Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being
can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know,
you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day,
to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight;
and never stop fighting.
- ee cummings
I confess I have not yet read Dawkins' book The God Delusion
(it sits, unopened, in favour of a collection of short stories by Amy
Hempel, on my bedside table), though I think I have read more than a
book's worth of discussion about it. I may well write about it once
I've read it, but in the meantime all the discussion of the book has
caused me to think about something much more important, IMO, than the
existence of superhumans: Our growing inability to think for ourselves.
The
OED defines religion as "human recognition of superhuman controlling
power and especially of a personal god entitled to worship and
obedience". Religions (plural) are in fact shared sets of beliefs about
the nature of superhumanity and about which form to worship and obey.
The word religion means "to bind" or constrain, to tie down.
In
this sense a religion is merely a specific type of culture, culture
being a shared pattern of beliefs or activities. We now live in a world
with one overwhelmingly dominant Culture, within which a variety of
religions and other subcultures exist which quibble among themselves
(constantly, and often violently). This Culture and these subcultures
can now hardly be escaped – there is no place to go to get away from
Civilization Culture, its artifacts, its messages – to be, as Cummings
says, "nobody-but-yourself".
I find this terrifying. It is
what I mean when I describe the modern world as a prison. There is no
escaping it. The wardens are always watching you. Your fellow inmates
are always correcting you, competing with you, pushing you around,
compelling you to be "everybody else". To stop trying to be nobody-but-yourself. To stop thinking for yourself. To be one with the Borg… er, I mean Culture.
I
don't believe in moral judgement, and I don't view this reality as good
or bad. It is just the way things are, and getting more so, as the last
vestiges of cultures that differ significantly from Civilization
Culture are extinguished, indoctrinated, and absorbed.
Why
would this be? Because in the short run it is an evolutionary success.
In a world with a natural human population level in balance with all
life on Earth, there is room for diverse cultures to have their own
space, and for individuals to have enough room and resources to be
nobody-but-themselves. By contrast, in our horrifically overcrowded
world, survival without constant war demands that we eliminate
diversity, to have monoculture.
Just as we have replaced permaculture (resilient, natural,
self-managing, self-sufficient, abundant, sustainable) with monoculture
agriculture (uniform, fragile, high-maintenance, unnatural, catastrophic,
but efficient enough to keep many more humans alive, while it lasts),
we have largely replaced astonishing indigenous human diversity
(resilient, natural, self-managing, self-sufficient, abundant,
sustainable) with human monoculture (uniform, fragile,
high-maintenance, unnatural, catastrophic, but efficient enough to keep
many more humans alive, while it lasts). Monoculture confers short-term
evolutionary advantage and so it was probably inevitable. In the long
run, it is unsustainable and hence will ultimately and inevitably
collapse and be replaced with new diversity. Darwin's rules.
We have, in addition to all the religions, political subcultures
in the form of political parties, either owned by rich and powerful
corporatists committed to Civilization Culture, or longing for a taste
of power themselves, to perpetrate the variation of Civilization
Culture that they believe in.
And, in the pursuit of electoral popularity, they will compromise
without limit, to the point that all that distinguishes the Tweedledum
party from the Tweedledee party is the style and colour of their logos
and their rhetoric.
And in addition to the religious and
political subcultures we have the economic, social and technological
ones. We have those who worship the 'free market'. We have those who
worship size and growth. We have those who pay homage to the latest
edicts from the fashion world. Or the latest technology. Or the latest
successful business tycoon. Or the latest sports/entertainment idol. We
have those who follow their new age gurus and those who are obedient to
their Twelve Steps. We have people who seek the promise of eternal life
in nano-form, and those who believe technology will bring us salvation.
And others who pursue the coming of a global 'collective consciousness'.
These
are all subcultures within the global Civilization Culture. The rich
and powerful are delighted to have us endlessly distracted by these
subcultures, to believe there are significant differences between
Tweedledum and Tweedledee. But you can't jam the culture.
Even the majority of the poor and disenfranchised eagerly support the
culture, and aspire to 'succeed' in it. All the subcultures and the
artificial choices and illusory differences between them keep us
distracted from realizing that we have become everybody else. They keep us obedient to the larger Civilization Culture, keep us busy, keep us in line. Those in a monoculture must be kept in line. There is no room for anyone who is nobody-but-themselves.
Our
Civilization Culture's subcultures are remarkable not for their
differences but for their crushing sameness: Like the 'choice' between
McDonalds or Burger King, they offer an illusion of freedom to choose.
They all tempt you to 'join', to sign up for their 'brand' of
Civilization Culture. To stop thinking for yourself and be everybody
else. (Ah, but sir, just look, our brand
of everybody else suits you so well!) We have thousands of subcultures,
many of them at war with each other (in order to keep the members
'bound' together through having a common 'enemy'). The prosperity of
the Tweedledum subculture depends on its unifying enmity for the
Tweedledee subculture, and vice versa. The continuation of Civilization
Culture depends on us being everybody else, through one subculture or
another.
