I was born and raised in a Catholic family on an island containing two parishes. I attended a church that was a block away from my house, and went to school there for twelve years -- 1969 to 1981.
As a first grader, the grammar school was staffed by the black-habited nuns of the Sisters of Notre Dame. I experienced a classic Catholic education, replete with uniforms, mild corporal punishment, long sessions of cursive writing practice, religious training, Latin, and lots and lots of grammar. In order of importance, the big three subjects were religion, grammar and math. I was horrible at math.
My childhood had a God who was loving but sternly provided the structure of religious regimen -- attending mass, observing holy days, and mirroring Christ's life through faith. I felt safe with God as a grammar school child, but became disillusioned with Church bureaucracy in my late teenage years.
Beyond the shores of our conservative little island, the 60s and 70s raged like a wildfire. We all could see it. Radical secularists on the other side were burning the scriptures of my church, among other things. The heat from that fire soon melted the black habits off the backs of the sisters, where for a few years they donned laymen's polyester dresses and pants, in less and less muted colors. A few years later, the nuns themselves melted away altogether in that fire. Their convent was converted to a study hall. I always wondered where Sister Mary Wilfred and Sister Dorothy went. Mysterious, their lot.
As a generalization, secularists rely on rationality as humanity's salvation. Some just put up with people of religious faith as inherently irrational, while they see themselves progressing by adhering to an analytical and reasoned philosophy that trumps faith. Rationalism largely liberated the West from clergical tyranny, displacing dogmatic faith with empiricism. Rationalism is the soil of the Enlightenment from which sagacious men devised the individual freedoms of the Constitution. The ideal of secular rationalism is fairness, balance and clarity; impartial scientific facts liberate humanity from the oppression of regressive religious notions.
As a generalization, people of monotheistic faith profess that humanity is dependent upon God's love, in order to be whole; they seek and believe His truth. It is impossible to be absolutely rational, since we are fallible. God's perfection is love -- we are lost without it. Where the rationalists offer clarity of facts, God's love offers strength and clarity of purpose. Dr. William Sloane Coffin said that faith is being seized by love: "Faith is not belief without proof, but is trust without reservation." It may be that faith is simply unbounded optimism.
What I find interesting about this age is how the lines of rationalism and faith have crisscrossed and diverged.
This essay was sparked by a three-part piece on the 'Secular Orthodoxy' called The Enemy Within. The author, Baron Bodissey, hopes for a modern, post-scriptural syncretistic revelation that would spark a new faith to bridge today's spiritual adversaries:But suppose, just suppose, a new revelation could somehow come into the world, the world as it exists now at the dawn of the 21st century. Imagine a revelation that could speak to the whole of interconnected humanity, one that could withstand the scrutiny of modern science. What form would this awakening take?The idea of a post-scriptural revelation is arguably in the works, the fruit of rational science itself. Posthumanists posit that something more intelligent than man can be built out of ones and zeroes, or possibly the quaternary code of DNA's nucleotides -- A, G, C and T -- or a combination of those, plus something else yet to be explored and developed. The resulting artificial or enhanced intelligence would theoretically accelerate past human abilities of comprehension, rendering the future moot because it would be utterly unpredictable -- called the Singularity.
Transhumans
are people who are augmented by technology in some way -- it could be an artificial limb, or enhanced intelligence -- the evolution of whom will lead to a post-human era. Transhumanists espouse melding technology and humans, as a ramp to a post-human future.Transhumanists and 'Singularians' are the unexpected children of rationalism and our culture's nurturing of science and technology. Their vision of post-humanity seems startlingly possible if we extrapolate today's technological innovations into the future. The very nature of the Singularity they anticipate will effectively represent humanity's end, at least as we currently exist. Some hope that they might live forever by uploading their minds to an extracorporeal host; or perhaps become part of a greater intelligence. Some others have faith that the Singularity, though it will supplant humanity's intellectual primacy, will not be our end, but rather our salvation, and rebirth. Many others think it's all impossible futurist nonsense.
It's possible to see the defined edges of a coming Singularity, based on the obvious acceleration of technology in today's world. While we presently fend off the anti-rational orthodoxy of fascist Muslims who chafe at the Western world, our own spiritual and biological evolution might eventually put us in their shoes. It could be that in a Singularity-apparent world, we'll all become Jihadists marauding for the Orthodoxy of Self -- fighting for who we are, rather than what we might become.
