such an un-made, un-born, ageless, undying, eternal state how then can this existence even BE? I’m still trying to fathom that one out – it goes deep. He *did*, by refining his mind to beyond thought ….

… and, ‘closer-to-home’ and up-to-date, that same logic can beneficially be applied to personal, social, societal and political human interactions (essentially morality and ethics) – merely by considering likely reactions. The number of timeless homilies on the matter are countless:
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,
Never piss off the fairies – (or TPTB – The Powers That Be)
… and in reasonably-modern comedy, Frankie Howerd’s ‘Up Pompeii’ dog-Latin : “Non crapat suum januum – don’t sit on your own doorstep”.

and the converse:
You catch more flies with honey.

ALL LOGICAL!

Now, before you protest “this is too cold and clinical”, consider http://gruntleme.blogtown.co.nz/not-a-kneejerk/