So, for some reason I pulled The Life of Pi off the bookshelf last night and started rereading it. For most people, there would be nothing strange in that. For me, though, it’s more than a little weird. You see, I was raised in a reading household. My father, the electronic engineering wizard who could build a short-wave radio out of a Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco can, a coat hanger and a few pennies, didn’t have much use for television. Ours gave out during JFK’s funeral procession, and I think we got our next one sometime around Watergate. Dad could have fixed it – repaired others’ sets and our hi-fi and all sorts of gizmos with vacuum tubes, capacitors, resistors and whatnot – but not our television.
So we read. A lot. And I’ve never knowingly read the same book twice, with the possible exception of To Kill a Mockingbird. So my voluntarily picking up The Life of Pi is actually significant. I think. Maybe…
No, I’m not going to do a review for you here. If you can read this blog then you can get yourself over to a library or the discount book store or Amazon or wherever you get your reading materials, buy the darn thing and read it yourself. And I strongly recommend you do. I digress…
So, I’m sitting on the throne meditating this morning (figures of speech both) and reading my book, when I ran across an early passage I didn’t recall from my last go round, which was admittedly several years ago. Did I mention that I pretty much remember in a very hazy way virtually every book I’ve ever read? Well, I do. I never remember the author or the title, but if I inadvertently pick up a previously read tome – within a couple of pages I will remember not only that I read it, but generally about when, and the whole story line. I have always been that way and sometimes find it a little disconcerting. It’s funny, actually, because I am one of the most forgetful people you’d ever want to meet, and yet I seem unable to fully forget anything I’ve ever read. The wife reminds me when I pick up something I’ve already read, because she knows I value efficiency, and that I’ll be back up out of bed and returning it to the bookshelf within five minutes once I’m made the discovery myself. Crazy, huh?
Dammit, I digressed again. Sorry…
Anyhow, Pi, the main human character in the story, was the son of a zoo keeper, and he delivers a pretty thought provoking exposition on the lives of animals in the wild and in captivity, and ties it back to humans just a bit, leaving me, the reader, to carry the thought a step farther. His contention is that modern zoo critics, PETA and others, are all wrong about zoos, animal happiness, and so forth. He suggests that wild animals need, rather than want, a certain amount of territory, because it takes that much territory to provide sustenance and security. I’m not a wildlife expert by any stretch, but it makes sense to me. For instance, jungles are teaming with wildlife in great concentration, precisely because there is an abundance of food and water, the relative security that comes with adequate cover, and the unit strength achieved when a troop or pack or gaggle or whatever is sufficient in number and cohesion to create a certain acceptable level of security. As the habitat dwindles, food sources thin, and water becomes more scarce, more territory is required to fulfill these needs. At some point the sustenance becomes insufficient to allow further expansion, so the group’s size is thereby limited. Likewise, if populations grow too large and food becomes too scarce, infant mortality rises. Too much inbreeding? Ditto. Is nature cool, or what?
His point is that the individual animal, given adequate room and a comfortable environment, adequate interaction with members of its species, and ample food and water, is likely happier in a zoo than in the wild because the security concern is largely absent. As an example, he cites numerous cases of animals escaping from, and then voluntarily returning to, various zoos throughout the world and history, due to the less stressful life there. No, I’m not going to argue with you. Sounds plausible and made me think, and that’s enough for me…
So then I started extrapolating from that brief passage what, if anything, might this say about humanity and our condition and behavior. And here’s what I came up with. Modern industrialized westernized humans are like animals in a zoo. We have given up our freedom and our connection with nature in exchange for the security of the civilized common. And all of this being relatively new in evolutionary terms, some of us take to this transition better than others. I, for one, hanker for something decidedly more primitive, largely because I’ve not yet had my fill of it – barely a teaspoon if truth be told. Whenever I get in the mountains or near the ocean or next to a babbling brook - far away from anything attesting to the presence of a single other human, I feel myself sucked into it like an iron filing to a magnet. And I can’t get in deep enough and I can’t stay long enough. The same circumstance will drive other moderns to sheer panic, a trembling fear which can only be settled by the rumble of engines, the smell of diesel, the glow of street lights, the reassuring snick of a door latch catching, or the road hiss of a nearby highway.
