Note by JR Wright: The following item is taken from a handwritten letter written by Myatt and addressed to me. It was dated June, Nearing the Solstice.


A Retrospective Part One:
Beyond God, Toward Empathy

Toward the Cosmos...

It seems a long time since we last met, although sitting here, on a hill overlooking beautiful English countryside,  on a cloudy Summer's day recollecting the past three decades places that year perhaps in its correct perspective.

Externally, in the year since our last meeting, a lot has changed in my life... Internally, even more has changed, mostly through thinking deeply about the genesis of suffering. Yet my essay The Origin of the Good seems now such a feeble attempt to explain what I believe I have understood, especially about suffering and empathy.

Is this review of mine too little, too late? Perhaps only a piece of music by Bach - the opening of the St. John Passion, perhaps? - can express the ineffable sadness I feel. Was it always like this? So little learnt from so much suffering? Will it always be like this, for we human beings?

Years ago, of course, in those Daedelus days of youthful impetuous arrogance that in my case lasted well into my fourth decade of life, I really did believe that such things as Art, Music, Literature, Natural Philosophy, can if not save us from ourselves at least aid us, upward toward a better understanding. And now? Now I must admit I am not so sure. Five thousand years of such things: and have we, as a species, changed? Have we really understood? And if so, have we acted on the understanding?

In my own case, the answer is mostly no. I did understand, many times, as I did, many times, seek to act upon that understanding. But always, always, I slipped back, downward: down toward causing suffering in others. It was so easy to forget; there were so many distractions. And, yes, this happened despite all my good intentions and all my rhetoric about using one's will.
 

What is it that I have learnt, discovered? Simple truths about reason, compassion, love, Nature and honour. About the origin of suffering and the need to alleviate suffering. And about how - in our very being - we still seem to need, still yearn for, God, some religion, while yet needing - if we are truely to evolve - to go beyond such apprehension and the ethics deriving from those things.

The truth is that God, that religion, fills a need we have, especially in times of suffering and of remorse. But if I have learnt anything these thirty years past it is that we should look to Reason instead, understanding the effects of our thoughts, our words, our deeds not in terms of some theology or by reference to a revealed ethics or God, but rather in terms of understanding how all life, on this planet and elsewhere, is all related. That is, to have a cosmic perspective: the perspective of Unity, of the connectedness of all existence but without ascribing to ourselves, as either individuals or a species, any special 'Destiny', or any 'revelation' from some supra-human being or deity.

Thus it is that I believe we should strive to judge every 'thing' by whether or not that 'thing' causes or can cause suffering, and by whether or not that 'thing' can alleviate suffering without causing more suffering. This means a compassion, a love, a striving to do good, an avoidance of what is wrong, harmful, to us and other life, but devoid of the concepts of 'sin', of 'rebirth', and of an afterlife earned through our good deeds. It means an empathy with all living things; a new cosmic perspective. It means the new Cosmic Ethics which I have often written about these past two years. It means a new way of life derived from these new ethics, from the empathy of the connectiveness of all life, all existence, and a turning-away from the ways, the paths, the religions, of the past: moving-on from Buddhism, from Taoism, from Islam, from Christianity, and modern materialism. On toward the numen of the Cosmos where we view all life, however small, as connected and feel in our very being an empathy with this life, using reason and a non-interventionist science to strive to understand this life, the world, the cosmos, and having always before us some simple rules, based upon honour, to guide us in our daily lives.
 

Can we human beings do this? I know I have found it very difficult, and find it especially difficult now, bearing in mind recent personal events. But I feel I must continue to try to resist what I understand are the ethics of the past and actually strive to live what I know, what I understand.

It just is easier, especially in times of grief, sadness, suffering, distress and remorse, to believe in God: to hope for salvation, to hope for redemption, to hope for forgiveness, to accept that there is a God-given way or path which we can follow. In such times, we - as I myself have, many times - yearn to have the responsibility, the chooices, taken from us. To rely on God is easy.

But this seems to me now really an abrogation of our own responsibility, as human beings. We need to learn to accept our nature, and strive to centre ourselves, moving away from the darkness of our savage animal past toward the light of the cosmos of which we are but a tiny part.

How can we do this? How can we move, upward, toward what may well be the next stage of our evolution, as beings? I believe only by accepting the cosmic perspective: by leaving behind the ethics of the past; by accepting that we are only fully human when we use reason and reason alone to judge things; when we feel an empathy with other life, with Nature, with the cosmos itself.
 

Many difficult questions remain, such as how to deal with those who actively do harm, who lack honour and empathy; how to make such a cosmic perspective the basis for a new way of living, a new society, and how to express, and keep alive, in such a new way of living - and in an honourable, empathic way - that wonderful diversity of human life, manifest in race and culture? And my essay Cosmic Ethics in Context is only a beginning, a mere sketch, and will most probably need some, or a lot of, revision.

But here ends the first part of this review. For it is raining now.....


Retrospective, Part 2
D. W. Myatt