This is the first part of a philosophical treatise I wrote some time ago, when I was about 21 or 22. I had a very esoteric talk with a Christian friend of mine, and we corresponded for some time over various matters. In the end I had the notes for (I thought ;) ) an entire philosophical “system.” These are the remnants of what I had originally, as my computer was stolen and all that remained was a single paper copy that I revised again and again. I would not say anything in this is my final word on anything, and some of the positions represented here I have abandoned completely.

1.  Decadence and Apocalypse

 

        As I grew up in the lower-middle class suburban Southern United States, an area sometimes referred to as the “Bible Belt,” I have heard many people put forward in one way or another the idea that, as time goes on, humans and their societies – the whole world’s human inhabitants in the most inclusive sense – have been continually growing more and more “evil,” perhaps exponentially.  Whenever a certain type of event has occurred, who hasn’t heard someone say, “That would never have happened when I was growing up,” or “The world is going to hell in a hand-basket.”  The groups and individuals that espouse this view seem to think that people in general are less “moral,” more cruel, have less sense of community and responsibility, and are, on the average, simply “worse,” in the sense of existing off-par with some time of human perfection, some golden standard of the best possible state of existence, than our ancestors living 100, 1,000, or 6,000 years ago existed in.  This idea is generally promoted in accord with some Judaeo-Christian religious beliefs: Adam and Eve were perfect and everything since has been a falling away. 

            Such a view, or any similar to it, can be attractive and easy to reach for some, especially those without much education and a deep culture of religious dogma around them.  The media, primarily through television and the internet, continuously and simultaneously broadcast events as they happen in real time to the entire “wired world.”  There are endless discussions, dissections, and deconstructions of events and actions of every imaginable kind, custom-tailored for every possible lifestyle, political conviction and religious affiliation available the world over with just a few clicks on a mouse or remote control.  What is called “morality” by Christians and other religionists is explicitly and unilaterally known from “God.”  Unfortunately, the texts that contain the instructions to this “morality” by which so many people allegedly live by were written hundreds or even thousands of years ago, and have little relevance regarding the world as it is today.  Religion is dogmatic and the indoctrination of dogma leads to a certain closed-mindedness, a staleness in the sphere of mental exploration and an intolerance with critical thinking.  This not only applies to Christians, but to any who are opposed immediately to anything that is not their own, so to people all over the world.  Christians of the Fundamentalist sort, let’s say, are handicapped and left in the dark from the get-go as to how to handle their own changing cultural environment in the modern world, while the customs and moral viewpoints of other cultures are simply so removed from their own ideologies so as to be misunderstood or all-out baffling, and the further whatever custom is removed from one’s own culture, the worse the misunderstanding.  To adherents of this view their own representation in the popular and fringe media spheres of entertainment and news – the internet, television, radio, film, music (and particularly music video), and print — is either very small or completely non-existent.  However, when memes that represent pieces of their “morally acceptable” criteria do appear in the mainstream, they often present simplified and unrealistic views and ideas of what the world is really like.  Sex and violence and all the other constituents of what these people consider “moral bankruptcy” are not only real and interesting phenomena, but they sell, and many people are into many different activities in their lives, the primary reason they are so abundant and popular.  These facts have to be taken into account sooner or later in a person’s life if they are to understand anything at all. 

            It seems that one unchanging component in our “human nature” is the desire to see others of our own species (and other species) suffer for the sake of amusement by placing them in painful, demanding, trivial, humiliating, and treacherous situations, usually for an amount of money to be awarded to the “winner.”  It is this seemingly insatiable desire, which can be seen in the terms of dollars and cents profits by the corporate capitalist elitists, and not a falling away from supposed perfection in an ancient garden, that reduces the population to voluntary, even ecstatic, depravity more than anything else in our time.[1]

