by Simon Smith
I’ve been watching Don Cupitt’s
series Sea of Faith recently. As you will see, if you have sense enough to follow that
link, a remarkable individual has had the wisdom, the foresight, the decency to
put the whole thing up on YouTube. May the gods bless and keep you, Nigel
Verney, whoever you are. Ta very much.
For those unfamiliar
with this televisual masterpiece, Sea of Faith was a documentary
series, written and presented by the Cambridge philosopher, Don Cupitt.
Originally aired on the BBC in the early 1980s, it charted the development of
Christian thought from the beginning of the modern period to the mid-twentieth
century, starting with Galileo and ending with Wittgenstein; the episodes on
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are especially exciting.
It’s an
excellent series, the kind you don’t see very often these days, unless it’s
presented by David Attenborough. Maybe Chris Packham. It’s genuinely thrilling
to watch a programme which assumes its audience are intelligent and well-read.
Not only does Cupitt name-drop Hegel, but while discussing Wittgenstein’s
pragmatic turn,[1] he
actually turns to camera and says something like ‘And what happened next? Well,
you’ve probably guessed already.’ Because, of course we can all guess how one
of the greatest philosophical minds of the century would proceed.
Everyone was so
much cleverer back then, before civilisation ended in 140 characters or less
(sad face emoji).
Don Cupitt
was, and presumably still is, as cool as a polar bear, standing on an iceberg,
dressed as Burt Reynolds from Smokey and the Bandit, and playing the Coltrane solos from Kind of Blue.
Oh yes, he’s that cool.
But I’m not
writing a review. Or a bromance. In fact, I bring this excellent documentary to
your attention, not only to encourage you – whoever you may be – to go and
watch it instanter – which you
definitely should – but also because among the many, many interesting things Cupitt
says, he said one thing which particularly stuck in my mind.
It comes at
the beginning of the last episode, before he gets going on Nietzsche. What he
said was this: ‘It’s scarcely surprising that we’ve become an enigma to ourselves.
We’re products of the modern age and yet we’re ill at ease in it.’[2]
The reason for this uneasiness, this sense of not-quite-belonging, comes down,
I think, to what I was thumping on about last week: myths and stories;
especially, the ones we tell ourselves about who we are and who we’re meant to
be. The trouble is, of course, that those myths and stories are much older than
the world we actually live in.
Some of the
stories have been updated. Consider, for example, that which passes for
philosophy in the world of Sci-Fi/Fantasy Cos Play: viz. Post-and/or
Transhumanism. Yes, of course it’s a serious philosophical enquiry. No, it’s
not just a chance to brush the Dorito crumbs from your underwear, put on your
Jedi costume, and come out of your bedroom.
The fact that
the whole ‘discourse’ basically comes down to ‘Everyone who bullied me at
school is going to be soooo sorry
when I’m a giant robot with a super-hot alien girlfriend! Oh yeah! Role on
Armageddon! Ahm gonna git me a girlfriend!’ is neither here nor there.
In reality, of
course, post- and transhumanism are reformulations of the same old messianic
myths, which have been part of human consciousness and human culture since the
dawn of time. Only this time, instead of gods and heroes, technology saves the
world; usually, for some reason, either by digitising and uploading or simply
killing everyone. Very Nietzschean.
While we’re on
the subject, I have a couple of questions about posthumanist techno-fantasies:
Firstly, what
is all this technology going to run on while it’s enslaving the human race. You
may not have noticed but there seems to be a bit of a problem with earth’s
climate. If the scientists are right, the end is very much nigh: eco-Armageddon
within twenty years or so. So how are our robot rulers going to power
themselves then, with seawater?
Meanwhile,
we’ll be too busy eating each other and trying to evolve gills to worry about
the Rise of the Machines. (Cannibalism won’t be so bad; better than vegetarianism,
anyway.)
Secondly,
bearing in mind which species is actually developing this world-dominating AI,
are we really sure it’s going to be as I as all that? Have you seen Windows 10?
