Mythology and Human Equality
I like to describe myself as suffering from serious internal conflicts (not always with that exact phrase). Not that insightful of an observation, really. Just a starting point. I’m sure everybody wants contradictory things, though we all deal with our personal paradoxes differently. Some people don’t acknowledge them. Some people don’t sweat them.
The one that probably vexes me the most, even more than the good vs. selfish one, is that of “reality” versus “mythology”, the latter of which sometimes I’ll disparagingly refer to as “fantasy”.
Mythology is like religion, only more general. It’s like philosophical cosmology, only less pretentious. It’s a belief system, only less doctrinaire and more emotional. It’s the powers we believe run the universe, whether they be gods, humans, forces of nature, or what-have-you. Everyone has a mythology. Not everyone can elucidate theirs.
There’s no doubt that the universe contains powers, but the real question is whether they are cogent, let alone coherent. Can we communicate with them? Do we have any input into the powers which control our lives? Or are we solely and ultimately victims of unseen, insensate, mindless forces?
Similarly, what power do we have over our own lives? In other words, how do we as individuals rank amidst the powers which affect our lives?
Powerlessness, or more accurately, the perception of it, is a primary cause of despair and depression, or at least apathy. For there is always escape.
I’m tired of escape, but I haven’t yet determined my own ability to affect the outcome of my own life. Or at least, the extent of that power. Clearly I can form relationships with other human beings, and nurture or damage those relationships. I can learn, work, create, and interact. How much of our lives depends upon our interactions with other people? And which people? Are people the only powers with whom we can commune?
I’m personally frustrated by all the people who, while rejecting established religions or explicit belief in supernatural powers, nevertheless invest functionally equivalent power in abstractions, like “love”, “family”, “money”, “socialism”, “science”, “progress” or other belief systems which supposedly will appease some spirits or gods, which will inspire those nameless entities to reward them with health, wealth and happiness.
All I can claim to have at my disposal is honesty. I don’t even believe in truth any longer, except as a measure of the reliability of facts. Honesty is to admit what you know or don’t know. Honesty is to acknowledge the difference between internal and external facts, or between sensation and emotion. Honesty is to put everything to the test. Honesty is to subscribe to the doctrine of disprovability. This is not science, but it is a fundamental aspect of the scientific method. (Science is much, much more than the process of learning new knowledge.)
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My experience is that the world hates honesty. I have learned that there is a distinct difference between being honest with others, and being honest with oneself, and that most people don’t want anything to do with either. I can’t abide those people, and they, without exception, cannot abide me. I have had to give myself some credit, and that’s not something I’m known for doing: honesty takes courage. What I have also had to do is face the fact that most people are not courageous. They lack a true belief in their own value, because they lack a true belief in the value of human beings as individuals, regardless of origins.
Belief in equality is paid lip service by many, but is truly subscribed to by very few. But in a world where race and sex and other overt differences are incrementally less likely to be accepted as measures of individual value, those who were formerly able to find confidence in a birthright which confirmed their value (relative to others) don’t have that benefit any longer, and have to invent more convoluted and bizarre means by which to convince themselves that they are important. Because the truth is that while we might all have equal value in some sense, we do not all have equal share of what the world offers. Moreover, we don’t want equal share. We want more than our share. And we will do virtually anything, or go to virtually any extreme of rationalization, to ensure we feel that we deserve more than our share. Because, objectively speaking, we don’t deserve more than our share. No one deserves anything. We get what we get. And to some extent, we defy belief in equality by accepting the state of inequality in which we find ourselves.
So we invent mythologies to justify these inequalities, and, invariable, these mythologies are simply covers for our willingness to accept that wealth is a form of power, and power is effected through violence, or its threat, and thus the ancient philosophy of “might is right” persists, except when we are willing to act in what we fool ourselves is generosity, to give back a little of what, theoretically, we believe belongs to those with less in the first place. This is not generosity. This is placation.
If you are reading this, you have more than you ever deserved to have. Because no one deserves anything, unless you say they do. You decide what you and everyone else deserves in relation to only one thing: how much you already have. Because the only way you can effect the principle of equality is by giving away what you have until you only have a fair share.
And that doesn’t look to be happening any time soon. Because no one wants to do it, and there are just too many ways to justify not doing it.
But I would like it if people would just be honest with themselves, and one another, for a change.
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What I’d like. Well, that’s just fine, isn’t it? But what do I want?
As I said, I’m contradictory. I don’t actually want a lot, at least, not desperately. In some ways, I already have what I want. I am not that interested in ownership. I’m more interested in stewardship.
Ownership is just the simplest kind of stewardship: you (ideally) take care of what you own. Except, people often don’t. Many people don’t even take care of themselves, let alone the things which have been entrusted to them. They are too busy trying to acquire new things, or, more to the point (and implicitly), chasing some elusive means to make sure that they are having the right feelings. That is, that they are in the emotional state in which they want to be in. In that way, I’m no exception. I simply don’t subscribe to the popular theory that owning things is the best way to make myself feel good. (Well, outside of basic food, shelter and clothing requirements. Sanitation is nice, too. And I like my computer, but it doesn’t make me happy. It has a utility function: to keep me distracted when I’m frustrated with trying to make sense out of my existence. Distraction is most assuredly not happiness. In a sense, it is not anything.) Things are just another mythology meant to help people feel important, in a world where there is not enough to go around, or at least we like to pretend that’s the case. Most scarcity is synthetic.
What I want, then, is for people to give up on the self-deception which necessitates the persistence of synthetic scarcity. I want them to accept that they are all equal, and that it is not necessary to subscribe to imaginary mythologies of inequality in order to justify their desires to have things. But I just said that they want things in order to justify their desire to feel important.
There’s a chicken-and-egg problem, perhaps. The obvious beginning of social competition is sex. But since most of humanity is monogamous, and since most people are more satisfied with a partner with whom they have simpatico (as opposed to someone whom society has artificially labelled more desirable on some arbitrary scale of value), I think that excuse has, to some extent, died out. But then, there are significant differences between sex and marriage, between marriage and a relationship, and between a relationship and procreation, and between procreation and sex.
In any case, the end result is that people are consumption mad, and are having too many babies, and something I consider of infinite value is, as a result, in jeopardy: the natural world apart from human beings. Human beings, as the man said, are like a virus, consuming everything. You are helping. I am helping. We’re a blight. All of us.
I’m not arguing for the extermination of human beings. But I think it’s time we left the natural world alone. Unfortunately, this is not possible for most of the world, probably upwards of ninety percent of us. I don’t rely directly on the natural world, that is, I don’t have to hunt or fish or even depend on people to hunt or fish. I drink artificially processed water and eat food grown on farms or in greenhouses and often assembled into meals in factories. I live inside a machine called a modern city. It could almost as well be floating in orbit as resting on the shore of Lake Ontario. However, I still need gravity, the light from the sun, and the jungles and forests to generate clean, oxygenated air. Gravity and the Sun aren’t at risk, but the forests are. It would be very expensive to have to generate fresh air artificially.
The biosphere is in trouble. Not just from global warming. Biodiversity is a real and pressing issue. But who is interested? People just seem to think that the scientists will solve everything. Well, people are unbelievably stupid. If the Earth’s plant biomass falls before a certain critical value, the air will not be properly recycled. The water will not be properly recycled. Entire ecosystems will break down. It’s not a joke. It’s not Chicken Little. Deforestation is a major issue. But it’s not trees. It’s forests.
So I want people to stop destroying the natural environment, because it’s indirect suicide. Maybe not for individuals, but for the human race. And I don’t want the human race to die out.