The Dead Still Speak. But Are We Listening?

By Ruben Rivera© 6 Nov 2010

The Greek philosopher Socrates (5th c. BC) famously said "The unexamined life is not worth living."

But Socrates did more than examine his own life -- testing the reliability of what his senses told him, even questioning the cultural assumptions, intellectual knowledge and religious beliefs upon which society's institutions and behavior were built. He spent much of his time questioning the people of ancient Athens about everything they thought they knew. They did not like it. So they had a democratic vote and told Socrates something like this: "You are one sick, sick anthropos. But if you swallow this drink made from a delightful little herb -- Ahhemlock! -- it will all be better."

"Death of Socrates," Daniel Chodowiecki, 17th C.

The Socrates affair has crisscrossed the globe through the ages in many different forms, but with the same caution to the wise, the summation of which only the king's English will do.

Never expose unto the people that they knowest not what they thinketh they know. Neither reveal unto them the gaps between their vaunted ideals and who they are in truth. For thou shalt surely suffer for it, and that right smartly.

Perhaps this maxim is easier to remember: The truth shalt get thee in a pickle. Pray, therefore, to love pickles.

I have written elsewhere on the need for education as soulcraft. I am saying here that foundational to soulcraft is the examined life. I am saying here that examining self and society may be an important step in the salvation of both.

One thing that desperately needs examination today is the difference between what we think we know is going on, and what is going on. Another thing that needs examining are the gaps between our ideals and who we really are. Take, for example, our much vaunted ideals of liberty.

1776

Excerpt: Declaration of Independence.

Some inconvenient truth here. When Jefferson said that "all men are created equal" and endowed by their creator with rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," he did not mean black people, whom he himself owned as slaves; he did not mean women, who did not get the universal right to vote in the U.S. until 1920; he did not mean Indians, whom he called "savages" in the Declaration. Jefferson, and the other founding fathers who signed the Declaration, did not mean a lot of people.


However, the Declaration, despite its obvious shortcomings, was actually a more radical document than the U.S. Constitution that was constructed for the new nation. For the Declaration stated the Enlightenment basis for a revolution for liberty. The Constitution promptly codified inequality and denied liberty to many.

For example, the Constitutional Convention of the new United States not only refused to abolish the very antithesis of liberty -- slavery -- but to add insult to injury, the Constitution defined black slaves as 3/5th persons for the express purpose of legally denying them democracy while simultaneously giving the white southern elite strong democratic representation in congress (U.S. Constitution, 1789, Article 1, Section 2).

"The elite," the great Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar once lamented, "want liberty, but only for themselves." That sentiment has never changed.

The 20th century was characterized by three developments of great importance, said Alex Carey:

"the growth of political democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy (1995)

In 2005, the international financial conglomerate Citigroup sent an equity investment memo recommending a strategy of luxury investment in the era of emerging "Plutonomies" which are, especially, the U.S., UK, and Canada. (See the whole document here.)

"Income inequality", said Citigroup, is at "the heart of plutonomy". For example, in the U.S. 1% of richest households have some 40% of the nation's wealth, "more than the bottom 95%...put together".

Citigroup was careful to disclaim that it was not arguing whether Plutonomies were good or not. It was just stating the fact of their existence. The question for investors: "How do we make money on this theme?" But it seems that pesky democracy can ruin the whole investment opportunity. No, wait. Good news. The growing gap between the few haves and the many have-nots will likely never be challenged, as long as "enough of the electorate believe they have a chance of becoming a Pluto-participant...the embodiment of the American dream". Translation? Plutonomies, their illustrious 1%, and you as a prospective investor in what the 1% luxuriate in, have little to fear that actual democracy by the other 99% will ruin your day.

Does anyone see anything wrong with this thinking? Is this a civilization that values anything higher than money -- when push comes to shove, in the final analysis? Are political parties of the right and left manipulated into demonizing and fighting each other for scraps from the tables of the Plutocrats while plutonomies may be the biggest threat to democracy in generations? What about this year's Supreme Court decision to lift the ban on corporate political spending? Do we really still believe there is one-person-one vote democracy in this country? Think again.

"We are now in a situation where a lobbyist can walk into my office...and say, 'I've got five million dollars to spend and I can spend it for you or against you."
Alan Grayson, Dem-Rep, Florida (defeated in recent election)

Why isn't government working for everyday Americans, asks Bill Moyers?