Thirdly, even
if the Machines do Rise, what makes everyone so sure that sheer human stupidity
won’t win out in the end? It’s got us this far, after all. And by ‘this far’ I
mean, ‘within twenty-odd years of the end of days’ obviously.
Not all the
stories have been re-written by and for people who still live with their
parents and have Star Wars posters on
their bedroom walls, however. Some stories, which we allow to shape our lives
and the lives of others, are as they have always been. As such, they’re often simply
incompatible with the world we live in. Old, old stories; and yet we will not
let them go.
Consider how
tribal we still are. It comes in all sorts of flavours: sports teams; religion;
rabid nationalism is very popular just now. It always amounts to the same thing:
we’re ‘us’ and you’re ‘them’ and that’s plain wrong, pard’ner (noisily spits tobacco juice into a spittoon).
It’s not hard
to imagine why fear of strangers made sense once upon a time, but nowadays?
Hardly. The world is far too small. We know more about other cultures and other
countries than ever before. Many of us have friends and family in those other
cultures and countries. Thanks to modern (non-murderous) technology, we can
communicate with people on the other side of the world (and call them ‘Nazis,’
if needs be) as easily as we can phone our mothers who live just down the road.
We can do that. If we remember.
The world is smaller
than ever before and it is more obvious than ever before that, no matter where
you go or what you do, with whom you do it, how often, and how vigorously, people
are basically the same everywhere.
That’s because
we all become people in the same way: we’re nurtured into it by those who have
and hold us. Taught to speak, taught to think, taught to like and, sadly, to
hate. Others invest themselves in us in order that we might learn how to be a
self, to other some other. What’s more, similarity contributes little or
nothing to the psychodynamic development of ‘personhood’. We’re not just
mythopoeic, we’re dialectical, we need difference to shape us: difference is
essential. Simply put, we learn nothing about ourselves or anything else when
we agree; it’s only when we disagree that we have to start thinking. That’s why
Feuerbach saw the realisation, better still, enactment of divinity in co-operation and, more especially, our
attempts to understand ourselves and our world. The sciences, in particular,
strive for omniscience and omnipresence, counting ‘the stars in the sky, the
ova in the spawn of fish and butterflies, and the colour spots on the wings of
insects.’
I’ve said it
before and I’ll say it again (and again and again): while one person trains
their telescope on Venus or Mars, someone somewhere is looking at Uranus.[3]
You’re
welcome.
Given all that,
modern tribalism, in all its delightfully bigoted forms, makes no sense. Worse,
it actually hinders our development.
That’s not to
say it’s wrong or foolish to want to belong to a particular group. But the
identity-constructs that often go with that sense of belonging do have a
tendency to become rather monolithic. They need destabilising occasionally,
because we need to be reminded that our way isn’t the ‘right’ way just because
it is our way. We need to be reminded
that we all have multiple identities, multiple roles we play depending on the
social contexts in which we find ourselves.
To be clear:
it’s not normal to be whoever you
are; it’s fine, but it’s not normal.
This is because normal is an
evaluation – as opposed to the matter of fact that some folks imagine. As such,
it tends to rule anyone else, anyone who sees things or does things differently,
as abnormal, i.e. wrong. Myths about normality, about sex
and gender, about ability and disability, nationality and ethnicity; all of
which can, of course, apply to the same person in different ways at different times.
That we feel
unease at the incompatibility between such myths and the world we live in is
really no bad thing. Certainty is the deathbed of creativity; uncertainty and
unease, along with the insecurity that come with them, is fertile ground for
myths and stories. That’s where old stories are renewed, so they can blossom
forth again, and the green shoots of new ones begin to grow and do likewise. A
garden, if I may mix a metaphor, built over forty thousand fathoms of doubt.
Always assuming,
that is, we survive the coming of Ragnarok and the cannibal holocaust that
follows. Or maybe not; even cannibals need myths.
[1] Of course it was pragmatic! Don’t be
ridiculous, what else could it have been?
[2] BBC
(1984). Sea of Faith. [video], 1:40-6. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/y4c2gyou [Accessed
17 Aug. 2019].
[3] Principles of the Philosophy of the Future,
17.
No comments:
Post a Comment