I hope everyone has started to pack their bags. We only have 4 billion
years or so to vacate the premises. Sorry to say but by then the Earth
and everything on it, will be vaporized.
However, settling somewhere else in the Universe won't do you any good.
In another 10 billion or so the Universe will itself vaporize everything
back into another big bang, or everything will disintegrate as the
Universe expands into infinite void and the effects of gravity are
finally lost.
Who cares? - indeed that is the big question, but also the big point.
Sooner or later the human race and everything it has created will
disappear. The natural "telos" of humankind is null.
Of course human beings are notorious for not being able to see the long
term. However, the nullity of human kind is not limited to the long
term. The dinosaurs certainly didn't will themselves into extinction.
If a new virus comes along that rapidly annihilates the human population,
mother nature isn't going to step in with a "illegal mutation" penalty.
My conclusion is that simply doesn't matter what happens to the human
race. We have no privileged place in the universe. We have no reason to
see ourselves as superior, or even more successful than any other life
form on the earth. Our very success depends not on skill or
intelligence. It depends no nothing more than the roll of the celestial
die. All that can be said about death as individuals applies to the
species as well. Moreover, we have no unique responsibility. We have no
obligation to keep other animal species alive or maintain some aspect of
the earth. They will all be wiped out sooner or later.
While this should not be news to anyone, my question is what effect does
it have an any proposed systems of meaning. As I see it, it implies that
any attempt to make meaning is necessarily local and not beyond doubt.
More importantly, it implies that all decisions are at some level
arbitrary. There is always some perspective from which the outcome of
that decision - DOES NOT MATTER.
The implications for conflicts and conflict resolution are rather
troubling. It implies to me that viewed from broadest perspective: there
is no way to resolve conflicts other than by "force" (symbolic or
otherwise.) The problem posed by the New Zealand dilemma becomes a
universal one when observed over the "long run." No side can ever claim
some universalist "high ground." It is all going to be vaporized sooner
or later.
For that reason the whole nature of "rational deliberations" take a
different character. When symbol and belief systems clash, the only
possible result is some sort of oppression. The minority view cannot be
characterized as "wrong", "inferior", "less efficient, less appropriate,
timely, worthwhile, etc." The minority view is the view that lost the
symbolic struggle, just as other minorities have been oppressed by direct
physical struggles.
When Foucault's arguments about "self-discipline" are added, suddenly any
proposal for "order","good","appropriate","civil", etc. becomes very
sinister. Claims about "everyone being better off" need to be compared
against who especially(really?) benefitted from having things this way.
Are we not all deluding ourselves to maintain the prison that we call
society?
This whole cycle of inquiry was started by Angel's question about "making
a difference." My conclusion is that this is finitely more problematic
than people seem to think. Angel and I share a possible escape from this
cycle of doubt - religion, but that solution itself must be "taken on
faith" with all the gut-wrenching uncertainties implied by that. Still
given the choice, I'd much rather struggle with the uncertainties of
faith, than to unquestioningly accept that secular versions of morality
can be derived "from the light of reason."
One thing is very clear to me. We take a lot of things for granted (even
in "lofty" intellectual circles.) I think we can take for granted that
symbolic resolutions of conflicts are somehow more "humane." We take for
granted that "progress" is meaningful, has already occured, continues to
be possible, and that moreover we can derive it's direction. We take it
for granted that there is a "we" that "knows what they are doing." We
take it for granted that the world is a better place because Eastern
block collapsed and the Kaiser was defeated in World War I. If the roles
have been reversed, I suspect that the equivalent intellectuals would
operate with much the same assumptions - Yet, I suspect the results would
shock our dispositions.
Our intellectual tools have the character of a doomsday machine; they are
more than sufficient to undermine our entire belief system. Yet, rather
than confronting that, we use those tools in very select and limited
ways: only chiseling at "safe targets." In what sense have we truly
progressed beyond the tribes that would not go beyond what was "lit by
the fire?" In the end, is human life fundamentally different from
theirs? Have we not perhaps spent too much time improving our "fires"
and not enough time trying to come to terms with what no fire can ever
illuminate?
Edouard
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: Edouard Lagache :
: lagache who-is-at violet.berkeley.edu :
:...................................................................:
: Truth is a river that is always splitting into arm that reunite. :
: Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime :
: as to which is the main river. :
: Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grace (1945) :
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