A note from a friend, a solid religious believer and a damned fine human being, set me to trying to figure out not just what do I believe, but what do I find worth believing – worth caring about, worth considering.
Overall, I feel that it doesn’t matter whether there is or is not a god, but that the universe is so haphazard that existence, however ordained, isn’t suited to life, doesn’t care about life.
Growing up, I abstractly believed in humankind (called, in our gender ignorance, “mankind”), that it was essential, ordained, the top of the universal heap. Much later, I came to a more nuanced outlook on humans’ place in the world – the ill we’ve done at every step, and how it’s ruined the “lesser beings” surrounding us.
I guess today I’d be labeled a pessimist, though I don’t see myself that way – more a realist, a pragmatist, or whathaveyou. I no longer care whether humanity survives. Because even if it (not “we”; individuals are too diverse to lump together under any common rubric) can learn what’s necessary to perpetuate itself through caring and wisdom, that will still not be enough. Evolution has fucked human life beyond redemption, an experiment that failed because there was no care in the “design.”
My rant about population can be summed up: “We’ve gone over the edge; the fall into the abyss is assured.” If the entire race should wake one morning infused with decency and understanding, it has already ruined its redemption though sheer numbers. Halting or limiting reproduction (chosen how?) would still leave the remaining handful with a planet blighted to the point of requiring eons to repair. The 8 billion already sullying its surface would be condemned to slow, painful extermination, useful only as fertilizer. A hell of a best-case scenario.
And supposing humanity’s continuation as a species? Trudging along with the same faulty mental and genetic equipment, it will face an eternal repetition of love/hatred that’s led it nowhere (though maybe it could intern the psychopaths who now control our destiny, providing them with canned adulation and the AI luxury to fill their every perceived need).
And if it tinkers with its makeup – fine-tunes the slurry of our collective mind so that love and pragmatic good infuse it universally? It would become a soup of refined beings, alphabetted with all possible knowledge, as dull as Georgian architecture.
Myself, saddled with a standard-issue muddled human mind, I alternate between self-flagellation and my increasingly dark certainty that nothing I could do would matter, that nothing humanity could do or be would make a damned bit of difference, now or through all eternity and infinity.
So which should I do? Putter around the house, satisfied with relabeling the jars of grains and seeds and nuts on our kitchen shelves, or continue writing novels and bilious articles that few will read and that will have no meaningful effect?
Supposed to be warm tomorrow. I’ll accept that.
* * *
Individual frog cells can become nano-robots – read about it. What does that portend in the macro world – not just ethically (when have we ever acted ethically?) but as a continuing lifeform? Assuming we don’t destroy ourselves fast enough, this generation or the next will likely see the end of untamed evolution and the beginning of deliberate transformation.
This needn’t lead to despair, unless you like to think that way. But it’s the science of reality, in the daily news pouring down on us.
Damned interesting.
* * *
What gets me the most wrangled is that so many people think I’m a nice, tolerant guy. Actually, I’m one of the most self-centered people I’ve ever dealt with.
I hate when anyone impedes my motion, mental or physical, in any way; I get enraged about intrusion – even though much of the time I have no real idea what I want to be doing or how to go about doing it. Erin, my middle daughter, is much like me – except in being honest and direct about who she is. That makes for a different set of problems from my failure to openly admit who I am.
* * *
Growing up, I never automatically thought of someone in their 80s as automatically too old to think cogently or have leadership abilities. I skipped the presidential debate this round, thank god; it sounds like they both should be prematurely buried, but I wonder if the constant ragging about their age hasn’t itself undercut them (though how anyone could further undercut Trump is difficult to imagine).
My age limitations (at least as I see them within my wider limitations) are far more physical than mental. I’m still able to both talk coherently, type complete sentences, and convey meaning… most of the time… but sitting hunched in my chair for an hour leaves my spine wracked.
Feh, I say again, Feh!
lickhaven 