Humanity not just one organism among many

How to resolve the dramatic challenge facing humanity in global warming and climate change? Control the population? Punish polluters? Return to nature? Explore outer space as a step to abandon Earth?

As we saw in my previous post, Pope Francis lays out a plan for action in his letter to all people of goodwill, Laudate Deum, prepared as a motivational resource for participants in the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) at the end of next month.

As we approach this conference it becomes obvious some perspectives on humanity's relationship with Nature miss the mark.

One such is that of  scientific researcher Neil Theise, whose new book presents a theory of complexity that comes down to a Buddhism-inspired pantheism. He also states his ideas clearly here:

So we don’t live in the universe. The universe isn’t an empty box; it’s not a place in which we reside. We are, in fact, the universe: emanating from its substance, within itself.

...because everything is just you. We’re nothing but walking and talking Earth.

Such a thesis is a materialist's attempt to wrap the order and beauty of creation in a thin garment woven from a Buddhist spirituality. But why is the nature of things such that he feels compelled to argue for the inherent compassion of a self-organising universe? In particular, why is the universe self-organising and not utter chaos? Why does the complex entity of the universe seem to display a self-healing compassion rather than a complexity that is totally red in tooth and claw? 

Theise is pursuing in another form the line taken by stalwarts of the Gaia era of late last century who presented the entire planet as more than a symbiotic system, as one behaving as a unified organism.

But from a Catholic perspective, he is singing "Laudato si'"—"Praise be"—to the proofs for the existence of God from order and beauty, describing but failing to define the essential character of this complex system, our common home.

For sure, the relationship between human beings and nature is a close one. But humankind, in reality, has a role as the "summit of the Creator’s work".

In 2019, the Catholic Church in Singapore responded to the confusion surrounding solutions to the unravelling of the relationship between humans and nature.  

The Singaporean reflection states that is essential to distinguish between metaphysical appraches or ideologies that miss the mark and those beliefs accurately identifying humanity’s relationship to the natural world because the stance taken will affect the solutions we propose. The statement continues:

Nature (or the Universe) is not God

One popular idea is that God and Nature are one and the same: that to be “close to nature” or “in union with the cosmos” is to be holy.

But it is wrong.

St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology, differentiated between God and Nature clearly: “His response to nature was to praise its Creator and love the creatures… they are not, as is the Eucharist, identified with God himself” (Francis of Assisi: A New Biography by Fr. Augustine Thompson OP).

It is tempting to praise the Earth as “sacred”, since it nurtures our bodies and – unlike the God of Christianity – makes no uncomfortable moral demands of us. But this ideology, called pantheism, can result in a rejection of human activity and the benefits of science and technology, which include the ability to sustain far more people than if the Earth reverted to an idealised “natural state”.

Humanity is not just one organism amongst many

A secular version of pantheism is deep ecology, the idea that the natural world exists in perfect balance and that humanity has “no right” to interfere with it. We are simply one species out of millions, no more special than birds or bacteria. Deep ecologists reject the Church’s teaching that there is a hierarchy of Creation and that “Man is the summit of the Creator’s work” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 343) with stewardship over all.

Since humanity has no intrinsic right to exist, their solution to the ecological crisis is to curb the human population. Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess has proposed reducing the population to 100 million people, while militant environmentalist David Foreman has said that people in the Third World should just be left to starve to death.

The idea that some should die or be stopped from reproducing so others can maintain their standard of living barely cloaks a racist or eugenic mentality, as the peoples of the developing world – who consume the fewest resources and are most vulnerable to climate change – are most often fingered for reduction.

As Pope Francis pointed out in Laudato Si’, “To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues.” Decisions about family size must be left to married couples themselves. The implementation of coercive national strategies in this regard is a fundamental affront to human dignity. (Populorum Progressio, 37)

“Natural” is not always good; “Artificial” is not always bad

Deep ecology has led to “deep green environmentalism”, the idea that human activity is bad because it disturbs the balance of an otherwise perfectly harmonious world. Its proponents reject urbanisation, industrialisation and even agriculture, which they believe damage and exploit the Earth.

But the Catholic Church recognises that human activity is good! It is a collaboration with God in perfecting the visible Creation (Catechism, 378). Jesus himself never shunned technology. He worked with carpentry tools and sailed in boats (though he could walk on water!). He told his disciples to follow God by “keeping My word” (John 14:23), not by going back to Nature.

The Second Vatican Council reminds us that “far from thinking that works produced by man’s own talent and energy are in opposition to God’s power, and that the rational creature exists as a kind of rival to the Creator, Christians are convinced that the triumphs of the human race are a sign of God’s grace and the flowering of His own mysterious design” (Gaudium et Spes, 34).

It is morally right, then, to use our God-given abilities to develop technologies to ameliorate the effects of climate change, to curb our reliance on fossil fuels, and recycle better. This is just as we have devised technology over the centuries to feed and to heal, to build and to educate, and to enable people with disabilities to live with dignity.

Technology is not our saviour

It is tempting to hold out technological progress as a silver bullet which can save us from the effects of man-made climate change. But even though new technologies may be under development – and it will be years, if ever, before solutions can be mass-produced and rolled out on a global scale – we must consciously choose more environmentally-friendly ways of living lest we squander any benefits that new technology might bring.

