At the Crossroads

If people want to survive, they will need an essentially new mode of thinking. Albert Einstein Every successive generation believes it lives at a turning point in history. How bad things are now! In the old days, nature was richer, people were better, girls were lovelier, and rain was wetter… Yet it may be that the generations alive today have stronger grounds for such judgments than any that came before. One way or another, we face a profound transformation of our way of life. Let us consider a single example. In 1960 the journal Science published an article by the distinguished cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster entitled “Doomsday: Friday, November 13, 2026.” Had humanity continued to grow at the same (accelerating!) rate as it did up to 1958, the world’s population would have reached infinity on that date. It is obvious that a demographic catastrophe driven by resource scarcity would have occurred well before that day arrived. Since then, the headlong growth of humanity has slowed. The driver of the vehicle in which we are all riding has lifted his foot from the accelerator and pressed the brake, yet we still have a considerable braking distance to cover before we come to a full stop. Even so, humanity has already become a titanic excrescence upon the Earth’s biosphere. For every group of animals—in particular for our own class, the mammals—one can construct a curve expressing the dependence of total biomass on the body mass of an individual. The pattern is clear: the larger the animals, the lower their maximum possible aggregate biomass. All mammals conform to this relationship with only minor deviations. The sole exception is humanity and its domestic livestock, whose numbers exceed the norm by five orders of magnitude. Alarmist “ecologists”¹ anticipate innumerable catastrophes that must befall an imprudent humanity. Technocratic optimists place their hopes in technological progress, which, they believe, will ensure the survival of our species through any upheaval. Their debates unfold against a backdrop of global changes whose causes we do not understand² and whose dynamics we cannot predict. Are the last days of our species approaching? The brilliant evolutionary thinker and theologian of the twentieth century Pierre Teilhard de Chardin held that the eternal continuation of humanity is a necessary condition of our normal existence. What is the point of living if our efforts are in vain? It seems to me that much has changed since the 1930s, when Teilhard pressed this argument. The experience of the Second World War demonstrated that events worse than death itself are possible. The annihilation of entire peoples by someone’s malicious will, and the destruction of vast regions by the faceless cruelty of nature, have become part of humanity’s collective experience. I venture to suggest that even the finitude of our species’ existence does not render our lives meaningless. To reinforce this thought, I would add one more definition of our form of life to the long series that has preceded it: “The human being is a creature that partially comprehends its present and does not know its future.” We may be firmly convinced of our own mortality without knowing when or how that event will come to pass. The choice available to most of us is limited: a dull fading away under an IV drip on a hospital bed, or a few brief moments of fear and pain. This does not prevent us from living and hoping for something better. Surely no small number of people are able to depart knowing they have not lived in vain. I believe that the possible death of humanity likewise does not negate the meaning of our existence. Moreover, while we can be certain of an unambiguous outcome for ourselves as individuals, humanity may either perish or survive! One thing is clear: humanity will endure only if human beings become different. Different in what way? That question could be answered only by one who knows his future with certainty. We can only surmise which dimensions of our nature such a transformation might touch. Contemporary social consciousness is grounded in the accumulated experience of humanity. Those forms of behaviour that once ensured the success of small, isolated groups—collective egoism, xenophobia, confrontation with a hostile environment—are becoming inadequate for a globalised humanity. Our survival requires a comprehensive restructuring of social consciousness linked to a transformation of our relationship with our habitat. We will have to rid ourselves of many widely prevalent myths: both explicit and implicit assumptions that shape our perception of reality and our relationship with it. Freeing oneself from implicitly absorbed myths is arduous and painful work. It seems that Friedrich Nietzsche was the first to consciously recognise the existence of implicit assumptions that determine our relationship to reality. His attempt to free himself from them drove him to madness. Our task is somewhat easier, though it still demands courage of spirit. It is far simpler to retreat into some ideological refuge—to embrace a system of views that unambiguously describes our future and prescribes what must be done to attain it. About fifteen years ago I spent some time in a settlement of Baloch people (one of the peoples