SOME EARLY ESSAYS:
1. Afterward-The Problem with Man
2. On Religion and Ethics
3.
Afterward-The Problem with Man
Version 4-21-92
This essay does not really belong to the book proper. I do not wish to turn my book into a vehicle for invective or for my own personal opinions and I have a great hesitancy in beginning the essay at all. I feel it needs to be done however, but I also feel that it should be done correctly -with clarity, objectivity, and most of all, without "carping"! I feel my cause is too crucial to alienate anyone who might help it!!
If my fundamental convictions, (ethical, social, aesthetic, etc.), are valid -then they will be validated from the theory itself. I believe that whatever is truly significant, (and not just historical), will be found to exist as invariants, as inherents in the new science! I believe they exist as inherent aspects in the implicit definition of mind! If my own personal convictions are not such, then, ultimately, they are not important. I am willing to trust them to this inevitable process of history and of science, and I ask the same of you. The imperative is to expedite the process itself.
Is this utopian? Surely it is. Utopianism fails when it rests on false or incomplete assumptions, but not when it sits on a proper foundation. Physical science itself is utopian! It believes that effects really do follow from correct causes. If my thesis is really science, then the same assumption is valid. If it is really science, then it is the science of man!
In this essay, at a less than specific level, however, I would like to broach the problem of mankind's basic dissatisfaction, his universal pain. I have referred several times to the need to "cure man". What is this "sickness", then? How is he ill?
The basic problem with society and with the life of mankind in general, I believe, its "sickness", is not that it is "evil", but that it is fundamentally unreal! It is not in contact with the larger potential of human reality as illuminated by "implicit definition"!! (Alternatively, we could define "evil" as the unreality of that contact.) ”Mankind, I believe, has in an invalid, a "skewed" contact with ontology!! The historical orientation of man and of society, and the focus of the preponderance of living, is invalid and inconsistent with the actual and proper orientation of mind, (in all its aspects -scientific, aesthetic, experiential, ethical), to ontology! This is manifestly obvious in the investigation of "implicit definition", and the inherent nature and proper orientation of "mind" which derives from it! What do the "things" of man or of his societies have to do with his essential nature? They are expressions, I believe, of his incompleteness and of his frustration!
Jesus:Buddha:Einstein,[1] this, I believe, is man's true and actual nature and it is the actuality of his relation to ontology! I do not propose this as an ethical or an idealistic goal, but as the inherent nature of man -of the potentiality of the mind of all men!
Ethics and idealism derive, fundamentally I propose, from his nature, they are not superimposed goals! If he does not destroy himself first, or lock himself into a prison of drugs or the totalitarian control of growth, he will get there! He will do so not because he wants to, but because he will have no other choice! I believe that all the factors of his being, his reason, his aesthetics, -even his perversions are grounded in this core, and that it is the goal and the fulfillment of them all!
Let me get more specific! I want to change tone and level and open a new perspective. There seem to be several problems here:
1. An ethical one and the argument against Jimmy Stewart's "It's a Wonderful Life" portrayal of man, (as an example operating in my specific culture), which masks the problem. I submit that it is totally contrary to fact. This is what "nice" people want to believe.
2. The organic one -which contrasts the essential nature of man with his current development. This should also develop the evolutionary case - e.g. vis'-a-vis' less developed animals. Do they have the same problems? I don't think so.
First things first -a disclaimer! I claim no "holier than thou" status, nor do I write this critique from that standpoint. My personal credentials are worse than most of yours. There is a smallness, a pettiness, a meanness in me that is very real. I wish it were not so, but it is. But there is also an envy, an appreciation of goodness. I have no illusions that I have ever been "good". I respect goodness, and I value it, but I am not it. Every time I have tried to become that, I have become worse. Every time I have attempted bravery, I have become a bully. Cowardness and self-centeredness are my daily companions. I truly understand Paul's words: "that which I desire, that do I not, that which I desire not, that do I do...." This is an honest humility- as I truly believe it, and its simple statement is not a self-contradiction or covert self-glorification.
But this does not disqualify or prevent me from clearly seeing the difference. Perhaps it gives me a special qualification! I value the good and need the cure from my nature as much as any other man. (Perhaps, instead of being good, I can do good! This breaks the koan of "goodness" and egotism!)
Is man basically "good"? Does Jimmy Stewart's town really exist? Or did it ever exist? Was the populace in nazi Germany really so atypical? Were they really somehow organically or sociologically different from any other populace? Or were the component elements of a lynch mob in Mississippi really so different from those of a church gathering in Massachusetts, let's say? Remember, I am talking about organic difference here.
How is it that a hemisphere of "Christians" has the past history that they do in fact have? Or Buddhists for that matter? Has time so changed the species that our prior barbarities are impossible now? Certainly the nineteenth century believed that and that man had changed. History just as certainly proved them wrong. I maintain that these are not aberrations, but are a part of the nature of man himself - wherever he may be. But this is only the most obvious part of the picture.
Consider man in the whole. I submit that our societies are only law-organized systems of parasitism. The rich and the powerful parasitize the poor and the helpless with only the weakest mouthings of "compassion" and righteousness. (And the poor just as surely parasitize the rich!) There are people who spend enough on an automobile to feed a thousand starving families. Most lawyers would drive a widow to destitution and spend the fees on an idiocy.
Capitalism enshrines this parasitism explicitly. I am not talking about efficiency here, which is an entirely different issue, but rather, about ethics. And nations embody this savagery on their own level. Those sops to decency that they give are only justified on the level of expediency. We feed the poor not out of love or decency, but rather so that they might not vote us out of office or that they might not riot.