"Because it's been bought off. It's as simple as that. And until we get clean money we're not going to get clean elections, and until we get clean elections, you can kiss goodbye government of, by, and for the people. Welcome to the plutocracy."

The victorious rise of plutocracy is just one issue in a sea of troubling issues that face all people. I am challenged to my core to examine my religious beliefs and my life. To ask myself: is mine a faith that is heavenly minded and earthly good?

I think the reader can see that engaging in the examined life, let alone trying to get others to do so, is not a work for the faint of heart. One needs the strength of Hercules, the patience of a monument, and the conviction of a martyr.

The Hebrew prophets of old tried to convey to the world something of the realities of eternity. The world conveyed its appreciation by sending them there.

Jesus of Nazareth once said that "a prophet has honor except in his own country." His message, that right belief means little without right action, crossed a line. He ended up crossed.


But what of the claim of the resurrection? It is true that Jesus' resurrection for life in the hereafter has long been popular with Christians. It is Jesus' teaching about life in the here and now that historically has not been so popular. Following Jesus into heaven is one thing. Following him on earth is another.

And therein lies the paradox. Oh how people love and admire these prophets and teachers of rational ideals, religious verities and social conscience -- but from a safe historical distance, when there is often little at stake in loving and admiring them. This allows us to believe one thing and live another.

But where would we be without these gadflies of the world who examine self and society? What would the world have been like if people listened to them while they were alive? But there is still hope. For, if I may borrow a phrase from the Christian New Testament, "though they are dead, yet do they speak". What may the world still become if we would but listen to them now?

Wisdom From The Outer Limits: The Sixth Finger. The Wisdom to be Human Lies Not in the Distant Future

By Rattus Scribus© Sunday, 7 February 2010
You may want to read the introduction to this series here

The story:
In a mansion on the outskirts of a Welsh mining town, Professor Mather (Edward Mulhare) has advanced the science of genetics. Out of guilt for his part in the creation of the nuclear bomb that now threatens to wipe out all life on earth, Mather has invented a machine to speed up the evolutionary process of humanity in a desperate attempt to “make war impossible.”

Young Gwyllm Griffiths (David McCallum) jumps at the chance to be the first human subject for the machine, anything to escape the mining job and town that have condemned him to insignificance. The experiment succeeds. Evolved 20,000 years into the future, Gwyllm emerges with a much larger head and the bud of a sixth finger on each hand, denoting a human future of vast intellect and greater manual dexterity.

Scene: The Sixth Finger

But the machine unleashes the self-perpetuating forces of evolution and Gwyllum continues developing at an exponential rate. Eventually he evolves into a being with near god-like capabilities, complete with twelve fingers, a massive head/brain, and (for reasons unexplained) pointed ears. In the script, he also becomes translucent and lives now by photosynthesis, thus no longer requiring food or sleep; but none of these characteristics (except no longer needing sleep) are clear in the television episode.

Scene: The Sixth Finger

Having evolved the equivalent of well over a million years into the future, the only thing remaining of the original Gwyllm is his hatred for the town and, in general, for the ignorance, prejudice, and unreasoning destructive hatred of “man.” He is set on destroying the entire town with a mere thought (and afterward, to teach the entire world a similar lesson?), but then he evolves past the need for revenge or power, and indeed all things material.

Scene: The Sixth Finger

Impatient to wait for the completion of the human evolutionary process into "Vortex" -- the non-material transition into cosmic being of pure "intelligence in space" -- Gwyllm returns to the lab and enlists the aid of Cathy (Jill Hayworth), a poor bread delivery girl who loves Gwyllm deeply and first introduced him to Professor Mather. Gwyllm enters the machine but, afraid to lose him, Cathy reverses the process and brings him back to his original state, exhausted, but "glad" to be back, says Cathy.

The context:


When "The Sixth Finger" first aired (Oct 14, 1963), America was engulfed in two raging conflicts, one foreign, one domestic. On the foreign front, the early 1960s was the height of the Cold War. Exactly one year before, the Cuban missile crisis (Oct 1962) illustrated the Cold War era madness that threatened at any time to bring the world to thermo-nuclear annihilation. Indeed, the previous OL episode, "The Architects of Fear," dealt with the nuclear war paranoia by weaving a tale in which altruistic but misguided U.S. scientists secretly manufactured an extraterrestrial harbinger of invasion in the attempt to unite the world's two main antagonists -- the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. / China -- to overcome their differences in order to repel a common threat.

