Please read the Glossary of My Terms to be able to follow this post.
Some hold up the lotus as a symbol of the promise of earthscheme. Certainly, to the human eye the flower is appealing, the sludge from which it emerges, not. But the sludge is not less wholesome than the flower. Nothing in our environment substantiates the notion that the seeds of something fine can be harboured in ghastliness. But humans gasping for palliation can delude themselves. For the sighted, the pervasive, dyed-in-the-wool nastiness of our world is, quite simply, unnecessary evil.
In ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ Teilhard de Chardin brilliantly laid bare the most significant phenomenon on the planet; the – accident free – movement towards higher consciousness. And he posted this vision : “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” However, he believed evolution had come to rest in human hands; and to further it we needed to apply the ‘law of complexity consciousness’. He offered no usable suggestions as to how this could be done, and nobody else seems to have clarity.
Teilhard had a great synthesising urge. He blended coarseness, cruelty, divinity into a smoothie he would have us sip. “ … God is present in the world and nothing is more present in it than the God who creates it: for “it is in him that we live, and move, and have our being” (The Divine Milieu). I lack the information to speculate on the root of Teilhard’s urge. Certainly, it found succor within mainstream Christianity.
Strides in technology have had outcomes for Survival, Convenience, Comfort, Pleasure … greed and desire for dominance have been prominent in the mix that fuels this ‘progress’.
Forms of slavery flourish; there is trafficking of humans including children. Manufacturing and service units have assumed gigantic proportions; within them humans are semi-robots, comingling with machines. Artisans are steam-rollered out of existence.
Big money is made from illness. To enlarge and perpetuate revenues, symptom alleviation is, wherever possible, chosen over treatment of cause. To an extent though consumers are complicit in this.
Towards the end of 2019 alerts about a ‘novel’ virus were – the evidence seems to suggest – delayed to conceal its probable creation in a laboratory. Millions across the globe became ill, many died. Life quality declined for a majority. The World Health Organisation showed a curious lack of determination in tracking down the cause of the pandemic.
Various forms of addiction flourish. Many children escape into ‘gaming’. Demand for narcotics is met and fostered by ruthless, violent suppliers.
In many countries those who wield power are distinctly short on virtue.
Weapons of mass destruction are made, also sold to foreign buyers. There is the ever-present danger of these falling into the ‘wrong’ hands. They include terrible chemical and biological weapons, which have been used.
For millions, in many parts of the world, it is sport – so called – that makes life worth living; provides gratification for the propensities intrinsic to the ego. Football is probably the largest provider. The behavior of many players and spectators is nakedly unsporting, and much of this is par for the course. Children are taken to these events. Then there is The Olympics, even more nauseating because ideals are more blaringly plastered onto the – grimy – business as usual. Medals are pursued with a grim single-mindedness … most visible in gymnastics, in which rigid little girls go through their routines like marionettes. The media doesn’t pretend. ‘Medal hunt’ is their staple phrase … the coverage is a D u l l carry-on. Drug use has to be heavily policed – in the case of one host country there were grounds for suspicion that the government had condoned abuses by its athletes.
The ego is hardwired into every creature. The squirrel will steal from its neighbor to enlarge its own store. Thus an immutably conflict-ridden world obtains, in which its most complex product – us – could destroy itself.