The question of where our species went wrong sounds anachronistic in more ways than one. It’s a right question in general though, and a good starting point.
Why is it important? Because core insights into the causes of why man is destroying the earth and humanity may make the remedy clear. Indeed, to my mind insight is the remedy.
Of course, there are still a lot of people who maintain that humankind is progressing, because the media and society tell them so, and they have a deep need to believe it. Progress is the best kind of denial because at one level, scientifically and technologically, it’s undeniable.
Clearly, human nature hasn’t changed in the hundred thousand years since modern humans — Homo sapiens sapiens (one ‘wise man’ is a misnomer, two in the nomenclature is a delusion) — emerged. Given that premise, it can be misleading to ask where man went wrong, since it appears something went wrong at the beginning.
If that sounds a little like the Christian creation myth of “original sin,” that’s OK. Every good story has at least a kernel of truth.
To our modern ears, mistakes and sins mean something entirely different. But it’s interesting to note that the root meaning of the word “sin” is to “miss the mark, miss the target.” That’s synonymous with a mistake as we generally use the word. And it carries none of the hell and brimstone baggage, or even the connotation of judgment.
So if sin means to miss the mark, however widely (and murdering another human being, personally or through war is missing the mark as widely as people can), what is the mark? And how has humankind been missing it since the beginning?
Despite the attempt by most philosophers and scientists to blur the distinction between man and nature, humans are the only creatures on the planet who are destroying the earth. Whether another creature would if it had the abilities we do only begs the question: How did nature evolve a species that is at odds with nature itself?
Leaving aside the “man was made in the image of God” nonsense, it’s incontrovertible that humans evolved along the same lines and through the same processes as all other creatures on earth. So the wrong turn, if we can put it that way, is partly in human evolution itself.
In short, so-called original sin has nothing to do with a fall from grace in the Garden, and everything to do with the evolution of conscious cognitive abilities. Greed, power, injustice and war have their roots in the wrongful use of thought.
The essence of “higher thought” is the ability to intentionally remove reified things from the environment and modify them for our use. So in a sense, man didn’t go wrong, evolution did, since evolution gave us that peerless ability.
Even so, we human beings have to put our evolutionary adaptation — the most powerful adaptation nature has evolved — right. And that may be part of an intrinsic cosmic intent, without implying design. There is no separate Creator, just the random evolution of life and consciousness, toward the emergence of true intelligence in beings in the universe.
Symbolic thought is an adaptation of unprecedented power, making possible technology, science, art and culture (including the mental artifacts of belief, ritual and tradition).
But the evolution of complex thought carries with it the overwhelming tendency to live in fabricated realms enabled by our illusory separation — not only physically, which is necessary to survive as humans, but also psychologically, which isn’t, and has produced and is producing untold conflict and suffering.
After the emergence of complex cognition, was runaway fragmentation almost inevitable with high technology? And if so, doesn’t that make it even more unlikely that we humans can change course and begin to bring ourselves into harmony with the earth?
Paradoxically, it makes it more likely that we can.
Physical separation is necessary; indeed, it’s the sine qua non of the human adaptive pattern. But separation is merely a useful trick of thought, and therefore we can see through it.
Psychological separation, which is the extension of thought into a dimension where it doesn’t belong, inherently misses the mark. That is the original and ongoing mistake.
Without psychological separation there is no “me,” no ego, no feeling of separation and alienation, from which division, conflict and suffering emanate.
So can there be utilitarian separation without illusory psychological separation?
That is the great question life is putting, with increasing urgency, to human beings.
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” But the evolution of complex thought carries with it the overwhelming tendency to live in fabricated realms enabled by our illusory separation— not only physically, which is necessary to survive as humans, but also psychologically.”
As you have in prior articles and comments, you use the obscure term “separation” without explaining what that term means to you and why you attribute it with so much importance in your sermons. Help all your readers by fleshing out what you mean by the term and why you believe it is “necessary to (not only) survive as humans, but also psychologically.
You talk around that in the final paragraphs of this article, but that talk makes leap of faith assumptions about your audience’s understanding of your terms, rather than starting at the beginning and evolving your audience’s understanding of the higher level thinking you are jumping right into.
“Despite the attempt by most philosophers and scientists to blur the distinction between man and nature, humans are the only creatures on the planet who are destroying the earth.”
I don’t believe that’s true, and that animals sometimes do destroy their own habitat for similar reasons. (Self interest, vs. collective interest.)
“Whether another creature would if it had the abilities we do only begs the question: How did nature evolve a species that is at odds with nature itself?”
Nature itself keeps animals (including humans in check).
Evolution is working as it always has. There seems to be an “expectation” in your article that humans should be vastly different than all other species. Pretty sure that we share a majority of our DNA with chimpanzees, for example. And those guys can be real jerks.
Ever heard of the climate crisis, now nearing a number of irreversible tipping points? Or the Sixth Extinction, this one at human hands, which is wiping out at least half the animals with which we share the planet? It’s impossible to address this level of willful blindness and unquestioning,
Ignoring the put down of “sermons,“ no amount of defining and explaining man’s fragmentation of nature and alienation from nature (caused by psychological separation) will probably suffice to someone who doesn’t see and feel it.
But as simply as I can put it, we separate the thing called a tree from its environment, and then further separate its parts for use. Which is fine in a utilitarian way, up to a point.
But as long as we’re viewing the actual thing through our uses, memories and experiences of it, we aren’t seeing the actual living thing called an oak or a maple as it is in the moment. To be whole, we have to see the tree without even the word “tree,“ inextricable from the ground, air and surroundings.
This principle applies not only to “things“ in nature, but nature in general, as well as to other human beings. Most philosophers say that humans are inevitably “hermeneutical“ creatures (that is, we ALWAYS look through the lenses of our interpretations, experiences, etc.) that isn’t true.
Please question and experiment with observation rather than ask me more separative questions about psychological separation.
Have no fear Martin, I won’t ask you any more questions. You have made your attitude toward questions abundantly clear.
Honestly don’t know what the argument (if any) is on here, between the author and a commenter or two.
Other than perhaps an expectation that humans are very different than other species. (Which, the older I get, the less I see much difference.)
Just the other day, I saw a video of a cow scratching his butt with a stick. Pretty sure I’ve done something similar myself, at some point. The only possible difference is that I try not to see any other humans, at least, seeing me do so. (Whereas I doubt that the cow cares who sees him do so.)
Then again, I can reach my butt without a stick (perhaps unlike a cow – depending upon “where”, exactly). So I probably used the stick for my back, instead.
Good Matt, questions from you aren’t questioning anything at all.