Naturally Building our Destiny

There is a need to define yourself, but that definition cannot be allowed to be unchangeable.That is unless you pick a definition that allows for change.  I was religious in my youth, a left wing liberal/artist in my twenties, an atheist/scientist in my thirties (now). Who knows what I will be in my forties, but a combination and a push back from them will all occur. I also don’t think that I am either to be blamed or praised for anything I do, rather it merely is as I was to do. This may be a convenient way of justifying mistakes, but I don’t mean it to be. I suffer hugely from remorse, guilt, anger and the rest, it is just that given everything in my life, and in the universe there is no other emotions, good or bad, or actions, good or bad, that I could have taken. I have not known of this possibility as I have gone through the process of what some would call indecision, waffling (as they did with Clinton, and are saying something similar of Romney), having no backbone or simply vulnerable to manipulation due to whoever I am currently influenced by. While all of these may be true, the fact that they happen is something beyond human control.

This is not just an American thing of course, but it is especially apparent in America during political season, where most everyone I am with would not actually identify themselves with either political party, but the necessity to do so, often lands otherwise like minded people in different groups, which is a shame. So I choose generally to define myself philosophically by the belief that I indeed am who I am and circumstances are what they are going to be. That is, they can be viewed from the past, present or future with the same contours and forms. I have learned therefore to call myself a Naturalist, which seems so benign that at first blush I can be welcomed at nearly any party. Of course once people get to know me I may not be invited back. I first started calling myself a Naturalist after hearing a “Point of Inquiry” interview of Tom Clark, by the excellent, and thoughtful Skeptic and Magician D.J. Grothe. In this podcast Clark talked about his own group, which I have now followed, which is the Center for Naturalism. Before that time I thought of naturalist viewpoints from two angles. The first was the John Muir, or even Charles Darwin type of Naturalist. Though I identify with both, I am not a field biologist at all, and know absolutely nothing about beetles. The second was that as a former theatre director I think of naturalism as a 19th century literary movement, which in terms of the theatre was dominated by Chekhov in Russia and Ibsen in Norway. Though I loved this type of theatre in college, I spent my early 20’s trying to do anything but Naturalist plays, instead, thinking that experimentation involved a breaking from this tradition. It wasn’t until last night when I re-read my favorite Ibsen play “The Master Builder” that I realized that I had come full circle to my modern theatre literature days, when that play, and Naturalism had moved me so much. This is so true that I don’t mind the identification as a Naturalist to extend beyond what Tom Clark was describing on “Point of Inquiry”.

Clark, and now Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss and others have described naturalism in a way that makes sense to a person like myself who is delving deeper into nanoscience, and becoming more interested in cosmology. It doesn’t take long for that perspective to make you suspicious of human exceptionalism, as humans certainly make up such a tiny part of the universe. In fact just this morning I heard a traditional naturalist E.O. Wilson speaking of societal altruism in ant colonies. So even if we look below our feet, we seem less exceptional by the moment. In other words it fits the title, we are just a part of the natural universe. Already we are touching on something that might be uncomfortable to many, whether they are religious or not. Even many Atheists subscribe to a rationalist view of Emergence, which puts humans in a special place in the universe. While Emergence happens with flowers and butterflies, and certainly humans some would argue, including Jon Haidt in his latest book, that human emergence involves the property of free will. This explains how we are both natural and special, but unfortunately while not violating the laws of psychology it does violate the laws of physics, where cause and effect are clear tenants of everything, and thermodynamics paramount to the desire to be special.

So what about “The Master Builder”? I bring it up in case you haven’t seen or read the play or most Ibsen plays for that matter. It is full of tortured humans doing the only thing they can which is being human. The story is of course about an architect, or a builder as Halvard Solness likes to call himself, of enormous fame and talent. Tormented by guilt and paranoia, he is led to both acceptance and his fateful death. The Master Builder was not truly capable of building his own destiny, as we are not either. We just feel the joy and pain of that which has already been built. So perhaps we should take a while in these recent debates about free-will to stop reading editorials, blogs (well read this one), and books about it, and read an old play, where humanity so blatantly hits us over the head. The Master Builder may be dead, but we are not....