Vanishing Utopias

We all know that utopias cannot ever exist. But, according to historian Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, we keep getting closer to it. In fact, our approach to it is accelerating.

It is a long book, almost 500 pages, but it covers the entirety of human prehistory and history, up until the present day, which for the author was 2014. You will not find lists of empires and dates. In this way, it is almost the exact opposite of what is still perhaps the most famous overview of world history, the Outline of History by H. G. Wells.

Instead, the author seeks general trends and explanations for everything that has happened. Here is an example. Why did human evolution seem to proceed so slowly before the arrival of modern humans? For example, Homo ergaster stone tools in Africa remained unchanged for a million years. Harari says that all other animal species, and all humans before Homo sapiens, have or had a biological constraint on their ability to think of new ways of living. Before the human lineage could make any progress, we needed an innovation, invisible in bones and DNA, which allowed us to imagine the future. Neanderthals, for example, he said, did not have “the ability to compose fiction.”

But the author suffers from the delusion of technological optimism, which is very common among writers of popular sociology. Here are two examples which considerably erode the credibility of the conclusion of the book.

First, he seems to assume we will never run out of energy. This is because we invest some of the profits from the old kinds of energy into developing new ones. This has, in fact, happened. One obvious example is that England was running out of wood, so they invested money and research into using coal, which required the invention of the steam engine. Before modern times, all energy was either from burning wood or from human and animal muscle power. Medieval people did not even imagine steam, hydroelectric, or atomic power.

But this will happen only if we deliberately invest in new technology. Right now we need to invest in green technologies such as wind and solar energy. We have done so, but powerful ideological and political forces oppose the adoption of green technology. Donald Trump has made it very clear that his solution to our future energy needs is to pump more oil. Technology will not save us, because Trump will lead us boldly into the twentieth century.

Harari also speculated that wars were becoming rare. It is true that there were fewer wars in 2014 than there had ever been in the past. This was easy to believe in the balmy days of the Obama administration. But almost as soon as Harari’s book was published, Putin decided to invade the Ukraine, for reasons that are not clear even to his supporters, who do not dare to have an independent opinion; and Harari’s own country, Israel, is waging what many observers claim to be a war of extermination against the Palestinians.

Harari even speculated about how to be happy. Happiness is, he said, the product of serotonin levels in the brain. No matter what your external circumstances happen to be, no matter if you are in pain or slavery, you will be happy if you have a lot of serotonin. I think this opinion is a product of the author’s scarcely-hidden admiration for Buddhism. And, he implies, serotonin levels are not only biologically determined—you are either a happy or a depressed person—but also remain unchanged during your life. But this is true only for people who are clinically depressed. They need more serotonin but I do not. Also, I am certain that I am happier now, having completed so many of my life goals, than I was back when I had no idea if my future would be successful.

We need to admit that lots of things are getting better—the same message as Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature—but that we still have a lot of work to do and our success is not assured.

We all live in imagined realities. Despite the absence of evidence for spiritual realities, we will be individually unhappy and collective failures if we live in the way the apostle Paul described in one of his epistles: Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die. We have to at least imagine that we can make the world better.

The Stars in their Courses

This is from an email I wanted to send to the office of the Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters. However, neither he nor the department had any way for the public to contact them. They hand down their decisions from an undefiled lofty summit, without any input from the public they supposedly represent.

Walters has become infamous for mandating that all Oklahoma Public School classrooms teach from the Bible, and he means this literally. He has sought bids for the state to buy 55,000 Bibles to distribute among Oklahoma classrooms. But to my knowledge he has not provided any guidance about how to do this in a manner that is acceptable to him, personally.

I pushed the limits of truth in this letter. I retired from public university teaching in Oklahoma. My university classroom would not, itself, have been required to teach from the Bible. I taught biology and evolution, not astronomy, but there was some cosmology and astronomy in my courses.

“Dear Superintendent Walters,

“I have been an Oklahoma science teacher for many years. Among the subjects that I have taught are biology and astronomy.

“In order to comply with your order, I would have to use the Bible as the basis for astronomy. I assume from what I have heard that you are a creationist who accepts the recent miraculous creation of the Earth. But that is not what I am writing about.