On the neighborhood level, what neighbor would you trust to feed your starving children? (I don't say they don't exist, but that they are far rarer than society –“Jimmy Stewart’s society” -would have us believe). Which neighbor would you trust if it were to his advantage to be otherwise? Suppose you were to be split from your fellows on some obvious criterion. Suppose you had expressed yourself violently in opposition to Kennedy just prior to his assassination, or had a Japanese wife in 1941-what would be your safety margin in your society. Hell, just put the wrong bumper sticker on your car!
What about the day to day life of the average person? What are the just subsurface levels of violence and indecency that drive him, whatever his rationalizations? I maintain that the normal, “Jimmy Stewart” world does not exist. There is a level of violence, of anger, of profound indecency, and of profound discontent in the "normal", the "good" man. I call this "sickness". The wars, martial and economic, the rape of the weak, the violence which lies beneath the surface of the most benign gathering, the hate and the perversion of the most innocent amongst us - this is the sickness I speak of. I am talking of the sickness of the norm of humanity, its overt cases are obvious.
It is a function of society to deny this ongoing reality, to tell us we are O.K., but it is a lying function! The pain, the violence of day to day existence is always there.
Why do we applaud war -so long as we win? Why do we revel in the destruction of our enemies? (How many here wouldn't have cheered to see Nixon actually crucified? (Substitute your unfavorite politician!) Where is our compassion? Why is it such a little part of our existence -only for our priviledged few, (and ourselves)? Why do we have so little love? Why are we so petty? Why do we glory in our own pomposity?
And who am I talking about, dear reader? Why you and me too, of course -and I think that each of these accusations applies to each of us! As a mass, we are not a "nice" people, nor are we "civilized". As a mass we are worse than we are as individuals, as any possibility of chance compassion is lost. Obvious examples of this are found in the law and in government. A mob is one of the most truly frightening things I can conceive! A country is just an ordered mob. The social "epidemics", -our wars, our savageries are outbreaks of the inherent sickness of its individuals!!
But aren't there "good" currents in our societies as well as evil ones? Of course there are, but they are small currents. To paraphrase Shaw's devil, what is there in our good works to compare to the beauty, the sophistication and the glory of the rapid firing machine gun or the missile-firing submarine? (Which of these impresses your children?) What was the Marshall plan, (its motives aside), compared to the Manhattan project? Shaw's devil makes a very good case. But then, so did Shaw: man strives for something much more, he strives for the "superman"!
But perhaps worst of all is the "murder" of time!! Where is most of our time spent? It is spent in the destruction of the precious seconds of our existence! Most non-dedicated time is spent in the escape from reality. We wish to forget the death that is inevitable and the sterility of the life which is our actual existence.
Now let's turn our perspective around and look at man from the model I have constructed in the other essays. The essence of man is quite different from what I have expounded above. Is the "sick" man derived from the "animal nature" then? I don't think so. Certainly animals kill, they act for their own, (or the tribe's), self-interest. But there is little maliciousness in them. If my model is correct, then we might approach the problem in this way: in the evolutionary development of man the world-model and the world-view-model passed the level of simple and optimal relationship to external reality for survival and turned on itself -approaching its own roots. The mystical integration hypothecized in essay3 became possible -conceivably as a cofactor of our intellectual and verbal developement. The same development which led to our evolutionary superiority also embodied the roots of our discontent. The goal came obscurely into sight but remained profoundly and maddeningly out of reach. I believe this "talent" is inherent in man, -and that it is the lack of its fulfillment, (its being “maddeningly out of reach”), which is the source of his discontent. Man, all men, are divided from their deepest nature and their deepest desire whether it is explicit to them or not.
Man is meant for better things than his trivial and petty nonsense. I can think of no more trite destiny than to be an emperor or a president or preposterously rich! Man has a magnificent destiny, I believe. I believe he is inherently noble, not petty. I believe he is inherently a creature of love, not pettiness and hate. It is the twist in his being that has caused his dilemma and his constant pain. He is separated from the integration and the joy that is the fact of that integration. Man is separated from himself and has developed a brain talented enough to sense the fact, - but has no notion of how to cure the dilemma!
He is meant to soar. He has in him the means, (by that very talent), to free himself from his present condition. But he must work for this. It will be long and difficult to achieve, but it is the highest imperative of the race! But it is in an expansion of science, not in invective or dogma that it will be achieved.
On Religion and Ethics
v.4-12-92
NOTE: THIS WAS WRITTEN AS A "TROJAN HORSE". ITS TONE IS REASONABLY VALID HOWEVER. MY CONCLUSION IS THAT RELIGION IS REAL AND VIABLE. 5-26-01
Is religion defensible in any sense today -or is it a relic? I intend to put the subject on a concrete basis, (within my worldview), and to suggest its relevance there.
I feel that if religion is to be maintained, or, more properly, resurrected, that it must join the path of science, (however strange that may sound), as a full challenger and not as a grudgingly tolerated and beaten foe, (tolerated like an idiot child)! It must prove, or disprove its very groundwork! If it is real, then it will survive. If it is not, then it does not deserve to! In short, I intend to take religion for what it claims to be.
I do not intend to talk about "sunday school religion" -polite religion, nor do I intend to talk about "niceness" or "goodness" per se. I intend to talk about what I believe is the essence, the core, the bottom of religious experience by its most talented, its mystics. This is something quite different! I believe that if there is any validity in religion at all, it is here. If there is none in this place, then I believe religion is truly and permanently dead and deserves to be buried.