Martin LeFevre: Where Did Man Go Wrong? Part Three

Also see:

• Where Did Man Go Wrong? Part One
• Where Did Man Go Wrong? Part Two

Over 40 years ago, the eerily prescient film “2001: A Space Odyssey” conveyed a vision of human transmutation. In it, evolutionary leaps are caused by a mysterious external intelligence, operating at crucial junctures in our evolutionary history.

For all its scientific and philosophical originality however, “2001” contains the same core idea about God that is at the heart of monotheistic religions.

To monotheists, God is an outside agency that cares about the fate of humankind. God is an all-seeing deity that willed the universe into existence, and intervenes every now and then in its clockworks, especially where man is concerned.

That God, the God of civilization’s childhood, is dead. But the urge to understand humankind’s place in the universe is not.

The twin modern replacements of monotheism—the belief in a coldly indifferent and completely random cosmos; and the misanthropic notion of the ‘foreign installation’ of man on this planet—are merely the flipside of monotheism’s coin. That is, scientism.

Thanks to science, most people believe that there is no intelligence in the cosmos that cares for humanity anymore than nature on earth does for the individual. Does a tornado care which houses it flattens? Does an asteroid care which species it wipes out?

From the belief in a completely random universe, it’s a logical step to see nature as a thing to be controlled. But nature and the universe are an undivided movement of energy and matter becoming aware of itself, and of the inseparable creative force within and beyond the cosmos.

Therefore we don’t need a new conception of God; we need a new conception of humanity. We need a new insight into our anomaly on this beautiful earth, into our existential contradiction with nature and the universe--even as we are an inextricable part of nature and the universe.

Nowhere is it written that humanity will meet its self-made crisis and succeed as a species. Sentient species can fail, and humankind is failing. Just as the space for animals everywhere on earth is being destroyed, so too the space for people to grow into human beings is being destroyed. And there are not an infinite number of chances to change course.

The human adaptive strategy, based on the evolution of so-called higher thought, is obviously an extraordinarily powerful quantum leap in the development of life on earth. Indeed, the adaptive strategy of symbolic thought is so powerful that it seems incredible that it could be confined to earth alone, anymore than life could.

As things stand, humans are using symbolic thought to wreak havoc on earth. The question arises: Do planetary destructiveness, innumerable wars, incalculable suffering, and social pathologies of all kinds inevitably accompany the evolution of ‘higher thought?’

Certainly, Homo sap (as a philosopher I know calls man) is not the first to evolve the power to exploit all life forms on its planet (including its own). But man appears to be vying for pride of place as the most destructive species in the known universe.

Even so, the spiritual potential in the human being is as great as our actual destructiveness as a species.

The evolution of symbolic thought gave the brain the neural potential to share in the awareness and ongoing creation of the universe. But paradoxically, thought is also the greatest impediment to realization of that potential.

Reflecting a widespread misanthropy (which is really self-hatred), there’s a plethora of science shows on television lately with themes like ‘the world after people,’ and ‘how to destroy the earth.’ The former fantasizes how long it would take, after we extinguish ourselves, for the earth to obliterate every trace of man. The latter conjures up madness like self-replicating, rock-eating ‘bots’ that completely eat through the planet.

Such shows wouldn’t even be made unless there were millions of people who are so lost, so cynical, and so inwardly dead that they long for a destruction that takes everything with them when they go. Is that pathology essentially any different than the shooters and slashers that kill a dozen or more in schools or daycare or shopping centers before offing themselves?

The idea that ‘man’ is incorrigible and unregenerate hasn’t merely given rise to a lot of ‘divine feminine’ drivel; it has prevented women and men from questioning together to bring about a transmutation in human consciousness.

It should go without saying that radically changing oneself is the first and last step. First in the sense that the collective consciousness of humankind is enfolded in microcosm within each of us; and last in the sense that there are, in actuality, no separate selves.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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