“Instead, my understanding is that even creationist astronomy does not include astrology, that is, the belief that stars and planets directly influence human affairs.

“Imagine my surprise when I re-discovered Judges 5:20. (I have read the Bible twice, but I forgot about this verse.) Judges is a book, which you would consider historical (it is not psalms, proverbs, or prophecy) about the Israelite conquest of Canaan. This passage is from the victory song of Deborah (a woman army leader) and Barak about a recent Israelite victory over the Canaanites. It reads, “From heaven fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sisera.”

“Am I supposed to teach that astrology is, under some circumstances, true? If so, perhaps the state should also require classroom horoscopes and, if so, your department would issue the official horoscopes for public school use.

“If, instead, you consider this passage to be poetic allusion, then I would have no difficulty with this passage. However, how is a public school teacher to decide which Biblical passages are literal and which are poetic allusion? Your department should also issue official guidelines about this as well, perhaps an official state manual for Bible interpretation.

“Could you help me out in my confusion?”

There is much legal uncertainty about whether Walters will have to rescind his command for public school Bible instruction.

Gutenberg and Printing: A View from Strasbourg

Strasbourg, France, where I now live, is justly proud of Johannes Gutenberg (about 1406-1468), who invented the printing press. He was born in Mainz, nearby in what is now Germany, and returned to it later, but his crucial first steps in developing the printing press were taken in Strasbourg, where a statue and a plaza commemorate him. I have posted a YouTube video, from Strasbourg, France, about Gutenberg.

One would think that Gutenberg’s idea for a printing press would have been a flash of insight that everyone would have immediately appreciated. But he did his initial work as a sideline and without funding from other people, as far as we know. His main work seems to have been as a goldsmith, polishing gems, and making mirrors. He got his idea for the printing press from another kind of press: the wine-press, which removed juice from grapes. Perhaps if he had just stuck to his polishing and mirrors, or had gone into the wine-press business, he might have had fewer financial setbacks. At least, the return on investment was very slow. His few major investors sued him. But, if Gutenberg had not persisted, the world would not have had what is now widely considered one of its most important inventions.

As a result of the printing press, ideas could now be publicized through a large number of copies, rather than copied by hand or by meticulous engravings that were affordable only for illustrations. Gutenberg developed an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony that could be melted and re-used. The greater number of copies allowed the written ideas to spread more widely and gain a recognition that they would not otherwise have had, or had only after a long delay.

 

 

Some examples of such ideas, themselves changing the course of history, are depicted on panels on the Gutenberg monument. One of them shows the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, with a Gutenberg press squarely and symbolically in the middle of the Continental Congress. Copies of the Declaration then spread around the world, where they stirred the ideas of liberty and democracy more than any handwritten document could have done.

 

Another example is the idea of emancipation of slaves and the end of the institution of slavery. Were it not for the printing press, relatively few people would have been aware of how cruel a system slavery was. Anti-slavery documents stirred the hearts of good people and embarrassed those who owned or profited from slavery. This plaque graphically depicts the cruelty of slavery.

Another example is education. The ideas and works of all kinds of intellectuals, from Descartes to Kant to Mozart to Milton to Newton, might have been lost had it not been for the printing press making their creations widely available. As the plaque shows, it was almost entirely white male creators who benefited from this, but the spread of knowledge was a process which, once started, could not be restrained.

 

Who knows what great ideas might be lost even today because, even if published, go unnoticed. How much worse it would be had there been no way to publish them. This shows the important role that chance plays in evolutionary adaptation (in this case, cultural evolution).

Happiness Is Fill in the Blank

I’ve been looking through a dull but well-intentioned book from 1937, 101 of the World’s Greatest Books. That is, five to ten page summaries of them. They were the ones you would expect from the era which continued with Great Books of the Western World, whose numerous volumes filled many library shelves even in small towns because teachers and librarians thought these were the books that everyone ought to know about to be considered educated. Great novels, epic stories, great scholarly works, great plays, great works of philosophy, almost all of which were outdated even in 1937. I wasn’t expecting much, not having much interest in the classical authors (Dante was especially silly), but just in case I missed something, I wanted to check.