Dawkins takes issue with those who seek a
reconciliation between the religious subcultures and the science &
technology subcultures. He doesn't think we should be tolerant of
subcultures which preach hate for other subcultures or which question
the truths of the science & technology subcultures. Like a preacher
or an advertiser or a car salesman, he wants to convert us from one
subculture to another. We debate, we fight wars and elections, but its
all about which 'everybody else' everybody should be.
Let me put
it in simpler terms. Religions and other subcultures are all forms of
groupthink. Groupthink is easy, it is comforting. It enables more
people to live in crowded, unpleasant and unnatural conditions, because
we have the group, 'our' beliefs to fall back on. They explain away
everything. They promise a better future in return for suffering,
obedience and worship today. They keep us in line and in thrall.
Groupthink,
as Cummings was I think trying to tell us, is essentially a form of
self-loathing. For some this takes the form of self-prostration or
confession or admitting we're addicted or other forms of
self-abasement. But there are newer forms: Screaming hysterically at
the mere sight of a celebrity. Doing what you're told, 9-5 every day,
without question. Living in a squalid, over-crowded, unnatural urban or
suburban world among neighbours you don't know or don't like, without
question or complaint. Longing for, and working to 'earn', the latest
cult artifact that shows you belong to the brand of your 'choice'.
I don't disrespect
religions and other subcultures. I empathize with their members, as I
empathize with inmates of jails and hospitals and institutions and
personal hells, confined as they are in a hollow figment of a real
life, never free just to be themselves. We are all in the same boat.
What
is now called 'low self-esteem' is absolutely essential to the
continuation of Civilization Culture. You must believe that others have
the inherent right to tell you what to do and how to think. You must
believe that the choice between Tweedledum or Tweedledee is your most
important decision. You must know your place in the line and the
hierarchy. And you must be kept busy enough doing meaningless work, and
scared enough about the scarcity lurking just around the corner if you
stop, that you never dare think for yourself.
Our
planet's remaining indigenous cultures are based more substantially on
respect for and trust in the individual to know what to do, and the
freedom to make one's own decisions. Their cultures respect all life on
Earth, and respect their elders and ancestors, but they do not worship
them or necessarily even obey them. They have evolved in a way that is
antithetic to groupthink because, unlike us, they have had space to
accommodate diversity and are not dependent on the constraints of
monoculture agriculture. Where there is room for diversity, it's an
evolutionary advantage, since it makes the culture more resilient.
We have learned enough about our world to know,
intellectually, emotionally, instinctively, that there are no
superhumans, that No One is In Control, and that Civilization Culture,
in its headlong race to self-perpetuate and grow without limit, has
launched our planet's sixth Great Extinction. Still, we take turns
reassuring ourselves everything will be alright. We have met the enemy
and he is us.
There are readers who have claimed that I am religious and that my 'god' is nature or Gaia. But while I am
in awe of nature's ability to evolve self-organization for the
collective well-being of all life on Earth over millions of years (you
have to admit, unless you're a creationist, that that's a remarkable
achievement), I do not 'worship' nature. Nature is merely a remarkable
adaptation, though not without its cruelties. It has its rules, and
they have evolved to work. Nature just is. It is not a god, or
superhuman, or all-powerful, or divine.
I am and probably always
will be in thrall to Civilization Culture. I have been fortunate to
have had the time and opportunity to step back and study and learn
about our world and our history and different cultures. And I've
acquired a capacity to imagine possibilities very different from the
reality in which we live today. As a result, I am very slowly
extracting myself from the hold of this culture, by spending time
thinking for myself. I am still far from being nobody-but-myself, but I
am getting closer. As I get further from the Centre and closer to the
Edge of Civilization Culture, its hold on me is weakening.
What freed me most of all was John Gray's book Straw Dogs, because that book made me realize that we aren't going to save the world, it's just not in our nature, and that you cannot
change culture (even counter-cultures are really just subcultures that
either self-extinguish or become part of the larger Civilization
Culture). Ultimately we cannot be what we are not. So despite the title
of this blog (which has once again become ironic), I have no desire to
sway people to think like me. I'm merely keeping a public journal of my
experiment in learning to think for myself, and of my journey to our
Civilization's Edge.
If my writing provokes you to acknowledge
that you're in thrall to Civilization Culture but are making the
arduous, life-long journey in the hope that you might just briefly
understand what it means not to be everybody else, well then I wish you fare well (or as Eliot said, fare forward), wherever that journey may take you.
Postscript: Thinking about and writing this article has made me realize
why I am so impatient with, and tardy in responding to, comments and
e-mails about my articles. I've come to realize that I don't much care
what others think of my writing or my ideas. I write to think out loud,
to clarify my own thinking and feeling and sensing and instincts.
Whenever I've written an article espousing the starting of some
movement or collective action (and boy is it tempting to do so!) an
alarm bell goes off in my head, saying don't do that.
So I'm going to stop worrying about and apologizing for not replying to
e-mails and comments. I read them all, I appreciate them all, but given
the choice between a dialogue on what I've written and writing something new, there is no contest.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