A Singularity or ramp to it via transhumanism will pull generations apart, to say the least. If my daughter grafts a third arm onto her body and grows extra gray matter as a way to create music that would be beyond Mozart's comprehension -- much less my own -- then I'll know I'm a lowly, soon-to-be-extinct Orthodox Human. And just maybe I'll be mad and resentful about it, and scared -- maybe I will become one of the radicals with spears dancing around civilization's fire. Because if that happens to my daughter, civilization will most certainly have unexpectedly cleaved.
Bloggers and Open Source Creative Commonists should be modest about their achievements. Our early pottering with robust networks zipping between speedy CPUs will not merely be the harbinger of better, more accurate news blogs, interesting content, social change, or excellent software. As a phenomenon, Commonism will likely be another stepping stone that briefly carries our weight as the next stone appears out of the fog, yet to be seen. Blogging, texting, podcasting and file-sharing our way to revolutionary flash mobs is only the comprehensible fallout from our morphing technosphere, hampered by today's technological limits. There's a long way to go with this stuff. The real meat on the bone isn't even in our heads right now, and may not even be for our inferior heads to comprehend.
What Singularians and Posthumanists rarely talk about is where love fits into their view of improving man and/or intelligence. Could a spiritual singularity be in the offing? Singularity has a near infinite acceleration of capability -- but need it be limited to knowledge and technology? Might its true measure be in terms of infinite love and hate -- good and evil? And which way might that card fall? Not for us to say, if it comes to pass. We're just Cro-Magnon men. Or ants.
I admit that I'm unsure of the religion thing, the democracy thing, the statist thing, the rationalist thing, the get-rid-of-tyrants-and-the-world-will-be-free thing, and the singularian-trans-post-human thing, given evolution's curve, and where we are headed. Very bright people tell me I'm supposed to accept that rational science conceives of the Multiverse -- a universe composed of all possible universes -- and on top of that, technology could throw us towards the Singularity. I'm supposed to accept that rearranging our own genetic As, Gs, Cs and Ts with ones and zeroes is rational, unlike The Second Coming or reuniting with my deceased grandmother in Christ's Heaven. Science seems to be racing to a place where reality is highly speculative and completely irrational.
It's ironic that science -- the rational pursuit of what is knowable -- might lead to the Singularity, which is utterly unknowable, much in the same as understanding God is. What's the difference between a Christian and a Posthumanist? Maybe just that one is looking up at the heavens waiting for the Second Coming, while the other is looking at his workbench and tech blogs attempting to build it.
Posthumanism or the Singularity may yet be just another totalizing religion obsessed with improving fallible me through conversion, or by my death, with no in-between. And it has the force of commercial industry behind it. It keeps me invested in GenenTech to get me to retirement.
The harsh laser beam of improvement has long been refining our tools; now we face the prospect that, in order to progress and move forward, the error-correction beam is now focused on us. Better hands to play better Schubert on piano; Better feet for better Olympic runners; Better minds imagining better things -- presumably.
I don't know if my love could be better than it is now. As we step into the unknowable world, let's at least admit we have no idea what we're stumbling into. And that it means goodbye to all that we are now. If we're in foreign lands defending our way of life and the freedom of the human spirit, those ideals would mean more if I could tell you where we are headed on the free side of the planet. I certainly don't want to go back to Medina; but the opposite direction I hurl towards -- that takes me to where, exactly?
The early plagues brought about by the coming Singularity might be the torrents of cell phones with data-bits and voice-bytes washing over our streets and through our homes. It might be the silence of New Yorkers on the subways, uncharacteristically muted by their iPods. Or the strange, cryptic messages posing as advertising that fills my email box like foam. Though disparate, these storms will probably coalesce into one giant Red Spot that overtakes the Earth. How we will remain human, how we will keep the faith, how we will patrol our undulating borders is beyond my comprehension.
For me, the enduring faith of my Christian origins is that God is love. That's what the nuns taught me. All that we have built -- the incremental improvements, the tall buildings, Photoshop, Wal-Mart -- all of this stuff is nothing. My faith is no more strange or naïve than anyone else's; God loves me for who I am. Not for how I might be improved. Thank you, Sister Rita Margaret.
