Is Humanity a Zero or Infinite?
SITARAM
http://www.egroups.com/group/Sitaram
http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?forum=philosophy&show=0&cid=81215
Is human "infinite" in nature or a "zero" in the grand scheme of things?
===========================
Thanks for your post. Good question!
Over the years, in posts and chats, I have occasionally heard (and also made)
the remark that if the earth and humanity were annihilated tomorrow by some
cataclysm (such as an asteroid, or supernova), that it would not be a great
loss to the Universe, which would just dust itself off and evolve some other
form of consciousness (and self-consciousness) elsewhere. Lord knows, the
Universe has Time on its side (as Carl Sagan would have said "Billions and
Billions of years"). It is very sad to see what utterly wretched, perverse,
cruel, unfeeling destructive creatures we humans are, when we have at our very
fingertips, within our very grasp, to be so much more, to make our lives and
societies and the world about us so very different and so much better. One
famous Greek Orthodox Christian theologian (I think it was Constantine
Cavarnos) laughed when he saw the moon walk, saying, "Look, mankind has finally
succeeded in walking upon the moon, and yet they are no different, they have
succeeded in conquering and transforming the world, but they have failed to
conquer and transform the self. They are still the same miserable wretches that
we read about in Homer' Epic poems.
The above remarks are on the side of humanity as a zero.
On the side of humanity as infinite, well, one of my favorite verses from
Proverbs (or is it Ecclesiastes): "God has placed the image of eternity in the
heart of humanity, yet no one can see to the beginning or end of a matter."
Certainly, the human mind is infinite in the sense that we can think of
infinity and imagine infinity, both in mathematics, as Cantor and others have
done, and also in the poetic imagination, which Wallace Stevens profoundly
describes in his essay "The Necessary Angel".
Wallace Stevens takes that title from a verse in one of his poems: "I am the
necessary angel of this world; though my eyes you see the world again." That
angel is imagination itself.
Wallace Stevens wrote: "...imagination is the power that enables us to perceive
the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos. It does this every
day in arts and letters."
...from his essay "Imagination as Value"
=================================
I am the angel of reality,
Seen for a moment standing in the door.
I have neither ashen wing nor wear of ore
And live without a tepid aureole,
Or stars that follow me, not to attend,
But, of my being and its knowing, part.
I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.
Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again . . .
(from "Angel Surrounded by Paysans,"
===================================
Some excerpts from others:
It is not merely that Stevens argues for the necessary angel of the human, but
that he enacts it with all its ambiguity, energy, misunderstanding and
hopefulness. It is the alternative fictive universe to that proposed by those
Christians – including the widow – upholding the "moral law" and upheld by
it. That other universe cannot be controlled and takes on its own
carnivalesque, ribald masks; the "hullabaloo among the spheres" is a kind of
carnival, a release, a pleasure principle. And, as he has enacted in the poem,
the more we would deny that aspect of life, the more it asserts itself: "But
fictive things / Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince."’
Wallace Stevens speaks of poetry as the process by which the world is known,
including both imaginative projection and the human urge for truths and
closure--the "blessed rage for order."
Paul Klee on Visible Reality: "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it
makes visible.... My aim is always to get hold of the magic of reality and to
transfer this reality into painting - to make the invisible visible through
reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it is, in fact, reality which forms the
mystery of our existence." - Paul
In IRC, Dalnet, Philosophy, someone asks, "What should we do if we discover
another telling lies about us."
I reply, "Stop and think, the truly altruist self-sacrificing pacifist, in an
act of utter compassion and mercy, would transform themselves in such a way
that the gossip and lies would become truth, so as to deliver the
gossiper/slanderer from the reproach of their own mendacity
Actually, all this made me think of the Jakarta Tales (accounts of lives of the
Buddha's former incarnations).... the one where he casts himself from a cliff
to provide food for a starving tiger and her cubs below
(Changing the world by changing ourselves - Sitaram)
I believe in the future transmutation of those two seemingly contradictory
states, dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, of surreality, so
to speak. I am looking forward to its consummation, certain that I shall never
share in it, but death would matter little to me could I but taste the joy it
will yield ultimately.
. . . Heraclitus is surrealist in dialectic. . . .
Swift is surrealist in malice.
Sade is surrealist in sadism. . . .
Baudelaire is surrealist in morals.
Rimbaud is surrealist in life and elsewhere. . . .
Carroll is surrealist in nonsense. . . .
Picasso is surrealist in cubism. . . .
The Manifesto of Surrealism has improved on the Rimbaud principle that the poet
must turn seer
I believe in the future transmutation of those two seemingly contradictory
states, dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, of surreality, so
to speak. I am looking forward to its consummation, certain that I shall never
share in it, but death would matter little to me could I but taste the joy it
will yield ultimately.
=============
Sitaram continues:
In a recent post, I quoted someone who pointed out that although one cannot
inductively arrive at the notion of rabbits through the laws of physics, yet
the nature of rabbits is not contrary to or in violation of the laws of
physics. In another recent post, someone pointed out that the products of
imagination are something totally separate from the physical, phenomenological
world of the reductionist. It is astounding to think that the physical matter
of the universe gradually gives rise to a solar system and a planet, and
biochemical processes which produce reflective intelligence possessing
imagination which then turns about like a mirror to reflect upon that material
universe from which it sprang, and furthermore, that the denizens of
imagination should be something with a life and a logic all its own, with no
causal bearing upon the physical material universe which set the stage for such
cognitive and emotive activity.
Blaise Pascal said it in his "Pensees" or Meditations: We are an insignificant
nothing in this infinite universe, and yet we are greater than the universe in
that we are aware of our nothingness and insignificance, while the universe
itself knows nothing of us or itself."
At least, we presume that the Universe knows nothing, has no thoughts. Yet, for
all we know, every black hole is like some kind of neuron in an immense brain,
linked together by some all pervasive force similar to gravity.
Then there are those Hindu scriptures about Vishnu dreaming countless universes
into and out of existence like so many bubbles in a frothing foaming chalice.
Hegel ends his "Phenomenology of the Spirit" with a quote from, is it Schiller,
"The chalice of this realm of spirits foams forth to God His own infinitude."
Well, there are some thoughts in response to your excellent question. If I
think of more later, I shall certainly post again.
Best regards,
Sitaram