From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: sideways - incapacity
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 22:33:47 -0600


Steve, 

If humans really only have drives and instincts, then what hope is there
of any alternative to this manic consumption before hummers overrun the
world.  I personally think it is more complicated than you propose. It
isn't just a choice of supernatural human versus nature with no
in-between.  I am coming from the same Darwinian perspective as you, but
I think there are enough shades of gray here that honest minds can
disagree. 

For one think, I have a have time agreeing that we must base our values
simply upon what is natural and not upon what he judge to be just. The
ants may be very resilient in the type of society they have
institutionalized, but that doesn't necessarily mean humans should be
required to imitate them?  I believe that forms of rationality and
malleable learned behavior have emerged within humans and have become
significant factors in who we are and what we may become. I don't think
that makes us totally unique and separate from nature, but I think there
are still significant differences.  

Rilke wasn't a philosopher, but he did a good job of interpreting this
in-betweenness of our situation in a non-theistic way. Not angels, Not
gnats.  
Although we can't step inside another animal's skin, it does seem like
the very consciousness we have of our impending death serves to distance
us from nature. 

It interests me that even though Epicurus was a materialist and atomist
philosopher, strictly speaking, he wasn't an atheist. For the pagan
Greeks, the gods were organisms who resided within nature, not outside
it.  They differed from human insofar as they were immortal and
blissful. They thus served for humans as both a model and image of a
higher state of more intense life.

What also impresses me about Epicurus is that he already saw the way
that leads out of our current trap of overconsumption. The path lay in
becoming more like the gods, and living lives that are more blissful.
This would be a welcome compensation for having less things.  Woman
doesn't live from a hummer alone, In fact, she lives more intensely
without one. 

If you believe that what I am talking about here is merely false
consciousness, then how do you think it emerged out of nature via the
processes of natural selection?  Even though we may not be believers,
isn't the whole panoply of such experiences something that must be
explained?

eric