It may be my hallowed remembrances of love that sustain me the most: Those childhood days when I got up in the early morning darkness to be an altar boy at 6:30 mass -- lighting the candles in the darkened church while the pipe organist practiced Bach, and the nuns filed in; Eating kippered sardines on rye with my grandmother, teaching her to play blackjack after school; The moment I met my wife, and knowing that's who she'd be; Driving our newborn daughter home from the hospital at 35 miles an hour on the freeway, and coming home to her new grandma on our porch in a bright, white apron; The summer crickets that lull me to sleep on warm August evenings, with the fan humming low...
The fire that melted away the Sisters of Notre Dame is hotter than ever. How I miss them so. Their orthodoxy was only one link on the chain of faith; each link seems to have its melting point in the face of evolution's flames. I can only hope that my simple faith can endure the fires to come.
1) as a point of irony, one of the first open non-theists (his skepticism was qualified during life, less guarded after death when his papers were fully published) of the modern world, david hume, was not a rationalist. he ridiculed social contract theory and the rationalism of the followers of locke (who was a theist).
2) i don't know if the generalization that god's love in the prime element of monotheism is valid. agape is important in christian theology, but remember that islam means submission. such assertions are always open to debate, but i would submit that god's law is more important to both judaism and islam than god's love.
3) as for this: "It is impossible to be absolutely rational, since we are fallible." how does this square with thomism?
4) i think some of the speculations about transhumanism capture the essense of the analogy though. christianity and transhumanism seems to be grounded in an eschatology of sorts.
Beautiful essay, Cicero. And thanks for the link and the quote!
I have often thought of what is to come; it seems to be something I call the "World Mind". The early telegraph networks were the beginning of it; then telephone lines, and now the incredibly intricate fibers of the internet.
When the World Mind becomes aware, we will no more be cognizant of it than one of my brain cells is of my reading the newspaper. It is unfortunately not possible for us, as the smallest components of the World Mind, to be aware of its "thoughts". We're stuck here in the world of sunlight and grime and children and lampposts. But it's not such a bad place, is it?
Anyway, it's fun to think about these things, even if only by analogy.
Another wonderful post Cicero. You've set my head spinning. I tend to be more optimistic on these trends. I have a hunch that there are some surprises in front of us, and that the old-fashioned human model is more resiliant than we appreciate just yet. The other danger I fear is that we will forget ourselves (or "continue to forget ourselves") as we become obsessed with an emerging post-human or trans-human representation that is more mannequin than real.
Thanks for putting me onto Bodissey's essay. Lot's to read and think about!
As a generalization, secularists rely on rationality as humanity's salvation.
True as a historical generalization. But Voltaire is dead and the Age of Reason ended centuries ago, and the present status of Rationalism and non-religious Humanism is a little hard to assess.
If there is a true secular culture of Rationalism left, why is it so tongue-tied in the face of militant Islamicism? Because it's weighed down by irrational guilt, irrational fear, irrational political spite, or irrational hatred of the West that gave birth to the Enlightenment? I say because it's no longer rational or humanist at all, it's an immanent religion - and often a nasty, narrow-minded, bigoted sort of religion. And far from making a God out of Man, it's more often than not anti-humanist.
Well, I'm more optimistic than Glen ;)
Socialism was so "scientific"
It mass murdered 174 million people in the name of utopia.
And it tied to postmodern irational regection of reality, and the rejection that objective truth exists.
The fraud that held itself forward as the salvation of man, is proven itself eternal in history to be his most mortal enemy, more deadly, cruel, and inhumane than anything that has come before or since.
It is objectively, pure evil, the most evil of all evils ever to dwell in the mind of man.
That the left claim to be members of the enlightment is a fraudulent claim.
They have rejected, outright, every good aspect of the idea of liberty it was based on.
The bullets comming into republican campaign offices and the trashed cars and street violence in New york remind you of Kristalknight, a harbinger of civilisations fall than the heralds of its birth.
One dont see much "enlightenment" in a Ted Rauls comic, or his idiological parrot moonbats on DU.
Parasite-model-economics, worship of the all powerfull state, the moral blindness, the culture of death.
Not much "enlightenment" there.
Bring back the nuns, the moral clarity, and the days when hollywood sent Clark Gable to show the best light on our sons in arms.
part1 part2 part3 part4
The days when when they would never support the ruler over a land of mass graves and pure evil.
The days back when the democrats would never have run for president a socialist that held up an evil communist that killed his own people with a 5% death quota of mass murder as a "George Washington"
Bring back the days when our media knew the difference between good and evil and would never allow themselves to be the tool of the latter like they are today. where the like of Chris Mathues holds up those that cut off heads of innocents with "they are not bad guys" in equal or higher regard than our own troops.