Rather than to discuss the summaries of the “great” philosophers, which would lull you to sleep, I have chosen one narrow question: What is happiness?

Aristotle answered this question in a prolonged and painful contemplation of the obvious. His was the doctrine of the golden mean, which says that happiness is where you have enough, but not too much, of everything, from wealth to strength. Is there anyone who didn’t already know this? Some people act as if the right amount of sexual pleasure is as much as possible, but even they get worn out once in a while, and they will probably admit this. Some people act as if the right amount of sexual pleasure is none at all, not even accidental thoughts of sex. They are not happy, protestations notwithstanding. But the vast majority of humans already live by the doctrine of the golden mean. I certainly do.

While the golden mean seems obvious, there are lots of people who say that happiness is different for every person. Let me cite, rather than a philosopher, the mid-century musician Ray Coniff, whose song said that “Happiness is different things to different people” (“To a beatnik, it’s a beard, beard, beard…”) In the 1960s, when as a little kid I was absorbing television, I heard the tobacco corporation version: “To a landlord, it’s a great big rent, to a smoker, it’s a Kent.” (I’ve never heard this song on the radio since the 1960s. I assume the tobacco company bought the rights to the original song and is hoarding them.)

I think we all, regardless of philosophy or religion, know that there must be some universals to happiness (except among psychopaths). And, I maintain, many of these universals match the behaviors and feelings produced in our species by evolution. We can only be truly happy when we can honestly feel we are doing the right things with our lives—that is, altruism. We actually enjoy being good (up to a point), and having allies rather than having only enemies and competitors. And having a sense of purpose—which is also the product of evolution—and not just disconnected events.

Happiness is, therefore, not just whatever rings our bells, or floats our boats, or tickles our fancy, or verbs our object. It is a product of evolution, just like language and toenails and the cockles of your heart.

As Always, Mark Twain

 

In the previous essay, I tried my hand at humorous creativity to shoot down the idea that a benevolent God is in control of the world. But who was I to think I could do a better job than Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known as Mark Twain?

I looked through a collection of Twain’s unpublished writings. He left as many unpublished scribbled sheets as he did published books, if not more. This demonstrates that the success rate of a genius (assuming that is what he was) is probably below fifty percent. In many cases, I can see that these works were unpublishable. They just did not have the compelling wit of his more famous works. Especially in his declining years, he simply did not work as hard as he could have. Genius is not enough; discipline is necessary.

A recurring theme in his unpublished writings is that, if there is a God, He must be cruel. In his essay Thoughts of God, Twain tried to analyze the twisted thought processes of a God who could create the fly. God’s commission to the fly: “Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting…Settle upon the soldier’s festering wounds in field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also prays…” And the plague victim: “sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gums them thick with plague germs…” At least with humans there is the hope, or delusion, of life after death, but animals suffer from flies, “…all the kindly animals that labor without fair reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter…”

Twain then attacks the idea that, when humans help one another, they are doing God’s work. Twain could not have known John F. Kennedy would say, “Here on Earth, God’s work must tryly be our own.” Twain just considers human good deeds to be God taking credit for someone else’s good work. The only italicized passage says, “There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve.” If it is a sin to withhold help when we can give it, God must be a cosmic sinner.

In another essay, In My Bitterness (written when Twain was still bitter about the death in 1896 of his daughter Olivia (Susy) of meningitis), he wrote, “He gives you a healthy body and you are tricked into thanking Him for it; some day, when He has rotted it with disease and made it a hell of pains, you will know why He did it…He may tear the palpitating heart out of your breast and slap you in the face with it.”

In a story at the end of The Refuge of the Derelicts, Twain writes about the cruelty of the spider sucking the life out of her victims, and even her husband, and then along comes a wasp and lays an egg on the spider. The wasp grub “gnawed a hole in the spider’s abdomen, and began to suck her juices while she moaned and wept…” The wasp grub eats the spider from the inside, leaving it alive until the last miserable moment. The wasp was “radiant with that spiritual joy which is the result of duty done.”

Theodicy is the intellectual discipline of making excuses for God. You would think that it would by now have gone extinct. But humans want to believe, despite all evidence, that God is good. That is certainly what I want to believe, but, as Twain would have said, wanting don’t make it so.