And as stewards of Creation, we bear in mind that “the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure” (Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 48). Technological improvements must respect the “grammar” that God has made evident in Creation, and not treat it as an obstacle to be overcome.

The fallen state of Creation means that every possible solution comes with pros and cons. We must use our prudential judgement to evaluate the likely effects – not just on the natural environment, but on the economy and on human societies, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.

Just as Moses reminded the Israelites to “Choose life; that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19), the current ecological crisis is an invitation “to a serious review of [our] lifestyle, which, in many parts of the world, is prone to hedonism and consumerism... What is needed is an effective shift in mentality which can lead to the adoption of new lifestyles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices” (Caritas in Veritate, 51).

Solutions to the environmental crisis

Authentic solutions to the environmental crisis must proceed can only come from the correct understanding of our relationship to God, humanity, and nature. Over-spiritualising Creation can result in measures which devalue the human person and the person's integral development. On the flip side, reliance on technological solutions in place of social and ethical change is a missed opportunity for us to grow in love of neighbour and of God’s Creation.

Let's see what world leaders at COP28 come up with as a pathway toward resolution of the challenges facing our suffering planet.  Also, let's pray that ordinary people around the world will accept the need to adopt new lifestyles, and that the business giants, especially those producing fossil fuels, will rein in their impulse to secure maximum profits, and instead foster the common good of all people and planet. By applying the principle of subsidiarity, each of us can exercise stewardship of our common home in our own way, "since every family ought to realize that the future of their children is at stake". 

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

COP28 and Francis's plea for our suffering planet

Trying to make a living, Mekong Delta, Vietnam, 2023

The Vatican released the new apostolic exhortation by Pope Francis, Laudate Deum, to all people of good will on the climate crisis, on 4 October. It is a document intended to follow up on his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home.

An apostolic exhortation is a teaching document from the pope, which often aims to encourage a particular virtue or activity. Like many papal encyclicals, apostolic exhortations have often developed themes of the Church’s social teaching.

Pope Francis states specifically that the title of this letter is “Praise God” because “when human beings claim to take God’s place, they become their own worst enemies” (#73). By this he means that when we seek power for its own sake we damage both ourselves and the planet.

“Eight years have passed since I published Laudato si’, when I wanted to share with all of you, my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet, my heartfelt concerns about the care of our common home. Yet, with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point. In addition to this possibility, it is not to be doubted that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many. We will feel its effects in the areas of healthcare, sources of employment, access to resources, housing, forced migrations, etc.” (2).

I live in Vietnam, which has a population close to 100 million. According to the International Monetary Fund, "... by 2100, climate change could impact more than 12 percent of the Vietnamese population and reduce growth by 10 percent".

Already Ho Chi Minh City, the nation's commercial hub, suffers from flooding in central streets as well as residential areas because it has little elevation above its many tidal rivers and canals. Any rise in sea level will compound what is a dire predicament, not only for this city, but also for the rich agricultural delta regions, where increasingly, sea water intrusion is confounding efforts of farmers to maintain their means of livelihood.  

The IMF study offers a bleak outlook for Vietnam, which is struggling to raise its people from poverty:

Climate change will likely exacerbate pressure on the environment: more frequent and more intense storms could affect crop yields and production, impacting rural incomes, food security, and commodity exports. Increased rainfall intensity will damage roads and railroad networks. Higher temperatures will raise demand for electricity. Risks will weigh disproportionally on the poor who could be forced to migrate inland or towards large cities.

The pope's exhortation uses intense phrasing in striving to move world powers to fulfill the  commitments made at COP21 in Paris in 2015, the last climate conference to have a positive result, which, observers say, flowed from the motivation provided by Francis's Laudato si'. 

In Laudate Deum, Francis points to people choosing to "deride" facts and "ridicule those who speak of global warming," and inertia or indifference by "the great economic powers [business conglomerates], whose concern is with the greatest profit possible at minimal cost and in the shortest amount of time."

A helpful summary develops this line of thought:

Consequently, the pope wrote, "a broader perspective is urgently needed, one that can enable us to esteem the marvels of progress, but also to pay serious attention to other effects that were probably unimaginable a century ago."

People need to assume "responsibility for the legacy we will leave behind" and let go of this "technocratic paradigm" that believes "goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power" and pursues "infinite or unlimited growth."

The great problem, he wrote, is an "ideology underlying an obsession: to increase human power beyond anything imaginable, before which nonhuman reality is a mere resource at its disposal.

"Everything that exists ceases to be a gift for which we should be thankful, esteem and cherish, and instead becomes a slave, prey to any whim of the human mind and its capacities.

"Never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely, particularly when we consider how it is currently being used." 

Pope Francis called for "rethinking our use of power," which requires an increased sense of responsibility, values and conscience with "sound ethics, a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint."

Also, unhealthy notions about hard work, talent and "meritocracy" without "a genuine equality of opportunity" can easily become "a screen that further consolidates the privileges of a few with great power," he wrote. "In this perverse logic, why should they care about the damage done to our common home, if they feel securely shielded by the financial resources that they have earned by their abilities and effort?"

Francis encouraged people, especially those with an "irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model," to reduce pollution and waste, and "consume with prudence." Even though these everyday actions will not produce an immediate, notable effect on climate change, "we are helping to bring about large processes of transformation" and a new culture of care. 