Bring back the days when such a statement would have made him the object of shame and rebuke of every good American, and an instant loss of his job.
Thanks for the great essay's Cicero, much appreciated.
Humans have always striven to an unknown future. Faith and reason are only sides of the same human coin. Fight angainst hubris. That is the true author of tragedy. Shakespeare knew this well.
The fire that melted away the Sisters of Notre Dame is hotter than ever. How I miss them so. Their orthodoxy was only one link on the chain of faith; each link seems to have its melting point in the face of evolution's flames. I can only hope that my simple faith can endure the fires to come.
Faith is not dependent on its forms. The culture from which the good Sisters came is now long gone. One of them, an archivist in her late '70's sees the phenomenon of chaste, unmarried woman living in community as a whole-hearted choice for its time. She does not devalue what she chose to devote her life to, and is now engrossed in preserving a history of that time and place. Meanwhile, she buzzes 'round the state, raising funds for her archivist projects, using her cellphone to maintain contact with the huge numbers of those who once peopled her classes -- now spread far and wide -- and comes back to the mother house at night to tend to the aged and to work on her current projects, one of which is making CDs of her favorite music --which she sings herself, with a little help from her friends.
Gabriel Marcel knew well that faith is not dependent on its objects. Faith is an attitude, a turning toward, a metanoia. It can be examined from without but it cannot be experienced that way. As he said, after the tumult of a conversion experience, life is exactly the same and entirely different.
The many orders of nuns --teaching sisters, nurses, contemplative, missionaries -- followed many paths to the same end: a life of meaning beyond the getting and having of quotidian life. They had, however imperfectly, a grasp on transcendence. It was this apprehension which made them often seem a little more together and a little more set apart than the rest of us.
The future forms of this opening up to the depth and breadth of life lived underneath all the bustle will not be there for us. We can but serve as the Via Negativa, pointing the way past the mounded, stinking failures. In this age of transition, this age in which the only forms seem to be tortured academia, haven of mandarins, or Sex and the City, the refuge of those who despair of any permanent union. Neither of these will serve as the vessel to contain that longing for transcendence.
We can be but the transitional example of what they don't want.
Razib,
Aquinas may have had more faith in reason than did Augustine, but even Aquinas recognized its limits. Thomist rationalism recognizes reason's fallibility and the necessity of revelation. Reason, for A. serves faith; it isn't a faith itself as it was for the philosophes.
Cicero,
The key line that struck me in your essay (which was beautifully written as usual) is this:
What's the difference between a Christian and a Posthumanist? Maybe just that one is looking up at the heavens waiting for the Second Coming, while the other is looking at his workbench and tech blogs attempting to build it.
That workbench has been the source of more evil in human history than any other source. Swift warned us about it in the early 18th century in his "Modest Proposal" (and yes, jinnderella, I know it was satire, but among the things he satirizes are excessive dependence on instrumental reason and the idea that science has or can find all the answers). Even Swift probably couldn't have conceived of the horror caused by human attempts to build a Civitate (sic?) Dei on earth. That's why I completely buy into the Christian concept of original sin.
Friend Marcus:
Another one hit right out of the park.
Scylla and Charybdis were a comparative cakewalk.
There's a mandala in my mind, and it's inscribed with two mottoes. On one side, "'Twas ever thus." On the other, "This too shall pass."
I'm on the road, but I'll make time to write soon about what this essay sparked in me.
Thanks.
/s/
Nortius Maximus
Friends,
I paused at the quote in which Baron Bodissey wondered about a "new revelation" and wondered if he (and perhaps you) would investigate and perhaps embrace it if it indeed came. So often we put religion against science without the realization that there is much more in common between them than at first glance. Indeed sometimes they appear to be in conflict, but we must realize that neither has received FULL and COMPLETE truth. Science is built upon hypotheses that grow into theories and may ultimately achieve factual status. True religion is revealed from Diety line upon line, precept upon precept, as individuals and societies seek and incorporate truth appropriate to their state of progression.
And so I come to my point. Their HAS BEEN a new revelation! Please follow this link (and the Learn More links on that page) to learn about how God has again resumed full communication with prophets as he did in ancient times and how we can experiment for ourselves to know if this is indeed fact or religious theory.