I’m afraid I am not the zoo animal that would turn and head back to the cage, but more the fool raised in captivity who would charge off into the wilderness, never looking back. And I would no doubt be taken on my first night by a hungry animal. And I think I might be happier in my departure than I was in my previous condition. And my killer would settle in under a rocky overhang, dozing peacefully with a full stomach, and dreaming about what exactly he needs to do to be accepted into the comfortably easy life of the zoo creatures…
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
In Memoriam…
Today is September 11th, the ninth anniversary of the heinous coordinated attacks on innocent Americans by radical religious fundamentalists. Like many, if not most, Americans, I am a bit more cognizant this year, owing primarily to the New York mosque controversy, and the idiotic and dangerous Quran burning threats of a megalomaniac Florida pastor.
I find myself mourning anew the loss of thousands of innocent lives of workers in the twin towers, of passengers who died the field in Pennsylvania, of the unsuspecting civilian and military personnel working in the Pentagon that fateful morning, and of so many brave rescuers who headed into instead of away from the conflagrations to assist their fallen brothers and sisters. I do make a distinction between victims and heroes, for while all were victims directly and indirectly, the real heroes were the fighting passengers on flight 93, the rescuers who charged into the infernos, and the tens of thousands of brave men and women who volunteered and who continue to volunteer to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation against an ongoing attack by a small but determined group of radicalized Muslims bent on spreading their religion by violent means.
I think what I mourn most deeply though, is the opportunity that was lost following those first days and months following the attacks, when then President Bush rallied the nation together, bolstered our spirits and soothed our troubled hearts, and held in his hand an opportunity to bind our wounds and unify Americans, and to unite America with the rest of the world. We had been knocked down off our high horse in a most traumatic fashion, which created a unique opportunity to join together with current allies and previous foes to form common cause against global terrorism, to recognize and seize upon our common interests, and to move the country and the world forward in a positive direction. At an early moment there, George W. Bush had the opportunity to go down in history as one of the greatest American Presidents.
He started out well enough, vowing to identify the culprits and make them pay for their deed, and take action to ensure that we would not fall prey to such actions again. He focused rightly on Afghanistan, a failed state which offered safe harbor to Bin Laden and his followers, and began marshaling forces and a plan to deal with our attackers. But then, before we’d even launched our action in that squalid land, he squandered his opportunity horribly…
We now know that the dust and debris from the attack hadn’t yet been cleared when plans began being laid in earnest to attack Iraq, a country that the administration knew had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. As a result, the Afghanistan effort was shoddily planned and woefully under-resourced, ensuring its failure from the outset and, as a consequence, squandering the lives of more than 2,000 coalition troops so far up to the time of this writing. While our allies willingly joined us in pursuing this initial justified effort, they were being simultaneously strong-armed into pledging participation toward the Iraq invasion. In the months following our successful invasion of Afghanistan, routing of the Taliban, and predictable failure to capture or kill Bin Laden and the Al Quaeda leadership, the actions of the Bush administration began sowing rifts not only between the U.S. and Muslim nations, but between us and our non-Muslim allies as well. Less than a year and a half after the 9/11 attacks we invaded a sovereign nation without legal justification, leading a bogus international coalition strong-armed together to create a flimsy masquerade of an international effort, and as a consequence severely damaging our standing in the community of nations and splitting our own nation asunder in ways unseen since the outset of the civil war.
