Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) 📖

callousness. They may all appear isolated (even reckless acts of some twisted or tortured minds), but they are still the acts of full-grown human beings, and what they do symbolizes the banal barbarity that the human culture is capable of. With the adult mind conquered or corrupted by evil, with child warriors growing into positions of prominence in society, and with technology offering an endless supply of easier ways of killing, the world yet to come looks truly terrifying. It is utterly mystifying how, among the millions of species on earth, it is the human — so well-tooled, so blessed, and with such reasoning power and so sharpened in the skills of survival — who has turned to be so vicious and violent. And this, especially when he does not need to be so for survival or for supremacy.

 

 

 

116 Peter Singer. Children at War. 2005. University of California Press, USA. Accessed at: http://www.amazon.com/Children-at-War-P-W-Singer/dp/0375423494

117 Cited in: Caroline Moorehead. The Warrior Children. 2005. [Review of the book “Children at War” by P.W. Singer]. The New York Review Books, USA. 1 December 2005. p.46.

118 Cited in: Caroline Moorehead. The Warrior Children. 2005. [Review of the book “Children at War” by P.W. Singer]. The New York Review Books, USA. 1 December 2005. p.46.

Evolution and culture

Perhaps, of all the attributes of which we are very proud of, none is greater than ‘culture’, a ubiquitous word, which in broad anthropological terms covers “the full range of learned human behavior patterns.”119 That is ‘human culture’, the generic way man has organized his life and the way he relates to the universe. It is the sum total of all that man has experienced ever since his brain developed to the present dimension some 200,000 odd years ago, an experience that includes a motley mix, from tool-making to advanced technology, from sexual modes to social interfacing, from the way we make and eat food to the way we amuse and entertain ourselves. It is what we do in the name of ‘culture’ and its twin brother, ‘civilization’ that is causing the present planetary crisis. And we must remember that the way we address the problems that confront the world will affect not only our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren, but also possibly heavily influence the direction of human evolution. What is needed for any meaningful human betterment is nothing less than the transformation of human cultures, values, and priorities, from the individual to the society.

We should nurture what has been called a ‘natural longing’ to show respect and gratitude to those who deserve it, and repentance and reparation to those who wrong us. All religions extol the virtues of heart-felt repentance; it cleanses every sin and opens the way to God.

Ingratitude is one of the five great sins in Hinduism, and repentance is the second principle in the gospel of Christianity. Without gratitude and repentance, no radical change is possible in the content of the human condition. While we have attained virtual suzerainty on earth, we are “cut off from an intimate life-enhancing connection with the natural world, and we are undermining our biological support systems at an alarming rate.”120 And that ‘cut off’ has also led to the paradox of great intellectual and scientific activity that has bestowed meaning and satisfaction, creativity and spirituality, on humans. The English antropologist Edward Tylor (Primitive Culture, 1871) defines culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”121 In fact, a sizable part of human evolution has not been biological or neurological, but cultural, or as some would say, bio-cultural. It was culture, which included his tool-making capacity that allowed early man to subjugate and survive his predators. Culture affected the direction of human evolution by creating non-biological solutions to environmental challenges, thus potentially reducing the need to evolve genetic responses to the challenges. Some thinkers like the French biologist Jacques Monod say that evolution is a “series of chance events governed by necessity.”122 Others like Motoro Kimura

 

 

 

 

 

 

119 Shana Pate. CliffsTestPrep Praxis II: Social Studies Content Knowledge Test (0081). Behavioral Science, Human Culture. Wiley Publishing, Inc. p.85.

120 Jay Earley. Social Evolution and the Planetary Crisis. Accessed at: http://www.earley.org/Transformation/social_evolution_.htm

121 Cited in: What is Culture? Human Culture: an Introduction to the Characteristics of Culture and the Methods used by Anthropologists to Study It. Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marcos, California, USA. 2009. Accessed at: http://anthro.palomar.edu/culture/culture_1.htm

122 Cited in: Miroslav Pecujlic, Gregory Blue and Anouar Abdel-Malek (eds.). Science and Technology in the Transformation of the World – Volume 1. Section III Biology, medicine and the future of mankind. The United Nations University. Accessed at: http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu39se/uu39se09.htm

 

say that it is “a series of coincidences triggered off by coincidences.”123 Some others say that it is “a sort of rectilinear predetermined process generated by a directing principle.”124 And they raise a doubt whether evolution is only horizontal, refining and improving the existing condition, or it is also vertical, moving towards qualitatively superior forms of life. In other words, is the next stage of evolution, the posthuman future, going to throw up an ‘improved man,’ maybe devoid of malice and aided by machine, or can the human really evolve as a different genre and genus — a higher step in the ladder of life?