I know that it is natural to quickly discard any such post as this as proselyting, but as an engineer and scientist I have struggled with the apparent discord between my profession and faith since I discovered my aptitude for both as a youth. My search and what I have found along the way have made all the difference in my life. I simply invite you to come along, if indeed your search is sincere.
Weeelll... if we're talking new revelations, here's a corker for you.
(Be warned, this is not pleasant. Funny, in a sick way, but not pleasant.)
wrt transhumanism: Did you ever read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis?
Readers,
The main thing I hoped to touch upon is that one way to look at the Islamofascists, for all their horrors, is that theirs is a response to the relentless changes brought about by Western innovation. And that someday, we too might be in their position. Restoring the Caliphate seems to have much to do with reclaiming the past -- they're largely planted a few hundred years in reverse. As I get older, the past looks mighty fine, warts and all. I don't know if continued evolution in my world will make me more obsessive about the past.
I share no quarter with fascists, and I hate them, to used an unvarnished word. But what we offer might, in some space of time, make mincemeat of us all. Democracy and freedom are wonderful things to export and envisage upon the enslaved, as long as that's where things end. But they probably won't. It is obvious to me that, in the present conflict, our culture is greater and more worthy of survival, in spite of the ills it inflicts on some; what is less obvious is whether our culture can survive its own branching evolutions, chasing separate destinies.
- - -
#1 Razib, you're far ahead of my philosophical knowledge curve. I will be the first to admit I'm not strait on Hume, Locke and Thomism. Interesting thought on God's law being primary over God's love in Judaism and Islam. Since I hail from neither creed, and can't speak to it. Perhaps someone else can.
#2 Baron Bodissey
What I hope to have conveyed in the essay is that totalizing concepts like the Singularity defy a quest for a path that humanity might follow. I find the Singularity nullifying -- a path that leads off a cliff. A 'World Mind' is indicative of the same thing. For some reason, it doesn't sound positive or appealing to me personally. No, the world is not a bad place, for some.
#4 Glen
The nature of man is irrational, be they scientists, secularists, priests or prophets. Not all the secularists are drunk on hatred -- at least not this one. We needn't choose between being the God-fearing and the secular. The idea was for those two things to be compatible under the original conception of the Constitution.
#6 Raymond
The Old Days are gone, with Clark Gable and the troops. It wasn't all icing and cake back then, either. I think it was easier to get everyone to sing off the same page in the days of World War II, given the crudeness of mass media at that time. So our memories of then are that we all sang off the same page. The choices to do otherwise were limited compared to this era of blogs and cable.
The nuns aren't coming back. And if they do, they'll be wearing unfamiliar habits. Watch out for them.
#8 dymphna
Nuns did and do have a grasp on transcendence. Thank you for pointing that out. For me, my relationship to nuns is personal, since to some degree I was literally raised by them, and took guidance from them. They appeared immovable to the Boy Cicero, as rocks to moor upon. And yet they melted before my eyes. At the time I didn't appreciate them as much as I do now. Their notions and wisdom were unique. And now they're rare, at least in this country.
#9 Fred
The workbench can create evil and good in equal portions. Original sin -- that we are born guilty, inheriting the sin of our ancestors, Adam and Eve -- probably annoys godless secularists the most. It doesn't bother me. It's a simple reminder that humanity is capable of great error and evil; that we should watch over our own shoulders from day one on this Earth. Not that it has prevented much evil.
#11 James
Thanks for your invitation. "God works in mysterious ways." Mormonism is much maligned in our pop culture, like my own Catholicism. It's too bad. I don't think one needs to convert in order to appreciate it.
#13 James
' Did you ever read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis?'
No. But I have long intended to.
Ultimately, I think that 'evil' can be boiled down to 'lust' and 'destructiveness'. It isn't very probable that the 'singularity' is going to either be destructive (indeed, it will be a hyperproductive animus, no?), nor will the concept of 'lusts' (covetry, hate, narcisism, greed, lassitude, ...) really be something that a technology burst has. Might be capable of it though.
Likewise, I think that the singularity will also be without palpable 'love' -- for the same reasons, opposite sign. It may well be beneficent though, largely. The main issue of course is that it may be possible (likely?) to co-opt the 'good' and rearrange it into bad, due to the meddling of human evil.
And then we're suddenly careening down the track of Japanese Rule The World science fiction. Though oddly enough ... might it not be possibly predictive of the power of individuals in a future where they actually HAVE the super-super powerful machines and technologies at their disposal to create their own harems of mastery?
