Guest Post: The Human Predicament
Anticipating the final days of 2017, and the beginning of the New Year of 2018 do we not all probe the future with our awareness? We hope, and some pray for conditions of health, well-being, and comity between family members, friends, and indeed the nations of the world. In 1970 I performatively enacted this human tendency. I joined with friends to throw a ten yen piece into the collection bin at the Meji Shrine in Tokyo at 12 midnight on New Years eve.
Given this natural inclination to hope for the best –it is well to keep in mind the reality, the facts of the human prospect. Here is a elegantly composed description of our common condition as human beings. I share it with the sober hope that we will work to forge lasting, productive relationships with one another in 2018.
Ever since I wrote my story last year about two friends strolling down a country lane where both parties have the inability to see what the other sees, I’ve been attempting to make the point that all of us interpret reality from our own subjective vantage point. My sense is that some people might agree with the overall concept of millions of divergent opinions yet the caveat is that their point of view is the correct one while all the rest of us are delusional in our thought processes. Here’s the thing; we ALL view the world from the dark recesses of our minds relying on our senses to send us information. We take the information received by our brains and each person interprets the input from a subjective standpoint. The information passes through filters based on genetics, our environments, our past experiences, disease, stress and on and on. So there is no correct correlated answer.
Genetically we humans are a product of our environment. We are critters, first and foremost. Our prime directive is to survive and procreate as is the case for almost all living creatures. Yet we are unique in that we have morphed those prime directives into something else, something called self-awareness and curiosity. This metamorphosis has led to astounding achievements and unfathomable depths of depravity. We can see into the distant universe and we can boil each other in oil. We can compose symphonic masterpieces while committing genocide on millions of people. We can explore subatomic particles and destroy our own planet at the same time.
I do not short-change our species because we do a terrific job of that without my input. We have amazing intelligence and astounding stupidity held within the palm of a single hand. And when one views the world in black & white, as if everything is either right or wrong and that any one person or group of people has the correct answer, then that is short-changing our possible future. And I use the word “possible” because I believe we have only a very slight chance of surviving our self-induced bottleneck of ignorance.
So as to the old conundrum of does the tree falling in the forest make a sound if no one is nearby to hear it: The answer is no, it won’t make a sound because no one will be around to hear the crash since we will be extinct.
Thems my two-cents.
Tobin
