Chapter 2.                               Part F

It seems bitterly unfair that the same Science that eroded our moral beliefs then offered nothing to put in their place. But what seems far more cruelly, diabolically ironic is that at the same time as Science was eroding our religious/moral beliefs out from under us, it was putting into our hands technologies of such destructive power that we can’t help but wonder whether any individual or group of individuals could ever be moral enough to handle them responsibly.

               

         We are living in a time of terrifying uncertainty. We now have the weapons to scorch our planet in one afternoon – so totally that the chances of our species surviving in that post-apocalyptic world are effectively zero.

Furthermore, even if we escape the holocaust of nuclear war, we are also steadily polluting our planet. We know that we are, but we can’t seem to stop, even though the vast majority of the scientists who study the Earth and its ecosystems say that the point of no return is rapidly approaching. To people who have studied the Earth and its systems, the risk of environmental collapse is even more frightening than that of nuclear war.

Large numbers of us, in the meantime, “lack all conviction”. Without a moral code to guide us – one that we truly believe is founded in the real world – we are like deer on the highway, stunned in the headlights, seemingly incapable of recognizing our peril.

               

            All reasonable, informed people today know these things. In fact, we are so weary of hearing what are called the “dire predictions” that we don’t want to think about them anymore. Or we think, get scared, and then go out with our friends to get inebriated. There seems to be little else one ordinary person or even clusters of rich and powerful persons can do. The problems are too big and too insidious for us – individually or collectively. Shut it out. Forget about it. Try to live “decently”. Hope for the best.

               

         For me, none of these answers are good enough. To ignore all of the evidence and arguments and resign myself to the “inevitable” is to give in to a whole way of thinking I cannot accept. That way of thinking says that the events of human lives are determined by forces that are beyond human control.

I disagree. I have to. I believe true philosophers must.

Whether we are talking about the cynicism of people who focus on events in their personal lives or the cynicism of some of the people who study all human history, or at any level in between, I have to tell these cynics bluntly: “If you really thought that way, we wouldn’t be having this debate because you wouldn’t be here.” 

  

                          Albert Camus, French philosopher (1913 - 1960) 

  

            As Camus sees it, suicide is the most sincere of all acts. (6.) Its only equal in sincerity is the living of a genuine life. A genuine person stays on in this world by conscious choice, not by inertia.  A genuine person is still here because he or she chooses to be. The other kind of person may claim to be totally disillusioned with this world and the people in it, but that simply can’t be the case if he or she is still alive and talking. These people are only partitioning up their minds, for the time being, into the manageable compartments of cynicism. But the disillusionment that they feel now – on any scale, personal to global – is going to seem minor compared to that which they are one day going to feel with themselves, one day when their fragile partitions begin to give way. And it doesn’t have to be that way, as we shall see.

So, to sum up our case so far, what have we shown? First, that Science has undercut and eroded the old beliefs in God and the old codes of right and wrong. Second, that, because of our ongoing need just to manage our lives and because, even more importantly, of our recently acquired and constantly growing need to manage wisely the physical powers that Science has put into our hands, we must replace the moral code that we no longer believe in with one that we do believe in. Then, perhaps we will have a chance - a chance just to live, go on, and get past our present peril.

If we can work out a moral code that we do truly believe in, will it then lead us on to a renewed belief in a Supreme Being? That question is one that I will have to set aside for now. But I will deal with it in the last chapter of this book. For now, let’s set our sights on trying to begin to build a new moral code for this era, so that finally we may confront and quell the “worst” among us. And in us.

Chapter 2.         Notes 

1.http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/heathwood/pdf/

  benedict_relativism.pdf

2. Kuhn, Thomas; “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, 

   third edition; The University of Chicago Press; 1996.

3. Searle, John; “Minds, Brains, and Behavior”; 

   Harvard University Press; 1984.

4. Kincaid, Harold; “Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences”; 

   Cambridge University Press; 1996.

5. Harris, Marvin; "Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times"; Altamira Press; 1999.  

6. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus; translated from the French by

    Justin O'Brien; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975, p. 11.