Instead of accepting the global outpouring of compassion and brotherhood that resulted from this dastardly and globally excoriated attack, and using the opportunity to motivate our people united in shock and mourning toward some positive end, Bush and his cohort climbed back up on the pedestal, brushed aside calls for measure and reason, swelled out their collective chest, waved the sword and bellowed out in anger and fury. They wielded our financial, military and political strength to bend the situation in their ill-conceived direction, and started a religious war that shows no sign of abating – quite the opposite. Instead of taking advantage of our unrivaled strength to lead a willing global coalition toward alleviating a great evil, they chose instead to add to it with their own criminal behavior. Instead of taking this opportunity to unite the nation toward some positive end and a brighter future, we found ourselves embroiled in increasingly violent rhetoric and political chicanery. And all the while, our brave men and women were spilling their precious blood in vain, and do so to this day.
All the while, Americans were coerced into giving up their civil liberties to an increasingly paranoid police state. Political operatives maligned ordinary citizens who were non-compliant with their outlandish plans. Rules were bent, broken and disregarded in the name of “national security,” while the actual security concerns at our borders and ports were ignored and deprived of resources which were instead being fed into an ill conceived conflict. A true national nightmare…
Conservatives and self-proclaimed “patriots” prod us with their flags and T-shirts and bumper stickers to “Never Forget.” None of us will ever forget. Not where we were. Not what we felt. Not how we huddled with our families and friends in shock and pain and suffering…
And I, for one, will never forget that this opportunity for healing and progress both at home and abroad, purchased at such a horrible price of pain and suffering and death which continues to be levied to this very moment, was squandered. I will wonder what those innocent souls of both victims and heroes whose lives were unjustly and violently taken would say about how their deaths were used to justify all the moral failures and violent deaths that have followed as a result. And I will wonder how long our nation will have to pay for President Bush’s terrible failure of leadership.
And I will mourn…
I find myself mourning anew the loss of thousands of innocent lives of workers in the twin towers, of passengers who died the field in Pennsylvania, of the unsuspecting civilian and military personnel working in the Pentagon that fateful morning, and of so many brave rescuers who headed into instead of away from the conflagrations to assist their fallen brothers and sisters. I do make a distinction between victims and heroes, for while all were victims directly and indirectly, the real heroes were the fighting passengers on flight 93, the rescuers who charged into the infernos, and the tens of thousands of brave men and women who volunteered and who continue to volunteer to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation against an ongoing attack by a small but determined group of radicalized Muslims bent on spreading their religion by violent means.
I think what I mourn most deeply though, is the opportunity that was lost following those first days and months following the attacks, when then President Bush rallied the nation together, bolstered our spirits and soothed our troubled hearts, and held in his hand an opportunity to bind our wounds and unify Americans, and to unite America with the rest of the world. We had been knocked down off our high horse in a most traumatic fashion, which created a unique opportunity to join together with current allies and previous foes to form common cause against global terrorism, to recognize and seize upon our common interests, and to move the country and the world forward in a positive direction. At an early moment there, George W. Bush had the opportunity to go down in history as one of the greatest American Presidents.
He started out well enough, vowing to identify the culprits and make them pay for their deed, and take action to ensure that we would not fall prey to such actions again. He focused rightly on Afghanistan, a failed state which offered safe harbor to Bin Laden and his followers, and began marshaling forces and a plan to deal with our attackers. But then, before we’d even launched our action in that squalid land, he squandered his opportunity horribly…
We now know that the dust and debris from the attack hadn’t yet been cleared when plans began being laid in earnest to attack Iraq, a country that the administration knew had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. As a result, the Afghanistan effort was shoddily planned and woefully under-resourced, ensuring its failure from the outset and, as a consequence, squandering the lives of more than 2,000 coalition troops so far up to the time of this writing. While our allies willingly joined us in pursuing this initial justified effort, they were being simultaneously strong-armed into pledging participation toward the Iraq invasion. In the months following our successful invasion of Afghanistan, routing of the Taliban, and predictable failure to capture or kill Bin Laden and the Al Quaeda leadership, the actions of the Bush administration began sowing rifts not only between the U.S. and Muslim nations, but between us and our non-Muslim allies as well. Less than a year and a half after the 9/11 attacks we invaded a sovereign nation without legal justification, leading a bogus international coalition strong-armed together to create a flimsy masquerade of an international effort, and as a consequence severely damaging our standing in the community of nations and splitting our own nation asunder in ways unseen since the outset of the civil war.