            To be certain, this force-fed depravity disseminated through the world might give some the impression that the modern world, or era, is “worse” than any previous time.  The average person probably sees and hears about more death, destruction, disaster, crime, and injustice on any given day than at any other point in human history.  Seen out of historical and social perspective, the events of today would definitely seem “worse” than before.  The world we all live in has a definite and pronounced reputation for being much, if not most of the time, “bad,” or not the kind of place you would (ideally) want to raise your kids, as the saying goes.  This is hardly a recent development, however – at no time or place in the world’s history that is not fictional or mythological would anyone alive and competent say that the overall condition of existence can really meet any basic definition of “good,” or on average a place that a person would choose to live if given a choice.  There have been good times for some and bad times for some alike: from comfortable living in royal courts to living in enslavement for other men and everything in between the circumstances of being human have ranged.  Today’s environment cannot be judged “better” or “worse” than any other, as far as the range of thoughts, emotions, and actions of the humans of known history are concerned – what kind of objectivism would claim that any two times could be objectively compared?  All versions, I assume, would do so.  But experience is subjective – individual and as unique as a person’s palate is — no matter how many facts are collected, or verifications made, or experiments run.  It is an unfortunate symptom of the condition of the human animal, perhaps, but it is a part of all of us – part of our nature.  Really, no matter if you are well-off or miserable in your life and no matter what your station is now, would you really take the chance of changing your life by traveling backward in time, in a sort of cosmic time/place birth mixer, to be randomly thrown out?  I do not think it is an overstatement that many more people in the past lived “poorly” than had it well-off – your chances of being born wealthy and comfortable are fairly slim, I would think.

            Though indeed the overall culture and the lifestyles of many alive now might be called decadent by some others alive today with a specific idea of “morality,” it truly means nothing.  Human beings and the world they inhabit are far from any prophesied downward spiral that has led from “creation” to now and will continue until some great “Apocalypse.”  As I said, it is really an impossibility for a species’ nature to change for the better or worse – a person is a person is a person, so to speak.  There is no doubt to the impossibility of quantifying, or even attempting to quantify, the collected joys and sorrows of every human alive; things are as they are. 

            Four factors, all socio-cultural, drive all general decadence, I believe: some are new and some are old, but they plague our world today in the most critical manner.  These are factors in which action can be taken to change the state of things, or action can be refrained from to leave the status quo as it is.  I will examine these factors – population, technology, unregulated free-market capitalism, and the literal interpretation and application of religious myths – one by one.  Crime is not included for as long as there is a world there is crime, and even the definition of what is legal or not legal varies from place to place and time to time, and if there are laws at all they are all open to subjective interpretation, both from within a legal system and from without.  Disease cannot be included for much the same reason, only much more grounded in biology – viruses and the like are very much symbionts with humans and all other creatures, constantly co-evolving and changing to beat out their “opponents.”  Nothing that is generally regarded as “pure evil” can be included because nothing can be done about it.  These things are in nature.  What I speak of can be changed.  These things are part of the current condition of humanity, and conditions change constantly.

            It is my purpose in this essay to show that not only is “human nature” unchanged in any sense thought of or that we could know of, but emphatically and most importantly in the sense that millions of religionists insist, from Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians to Fundamentalist Radical Muslims and many others.  I will attempt to show why this “decline of human nature” fallacy is so common, as well as why it is mere nonsense.  I will also consider notions as to what “human nature” is exactly and how it relates and interacts with other elements of existence.  Conditions could be changed for the better and that is the message I am attempting to broadcast.  But this is unlikely as long as so many blindly take the one state of consciousness that we know of – being alive as we are – for granted and refrain from meaningful action in the here and now of this life because they live waiting on one  mythical prophesy or another to actualize.

 

[1] Consider the abundance and popularity of the so-called “reality shows” that dominate much television programming today.  They are  trends of the day for a lot of popular culture, with millions of viewers watching each show, and most if not all tend to involve the straining emotional, physical, and mental circumstances I describe above.