of the Persian language group) in southern Turkmenistan. It is a region of intensive cotton cultivation. A horrifying quantity of pesticides is used in the growing of cotton. To apply them observing proper safety precautions (in a protective suit and gas mask) in the Turkmen heat would mean certain death from heatstroke. People work with them without any protection, trusting to luck. Half the children playing in the street bear stigmata—visible manifestations of abnormal development. When I told the father of one such child—an intelligent and estimable man—that in my opinion the cause of the abnormalities was pesticide exposure, he laughed at me. As everyone well knows, the problem is that children may only be conceived on the night between Thursday and Friday, and at the moment of greatest intensity one must say the word “bismillah.” Many people (including himself) violate this rule, and that is the one and only cause of all the problems. Do you seriously think that our own way of thinking is much freer than that of this Baloch man? Despite the fact that an ideological refuge softens fear of the future, let us step out of it and compile at least an incomplete list of the myths we will need to discard. They are: — the myth of the human being as the crown of creation and master of nature; — the myth that there exists an authority (a political leader, a superior, God, a prophet, a genius, a father, a Big Brother, and so on) who can prescribe the correct course of action; — the myth that earthly life is not something of inherent value in itself but merely a trial of those qualities that will determine one’s true, posthumous existence (in paradise or in hell, for example); — the myth that an “ordinary person” need not trouble himself with global problems, since resolving them is the task of scientists who will “think of something;” — the myth of the omnipotence or superhuman value of science as one of our means of engaging with reality; — the myth that the social nature of the human being has freed him from innate biological properties; — the myth that the innate biological properties of the human being can be evaluated as “good” or “bad” (for example, that the human being is by nature selfish and therefore bad); — the myth that the species surrounding us can be divided into “useful” and “harmful;” — the myth that all properties of an organism are contained within its genotype (and that the value of an organism is exhausted by the characteristics of that genotype), a view characteristic of a vulgarised understanding of modern science; — the myth of woman as a category of human being destined for reproduction (characteristic of crudely patriarchal societies); — the myth of woman as a being who should follow fashion, dazzle with beauty, lead a social life, and not be excessively intelligent (characteristic of the consumer society); — the myth of patriotism as loyalty to a single country that is better than all others; — the myth of the army as a “school of courage” and militarism as the supreme expression of masculine virtues; — the myth that everything, including human sacrifice, can be objectively assessed and compared; — the myth of the existence of particular national interests and of nations as entities worthy of sacrifice; — the myth of statehood and the intrinsic value of the state (as something exceeding in at least some respect the value of its individual citizens); — the myth of the superior morality or value of the traditional, patriarchal way of life and its suitability for the present stage of human development; — the myth that ancestral experience, common sense, folk signs, and the structure of values formed in one era can be applicable under conditions of ecological crisis; — the myth that the happiness and value of an individual person’s life increase with his level of consumption or wealth; — the myth that a self-respecting person must conform to the standards of consumption proposed by the modern advertising industry; — the myth of the existence of “objective” assessments, more reliable than the “subjective” assessments of individual persons; — the myth of the existence of “objective reality” as a material plane whose existence is in no way connected with our own existence and our interaction with it; — many other myths, as yet implicit. Will those who read this list agree with me? Most likely not. Some will supplement it with a proposition I have omitted. Many will condemn me for failing to understand something of supreme importance, or even for attempting an act of ideological subversion… Only one course remains to us: to wait until the future passes judgement—that very future which is not given to the human being to know. ¹ The discerning reader will understand that the word “ecology” refers to the biological science of interactions, and not at all to nature conservation. Back to text ² Do you think that, for example, the Kyoto Protocol is based on the scientifically proven influence of carbon dioxide emissions on the process of global warming? Not at all! The opposing view (that the rise in CO₂ concentration is a consequence rather than a cause of warming) has an equally robust evidential basis. Back to text D. Shabanov. At the Crossroads // Computerra: Povolzhye. — Computerra, Moscow, 2006. – No. 20 (640). — P. XII–XIII