Eden Again - Quareness Series 210th "Lecture.
The origin of our human species as told in the Bible story of the Garden of Eden sees our parents Adam and Eve originally living in full harmony with all of creation/nature until they succumbed to temptation and partook of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And we are told that this act of disobedience apparently driven by an overwhelming desire to expand mankind's knowledge resulted in banishment/estrangement from our "natural home" for all of humanity. Could this origin fable contain vital lessons for us today? Are we in danger of never finding our way "back home" should we succumb further and further to obsessive pursuit of empowering knowledge and control?
On the one hand...
During the early years of space exploration the late German-Jewish-American political theorist Hannah Arendt in her books The Human Condition (1958) and Between Past and Future (1961) wrote of how science had transformed what it meant to be human in the modern world. For her the emerging technology was undermining communal participation in society, uprooting the masses in advancing individualism, execrating interdependence and thereby pushing more and more people into loneliness. She saw the science as creating a type of human being who finds satisfaction merely in labour and consumption.
It had seemed obvious to most that man's conquest of space would increase our stature, but for Arendt our beginning to control the heavens in the sky and the humans on the Earth could mean we would simply become another entity...morphing from being "subjects" into "objects" of this planet...to the detriment of our inherent dignity as human beings. As we'd begin to understand ourselves not as human beings on Earth but cosmically, we would get smaller. She regarded this science as being antithetical to anthropocentrism and humanism in taking us away from earthly sensible reason. What we learn from science is a truth that is not apparent in our world of sensory experience and "only by renouncing the explanation of life in the ordinary science" do we get to learn the scientific truth. Today we see a glorified modern scientism leaving little room for a common-sense view of the world in which we can trust our senses. And here we have an echo of what she sought to convey back then - that the science used by man to change or manipulate our understanding and improve our world would reach a breaking point in which universal sciences were remaking our world as artificial on the principles of not only physics but also political and anthropological sciences...designed to create a man-made world instead of one created by God.
Does man "belong among the children of nature"? Is our planet "the very quintessence of the human condition"? Does the advancement of science into outer space exploration transform life itself when we're uprooted from the Earth and newly rooted in necessarily artificial environments? Are we being "possessed by a rebellion against human existence" in seeking to make everything "better"...to live longer and faster in a way that would surpass biological processes (e.g. by digitising our bodies)? Would there be no idea of "fate" left if humans were in control of everything and destroying all natural processes? Would living in such an artificial environment inevitably see humans treated as "objects" with less humanity and distinction? Is this not a "loss of stature of man"? The human brain, although as earthbound as any other part of the human body, allows us in a way to think from so far outside our environment that we can view our Earth as some mechanical object/reality rather than our home e.g. looking at it from above is possible only by separating ourselves from it. Our terrestrial activities might then appear as no more than overt behaviour as we begin to study ourselves "with the same methods we use to study the behavior of rats."
Mankind would appear to have two permanently competing parts. We are born into the world (i.e. earthly) and must deal with fate and fortune as well as with those things beyond our control, but we also have an ability to remake the world to some extent as we wish (the core of human freedom). However, as Hannah Arendt asked...what happens when we increasingly acquire the scientific and technological ability to remake not only some parts but the entire world...create new "planets" (e.g. satellites)...clone and design human beings with intent...etc. What happens then to human freedom? The scientific revolution has increased our knowledge by giving us information about things we didn’t have before. But it has also increasingly encouraged us to distrust our senses and in doing so start to think that universal science is more real than the things we encounter solely with our senses in our immediate environment. And in this process we may come to realise that we have never encountered reality..."instead of objective qualities, in other words, we find instruments, and instead of nature - in the words of Heisenberg - man encounters only himself."
Is expansion the next step of evolution for us and should we be pushing it forward? Today we see prominent billionaires pushing a new wave of expansion without having to conform to political or economic quandaries. This kinda new version of imperialism seemingly aims to colonise space and other planets and monopolise its targets even before they are inhabited. We may wonder at this "development" and indeed whether our wealthy elite in masquerading their commercial interests as technological advancement, are luring us all into dreaming the progressively unimaginable. Of course cosmic fantasies are an "easy sell" but avoiding any situation of blind belief where we fail to think would seem far more relevant for our well being.
On the other hand...
Reason, science, individualism, self-responsibility and personal freedom are said to have constituted core values for humanity during the historical period known as "The Enlightenment"...an outlook recognising no bounds to our curiosity, no barriers to our thought, no limits to our activities. The habit of experimentation and confidence in improvement informed the behaviour of those achievers who exalted both liberty and reason. It was understood that men of reason required freedom to explore, to communicate their ideas and to realise their visions...all in pursuit of personal fulfillment and self-interest. Were these values of any real benefit for humanity? Whatever about the desirability or otherwise of the means deployed, history would suggest that once people are encouraged to employ their minds in the pursuit of personal values, a torrent of human ingenuity and energy is unleashed arguably helping towards reducing for example the extent of disease, hunger, ignorance and poverty.
Despite these "improvements" there's an ongoing persistent attachment to the "values" inherent in many of our transcultural myths which see the cause of mankind's decadence or "fall" from a previous blissful state of paradise as almost always rooted in the "sin" of self-assertion against authority. Everything in nature is seen as existing in harmonious balance and perfect order and man's duty is to accept his humble niche within this benign, bountiful and balanced paradise where he can exist simply and non-intrusively. Man's prideful ambition, especially his quest to improve himself by gaining and applying knowledge, represents a grave threat to this pastoral ideal. Ambitious exercise of his creative intelligence (an inherent human quality) disturbs the tranquility and destroys the harmony of the pristine natural order. Therefore man's "evil" selfish appetites must be curbed and his intelligence suppressed in order to prevent chaos. And social "morality" rides to the rescue here with its own touted virtues of constraints, humility, obedience, self-suppression and sacrifice of the self for the "greater good."
Here perhaps we can perceive the spiritual soil in which the seeds of the current environmentalist philosophy and movement have taken root and flourished. We may also notice that such is the complete antithesis of the philosophical outlook of "The Enlightenment" time which championed man and his requirements for living on Earth...reason, science, self-responsibility, individualism and personal freedom. Rational individualism (a philosophy of modernity?) was then the emerging worldview for people perceived as newly liberated from superstition, stagnation and slavery as they strove to explore, develop, use and enjoy Earth's resources.
To conclude...
It is quite striking how much unintended (and even contrarian) consequences tend to arise irrespective of which collective and societal action tactics are used in seeking to implement the ideological concepts of whatever side.Those taking positions of certainty on either side here are almost certainly "not playing with a full deck" but such may well be an unavoidable dilemma for humanity. Perhaps it's more realistic to acknowledge that our embracing of uncertainty and appreciation of the survival potential inherent in both curiosity and humility may prove essential for our future well being?
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
August, 2024.