Gulp.
Au Contraire they are not gone, the values still live within some of us, and is the reason the USA isnt a leftist hellhole of gulags mass graves ruled by the type of "heros" worshiped in universities.
Nor do we a cling to the days of the tailfin and 4 twin barrel carbs, we still work toward a future, a future with the idiology of the gulag, mass grave, purges and the progroms of the left on the ashheap of history.
It creates good when its being worked for yourself, its pure evil when the work is directed at others "for their own good".
Thats the evil at the core of leftism, its imposed at the point of a gun, the left learned nothing from all the other imposing at the points of guns swords and spears. evil does not learn. and shows the inherrent offensive absurdity of those that call themselves "progressive", a name for those wanting to impose their schemes with deadly force, the least "progressive" act man ever does.
Conservatives are anything but backward, we have no problem with moderity (without the postmodern stupidity) its principles that are eternal, not fashion.
The fruits of the efforts of those nuns is still with us today.
Have you thought of what might be when the light of them so many carry has finnaly gone out?
There are other ways to come by the values of life liberty and God, The father of much of them a Certain late middle ages German called Martin Luther, was hardly the papal conservative of his day.
And his American Right Wing decendants still carry that torch.
A couple of C.S. Lewis quotes:
And from The Abolition of Man:
A big "me, too" to both of those sentiments. But when I said that I doubt rationalist culture still exists, I meant a rationalist culture in the sense imagined by Secular Humanism, Ayn Rand, or the ACLU.
I don't doubt the vitality of scientific culture, which is not "rationalist" in the same sense - in the sense of having a social mission to cleanse the world of superstition (or at least, replace it with their own superstitions). Modern science continues to thrive, I believe, because it has distanced itself from the political mania that rules the rest of the academy.
Glen:
Yes, the man was a prophet.
We have miles to go before we sleep, miles to go before man has reclaimed title to his life energy back from those wanting to redistribute it or ragain clear title to his land without having to pay a tax (a goverment rent) on it.
Miles to go before we sleep.
Fred:
That workbench has been the source of more evil in human history than any other source.
It has certainly done its bit.
But humanity is capable of great inhumanity without any such motivation.
I give you, for a few starters, the Aztecs, the Mongols, the Tartars, the Roman Games, the Vikings, the Norman Harrying of the North of England, the witch hunts, the slave trade etc. etc. etc.
My link to that hilariously nasty website earlier was not just a joke. The point is, what is missing?
The answer, I think (for starters anyway): both doubt and no compassion.
I recall some long talks some decades back with a friend pointing to some famous mystical/magickal adept (Crowley IIRC) and how he was supposedly an enlightened master of his psyche.
Me: If so, why was he such an unmitigated ba***rd to everyone close to him?
Him: Well, the totally enlightened is beyond such petty matters.
Me: Then please spare me such enlightenment, and from those so enlightened.
No compassion. No doubt.
I remain (being a lefty) an optimist on the progression of humanity.
Certainly we are bounded by our inheritance, our evolutionary psychology, so deeply entwined with the structure of the human brain/mind as likely to defy our transformation into innately "improved" beings without demolishing the foundations of our consciousness.
(Incidentally, one limit on radical physical tranformation: sex. Ain't no one want to go out with a three armed girl. Well, probably.)
However, within these limits, we may nonetheless achieve great things in removing dysfunction, and in the gradual, evolutionary advance of social ethics.
Original, IIRC is apoint of Christian dogma, and one not shared by Jews or Muslims or Hindus(Zoroastrians, in a rather different way. Buddhists, perhaps, as well?).
Today, much of the laws and public morality of such civilised societies as Ancient Rome or 17th Century Europe would leave many of aghast. Variously, gladiatorial games, slavery, hereditary status and privilege, etc.
Change, progress, IS possible, as the interactions of Christian morality and enlightened philosophy gradually transformed the West.
But it must, broadly, be a voluntary process, that one may accept or refuse. The point of the Islamists (and analogues in the future, perhaps) is that they would refuse it not just for themselves, but for all others, on the basis of their self-proclaimed superior gnosis. This is no better than the imposition of a "better future" by communists, nazis, and, yes, the odd missionary or two.
I say broadly, because, contra Raymond, some improvements CAN be imposed.
