Mr. E Poet has done me a grave injustice, positing a question near and dear to my heart and then failing to have me note it until I was ready to depart on the little adventure mentioned the other day. I am not one prone to immediate reaction or quick reply; however, in this case I have many, many years of rumination to fall back upon.
Is the world worth saving? Are the people of the world worth saving?
I am a strong believer in the interconnectedness of things, both in physical terms and in the more metaphysical sense. I view mankind as a whole, even though I must perforce deal with individuals at every turn, and as such I feel there is something worthwhile in the species. The climb up from ignorance and savagery has been breathtaking to behold and I have noted before that I see such things as more than a manifestation of the genetic imperative. I strongly believe there is a destiny that awaits mankind should the race survive to attain it.
Beyond that simple statement, the issue becomes rather more complex. The realities of the calculus of human interaction are brutally direct: some prosper, others do not. This is true of what I like to refer to as social processes of evolution as well: some societies prosper and others do not. Some societies are sick and they evince symptoms of that sickness in various ways. Corollary to that, and in concert with Mr. E’s commentary, healthy societies carry symptoms of sickness and sick societies show signs of health. Nobody has yet defined a Law of Nature whereby determining one from the other is required to be simple and straightforward. Such realities are grist for those who work the mill of “the world is going to hell” with such gusto.
I make my judgments based on samples, both of those I meet daily and those I encounter through their on-line personalities. I troll nightclubs and libraries for more than sex and good reading. I have no burning need for classes in symbolic logic or “Physics for Poets”, nor am I driven to sweat away at exercise clubs for my health, rather I make these efforts as a means to understanding. I go to yard sales, AA meetings, poetry readings, rock concerts, churches, grocery stores, shopping malls… in short, any place where people do the things that make up daily life. When taken by the notion to feel the pulse of society I wallow in those places people frequent rather than looking exclusively to news and journals and commentaries. I ask no pointed questions, take no surveys, and offer no carefully provocative opinions. I merely listen, remember, and ponder.
What do I take from all of this? Simply that to ask if the world is worth saving is the wrong question. The world will go forward regardless. Society will evolve in to what it will, directed by the ebb and flow of its peoples and their own sense of culture. If one is moved to ?save the world’ one should do what comes naturally. Some are driven to take an active role in those endeavours they feel best suited to making the world around them a better place to live in, be it a cleaner world, a safer world or a world of greater wealth and plenty. Others are motivated to turn those energies inward, concentrating on family and locale. Saving the world can be as simple as raising your children to be critical thinkers who are aware of their own connection to those about them.
What will be saved? Humanity is moving towards something. That this something is difficult to define is immaterial as the process moves forward apace regardless. It is simplistic to see segments of the world’s populace in desperation and proclaim human society a failure: evolution of societies, just like evolution of species, often leaves wreckage in its path. To witness such and be moved to ameliorate suffering is noble. To witness such and proclaim humanity a failure is foolish. To witness such and demand that successful societies be reduced to penury in an attempt to enforce some ephemeral form of equality of outcome is worse than foolish, it is criminal. It is treason against the species.
This history of human evolution is littered with the remnants of failed experiments. The predecessors to Cro-Magnon man did not settle in to sleep one night and awake upon the morn a new species. The evolved, improved Man slowly drove out and destroyed the creature that had come before and Mother Nature, were it such a cohesive entity, shed not a tear in the passing. Throughout history the societies created by Man have each preyed upon the weaker, less dynamic structures that predated them. The United States of America is an indisputable example of just such a phenomenon- a society seemingly designed to draw in the best, brightest, most driven and adventurous souls from the world over and forge them in to a somewhat unified entity that has grown in a virtual eye-blink in to the most materially, militarily and culturally powerful nation on Earth. If this sounds like cheerleading for the American experiment, well, to a degree it is, but I am uniquely disposed towards understanding that what exists today is in itself temporary- something will evolve out of the United States of America, or it will be supplanted by a more dynamic, more efficient, more driven society in the future.
In the science of Humanity little, if anything, is permanent.
Save the world by living in it and doing what you feel driven to do. Save the world by raising your children to be thinking, critical beings. Save the world by drawing bright lines to proscribe what is tolerable and what is not, and enforce them. Save the world by never losing hope, by refusing to surrender to those forces that whisper defeat and despair. Beyond that, the world and the people in it will carry on without you, perhaps even despite you, moving along paths determined by forces we can only dimly perceive and merely pretend to understand.
One final warning: beware those who purport to have all of this figured out, for they are lying, or deluded, or both.
Posted on July 19th, 2004
Filed under: Philosophy | 4 Comments »