I am not known to be the optimist on this list, and you all should feel
relieved that previous attempts at this reply went no further than the
byte trash. Yet, I think there are some important philosophical issues
that really occur at a very high level and yet influence the practical
issues under discussion.
As Mike pointed out, Academics have it soft, yet they are perhaps the
loudest complainers. Probably for the simplest reason that their
existence is to some extend engaged in complaining. The voice of: the
homeless Veterans on San Diego's streets, The children of single parent
homes in San Francisco, The Buddhist monks oppressed in Tibet, and the
lamenting old men in the countryside of France are never heard here. So
what is the solution? Shall we all go out seeking the disempowered and
faithfully typing their words into this list? What would happen to our
voice if we did? More importantly some voices cannot be reached in this
way at all. Consider the dead at Gettysburg and Verdun. What might
those folks say about what were really two different Civil wars that
shaped the world in different ways?
The point I want to make is trivial and yet constantly overlooked: human
beings are finite. Their institutions are equally finite. In religious
terms this is expressed as a sort of incompleteness, yet science
certainly describes with more accuracy that we are fallible, mortal, and
extremely limited.
The human ability to modify her/his environment has made the critical
difference in the survival of the species; alas it has promoted a
profound naivety. The human race is in constant need of reminding of its
finiteness, its fallibly, its incompleteness. Even with the Godel
Incompleteness theorem and Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, we do not
appreciate the limits imposes on us by our environment. Instead we
defiantly plow forward, convinced that eventually all is knowable, or at
least anything important enough to know is knowable.
I fear if there is any single error that dooms us to the misfortunes we
face - it is this naive act of arrogance. I think it is best expressed
in terms of a religious debate, but I think it universal and extremely
dangerous.
David Hume in a simple bit of brilliance concluded that the existence of
God was beyond human understanding. Faith and faith alone was the only
means by which individuals could explore this question. Anyone familiar
with the history of Philosophy knows of the uproar Hume's observation
caused. Yet, I think Hume would turn in his grave if he knew what would
be the result of his observation. For within 100 years of his work, the
"scientific community" took it as its operating assumption that God did
not exist. Yet, no one that I know of has produced a scientific proof
that demonstrates conclusively that the gods of the Christians, Jews,
Hindus, or Egyptians for that matter do(es) not exist. As we approach
the turn of the century, the public has grown suspicious of this flat
answer and even science has been forced to admit its incompleteness in
certain respects - and so we return to our point of departure.
Worldly scholars will immediately point out all the major religions of
the world are guilty of the same error - and they would be absolutely
right. We cannot judge from any human experience afterward, whether the
teachings of Christ or Marx in fact would lead to a utopia. Human beings
violated the central premises in both teachings from the get-go.
What is perhaps unexpected is that such activity is natural trigger for
human unhappiness. We are constantly setting up expectations that we
cannot meet. The present thread is full of them: a universal language
that won't destroy the cultures from which it evolved, technological
medium that will unify the entire world, an economic system that won't
exploit the common person or the young scholar in particular. Yet, we
continue to sow the seeds of our destruction.
In James Burke's 1978 book on inventions: _Connections_, he noted with
alarm a disturbing tendency among modern humans. When technology fails
us, we do not scramble for some alternative - instead we take it on faith
that our technology will get us out of any predicament we find ourselves
in. Instead of praying to a distant and unfamiliar god, we have made our
technological apparatus our new "god." Yet, as I have argued above, that
apparatus is anything but perfect. While the Religious may pray in vain,
putting our faith in the finite nature of humans to control the world is
*guaranteed* to fail. Yet undaunted, the rationalists continue to preach
a path unbroken progress toward a perfect future. Is such foolishness
any less vain than the Catholic Church of the middle ages?
Death is a unpleasant thing - but it is a natural one. One of
modernity's insane sanitations has been the obliteration or
compartmentalizing of everything related to death. In older times death
was common, death was understood, and the relationship between death and
new life was clear. Thus in this state of severe detachment, perhaps it
is not surprising that we cannot perceive or conceive of the death of
society - the end of civilization as we know it.
I do not pretend to foretell the end of the world, but nor I need to.
Perhaps by some revelation some prophet knows of a date, but we need
nothing more than our own science to see that modern societies are going
increasingly unstable, and far from countering the threat we turn a blind
eye and make ourselves still more dependent on each other, more dependent
on more complex technology, more dependent limited resources, and more
dependent on the promise of cultural practices we have already destroyed.
The domino effect could occur in any number of ways: natural disaster,
wide-spread conflict, infectious disease, or technological breakdown.
Just imagine for a moment what would happen to a city like New York if it
were completely cut off from the outside world? Would it take days?
certainly no more than a week and perhaps as little as hours, for the
population to panic and basically tear each other apart.
This cannot be anything but a spiritual message and yet, that's because
we have so few means by which we can transcend the hegemony of science.
Any particular religion has its hegemonic pitfalls, yet again the
folklore surrounding the millennium prophesies suggest a global
alternative. For the myths of catastrophe and rebirth are surprisingly
similar and taken together, they suggest that hope is to be found in
precisely the opposite of our instincts. Instead of clinging ever more
tightly to our science and technology - we need to be prepared to let it
go. We need to do something that is perhaps the scariest thing of all
for a human to do: stop hiding behind our tools and face the universe
simply as we are.
We face a moment that humans have visited before: Plato's Philosophy was
a result of the decline of Athens, Stoic Philosophy arose out of the fall
of Rome. The Renaissance to some extent arose out of the fall of
Constantinople. There is now intriguing evidence that all the ancient
cultures were the legacy of a Lost Civilization destroyed at the end of
the last Ice Age. Each moment of destruction gave birth to something
new, and the survivors went on to create great things. Alas, the
precious lessons to be found in such calamities are quickly lost. Like
the homestead built on a floodplain, Humanity seems to possess an
indefinite capacity for optimism but very narrow capacity for remembering
the hard lessons of generations past.
It is in this context that I think we should conduct our lives. Like the
people of Constantinople, we should not try to hide from the inevitable,
but should face it proudly and with honor. Spirituality is of great help
in confronting such things. Yet I think a healthy dose of Stoic
Philosophy and Greek Tragedy can be just as healing. An end of sorts is
coming: whether it happens in our generation or not, only time will tell.
The scope of the transformation is equally unknowable. Yet to
understand this and be at peace with it, is far better than to beat our
head against test tubes and textbooks trying to stop throws of
catastrophe.
If there is reason for hope, it is in the certainty of rebirth. If there
is purpose in life, it is in understanding the errors of our ways and
passing that knowledge on to future generations. I fear that the Aztecs
and Mayans are right, humans bring upon ourselves our own destruction. I
a profound sense we have the power and responsibility to try to break the
cycle of human selfishness and self-centeredness. Whether the upheavals
that we face are as mild as the 1960s or as earth-shattering as those
foretold by the Bible, we have a chance to learn that lesson that every
generation before us has failed to take to heart: we are finite, moral,
and incomplete. Make peace with that - and through that process you will
find a hope that no disaster, natural or man-made, can take away.
Peace, Edouard
============================================
Edouard Lagache, PhD
Webmaster - Lecturer
Information Technologies
U.C. San Diego, Division of Extended Studies
Voice: (619) 622-5758, FAX: (619) 622-5742
email: elagache who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
:...................................................................:
: The Lord blessed us with all about equal intelligence. :
: Alas, most people use less of it than they have, while :
: insisting that they have more than their share. :
: :
: E. Lagache, April 13, 1998 :
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