To employ a buzzword, we have to become more "intentional" in simplifying our lifestyle, controlling our wants, and giving far greater respect to the natural order of the world we find ourselves in. Urgency is essential in toning down the customary stance of human domination of Earth, turning instead to the principle of stewardship. We have to learn humility all round.

Ω See also: Resources on the theology and practice of environmental stewardship.

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

Artificialism expresses a rejection of Man

From Neanderthal to Homo Sapiens to Techno-Human: The digital person

A new reason to be countercultural—to avoid the wasteland that promoters of the full-blown deployment of artificial intelligence are driving us toward.

Our scrutiny of AI comes as Oppenheimer has been a media talking point both as a film and as the focus of a troubling issue—was it morally right to develop the nuclear bomb? Nuclear energy—of benefit to humankind, generally speaking; nuclear weaponry—still a danger to nations and, in extremis, to the continued existence of humanity on this planet.

We are at a similar point on our journey with regard use of AI. From Scientific American:

A 2023 survey of AI experts found that 36 percent fear that AI development may result in a “nuclear-level catastrophe.” Almost 28,000 people have signed on to an open letter written by the Future of Life Institute, including Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, the CEOs of several AI companies and many other prominent technologists, asking for a six-month pause or a moratorium on new advanced AI development.

And significantly, (from here and here), concerning the "Godfather of AI": 

Geoffrey Hinton, perhaps the world’s most celebrated artificial intelligence researcher, made a big splash a few months ago when he publicly revealed that he’d left Google so he could speak frankly about the dangers of the technology he helped develop.  

[...] Hinton’s basic message was that AI could potentially get out of control, to the detriment of humanity. In the first few weeks after he went public, about those fears, which he had come to feel only relatively recently, after seeing the power of large language models like that behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

[...] Now consider the combined possibilities that machines can truly understand the world, can learn deceit and other bad habits from humans, and that giant AI systems can process zillions of times more information that brains can possibly deal with. Maybe you, like Hinton, now have a more fraughtful view of future AI outcomes.

Some are not worried. Advances in technology must take their own course, they say. We should go wherever science and technology takes us, even if it is to our detriment. We are just "star dust"; and if humans disappear from this planet, so be it. 

As I write I'm thinking of the likes of Yuval Noah Harari, with his work, Homo Deus: "... humans have completed their cosmic task and should now pass the torch to entirely new kinds of entities", among which are techno-humans, part of the brave new world of transhumanism. The frightening self-invention lauded under gender ideology gives us an inkling of what awaits us as mere creations of genetic engineering and brain-computer interfaces.

However, there is another perspective on our management of the human future:

I believe the third millennium is so far best understood as the dawning awareness of the Crisis of Man. It is a crisis involving every person on earth, and mankind’s relationships to earth; and to animals, to plants, to the sky, to the waters, to the weather, to the atoms, to the heavens.

What reality is (1), who we are (2), and what is the basis for understanding the relationship between them (3), are the foundational questions which are under dispute.

This is from writer and parent Tara Thieke, who identifies the culprit in the upheaval of WEIRD society as Artificialism:

The pain of the Crisis is that many people adhering to old answers are only beginning to realize they live in a society shaped at every level by new answers, answers which communicate a profound rejection of Man and interpret reality as a place devoid of limits.

Artificialism is the common ideology bonding the New Answers. It begins in ancient Greece with the theory of atomism; it lurked in the background as the nominalists and realists quarreled in the medieval universities; it spurred the great consciousness shift of the Scientific and Industrial revolutions which produced scientism and reductionist materialism.

With the reach of contemporary technology, Artificialism builds on its past gains by prompting a new (ancient) rejection of reality, Man, and communion-based knowledge. Artificialism is no longer a denier of essences, but a promoter of self-created fantasies [...]. It used the blank slate when it was suitable; today it uses gnostic gender ideology when that is appropriate. 

All that the Artificialist ideology wants is to replace Creation and Man. It will use anything to get there, and we have allowed it. Our engagement with its incessant temptations atrophies our memories, our skills, our hands, our bodies. It really only leaves us with feelings of addiction and rage, feelings so exhausting that we numb them by rushing back to the Artificial virtual domain to get another rush of dopamine. Increasingly the Artificialist institutions program us to fit their desires via their algorithms.

A crucial point in answer to the questions, Is it inevitable? and Is it right?:

It’s understandable to feel a surge of doubt and helplessness when one suspects one is surrounded. But not one of the futures proposed by the Artificialists is truly inevitable, and they are all dependent upon enormous amounts of deceit and manipulation. What makes Man so interesting, his ability to make choices, is something the Artificialists abhor. They do not want Man to be More Man; they want us to be something distinctly less.

A unit, not a face. A quantity, not a quality. Matter and Man must be deprived of their meaning and Man convinced it could not be otherwise. God and reality had to be deprived of truth claims so the institutions could replace them with gods they crafted to serve their own desires.

How do we respond to the brave new world? 

Thieke quotes approvingly the insight that: 

"... industrial society [is] ‘a world above the given world of nature,’ where I came to see how the ‘above’ was brought about through ‘artificial synthesis,’ as in the isolation of active ingredients and their synthetic counterparts." 

