by a Me and asking “how might Me behave if it was out there rather than here?”—and Baby’s world is, as a result, being enriched with the warmth and light of human interaction.
Two great forces are now locked in battle for Baby’s soul.
One force says “GIVE! For I am the path of Magic and Art! Give meaning to the world and it will repay you an hundredfold! See patterns in everything, for pattern adds value. Trade Self for Understanding and Nature will become your mirror, reflecting back the many facets of your infinite complexity, for everything is alive and longing to teach you. Personify the world and I will grant you WISDOM!”
The other force says “TAKE! For I am the path of Religion and Science! There are no patterns, there is no life, save only the will of God or the laws of physics. Guard your soul within you—never trade it—for it is not yours but God’s, an illusion woven from the laws of physics. Objectify the world and I will give you POWER!”
Should Baby move forward from the discovery of Mama’s soul? Should Babe look again at the family pets and realising that they too might possess volition and be better understood in those terms? As a grown up, might he not speak of a sailing vessel as ‘she’ and seek to divine her moods and subtle handling characteristics under changing tide and weather patterns in such terms? When the office photocopier persistently misbehaves just when the pressure is on, might he not ask the question “but how does it know we are in hurry to meet deadlines?”
And next time the spoon hits the floor so satisfyingly, might not Baby peer over the edge of the table—a second chance to appreciate the aesthetics of the situation—and actually thank the spoon for being so co-operative? Do this, and Baby’s world grows richer and more nourishing day by day—an ever-ready breast inviting Babe to suck the milk of wisdom.
Or should Babe rather retreat from all this sharing of complexity and concentrate attention on the compliant Spoon? Gadgets can be much more complicated than Spoon, and take longer to control, but eventually they give in without the need to bargain with them by sharing out Me. Family pets might seem to have minds of their own but, as Pavlov has shown us, they can also be coerced into mechanical patterns of behaviour. It might take a long time, but even Mama has buttons that can be pressed—and the whole secret of worldly success lies surely in the calculated manipulation of your business colleagues. While others get distracted into hugging trees and kissing their children, there are millions to be made by exercising our God-given dominion over matter. Who needs a rich environment out there when they can have all those riches for themselves?
Reader! You stand outside the walls of my thesis and two Great Beings guard the entrance.
One, a mighty demon of polished brass seven cubits in height and wielding a flaming sword, beats its fist against the right hand gate and cries with the voice of thunder:
“Take my path, foolish reader! For mine is the path of Religion and Science, of law that must be obeyed! No matter whether the law is of god, or of physics, you stand helpless before it for I am all-powerful and you are weak— a plaything of original sin, a mere genetic mechanism to be imprinted by circumstance. But I will give you power, for I will teach that there is no will but God’s will, and therefore all phenomena are mechanical, even your fellow beings. Nature is under your command to exploit for your good. Other people are no more than consumers of your product, so raise your price! Be the fittest to survive! Conquer all and leave a wasteland—for matter has no life and you have naught to lose! Reason is my standard, but Psychopathy is my secret name!”
The other, a mighty demon eight cubits high, clad in snowy samite and bearing a silver chalice from which an endless stream of milk is flowing, beats its fist against the left hand gate and cries with the voice of tempest:
“Take my path, wise reader! For mine is the path of Art and Magic, of laws made to tinker with and throw aside! I know you as a thinking, feeling being that will make up your own mind—so what can I do but invite you to the great adventure? Be one with nature and your fellow beings, trade your soul for meaning and stay hungry! Experience is not to own, but to eat. Taste life, don’t hoard it, and you will find love. Empathy is my standard, but Fellow Victim is my secret name!”
Choose, reader, choose!
I said CHOOSE! Damn you!
Oh well, if you must stand there dithering, then you might have time to notice that between the two great gates there is a little doorway with the door ajar. Peep in and you see a family seated round a hearth and the elder man smiles and invites you in for a cup of tea, saying:
“Well done! So you didn’t fall for either of those charlatans out there! Let me introduce myself: I was writing this book and got a bit bored with the intro so decided to repeat the opening argument in demonic form—no longer a self-help manual but a cosmic battle cry. Don’t worry about making choices at this stage, all that matters is what can be learnt from your own responses.”
•When I re-presented my introduction in terms of great powers, a choice of paths that could lead humankind into a world of nature and love or into a world of destruction and power, did it become more interesting to you?
• Or did it revolt you? That a thoughtful, if possibly misguided, thesis was being sensationalised in this obvious way?
• Or did you simply wonder what the author was playing at?
The first two responses are what I would consider to be superstitious: an over-reliance on demons to motivate us, or an instinctive rejection of them.
The third reaction is that of an awake human being, an explorer whose intelligence, alertness and sensibilities have not been altogether subjugated by a thousand years of religious and scientific cultural dominance. It is the response of someone who knows that a human being, not a sinner, nor a machine, is writing this book.
To those who chose the first two responses I say “have you forgotten that the author will receive a small amount of money, and an iota of kudos, every time a copy of this book is sold?”
Ah yes! And that would surely explain why I would want to sensationalise my thesis, in the desire to win more sales!
But no—for I know that many potential buyers would be put off by a sensational approach.
Ah well, that explains it—that is why you have now deflated the sensational approach in order to win more respectable sales.
The oh-so logical process of reason has just reached two diametrically opposite conclusions based upon an assumption that I am a mechanism seeking to boost sales of my book. The fact is that I, the author, am a total mystery except for one crucial fact: I too am a human being.
As a mystery I might want to boost sales, at the same time I might be addicted to unconscious self-sabotage, or I might want to prove how clever I am. I might want to teach you, or to help you, or to atone for deep feelings of childhood guilt. I may equally be a simple explorer of ideas, or an artist playing with words...
In fact I’m more likely to be all these things rolled into one and that would still be but a tiny part of the whole of me. And yet the whole pathetic structure of Western academic discourse is based upon the inane assumption that people should write what they mean to say.
“Science proves a connection between infertility and...” and we are supposed to believe it, rather than consider that it is a team of scientist who have made the announcement, human beings with individual agendas and in the pay of an institution with its own agendas. The papers are full of book reviews that blindly assume
