What Is Wrong With Humanity?

The Times once asked famous authors to respond to the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” G.K. Chesterton responded simply, “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”

"We have met the enemy, and he is us." - Pogo 

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It's pretty obvious: a lot of things are broken in the world. The headlines of gun violence, human trafficking, #metoo, corporate greed, cyberbullying, terrorism and abusive sex cults remind us that something about the human enterprise is clearly failing on an ongoing basis. For every area in which we make progress, we seem to offset that by regressing in some other way.



"Etcetera #18: What's Wrong With The World?"

In this episode of a podcast I host with journalist Beth Milligan, I take a look at the brokenness the permeates our lives. The headlines of gun violence, human trafficking, #metoo, corporate greed, cyberbullying, terrorism and abusive sex cults remind us that something about the human enterprise is clearly failing on an ongoing basis. For every area in which me make progress, we seem to offset that by regressing in some other way.

So, what's the problem with humanity? Is it our biology, our environment, or our souls? Has our DNA doomed us to dance to its tune? If not nature, have the forces of nurture forced us to become who we are? Are our spirits or souls (qualia, for all you philosophers) the problem? And depending on what we conclude, what is the best course of action?

Spoiler alert: I think we have to look at all three possibilities. If we want to find the right cure, we need the proper diagnosis.

The March For (At Least Some Of) Science

“In a way, the worldview of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.” (George Orwell, 1984)

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The March For Science, according to various news article I have read, was focused on the value of evidence-based science, an enterprise that is apparently under fire. I suspect this is mostly a political broadside against President Trump, specifically when it comes to global warming,vaccines, and alternative theories to evolution.

Now, I am a fan of both science and evidence. Though the march is largely symbolic and baldly political, I don’t think anyone actually thinks the theoretical framework of the march is problematic (“Boo evidence and science! Stop learning stuff!"). However, the march seemed to me to be somewhat naive and far too narrowly focused.

UnWholly: More Than The Sum Of Its Parts

In Unwind, Neil Shusterman began a brilliantly disturbing look at a culture in which parents can have teenage children “unwound” – a process which kills tham as every part of their physical body is separated and given to someone else. Perhaps because this cruelty is so counter-intuitive, the government floods society with manipulative slogans (“Experience a world outside yourself: Embrace the divided state.”)

As if the story weren't disturbing enough, Shusterman connects the issues with some current trends in the world. He cites current news stories about children abandoned under Safe Haven laws, exorbitant organ prices on the global market, and surgeons who profit by harvesting organs from euthenized patients. It's not the same as unwinding, clearly, but seeing the real world juxtaposed with his fictional world is sobering.

Shusterman introduced some weighty concepts in Unwind: Do we have souls? Do people have intrinsic worth? What makes human life valuable?  Fortunately, UnWholly continues with the same skill and depth offered in Unwind.

Deconstructing Humans

The horror genre has a long history of terrifying us with distortions of humanity. Some of the monsters are inhuman (Silence of the Lambs, Saw, Hostel).  Some are superhuman (Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween).  Others are subhuman (The Descent, The Walking Dead).

The subhuman zombies of AMC’s The Walking Dead have reanimated a hot philosophical topic: What does it mean to be human?  It's one thing to identify deviations from the norm. Clarifying the standard from which we are deviating is a bit more difficult.
   
The Walking Dead and Philosophy, a companion book to the series, uses the undead to shine a spotlight on one of today's headlines:  Can humans lose their personhood - and thus their moral rights and standings?  I think most of us would immediately say, "Of course not," but  scientists, philosophers and theologians have a hard time agreeing on the answer to this question.  If "human" is merely one type of "person," then clearly a person does not have to be human. This distinction is not too controversial.  The controversial question is this: Can someone be human without being a person? 

Much Undead Ado About Nothing

As mentioned in an earlier post, the debate about what it means to be human has taken an interesting direction following the recent fixation with zombies. The Walking Dead and Philosophy opened with two essays arguing that the consideration of philosophical zombies (P-Zombies) - theoretical beings identical to human beings but lacking consciousness, qualia, or sentience -  mitigates against a purely materialistic view of the world.  

There is a clear difference between P-Zombies (who are biologically identical to humans) and actual humans.  Something besides biology seems to be necessary to explain consciousness, mind, thoughts, ideas, and emotions.  

I find the intellectual speculation to be both insightful and entertaining.  The zombie analogy provides a way to decipher the nature of humanity, at least at a theoretical level.  Robert Delfino and Kyle Taylor (“Walking Contradictions”)  take the discussion in The Walking Dead and Philosophy a step further. Is the idea of real zombies even coherent, or are we just making a lot of undead ado about nothing? 

Their argument builds from two key laws in logic - the Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction -  to argue that a thing cannot exist in such a way that is incompatible with its nature. A thing with mutually exclusive properties cannot exist (like a square circle, or a sane University of Michigan fan). In the same way, a being with mutually exclusive properties cannot exist either. Since the Walkers try to hold two mutually exclusive properties in tension (both physically alive and physically dead), they would seem to be impossible.  
   

 But not so fast!  Some quasi-living beings (such as viruses and viroids) appear to do just that. One type of fungi can take over carpenter ants and make them act like, well, zombie ants.  And if you’ve seen Twilight, you know that zombie actors can even carry commercially successful films.