Instead of accepting the global outpouring of compassion and brotherhood that resulted from this dastardly and globally excoriated attack, and using the opportunity to motivate our people united in shock and mourning toward some positive end, Bush and his cohort climbed back up on the pedestal, brushed aside calls for measure and reason, swelled out their collective chest, waved the sword and bellowed out in anger and fury. They wielded our financial, military and political strength to bend the situation in their ill-conceived direction, and started a religious war that shows no sign of abating – quite the opposite. Instead of taking advantage of our unrivaled strength to lead a willing global coalition toward alleviating a great evil, they chose instead to add to it with their own criminal behavior. Instead of taking this opportunity to unite the nation toward some positive end and a brighter future, we found ourselves embroiled in increasingly violent rhetoric and political chicanery. And all the while, our brave men and women were spilling their precious blood in vain, and do so to this day.
All the while, Americans were coerced into giving up their civil liberties to an increasingly paranoid police state. Political operatives maligned ordinary citizens who were non-compliant with their outlandish plans. Rules were bent, broken and disregarded in the name of “national security,” while the actual security concerns at our borders and ports were ignored and deprived of resources which were instead being fed into an ill conceived conflict. A true national nightmare…
Conservatives and self-proclaimed “patriots” prod us with their flags and T-shirts and bumper stickers to “Never Forget.” None of us will ever forget. Not where we were. Not what we felt. Not how we huddled with our families and friends in shock and pain and suffering…
And I, for one, will never forget that this opportunity for healing and progress both at home and abroad, purchased at such a horrible price of pain and suffering and death which continues to be levied to this very moment, was squandered. I will wonder what those innocent souls of both victims and heroes whose lives were unjustly and violently taken would say about how their deaths were used to justify all the moral failures and violent deaths that have followed as a result. And I will wonder how long our nation will have to pay for President Bush’s terrible failure of leadership.
And I will mourn…
Monday, September 6, 2010
What If…?
I might have mentioned at some time in the past that I have a frighteningly intelligent son. He is now 22, graduated from college and gainfully employed. And for the first time in a very long while we are having some pretty intensive intellectual discussions on topics large and small. Very gratifying, to me at least…
I noted in the course of one such exchange recently that he shows exactly the same fealty to his faith in science, as it exists currently, that the religious believers he so disdains hold toward their interpretation of God and their particular scriptures, traditions, practices, and so forth. Did I mention that he is an atheist? No? Sorry. Yes, he is one of those dogmatically certain atheists that I have a hard time elevating to a status too far above the dogmatically certain Christians or Muslims or Jews. Ok, I admit that I know no dogmatically certain Jews – perhaps being “God’s chosen people” eliminates the need for dogmatic certainty. In fact, I have developed something of a deep appreciation for Judaism, based on my interaction with many in that community. They seem quite comfortable in their uncertainty, which I find very refreshing.
I digress…
So, with my boy and I now having re-found the ability to engage in intellectual sparring sessions, I asked him to consider the possibility that science, as it exists currently, is limited to only being able to explain within its capabilities the material universe, and that these abilities might be both limited and limiting. I suggested that the total universe might be infinite, and might be comprised of many non-material aspects of which we have no awareness, nor means of comprehending. I further suggested that there might be points of interface between these hypothetical planes of existence, at which points the material world might not behave exactly as science currently believes the material world to behave. Finally, I suggested that science’s belief that the material universe is finite might in fact be nothing more than science’s finite ability currently to observe – that the universe’s purported limits might in fact only be our own.