She writes:

We are told to dwell in fear about a climate change crisis, and we experience troubling shifts in our environment. What makes all the difference, though, is how and who we allow to interpret this information for us.

Is the remedy to our ills a yet further plastic-ification of the world, to give greater power to the same technocrats who have most notoriously rejected respecting Nature’s limits? Is it to consider how Artificialism is warping our food, has poisoned the water, tortured and manipulated animals, and at every moment showed a determination to replace what is given with a synthetic, controlled option?

Her conclusion is a sweet one for the worried and the weary, though I doubt its simplicity of expression excludes a radical countercultural stance, and a willingness to enter the battle to reshape society in order to be able to celebrate the natural and the human, limitations and all. Thieke puts it this way:

You do not have to craft an entire worldview on your own to resist Artificialism. You do not have to fight Goliath at every moment, all on your own, forever:

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29

The work was done long ago on the Cross. We do not need to fight the new System with yet another new System. It is the prayer of the heart softened by metanoia, not Systems, which fully answers the triad of the questions under dispute. It is our relationship with the Holy Spirit which is the summum bonum of Man and Creation. 

Ω See also: Why science needs to break the spell of reductive materialism 

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

Wokeism under increased scrutiny

Herbert Marcuse, social theorist, and Angela David, political activist — cooperative change out; political compulsion in.

Woke thought erupted upon the Western world abruptly, making an impact only when most branches of cultural influence and power had surrendered to its authority. In the United States, it was clearly in play with the 2020 riots following the death in police custody of  George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

Of course, the philosophy termed Critical Theory, of which Wokeism is the praxis, had long taken hold in the universities of the West, becoming fashionable within the academic community, thereby convincing a generation of graduates who have since become the cultural elite that there are new rules that must apply (!) in conducting themselves in social relationships. 

A penetrating discussion on the roots of the attempted cultural revolution underway in many parts of the world—but not all—occurs in a video just out in which Chris Rufo discusses his new book, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, with Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose study of the "new wave" philosophy shows how aggressively opposed it is to the great body of experience of what is needed for human flourishing expressed in Catholic Social Teaching.

The discussion starts with scrutiny of the history of the philosophical origins of Wokeism, a better term than Wokeness, which suggests a quality of thought or practice, and which doesn't do justice to the ambitions of what is clearly a hardline neo-Marxism. The full discussion is enlightening and practical. The following portion has been lightly edited.  

Rufo: [What] really confuses people is that woke ideology, or left-wing racialist ideology, operates at two levels. There's a level of euphemism, all of which sound very nice – diversity, equity inclusion, justice, solidarity sometimes —-  but if you dig under the euphemisms, which are marketing words, you find an ideology that is very different.

It doesn't stem from the Christian tradition, it doesn't stem from the natural rights tradition, it doesn't stem from the traditional mid-century (1960s) civil rights movement. 

Barron: It's against all those things.

Rufo: Yes, it's against all of those things and so you have to do your homework, you have to understand where it comes from. Where it comes from is, most prominently Marxism or neo-Marxism. You have someone like Herbert Marcuse, you have the black radical tradition, which is an atheist tradition, and the militant revolutionary push that sought to overturn the system of government in the United States. 

Then you have this ugly brew of post-modernism and gender theory that seeks to erase the very basic fabric of the cosmos. It rejects the world of creation in favor of a world of unlimited human manipulation. What I've tried to do with the book is essentially to say let's look at the euphemisms, but let's look underneath them to find what's really happening.

Barron: Do you find some of that neo-gnostic— the oldest heresy in the church that keeps asserting itself century in and century out with the view that the real me is hidden deep in there somewhere and the body is malleable, the body can be changed according to the whims of the real inner self. Of course the church recognized very early on—go back to Saint Irenaeus in the second century—that that's repugnant to a Christian or biblical anthropology. Do you find some of that neo-gnostic in form?

Rufo: Definitely, and I think it's most pronounced on gender because politics is largely driven in the United States by the left on race issues. That's the great mechanism by which they feel they can change the structures of society, the economy, the law, the Constitution. But there's a separate strain that has a separate lineage and we think of it as Gender Theory, we think of it as the trans activism and that's very much predicated on the rejection of any concept of human nature. Human nature is what they call a kind of normative structure, it's part of the sexual normativity that is an oppressive structure that's created by human invention. 

They actually believe that they can manipulate the physical world, the biological world, to meet any ideological demand. Men can become women, men can become pregnant. Whatever kind of such phrases you might have heard are based on this idea of a rejection of any natural limits and using technology to transcend not just the categories of male and female, which are you know embedded in the human experience, actually in our biology all the way down.

Gender, if you look at it from a scientific account, if you look at it from a Biblical account…but they actually think they can transcend the limitation of human nature as such. So it's a movement that is at the end of the day an anti-human movement. A lot of the reporting I've done recently is looking at where this leads in medical practice and you have some surgical procedures that they're doing that are far beyond Dr Frankenstein. I mean things that are so horrific it's almost hard to mention, but they really believe there is no human essence, that it's all accidental, it's all contingent….

Barron: Sartre says my existentialism means that existence precedes essence, so my freedom comes first, then I decide who or what I am. Well, that's from the French salon the 1940s and 50s. Now it's in the mind of every teenager in America. That there's a nature, that there's a givenness to our bodies, to our anthropology, that's seen as the problem—“that's oppressive!” 

