Some Thoughts on Our Human Problem
After five thousand years of experience - of creativity, learning, suffering, discovery - we can still make excuses for having a large Army invade another land and subjugate another people and kill "enemies"; still make excuses for killing thousands upon thousands of people by dropping bombs on them; and still condone the dishonorable shackling of people and their incarceration - and even their torture. After five thousand years of insights being available to us - from Loa Tzu, the Buddha, the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, to the images of our planet Earth from Space - we can still be indifferent to such things, to the suffering of our fellow human beings, and especially to our own failings, which we often strive to hide through hypocrisy and arrogance.
How much time do we, as a species, need to become rational, honourable, empathic - truly civilized - human beings? Another five thousand years? Ten thousand? Thirty thousand? Perhaps. But will we, by then, have destroyed the fragile connexions of Nature which brought life to this planet and which sustain our life? Possibly. And how many more millions of human beings will suffer and die in humiliation and agony before then?
Why cannot we learn, as I myself have learnt, albeit my learning was achieved painfully slowly with many returns to causing suffering in others? In the West, we seem to be proud of our system of so-called "education" which has been with us for some hundred years. But has this brought enlightenment, understanding and the beginnings of wisdom to most? Has it bred honourable character? In the majority of instances, no. In the West, we seem mighty proud of ourselves and our "system" - so proud in fact that we strive to export it by force of arms, or by of force of money and bribery, to other lands, always forgetting, it seems, the poverty, the injustice, the degradation, the addiction, the inequality, the dishonourable violence, the prejudice, that still exists in almost every Western land, and especially in those who bleat so loudly about their own achievements and values.
Perhaps it will always be like this - people striving, as I myself have strived, toward wisdom, and in the process inflicting suffering on others. But it seems to me - these last few years and especially these last few months - that there is a way out of this. This way involves three simple things.
The first is to understand that good is simply the alleviation of suffering by means which do not cause any more suffering - that is, it is simply striving not to do any harm: striving not to harm any living being, human, animal or otherwise. This involves us in developing empathy, and compassion - it involves us in feeling, understanding and appreciating how all life is connected. It involves us in having the new perspective of the Cosmos as our guide - but not in any mystical way. Rather, in the rational way which arises when we feel and know how we have evolved from primitive life; how we exist on one planet circling one star among billions of stars in one Galaxy which itself is only one Galaxy among billions in the Cosmos. In brief, it involves is in growing-up - ceasing to be children who are enwrapped in themselves and their desires but who instead by becoming aware of the wider world, the wider Cosmos beyond, develope that perspective, that respect, which is part of maturity. The human failing now, as in the past, is to posit some abstract "good" the striving for which almost always involves inflicting suffering, harm or death upon others. That is, in the pursuit of this abstract "good" we have condoned, even encouraged, more suffering. But the empathic reality is that whatever causes suffering is wrong - that causing more suffering cannot ever be justified.
The second simple thing - in many ways deriving from the first - is for us to abandon the methodology of abstraction, and in the most important practical sense this means abandoning the artificial divisions we have created in the world through such artificial ideas as "politics" and "nation" and "government". That is, we must move toward the true sovereignty of the individual, and abolish large, abstract, structures, like nations, and the governments, and elites of privilege which, in theory at least, "govern" such abstract entities. We must move toward a new way of life which is more human - and this, as it always does and has done, means and implies a small-ness. It means small communities. It means a living in harmony with Nature and other human beings. It means a more simple, manual, way of life. We should do this, even though it will involve us restraining our desire for material comfort and material goods and material wealth. That is, we must use our will, our reason, our judgement, to behave, to live, in a more human way because we accept that this is the human thing, the civilized thing to do. This itself involves us in evolving toward the next level - that is, it involves us in consciously changing ourselves, and developing, and living by, empathy. We can indeed do this - but whether we will do this is quite another matter.
The third simple thing we can do is strive to be honourable, and understand that honour means not only that we are responsible for ourselves but also requires empathy and indeed compassion. For honour is founded on the two other simple things, mentioned above. Honour implies real freedom, and real justice - the so-called "freedom" and so-called "justice" that nations and governments and tyrants bleat about and have bleated about for hundreds of years are, in reality, the oppression, the humiliation, the subjugation, of the individual to some abstract idea, or law, or tyrant or elite, and the "freedom" and the "law" which such systems and tyrants, and elites, create is always based upon some generalized - and inhuman - restriction, always involves a punitive notion of "punishment", and always involves some "appointed authority" having a bullying, dishonourable power over individuals.
Such, in brief, is my learning, born from my experiences, from the suffering I have caused, in others, and the suffering I have encountered and sometimes endured. Am I optimistic about us changing ourselves? Not as optimistic as I was. Will - can - words such as this change anything?
There is then that sigh of knowing
How not to know
DW Myatt