Tree of the Enlightened with Cat Print

This is one of a series of designs. The “tree of the enlightened” and the “circle of the enlightened” are part of my personal ethical philosophy and a repeated theme in my art. They represent the four elements required in the character of a person for them to evolve into a good human being. These are compassion, virtue, tranquillity and understanding. People often associate these concepts with “spirituality”, however, they are in fact a product of human sentience, not spirituality. They originate in the synaptic firing of our brains neurons. Compassion is the most important characteristic to nurture in oneself if you wish to become a good human being. Compassion is what separates us from sociopaths. The less compassion you have, the more sociopathic you are. Compassion requires the cognitive ability of empathy. Empathy is a skill that can be taught from early childhood through role-play and giving children practice in critical and ethical reasoning skills through classes such as P4C (Philosophy for Children). Unfortunately, there is little emphasis on these skills in most education systems. Compassion is a skill that requires intelligence but it doesn’t require genius. Hence every person is capable of this, the most profound of cognitive skills. Showing you can calculate advanced algebra in your head doesn’t make the world or yourself a better person. Showing that you can empathise and show compassion does. Virtue is the term I use to cover aspects of self-control and a general regard and respect for the rights of others. It is about actively choosing to think, speak and act in a way that is courteous and abstemious of base drives. It is a building block of an ethical person. Indeed we start to learn these rules of behaviour in our early childhood. Essentially it relates to the developmental stage when a childs frontal cortex starts exercising greater control over impulses from the basal ganglia.However, it is possible for someone to live virtuously simply as a matter of conformity rather than by ethical principles internalised in ones frontal cortex. Conformity is definitely not an ethical way to live ones life. Conformity is a behavioural instinct that has been a catalyst for every sort of moral atrocity throughout human history. Higher levels of ethical reasoning are achieved when an individual develops the skill of empathy; begins to understand why certain behaviours are prosocial or antisocial because of their affect on others; internalises principles such as equality, justice, beneficence, and respect for autonomy; and the ability to use these principles as a basis for evaluating the ethical consequences of human behaviour. Conformity just turns a human into a pack animal. Tranquillity is an essential element in evolving as person. It frees the mind from stress, lessens drives and emotions such as anger, and it clarifies thoughts. This is very important for the objectivity required in reasoning ethically, particularly when evaluating the variables involved in ethical dilemmas. As a highly emotional species tranquility isn’t all that easy to obtain. It requires learning techniques of meditation and regularly taking time to practice them. One of the drawbacks of trying to learn meditation is that the skill is often taught by people who surround the skill in oozing dollops of “spirituality”. They babble on about chakras, qi energy, gods and goddesses and other nonsense. I, fortunately, avoided this by learning meditation from my Judo instructors when I was a youth. They weren’t interested in that sort of nonsense. Meditation is basically learning to control your breathing, slowing your heart-rate, thus allowing you to calm your metabolism, emotions and your thoughts. It’s not about eliminating emotion. That is psychologically unhealthy. It’s about having control over your emotions. Controlling your emotions allows you to think clearly. Understanding as I refer to it encompasses the concept of “enlightenment” as defined by the western search for empirical understanding of the world that began again during the renaissance after the long hiatus of the dark ages. It also encompasses the eastern concept of “enlightenment” that has more to do with ones existence as a social and ethical entity. Ethical decisions need to be based on reality based facts. Therefore is important to have a way to objectively obtain and authenticate those facts logically. We have a process for this, it is called scientific method. Under-educated religious individuals are fond of calling science the “religion” of atheists thus showing that they haven’t got a clue what science and scientific method is. Religion is about having a set of dogmatic unchangeable beliefs. When confronted with evidence that disconfirms those beliefs, that evidence is either completely ignored or twisted to fit the belief. The religious however, don’t spend much time looking for disconfirming evidence. If they look for evidence at all, it is for anything that confirms their belief and this “evidence” is often anecdotal, and not subjected to a rigorous evaluation of its reliability or validity. Scientific method, on the other hand, actively looks for evidence that disconfirms a hypothesis. This is based on the simple logical truth that if evidence is found that contradicts the belief, then the belief cannot be based in truth, the belief is false. Science is a constant process of seeking this disconfirming evidence, and updating our understanding of reality according to what is found or not found. For a little more information on the principles behind scientific method, see the description of this woodcarving design:www.redbubble.com/people/torad…... The concept of “understanding” in it’s social context relates to knowing yourself as an individual and separate entity; understanding that every other person has this same status as an equal and autonomous entity while applying the cognitive skill of empathy to generate a feeling of connectedness with others. This feeling of connectedness leads us to value others as individual entities, motivating us to treat them with compassion, ethics and respect. If you don’t have empathy for others, you are the 1 in a hundred in the general population that have anti-social personality disorder, ie a sociopath.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:9 W x 12 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:14.25 W x 17.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.