Now I know how Galileo felt…
The genesis of this line of discussion came when I found myself pondering exactly how much we have progressed since the dawn of man. I have long and often stated that we have progressed very little, that we still focus primarily on survival and advantage, and that despite our recent advances in science, communications, travel and transport and the manipulation of so many aspects of the material universe, we seem to have no end purpose as a species. We have certainly made our lives more complex, and it has admittedly been in the course of this self-serving hubristic paean to ourselves that we’ve developed the technological capabilities that make our world today such a wonder.
So what?
We still struggle to put food on the table, shelter over our heads, and to gather certain bits of material wealth to make our lives or the lives of our children theoretically easier. We live a more complex version of the life our forbearers lived while still in caves, in other words.
Have we developed a common mission? Do we, as a species, have a communal objective? Have we a plan to somehow make our lives meaningful purposeful in any real sense? I think not. My friends the religionists see no need – they await the rapture in which they will transcend this physical realm and ascend to something bigger and better and more rewarding, and they arrogantly assume that this rapture will come in their lifetimes and in this particular corner of space.
My son the science worshiper is no better – readily admitting that in his theology there’s no reward in store in the end – that mankind will simply stay tethered to this spinning blue orb or at most this solar system until the sun goes to supernova and fries away all sustenance for life, and life itself. I personally don’t see one improvable mythology being particularly superior to the other.
But, what if there is potentially a third path? What if “God” really does have a plan, and that plan is survival. Without us getting all hung up on the unanswerable questions of whether God is or isn’t, or God’s nature or will, for the sake of conversation let’s make the allowance. There is ample evidence that nature reveres survival above all else – it is the strongest of instincts, and the imperative for evolutionary progress. As my boy put it in the course of our discourse, “the extension of life.” Disdainfully it was said, I might add. This brilliant lad, who chooses to ignore anything for which there is no evidence, seemingly refuses to ignore the most glaring evidence of all – namely, that nature reveres survival above all else.
“So what?” you ask?
So, what is the greatest inarguable and certain impediment to mankind’s survival? How about the fact that we are firmly tethered to a planet and a solar system moving inexorably toward certain destruction? Assume that we somehow dodge the asteroids that are sure to pound the planet over the eons. Assume, as I don’t, that we will manage to not immolate ourselves in some nuclear conflagration. Assume that we will avoid unleashing a plague on our species, or poisoning our atmosphere and environment beyond the point where it can sustain life, or that we will somehow get over our love of wars fought over man-made religious differences and the distribution of wealth. Assume all these things, if you like. But recognize that these unlikely accomplishments and avoidances will not change the physics of the observable material universe, and that our solar system will become in time uninhabitable by life as we know it.
These are all known impending realities. What are we doing about them?
We’re celebrating Lady Gaga and the latest in techno entertainment. We’re working to figure out how to squeeze a few extra MPG out of our planes and trains and automobiles. We’re manipulating currencies and starting wars and developing new technologies and products and practices to bend the material world we live in to our will, in a micro sense, to make our lives a little more comfortable, a bit more entertaining. Oh yes, and breeding like rabbits, as if there’s something positive in that. All the while we’re ignoring the stark reality that we’re busily remodeling and decorating an increasingly crowded residence assured of fiery destruction, and not even considering what our next stop might be, or if there might be one.
So, what should we be doing instead? How about focusing on getting off this doomed orb and out of this doomed solar system as expeditiously as possible? Now that would be a project, no? Am I suggesting that we stop trying to ease our suffering, improve our health, increase our efficiency, transform our energy models? No, of course not – these are part and parcel of survival in the shorter term. But as long as the rationale is short term and immediately self-serving, we will never achieve the greater possibilities.
What are the avoidable impediments to mankind’s survival beyond that of the earth or the solar system? I will name the first few that come to mind:
No sense of urgency – there are in fact scientists who sound the alarm regularly about the likelihood of our encountering a cataclysmic hurtling object of some sort which could set civilization as we know it back to at least the dawn of the industrial age, or perhaps annihilate us altogether. And it could happen at any time. And, as mentioned before, the lights will eventually go out of their own accord, and there is nothing we can do to change that reality.