We're on dangerous ground, aren't we, when we start playing that game of my existence completely trumps essence?

Rufo: Yeah, we're on dangerous ground but, most importantly, if you look at it as a practical matter, it just doesn't work.  It is disproven over and over and over, and that's really the problem with all of these revolutionary ideologies, at the end of the day, they are revolutions against nature, against human nature, against the social essence of what makes us human beings in community, and they have this romantic and idealistic notion, which is very attractive to people, especially young people, that you can overcome any limitation, that the limitations, the prescriptions of human nature, are structures of oppression that can be abolished. 

But ultimately the theme of the book is that the process you see in this revolution, and the process you see in all these revolutions, is one of idealism turning into disillusionment, turning into nihilism, and you see that largely in the philosophical line of thought and philosophical reasoning. You see it personally in many of these stories of the thinkers of the time, but then you also see it—and this is the most tragic and devastating—in the lives of people who are manipulated by these ideologies. Those kids are suffering from it. It's not just an abstraction. 

You have to tell them quite the opposite: there is an essence, there is a human nature, there is a way that things ought to be, and as a component of that, there are limitations that you should not only respect but actually those limitations are what give us the constraints and the bounds of being human. 

Again, do it easy! Catch up with the philosophical and political theory that underpins Wokeism. View the video of Rufo's discussion with Bishop Barron, which is refreshing in that it covers the trouble Western societies are in but also how ordinary people can recover their place at the centre of their culture, instead of being serfs within a feudalism dominated by the cultural elite.

Know your opponent and you need not fear 

Rufo's book aims to provide knowledge of the enemy in the manner of Sun Tzu's admonition, and to guide that counter-revolution the times demand. He writes:

Further:

In America, Florida gives hope. In Europe, Hungary and Poland do. Societies in Asia and Africa are also on alert, as a new form of colonialism-cum-imperialism is evident as the West seeks to impose its metaphysical stance upon the "natives" abroad by tying financial aid to a required cultural performance. The pushback from the Muslim community in the U.S. and U.K., and from parents generally in many nations, is a growing element within the political mix, providing opposition to an elite who rejects objective morality in favour of unbridled self-invention. Personal disintegration is the result, as recorded in the sad explosion in the West of anxiety, depression and suicide. 

Marcuse, the Marxist stalwart, in the vanguard 

Rufo has a valuable chapter examining the role of the German-American professor of philosophy and social theory, Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), who shaped Marxist-inspired Critical Theory for consumption by the New Left. This materialist movement fomented political agitation openly or by way of indoctrination through the education system, as we see even up to the present day.

Rufo expands with direct information on Marcuse's line of thought as a Marxist loyalist:

The drive for "disintegration" of society, for a "radical change in consciousness" and for "rebellion" that Rufo identifies in his book and his video discussion, dismays Bishop Barron, who repeatedly cites the Church's understanding of social renewal as a cooperative effort, springing from love for the other, even the opponent, an effort that works, not through condemning individuals or classes of citizens, as we see in the ubiquitous "cancel culture" under the aegis of the "diversity, equity, inclusion" regime, but through adherence to respect for the dignity of the human person.

Critical Theory wants nothing to do with the freedom of classical liberalism or that of classical biblical freedom, both of which rely on the discipline of desire. Rather it talks of a "liberating tolerance" which incorporates an intolerance that would permit censorship, repression and, where deemed necessary, violence. 

The picture of the leftist mindset presented by the video and book offers motivation for prayer coupled with action in defending society's moral and cultural heritage.

One thing more:  A word from Alasdair MacIntyre from 1969, at the height of  Marcuse's prominence. Writing in The New York Review, MacIntyre points to the origin of the abuse of science among the educated elite so widespread in Western society:

Marcuse now [in his 1969 publication] aspires to provide a biological basis for his theory. His biology is in fact as speculative as his metaphysics, and Marcuse explicitly disavows any scientific basis for his speculations. This does not however lead him to be less than dogmatic in his mode of assertion.

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

Zombie state: How to achieve the great escape

Alienation is a virus reducing mutual support within society 

Western civilisation marks the Judeo-Christian influence on Europe in particular and, from that source, to different degrees, the bulk of the world's nation states. The talk these days, though, is more of the decline of that system of thought and practice. If the fall of "the West" eventuates, it will be recorded in history along with the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great, or the Greek Empire under Philip and Alexander, and the Roman Empire under caesars of fame and infamy.

But such a fall will be a heavy defeat for the world, not a sign of progress as many of today's "progressives" would have it.

As political power is wielded through history there is an accompanying flow of ideas that shapes separate societies into distinct cultures. A key factor within the Western civilisation's mindset has been Christian beliefs that enriched attitudes toward birth, death and the search for the Truth, the Good, the Beautiful, all of which gave rise to a devotion to study, to science, to art—under God.

However, those who are able to stand apart from the impulses of this present age few signs of postive outcomes ahead, and more signs of a warped mentality, elements of which still hold to Christian concepts but without the transcendental underpinning and the God-given morality that guides us along the path that produces a life of meaning and satisfaction. 

