…capable of incredible beauty and massive destruction, unselfish kindness and unspeakable cruelty. With a brain the size of a melon and couple of opposable thumbs, we conceive of and build the World Trade Center and the transistor, produce art from the Sistine Chapel to street graffiti, create the music of Mozart and the Sex Pistols. We’ve produced Einstein and da Vinci, but also Hitler and Idi Amin. We create artificial kidneys and hearts to save lives, but also napalm and nuclear weapons to destroy them. We develop complex civilizations like Egypt and Greece and Rome, or those of the Aztecs and Mayans and Incas…then destroy them to build others and ultimately destroy those, too.
Who are we? What are we? Why are we? Where are we going? I know, of course, the academic answers…and maybe some of proposed by the existentialists. But that’s not what I’m asking. These are just thoughts that occur to me after walking through Florence and Rome over the last couple of weeks…and yes, admittedly, reflecting on Tuesday’s election.
“Man is a useless passion.” Jean Paul Sartre
“The human primate is a grotesque aberration in Nature.” Michael Weise
It’s times like this when my lack of grounding in philosophy becomes painfully obvious, but I will jump in anyway.
First, Mr. Weise: I think his view is a bit harsh…and from what I know of the fellow, predictably pessimistic. I think where we all run into problems in addressing human nature is our lack of objectivity. We inevitably project value onto it..and maybe onto existence in general. We desperately want it to MEAN something! And, from the brief background I read on Sartre’s quote, his was in effect a comment on innate meaninglessness and on the fear of responsibility that comes with creating our own meaning. (Correct me if I’m wrong, here.)
But if we view life (or all existence as we know it) as the result of a mechanistic series of evolutionary or geologic or cosmic causes and effects, then Man (like much else that we perceive of the extraneous world) is a happenstance…one of an unlimited number of possible outcomes. This is where I would agree with Sartre (though not so much with Mr. Weise): We must create our own meaning, our own purpose, our own reason to get up every morning. I’ve commented to this effect in this earlier post.
That said, I realize this is easy for me to say, from my comfortably well-off and secure middle-class American lifestyle. But it also does not mean I don’t think mankind has not gone off the rails. We most certainly have, and I think we are pretty much doomed as a result. Only I can’t do much about that. My job is to understand my own limits and create meaning within that sphere of control. Despite my obvious solitary nature, I decided some years ago that meaning for me will be found in other people, and it is my job to help others within my sphere reach a point (maybe only Maslovian) where they can perhaps find meaning for themselves.
My post about humankind being a paradox was just an observation. We are, in my view. Are we “a grotesque aberration in nature,” per Mr. Weise? Well, again, that description implies value, that nature is supposed to “be” something in particular. But in my view, Man just “is.” (…at least, that’s as far as my pitiful knowledge can take me).