The Royal Navy enforced the abolition of the slave trade with musket and cannon quite handily.
I leave possible contemporary parallels to your consideration.
As for love, who can quantify that? The widening of agape is necessary, and the transfiguration of eros a delight, and both are necessary to us, and to our future. But love is an imaginary number.
Thanks for the thought provoking essay, Cicero.
Now, I must order that C.S. Lewis book...
Isnt slavery imposition ?
even worse is marxist slavery.
Leftism is imposition by definition.
Imposition is evil, and at the level of the levathan state, the most evil of all evils ( measured in millions of innocents murdered, and billions suffering the iron boot)
That is entirley different than assult on the evil impositors, the taking down of tyrants, be it the tyrant of one abusing the rights of another, or the tyranny of the state abusing the rights of all his subjects.
These principles are eternal, and leftism violates them, usually horrifically, earning its badge of infamy well as evil incarnate. not the only evil, but the most horrific that has existed, and all the more offensive because umlike most of the others, is still with us.
The leftist war against humanity continues.
John,
I certainly can't deny that people committed great evil in the past. But then I said I believed in original sin. The inheritance, evolutionary psychology etc you mention seem to me a good secular analog to original sin, so we may not be as far apart as you think. That said, the ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries introduced a new level of evil into the world. And not just because they had the technology to commit and spread their evil more efficiently. They were a denial of the human condition itself. Even the ancients who committed the evils you enumerate believed in human limitations. Modern utopians believe we are unlimited. We don't need God (the gods) because our reason is powerful enough to perfect the human condition. There is, therefore, absolutely no limit to what can be committed in achieving that perfection. As the Christian Dostoyevski and the atheist Nietzche agreed, if there is no God (are no gods) everything is permitted. That "everything" becomes particularly terrible when we attempt to take the place of divinity ourselves.
Being a righty, I don't have as much faith in human progress as you do. Progress happens and can be good, but an awful lot gets lost along the way. That loss can conceivably overwhelm the progress and leave us worse off than before.
Cicero, a wonderful post which goes to the heart of what makes us human. Without something greater than ourselves we are mere narcissistic animals, armed with sophisticated symbols, ie language. For those who do not believe in God, they are forced to invent a god for themselves. As I wrote in a differeent context, "If God does not exist, we would need to invent him, if only to maintain our fragile ability to make sense out of an often irrational world. When much of the third world trades fantasies of the United States and Israel causing the recent Tsunami, they are deifying America and Israel. Our soldiers talked about the Iraqi's anger that we did not walk in and like superhuman demi-Gods, instantly give them electricity and riches beyond their dreams."
And this:
"We are better equipped than our distant cave dwelling ancestors to understand the world, but on an individual level, we remain surrounded by monsters and magic. Fate can separate us from our loved ones in an instant and we have no mommy or daddy who will hug us and tell us everything will be all right (which our children might believe; even if someone tries to reassure us, we can not even comfort ourselves with the reassurance because we know better.) The only way we can keep our irrational (and sometimes rational) fears from destabilizing our minds is to find something more powerful than ourselves to believe in; we need God, and in the absence of God, we will invent the equivalent to protect us."
My point, I suppose, is that secular humanism is merely a new religion with a different name. How much more noble to have a god who represents love than a God who is an inventiona nd expression of our won desires and fears.
To me, we're building a lifeboat in a storm-tossed sea of uncertainty that is life. Unable to touch the bottom or see the shore, our lifeboat becomes more stable the more people we convince to come along with us.
We manufacture what society that we can, for our own safety's sake. What you call love, is the appreciation we are all in this together and my security is inextricably tied with others who choose to reach higher than the law of the jungle.
The splendor is our struggle.
"what is less obvious is whether our culture can survive its own branching evolutions, chasing separate destinies."
Why shouldn't it? This very comment page is a tribute to the durablity of our culture. Look who is cited. The various recrudescences of the ubermensch which you describe suffer the same flaws of the original concept. The ubermensch is always a specialist--being "better than human" always means being less than human.
Nature is conservative. We are still the same unspecialized generalists who spent tens of thousands of years flaking flint and tying up things with sinew. Whatever new form our culture manifests will always be limited by the same human needs that kept us doing that for so long.
MC: as I said your website, don't stop writing. PDS
Great, Cicero. Thank you. This is a post on much the same wavelength, or at least exploring in the same direction, as you and Baron Bodissey:
Spiritual nomads