The fascinating "theo-drama" of the past 2000 years has been replaced by a "ego-drama" rendered monotonous by its inspiration from the likes of Nietzsche and his nihilism, will to power and Übermensch (Superman).

Of course, from Nietzsche, via Marxism and Paul-Michel Foucault, we have the viral Critical Theory that has captured the commanding heights of Western political and cultural power, with a concerted effort under way to colonise any society remaining outside its imperial reach.  

Wellsprings of social vitality have dried up

The impact at home of the cultural plague that infects more and more sectors of society are becoming plain. Jacob Howland, provost and director of the Intellectual Foundations Program at UATX, commonly known as the University of Austin, writes in Unherd and here that "America is now a zombie state":

It’s not just in politics that the wellsprings of individual and social vitality have dried up. Americans are marrying less and later, and having too few children to reproduce themselves and the families that nurtured them. What is more, our public schools have largely ceased to transmit the accumulated knowledge and civilisational wisdom of the past to the children we do have. A taste for historical repudiation has taken hold across the culture, leading curators to “contextualise” art, city governments to take down statues, colleges to rename buildings, and publishers to censor or rewrite books. But creativity withers when it ceases to be nourished by the oxygenated blood of the tradition. Little wonder that Hollywood increasingly cannibalises its legacy by pouring old films into new plastic scripts.

Technology has exacerbated our national enervation. We have become charging-stations for our smartphones, which drain psychic energy with insistent distractions and overloads of information-babble. Video calls and work-from-home limit in-person interactions with actual existing individuals, who would otherwise be together for most of their weekly waking hours. Targeted advertising, fine-tuned algorithms, and politically stratified social media sharply decrease our exposure to new ideas. We are immuring ourselves within our own private caves, watching flickering images in darkness.

AI language-learning models offer a cautionary parable of these larger cultural developments. Programs such as ChatGPT, whose writing remains formulaic and prone to errors, learn by sifting through a sea of digitalised text, a growing share of which consists of AI-generated content. The predictable result of this feedback loop is the kind of levelling we’ve seen across our institutions. Like newspapers that drink their own ink — and which ones don’t, these days? — their product can only get worse.

Cultural exhaustion, social withdrawal, and the general enfeeblement of life forces are the practical expression of a will to nothing. There is a name for this spiritual and intellectual condition, and it is nihilism. Nihilism is demonic to the extent that the will to nothing is still a will, a life force. That it is only a negative one is by no means reassuring, because it is easier and more economical to tear down than to build up. Destruction is dramatic and accomplishes the illusion of vitality with relatively little energy. And who in this apocalyptic time, including the nihilist, doesn’t want to feel even a little alive?

 Drop in community support 'very concerning'

It's not only Americans who are becoming more self-absorbed as perspectives shrink and dis-ease takes hold among the confused young especially, but not just the young. For example, the willingness of UK people to volunteer in the service of the community decreased as activity picked up after the long Covid lockdown.

In 2021/22, 34% of respondents (approximately 16 million people in England) had taken part in either formal or informal volunteering at least once a month. This is a decrease from rates in 2020/21 (41%) and is the lowest recorded by the Community Life Survey for this measure. (Source)

A BBC report on the results of a separate survey in Northern Ireland quotes Denise Hayward of Volunteer Now, which promotes volunteering across Northern Ireland. She says:

 "Mostly our volunteer population was at about 28% of our adult population and it sat at that point for years - it never really moved."

The report says the latest government statistics reveal a change:

"[They were] the first real stats after Covid [and] the numbers had gone down to 17%. That could be church-based organisations, sports, arts," Ms Hayward said.

She says Covid broke the habit of volunteering and many volunteers never came back or came back slowly.

"Now that may well change, but overall, we have seen a decline of over 10 percentage points and that is very concerning."

Ms Hayward described the impact on fundraising as huge because "volunteers are a huge driver of fundraising".

But it has also affected the delivery of organisations' services.

"Often volunteers are the ones doing things like befriending schemes. Some needs really rocketed because you saw more isolation, so what you are seeing is demand for services, in many cases, increasing but actually a decreased ability to deliver those services." 

The American experience is manifest in these headlines: 

Americans Are Volunteering Less. What Can Nonprofits Do to Bring Them Back?

Why and How Charities Should Revive a Declining but Vital Resource ... Volunteers

Nonprofit Leaders Want More Volunteers but Say It Is Tough to Recruit Them

This kind of evidence about the state of an alienated society is compelling. Accordingly, everyone in each society must scrutinise the historic forces shaping that society's future, and be prepared to take up  a countercultural lifestyle; at least, that of going on the offensive is not feasible.

Often decisions on the use of money and time, made within the family, the basic cell of society, demonstrate the presence of a generous spirit, and it is  that spirit which makes or breaks the ability of a society to thrive.

There's the challenge, to break free of the cultural brambles that choke us—the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life—and to seize life in all its difficulties, to embrace objective truth and beauty, and to sow a people-centred generosity of spirit that defeats alienation by fostering partnership and wider solidarity.

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

Theise belittles the human in 'we are the planet'

Life holds so much more than what science can unfold. That's why some scientists turn to poetry to express what they have learnt, but which isn't limited to a set of mere material findings. An example is physicist Richard Feynman, who famously declared "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantam mechanics", a statement that continues to ring true.