Religion – the proselytizing religions (all in the Abrahamic tradition, interestingly) seem stubbornly unwilling to concede that they cannot prove their claims in this realm, and instead insist on marshaling armies and exhausting resources to defend and spread their beliefs in hopes that non-believers will somehow validate their own fealty to the unknowable. That this has been going on for millennia supports my contention that we’ve made little real progress since man first stood upright and figured out how to control fire.
Nationalism – petty peoples both advanced and primitive continue to expend tremendous energy and limited resources defending lines drawn on the surface of the planet by men with apparently nothing better to do, creating a basis for conflict and angst which is totally self-made. The demise of princedoms and the evolution of the nation-state is one of the societal developments which allowed for the rise of industrialism and the rather impressive advances in science and technology of the last several centuries. But our retention of the model which is now aging and causative of more negative than positive is a pronounced impediment to mankind’s continued progress.
Economics – over the centuries certain models of wealth distribution, currency exchange and trade have arisen and been refined, which again have served a valuable purpose for mankind up to this point. It is increasingly clear, however, that the competitive nature of the models which have gained ascendency now act more to retard than to facilitate human progress. There are those who laud the competitive aspects of western style capitalism as the engine of efficiency leading to technological progress, and this point I won’t argue. I will argue, however, that other motivations, such as survival of the species, could serve equally well, if man could only find a way to step beyond the artificial distinctions of race, religion, nationality, and so forth. In the end, everything that was, is or ever will be is already provided by God or the universe or whatever you wish to title the supreme force, and by perpetuating systems designed to marshal and horde these gifts to a select subset of humanity, we waste precious time and opportunity to progress and survive as a species.
Science – there are too many among us, my dear brilliant son included, who treat science as a religion, the laws of physics as their scripture, the currently provable as their theology to not be trifled with. I know there are many scientists and supporters, however, who hold a more expansive view, who appreciate the accomplishments of science to date, but who also recognize that what we know is limited to what we can at this mid-point in our development detect and measure, and who want to strive and stretch beyond the current self-imposed limitations of our understanding. It is these who would move our understanding and knowledge beyond the limitations of crass commercial viability and toward the possibility of mankind’s potentially limitless survival.
The religionists would argue that my approach is hubris, and that what I am proposing is a path to a modern day Tower of Babel. To these I would argue that it is hubris on their part to presume a knowledge of God’s will, and to assume that God intends us to rise and fall on this single wondrous blue ball we’ve been granted the honor of occupying for many eons now, a mere instant, however, in the infinite life of the infinite universe. What God/Nature has demonstrated inarguably is that its preference is toward our survival, and that, among all the species on this particular planet, man is the only one with the theoretical capability to extend our existence beyond the predictable lifetime of the planet and solar system on which and in which we came to be. Are we not compelled to do so?
In the end, the question comes down to this: Do I prefer for my progeny 1,000 generations hence to be the richest and most comfortable and best entertained humans on earth at the point the planet ceases to be able to sustain life? Or would I want them to be elsewhere, or to at least die trying?
For me, the answer is pretty simple…
I noted in the course of one such exchange recently that he shows exactly the same fealty to his faith in science, as it exists currently, that the religious believers he so disdains hold toward their interpretation of God and their particular scriptures, traditions, practices, and so forth. Did I mention that he is an atheist? No? Sorry. Yes, he is one of those dogmatically certain atheists that I have a hard time elevating to a status too far above the dogmatically certain Christians or Muslims or Jews. Ok, I admit that I know no dogmatically certain Jews – perhaps being “God’s chosen people” eliminates the need for dogmatic certainty. In fact, I have developed something of a deep appreciation for Judaism, based on my interaction with many in that community. They seem quite comfortable in their uncertainty, which I find very refreshing.
