The Human Dilemma — From “The Death of ‘Nature’”
See The Death of “Nature” — Introduction — Medium http://buff.ly/1ILZg6i
Under the influence of Charles Sanders Peirce, I have launched an idea called Triadic Philosophy. It is summarized in the Kindle book Triadic Philosophy 100 Aphorisms . A free sample can be accessed by clicking Look Inside.
Triadic Philosophy grew into several more books outlining specific methods of triadic meditation and thinking. “The Death of ‘Nature’ “ is among several follow-up texts that examine expressions of, and propose actions related to, triadic thought.
The Human Dilemma
The human dilemma can be stated with stark simplicity. Who and what must we destroy to survive? Nature and we are part of the same system. The difference is we have freedom and power. We can destroy ourselves and all creation, or at least our corner of it.
We all know the drill at some level.
We know that if bird flu shows up among millions of chickens, we will destroy the whole lot.
We know that if we intend to keep eating meat we will kill all the livestock needed to accommodate us.
We can go on and on.
When I say we and nature are part of the same system I should be clear. The system of which are are all a part is called Reality. Reality is all. All we know and all we don’t. It is all that is grasped by every discipline there is and all these disciplines have not yet or never will grasp.
That does not mean we rule the cosmos, which might serve as a synonym for reality or the all.
It does mean we rule what we can reach.
And that is a scary truth when we consider that we have a propensity to convert uncertainty into fear and a tendency to convert fear into selfishness and mindlessness.
Saddled with these weights, the human mind tends to be a bit out of sorts and to gravitate toward actions and expressions that do not bode well on the social front, which is actually the only front there is.
Because we do rule what we can reach, it is helpful to do it with a better attitude than I have described. We should indeed embrace the following values which make for progress and harmony with the tendency of things, which we can take to be continuous, evolutionary and progressive to the extent that we do not impede it.
The human dilemma is not that we are destroying species. Species are always being destroyed. If we count life as everything that can move we are in a massive mortuary. Most of what is killed cannot even be seen. Reality is involved. Make no mistake.
Reality ACCEPTS the end of life for everything that lives.
I sometimes think it CELEBRATES it.
The human dilemma is that we are special and that we have consciences and that when all is said and done, the governance of the world does NOT rest on reality’s shoulders as if reality and us were strangers. It rests on us. We are reality. We are supposed to be the CROWN of reality.
But if we no not move from selfishness and mindlessness to the above values pretty soon, if we do not start teaching them as gospel, we will warm ourselves into a situation where kill more of US than we already do. We will unleash mechanisms of harm that ravage our children. We will be awash in our free and sadly evil decisions.
It is we who devise economies that guarantee deaths of various sorts.
It is we who befoul the skies so that warming is now a problem.
It is we who litter the world with sprawl so that it becomes harder and harder to conceive of a world beyond traffic jams.