It's not that science hasn't opened our eyes to what would otherwise be incredible information about our world, from particles preceding atoms, to busy ants, to the immensity of the universe. 

A book out this year on complexity, on how everything that makes this planet liveable is interconnected, is forthright in stating that what is being presented is a theory: Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being, by pathologist and stem cell biologist Neil Theise. He is a professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.

The Washington Post review states this about the book as part of the ongoing human quest to understand ourselves:

It’s a theory that attempts to provide rigorous scientific underpinnings to timeless questions of consciousness, being and self — as well as our place not just in the world but in the universe.

The reviewer, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, places this work in the company of multitudes:

Searching for “consciousness books” online yields tens of thousands of titles, ranging from old classics by Aldous Huxley and Carl Jung to a much more recent bestseller with an outrageously ambitious subtitle: Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, by Annaka Harris. And this doesn’t even touch on the innumerable works about neuroscience, mysticism, meditation, self-help — clearly, once one starts trying to learn about consciousness, the possibilities are, appropriately, limitless.

But she finds Theise's work on interconnectedness is convincing in that it demonstrates that:

...many of the boundaries we take for granted are not just scientifically artificial but intellectually, spiritually and even psychologically suffocating.

The problem in appreciating our situation "is those of us who are products of the thoroughly atomized, self-involved Western world" have eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear.

Theise turns to the poetic mode in trying to encapsulate his insights:

Complexity comforts us, revealing, unequivocally, unavoidably, that however separate and alone we might feel, each one of us is — in each and every single moment — a pure expression of the entire living, conscious universe. Nothing separate, nothing left out, but true, pure, and complete, just as we are.

The reviewer, too, posits a spiritual stance in concluding her reading of the rich vein of Theise's scientific exploration: 

But even if Theise concludes that the end state of all this complexity is, inevitably, chaos, the constantly regenerative nature of complexity still offers something like hope.

Maria Popova, likewise, finds Theise's work to her taste as he delves into the mysteries of life:

The mystery has only deepened for us “atoms with consciousness,” capable of music and of murder. [...] Each day, we live with the puzzlement of what makes us and our childhood self the “same” person, even though most of our cells and our dreams have been replaced.

Popova:  

The Buddhist scientist Neil Theise endeavors to bridge the mystery out there with the mystery of us, bringing together our three primary instruments of investigating reality — empirical science (with a focus on complexity theory), philosophy (with a focus on Western idealism), and metaphysics (with a focus on Buddhism, Vedanta, Kabbalah, and Saivism) — to paint a picture of the universe and all of its minutest parts “as nothing but a vast, self-organizing, complex system, the emergent properties of which are… everything.” 

Zooming out to the planetary scale, he argues that all living beings on Earth are a single organism animated by a single consciousness that permeates the universe. The challenge, of course, is how to reconcile this view with our overwhelming subjective experience as autonomous selves, distinct in space and time — an experience magnified by the vanity of free will, which keeps on keeping us from seeing clearly our nature as particles in a self-organizing whole.

A doubt arises, here in particular, about Theise's project. Neither Szegedy-Maszak nor Popova clarify the theorist's stance in regard to the source of the consciousness that keeps the "system" functioning. Further, though Popova indulges in a reference to free will as being an illusion, Theise himself uses "can" and "creativity" in speaking of the human endeavour — are we truly creative or not? Theise:

Neither we nor our universe is machinelike. A machine doesn’t have the option to change its behavior if its environment changes or becomes overwhelming. Complex systems, including human bodies and human societies, can change their behaviors in the face of the unpredictable. That creativity is the essence of complexity.

To keep that complexity in order, a key element of quantum theory, complementarity, comes into play. Popova quotes Theise:

The teeming hordes of living things on Earth, not only in space but in time, are actually all one massive, single organism just as certainly as each one of us (in our own minds) seems to be a distinct human being throughout our limited lifetime… Each of us is, equally, an independent living human and also just one utterly minute, utterly brief unit of a single vast body that is life on Earth. From this point of view, the passing of human generations, in peace or turmoil, is nothing more than the shedding of cells from one’s skin.

It would seem that as a Buddhist, Theise preaches a gospel akin to Sam Harris's "mindfulness", part of the multitude of self-help programs referred to above, tapping into rich concepts but lacking the ability to apply them in their original transcendental context. He is also a run-of-the-mill pantheist, costumed in scientific data but metaphysically unable or philosophically unwilling to understand what he sees.

His shallowness appears in the following quote, which is hardly "redemptive" (Popova's term), since it suggests little to elevate the human above the ant. Morality, virtue, the nobility of compassion relate only remotely to the human person in search for the common good:

While we feel ourselves to be thinking, living beings with independent lives inside the universe, the complementary view is also true: we don’t live in the universe; we embody it. It’s just like how we habitually think of ourselves as living on the planet even as, in a complementary way, we are the planet.

Theise is obviously enthusiastic about what is otherwise called quantum physicalism, a form of materialism, but it would preclude the human person living "according to the fullness of their nature, dignity, and destiny" (Spitzer 2015*). This author goes on:

Reducing ourselves to mere atoms, molecules, or quantum systems — or to a mere dimension of a universal consciousness embedded in physical processes — causes us to "underlive" our lives, undervalue our dignity, and underestimate our nature and destiny, which is a completely avoidable self-imposed waste and travesty.