It was the adoption of farming that facilitated a break for man from the evolutionary path of animals, by generating what economists call a ‘social surplus.’ There are important milestones in human evolution, from standing erect to the design and development of tools, to the injection of science into technology which then became the most transformational event in evolution. Dwarfing all these is the acquisition or development of the mind by man. We will never be able to put a precise date in the last two million years, but whenever it was, or whatever was the process or trigger, it was the most decisive development since life started showing up on earth some six billion years ago. In Christianity, Adam was the ‘first fully conscious, intelligent human’ and it was his intelligence that was the cause of his fall and the foundation of the human condition. It was his mind that was seduced by the ‘logic of Satan’ that, contrary to what God told Adam and Eve, by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge, man ‘could be like God, knowing good and evil’. One wonders why knowing good and evil, which we normally consider a virtue, earned such terrible divine wrath and banishment. One ‘explanation’ is that by eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, they became aware of themselves as being separate from Nature while still being part of it, which was why they felt “naked” and “ashamed”: they had evolved into human beings, conscious of themselves, their own mortality, and their powerlessness before the forces of Nature, and no longer united with the universe as they were in their instinctive, pre-human existence. It was, in John Milton’s phrase, the ‘mortal taste’ of the forbidden fruit that brought death to the world! Milton also wrote “It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.”125

The scriptural hypothesis is that man is at the pinnacle of creation, at least thus far. That full potential though is still veiled, and the purpose of life is to peel away the veils. In Vedanta, that veil is called maya, which itself is a manifestation of God, a kind of divine deception. Why God makes man potentially perfect and creates a barrier to his perfection is a theological question akin to that of why God creates or tolerates evil and the suffering of the innocents. Is creation some kind of a divine ploy or a hobby, as Greek mythology suggests? Or is it some kind of a trade-off for freedom and free will? According to another view, all that we find in the world is impermanent, and an imperfect representation, a fractured expression of the Perfect Being. In other words, human imperfection mirrors the imperfection of creation itself. If we are aware that everything in the world is both impermanent and

 

 

 

123 Cited in: Miroslav Pecujlic, Gregory Blue and Anouar Abdel-Malek (eds.). Science and Technology in the Transformation of the World – Volume 1. Section III Biology, medicine and the future of mankind. The United Nations University. Accessed at: http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu39se/uu39se09.htm

124 Cited in: Miroslav Pecujlic, Gregory Blue and Anouar Abdel-Malek (eds.). Science and Technology in the Transformation of the World – Volume 1. Section III Biology, medicine and the future of mankind. The United Nations University. Accessed at: http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu39se/uu39se09.htm

125 Cited in: Frank Kermode. Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday. 2009. [Review of the book “John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought” by Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns. Oxford University Press. 488 pp.] New York Review of Books, USA. 26 February 2009. p.28.

 

imperfect, we would be able to savor the present. The philosopher Heraclitus said that one cannot bathe twice in the same river. The metaphor of river is often applied to life. Life flows, like a river, sometimes languidly in summer, sometimes like a swirling torrent in the monsoon, sometimes fertilizing, sometimes eroding, sometimes enriching, sometimes destroying; but it always makes a difference. And because everything in life is in motion and is both flawed and in flux, there is hope for betterment. Because, every condition is conditioned, there is scope for human effort. If everything is fixed and perfect, life becomes meaningless. In Zen philosophy, it is said that the most precious thing in life is uncertainty. Another school of thought believes that man is, by design, left unfinished, but with a thinking mind and a feeling heart, each with the capacity for remembrance, while the ‘finishing’ itself is left to man. That is the greatest challenge, the opportunity and the ‘vote of confidence’ in man, God’s own prerogative being given to man. Even among evolutionists, there are differences regarding the inter-relationship of the individual organism and the species in evolution. Darwinism gave primacy to genetic mutations within the individual organism, but what has come to be called ‘big-sociology’, gives importance to the way an entire species is transformed, based on the principle that mutation is incorporated into a species systematically, not randomly, through natural selection. Some say that since species- evolution is not a steady and single climb, at any stage, humans at different stages of evolution can exist, just as chimpanzees are still around along with man. It is also being ‘scientifically’ speculated that a good chunk of humanity, particularly people living in affluent societies are no longer governed by the principles of natural selection and genetic mutation, virtually bringing evolution to a halt. Future generations, at least in these parts might not be any different from the present generation; if any, they might well regress, as they no longer have to fight just to stay alive, and their comfort and convenience might enfeeble them and take a heavy toll. The very expectation of long and healthy life and immunity from diseases might work against the evolutionary tool of natural selection.

Inferentially, it means the hope for human evolution rests on the impoverished people, who are now vulnerable to debilitating diseases living in the so-called Third World. Does it also mean that for the ‘good’ of humanity, they should continue to stay in the same condition of despair, deprivation and destitution! If so, should humanity be prepared to pay the price?

The discovery (in 2003) of the fossil remains of a tiny human-like species, on the Indonesian island of Flores (near Java), gives some credence to the theory