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.

War For The Planet Of The Apes

War For The Planet Of The Apes has received widespread accolades, and rightly so. More importantly than the remarkable special effects, it tells a thoughtful story about war, morality, revenge, justice, goodness, and hope. And it once again features apes riding horses, which is hard to beat in terms of sheer entertainment value.

What stood out to me in this final (?) installment of the series was the remarkable biblical imagery. I said to my son after I watched it, "That was a story of Caesar, the Ape Moses, leading his people to the Promised Land." I went home and jumped online, and sure enough - that's what the director had in mind:

In Reeves’ mind, the character’s death was almost biblically preordained. “He was sort of this ape Moses, so for him not to be able to be in the Promised Land with them — I thought reaching this place could be tremendously emotional,” he said.

 Director Matt Reeves told EW:

“We watched Bridge on the River Kwai...We watched The Great Escape. We watched Biblical epics, because I really felt like this movie had to have a Biblical aspect to it. We watched Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments. We didn’t go, like, ‘Let’s take a little bit of this, a little bit of that.’ When you surround yourself with something that feels emotionally right, there are connections that make sense to you that somebody else might not see…[the films] informed the vibe we felt about this thing.”

The parallels to the biblical epic of Moses are unmistakable.

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.

When Humans Lose Their Humanity: "No Sanctuary" and the Real Horror of Terminus

The Walking Dead has been one of the most thought-provoking shows on TV in the past 5 years, and the Season Five premier showed that the writers haven’t missed a step. However, I'm not sure that every step deserves to be taken. Let me explain.

I’ve been thinking about the profoundly disturbing Episode 5.1, “No Sanctuary.” Something was bothering me on a deeper level than just the visceral reaction to the horror in the story. I finally realized that The Walking Dead is (perhaps accidentally) revealing a troubling aspect of how human nature works: We have a tremendous capacity for dehumanization.

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Dehumanization: to deprive of human qualities, personality, or spirit (Merriam-Webster)

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The Walking Dead features human beings who have been dehumanized by a virus that has shut down almost everything except basic minimal brain function. Rationality, emotion, and morality are absent from this animated corpse. The Walkers are now just a thing that looks human, with none of the dignity or rights a human being deserves. If zombies like these were real, that would seem to be solid reasoning.

   

However, the dehumanization does not stop there. In The Walking Dead, people who treat the Walkers as if they are merely things increasingly treat the fully human beings around them as if they, too, are things. Pick any character in the show. They more they enjoy taunting, toying around with, or killing the dehumanized around them, the more cruel and indifferent they become to the human beings around them. They inevitably dehumanize the living in some fashion as well.

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. 

Hitting Us At Our Weakest

I suppose I shouldn't be, but I am continually amazed by the conclusions our society reaches about human life. Exhibit #1: Recently, Peter Singer's blatant call for the legalization of infanticide has regained popular traction after the idea of after-birth abortion became mainstreamed. Here is the core argument:

[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk...merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.” 

There has been some criticism within the media, but it's been a cautious criticism:  most people don't like the idea at all, but as it pushes them to the logical conclusions of their ethics, they start to stumble a bit. The author of the article above, after saying he believes something changes when the baby is born and achieves autonomy, adds, "But I also think that the value of the unborn human increases throughout its development..."  That's a tough position to defend. Perhaps that explains why the article concludes with some questions for other pro-choice hard-liners, questions which the author carefully avoids answering.

Exhibit #2: When the New York Times wrote a feature on babies with Down's Syndrome, they certainly did not choose a neutral tone:

"A growing group of parents is seeking to insert their own positive perspectives into a decision often dominated by daunting medical statistics and doctors who feel obligated to describe the difficulties of life with a disabled child." "The parent evangelists are driven by a deep-seated fear for their children’s well-being in a world where there are fewer people like them. But as prenatal tests become available for a range of other perceived genetic imperfections, they may also be heralding a broader cultural skirmish over where to draw the line between preventing disability and accepting human diversity." 

The idea that the handicapped children have value and worth is a "perspective"; their parents are actually zealots motivated by fear. Later, the NYT finally managed to give at least one sentence to the more serious question underlying the debate: 

"Many participants in the ad-hoc movement describe themselves as pro-choice. Yet some see themselves as society’s first line of defense against a use of genetic technology that can border on eugenics."

 That's how they see themselves, anyway. The NYT promptly followed that up with a paragraph about the selfishness of the parents, but the underlying questions of ethics and eugenics had been cautiously raised.