Spitzer dwells on the nature of that travesty in this excerpt:

Spitzer devotes his  efforts in his text to provide recent evidence from physics and cosmology to highlight the "creation of physical reality by an intelligent transcendent cause": "For in him we live and move and have our being", as Paul told the elders in Athens, quoting the 6th Century BC poet Epimenides.

Philosopher and theologian David Bentley Hart in his book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale 2013; accessible online), makes plain the direction Theise should go to advance our understanding of human existence:

God is not, in any of the great theistic traditions, merely some rational agent, external to the order of the physical universe, who imposes some kind of design upon an otherwise inert and mindless material order. He is not some discrete being somewhere out there, floating in the great beyond, who fashions nature in accordance with rational laws upon which he is dependent. Rather, he is himself the logical order of all reality, the ground both of the subjective rationality of mind and the objective rationality of being, the transcendent and indwelling Reason or Wisdom by which mind and matter are both informed and in which both participate (BS emphasis).

If indeed to exist is to be manifest—to be intelligible and perceptible—and if to exist fully is to be consciously known, then God, as infinite being, is also an act of infinite knowledge. He is in himself the absolute unity of consciousness and being, and so in the realm of contingent things is the source of the fittedness of consciousness and being each to the other, the one ontological reality of reason as it exists both in thought and in the structure of the universe (BS).

At least, according to almost all the classical metaphysical schools, East and West, the marvelous coincidence between, on the one hand, our powers of reason and, on the other, the capacity of being to be understood points to an ultimate identity between them, in the depths of their transcendent origin. God’s being—esse, on, sat, wujud—is also consciousness—ratio, logos, chit, wijdan.

As Ramanuja would have it, Brahman, as the fullness of all being, must possess immediate knowledge of all reality within himself, and so be the fullness of all consciousness as well, the “personal” source in whom being achieves total manifestation, total actuality.

Or, in the language of Plotinus, the One ceaselessly generates the eternal reflective consciousness of the divine mind, nous, from which emanates all the rationally coherent diversity of the cosmos (BS). Or, in the terms of Philo of Alexandria or the Gospel of John, God is never without his Logos, the divine Wisdom, in and through whom the world is created, ordered, and sustained (BS).

So all of creation is rationally ordered and sustained by God who made the human person in the image of himself as a being who has a personal will and the capacity to be creative, a human quality Theise lauds but fails to acknowledge as a mark of independence above everything else in creation.

Evidently, much of the knowledge—and wisdom—of ages past has been lost among practitioners in the fields of science and philosophy. Though Theise probably employs a fuzzy Buddhism-lite spirituality in his "we are the planet" metaphysics, Spitzer could be writing to him, urging him to harken to his Jewish heritage:

If we do not try to help our culture overcome [its] self-limiting, self-deprecating, and self-destructive belief in "mere materialism", we consign ourselves to be a part of it...."

In conclusion, Theise's theory is of a force within nature that directs in a self-organising manner, but one which deprives the human being of the respect due to the partner with God in fulfilling the divine plan for each person, for the common good, and for the planet. In response to that theory, the alert individual is led to follow Flannery O'Connor's example in reaction to another example of a great truth being emptied of meaning, in exploding with a hearty, "If that's the case, to hell with it!"

*Spitzer, Robert J. The Soul's Upward Yearning: Clues to our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason. San Franscisco, Ignatius Press, 2015.

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, read the same posts at my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.

Why God made me: a splendid destiny

This life, in all its passion and possibilities, is a passing thing. Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko

“God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in the next.”

That is the Catholic's deepest reality, the reality of the eternal God. In respect of that reality every other natural or intellectual fact is secondary and subordinate. Certainly he regards such natural things as real and as valuable, but he does not rest in them as in his last end. He regards them somewhat as a ship in which he is for the moment travelling, which he knows that he must presently leave.

He acts in the spirit of that saying of our Lord which is inscribed on a gateway in Northern India: "This world is but a bridge; pass over it, build not thy dwelling here". His soul tends continually forwards and upwards. 

Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism.

Jesus, our Lord and God, told his apostles:

Father, I have given these little ones your word,
and the world has hated them
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
15 I am not asking you
to take them out of the world,
but I do ask you
to protect them from the evil one.
16 They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
17 Consecrate them in the truth.
Your word is truth.
18 As you sent me into the world,
so have I sent them into the world.
19 And for their sakes I consecrate myself,
so that they too may be consecrated in truth.

                                      The Gospel of John 17:14-19

It's also John, in his first letter to the early Christians, who captures that other-world principle most directly. He writes:

Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires if the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world.  

Paul has many such words of warning about the trap in the form of submission to the lifestyle of any era, this being the simplest: "But our citizenship is in heaven". 

Peter, too, sees our situation as that of sojouners/pilgrims, the task of each being to abstain from the passions of our weakened nature during our time of exile. 

Peter highlights our true destiny when he tells us: 

God has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 

Our goal, then, is glorious. In this life we work on making true on our existence as sons and daughters of God our creator by answering the call to deification, union with God (theosis), that is announced in the revelation of our being made in the image of God. Though we struggle during our life with those passions that belittle us, when we die we will be completely able to respond to God's energies in our face-to-face relationship with God.  

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.