I digress…
So, with my boy and I now having re-found the ability to engage in intellectual sparring sessions, I asked him to consider the possibility that science, as it exists currently, is limited to only being able to explain within its capabilities the material universe, and that these abilities might be both limited and limiting. I suggested that the total universe might be infinite, and might be comprised of many non-material aspects of which we have no awareness, nor means of comprehending. I further suggested that there might be points of interface between these hypothetical planes of existence, at which points the material world might not behave exactly as science currently believes the material world to behave. Finally, I suggested that science’s belief that the material universe is finite might in fact be nothing more than science’s finite ability currently to observe – that the universe’s purported limits might in fact only be our own.
Now I know how Galileo felt…
The genesis of this line of discussion came when I found myself pondering exactly how much we have progressed since the dawn of man. I have long and often stated that we have progressed very little, that we still focus primarily on survival and advantage, and that despite our recent advances in science, communications, travel and transport and the manipulation of so many aspects of the material universe, we seem to have no end purpose as a species. We have certainly made our lives more complex, and it has admittedly been in the course of this self-serving hubristic paean to ourselves that we’ve developed the technological capabilities that make our world today such a wonder.
So what?
We still struggle to put food on the table, shelter over our heads, and to gather certain bits of material wealth to make our lives or the lives of our children theoretically easier. We live a more complex version of the life our forbearers lived while still in caves, in other words.
Have we developed a common mission? Do we, as a species, have a communal objective? Have we a plan to somehow make our lives meaningful purposeful in any real sense? I think not. My friends the religionists see no need – they await the rapture in which they will transcend this physical realm and ascend to something bigger and better and more rewarding, and they arrogantly assume that this rapture will come in their lifetimes and in this particular corner of space.
My son the science worshiper is no better – readily admitting that in his theology there’s no reward in store in the end – that mankind will simply stay tethered to this spinning blue orb or at most this solar system until the sun goes to supernova and fries away all sustenance for life, and life itself. I personally don’t see one improvable mythology being particularly superior to the other.
But, what if there is potentially a third path? What if “God” really does have a plan, and that plan is survival. Without us getting all hung up on the unanswerable questions of whether God is or isn’t, or God’s nature or will, for the sake of conversation let’s make the allowance. There is ample evidence that nature reveres survival above all else – it is the strongest of instincts, and the imperative for evolutionary progress. As my boy put it in the course of our discourse, “the extension of life.” Disdainfully it was said, I might add. This brilliant lad, who chooses to ignore anything for which there is no evidence, seemingly refuses to ignore the most glaring evidence of all – namely, that nature reveres survival above all else.
“So what?” you ask?
So, what is the greatest inarguable and certain impediment to mankind’s survival? How about the fact that we are firmly tethered to a planet and a solar system moving inexorably toward certain destruction? Assume that we somehow dodge the asteroids that are sure to pound the planet over the eons. Assume, as I don’t, that we will manage to not immolate ourselves in some nuclear conflagration. Assume that we will avoid unleashing a plague on our species, or poisoning our atmosphere and environment beyond the point where it can sustain life, or that we will somehow get over our love of wars fought over man-made religious differences and the distribution of wealth. Assume all these things, if you like. But recognize that these unlikely accomplishments and avoidances will not change the physics of the observable material universe, and that our solar system will become in time uninhabitable by life as we know it.
These are all known impending realities. What are we doing about them?
We’re celebrating Lady Gaga and the latest in techno entertainment. We’re working to figure out how to squeeze a few extra MPG out of our planes and trains and automobiles. We’re manipulating currencies and starting wars and developing new technologies and products and practices to bend the material world we live in to our will, in a micro sense, to make our lives a little more comfortable, a bit more entertaining. Oh yes, and breeding like rabbits, as if there’s something positive in that. All the while we’re ignoring the stark reality that we’re busily remodeling and decorating an increasingly crowded residence assured of fiery destruction, and not even considering what our next stop might be, or if there might be one.
So, what should we be doing instead? How about focusing on getting off this doomed orb and out of this doomed solar system as expeditiously as possible? Now that would be a project, no? Am I suggesting that we stop trying to ease our suffering, improve our health, increase our efficiency, transform our energy models? No, of course not – these are part and parcel of survival in the shorter term. But as long as the rationale is short term and immediately self-serving, we will never achieve the greater possibilities.
What are the avoidable impediments to mankind’s survival beyond that of the earth or the solar system? I will name the first few that come to mind:
No sense of urgency – there are in fact scientists who sound the alarm regularly about the likelihood of our encountering a cataclysmic hurtling object of some sort which could set civilization as we know it back to at least the dawn of the industrial age, or perhaps annihilate us altogether. And it could happen at any time. And, as mentioned before, the lights will eventually go out of their own accord, and there is nothing we can do to change that reality.
Religion – the proselytizing religions (all in the Abrahamic tradition, interestingly) seem stubbornly unwilling to concede that they cannot prove their claims in this realm, and instead insist on marshaling armies and exhausting resources to defend and spread their beliefs in hopes that non-believers will somehow validate their own fealty to the unknowable. That this has been going on for millennia supports my contention that we’ve made little real progress since man first stood upright and figured out how to control fire.
Nationalism – petty peoples both advanced and primitive continue to expend tremendous energy and limited resources defending lines drawn on the surface of the planet by men with apparently nothing better to do, creating a basis for conflict and angst which is totally self-made. The demise of princedoms and the evolution of the nation-state is one of the societal developments which allowed for the rise of industrialism and the rather impressive advances in science and technology of the last several centuries. But our retention of the model which is now aging and causative of more negative than positive is a pronounced impediment to mankind’s continued progress.
Economics – over the centuries certain models of wealth distribution, currency exchange and trade have arisen and been refined, which again have served a valuable purpose for mankind up to this point. It is increasingly clear, however, that the competitive nature of the models which have gained ascendency now act more to retard than to facilitate human progress. There are those who laud the competitive aspects of western style capitalism as the engine of efficiency leading to technological progress, and this point I won’t argue. I will argue, however, that other motivations, such as survival of the species, could serve equally well, if man could only find a way to step beyond the artificial distinctions of race, religion, nationality, and so forth. In the end, everything that was, is or ever will be is already provided by God or the universe or whatever you wish to title the supreme force, and by perpetuating systems designed to marshal and horde these gifts to a select subset of humanity, we waste precious time and opportunity to progress and survive as a species.
Science – there are too many among us, my dear brilliant son included, who treat science as a religion, the laws of physics as their scripture, the currently provable as their theology to not be trifled with. I know there are many scientists and supporters, however, who hold a more expansive view, who appreciate the accomplishments of science to date, but who also recognize that what we know is limited to what we can at this mid-point in our development detect and measure, and who want to strive and stretch beyond the current self-imposed limitations of our understanding. It is these who would move our understanding and knowledge beyond the limitations of crass commercial viability and toward the possibility of mankind’s potentially limitless survival.
The religionists would argue that my approach is hubris, and that what I am proposing is a path to a modern day Tower of Babel. To these I would argue that it is hubris on their part to presume a knowledge of God’s will, and to assume that God intends us to rise and fall on this single wondrous blue ball we’ve been granted the honor of occupying for many eons now, a mere instant, however, in the infinite life of the infinite universe. What God/Nature has demonstrated inarguably is that its preference is toward our survival, and that, among all the species on this particular planet, man is the only one with the theoretical capability to extend our existence beyond the predictable lifetime of the planet and solar system on which and in which we came to be. Are we not compelled to do so?
In the end, the question comes down to this: Do I prefer for my progeny 1,000 generations hence to be the richest and most comfortable and best entertained humans on earth at the point the planet ceases to be able to sustain life? Or would I want them to be elsewhere, or to at least die trying?
For me, the answer is pretty simple…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