American children were taught to head for a bomb shelter if they heard a civil defense siren, or to "duck and cover" if they saw a flash in the sky, as if hiding beneath a wooden school desk could protect them from the equivalent of a small exploding sun.

Ironically, while the U.S. lectured the world on liberty and was prepared to vaporize the earth in defense of it, on the home front, America was far from the model of democracy. For the legacy of slavery and racial segregation finally erupted into the protests and conflicts of the Civil Rights Movement.

1965: Police break up a civil rights protest,
ironically in front of a U.S. symbol of democracy: The White House.

Meanwhile the feminist, youth, and sexual revolutions were also creating tensions and resentments with the traditional holders of power. Finally, about a month after this episode aired, the United States would lose its president, John F. Kennedy, to assassination (Nov 22, 1963). Thus, while America saw itself as the world's physician, it was a physician much in need of a doctor.

The Wisdom:
There are always things one can find to critique in fictional drama such as "The Sixth Finger." One glaring problem for me is when devotees of the inductive science of evolution (who have often criticized deductive philosophy and religion for making unprovable claims about the divine origins and final non-material state of humans) themselves speculate on a final non-material destiny of human evolution that is just as unprovable. Evolution can only attempt to trace the material origins and development of biological life. It has absolutely nothing to say about what, if anything, happens beyond the vale of biological death. Nor can it track or prove any species development that includes non-material factors or states of existence. This utopic ideal of humans evolving to pure non-physical intelligence absorbed in the cosmic all, may be standard fare in many a science fiction novel or film like "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," or "The Outer Limits."

Scene: 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But it has far more to do with Plato, or (ironically) religion, or plain wishful thinking, than with the science of evolution itself.

Scene: Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Captain Decker "joins" with the entity known as "V'ger" and evolves to pure intelligence in space.

Nevertheless, in the paranoid and uncertain Cold War context, "The Sixth Finger" very deliberately attempted to illustrate humanity still in its developmental infancy, driven by primitive and petty motives of ignorance, hatred, lust and the quest for power. Technologically entering the space age but developmentally not essentially different from Neanderthal, humans seemed doomed to self-extinction unless something could render us "intelligent."

That something, it was assumed, was the progress of evolution. And why not evolution? Neither philosophy nor religion had as yet been able to render humanity intelligent enough to avoid the horrors of slavery, racism, sexism, war and holocaust. But, evolution is too slow. The fear is that humans are likely to destroy themselves long before reaching that state of blissful intelligence. Simply put, we cannot wait millions of years to grow up.

Scene: The Sixth Finger: "Evolution Machine"

Wouldn't it be great, therefore, if someone could invent a machine to do it all at once? Zap! Problem solved. That is the stuff of dreams and science fiction movies. The writers of "The Sixth Finger" of course knew that there was no such machine in reality that could come to our rescue. So all they can do is close the TV episode with the following narration:

"...And yet, may we not still hope to discover a method by which within one generation the whole human race could be rendered intelligent: beyond hatred, or revenge, or the desire for power? Is that not after all the ultimate goal of evolution?"

"Within one generation." Why the hurry? Because WWIII (or today, some other Weapons of Mass Destruction conflict, environmental disaster, water wars, etc.) could ruin our whole day. We cannot wait for "the ultimate goal of evolution".

But, if I may be so bold, there is hope for the wisdom we need, and we need not wait for the distant future. It has always been right here. We have all known people from ancient times down to our own day that have imparted to the world just that wisdom. Moreover, it is a wisdom that has nothing to do with the mechanisms of evolution, nor with advancements in science, technology, or futuristic material progress at all.

The wisdom that is selfless, other-oriented, and at peace (neither afraid about things one cannot control like Hurricane Katrina, nor withdraws from things one can ameliorate, like human poverty and injustice) have found expression in many cultures. Socrates of Athens, Gautama Buddha of India, Jesus of Nazareth, Sor Juana de la Cruz of Mexico, Mahatma Gandhi of India, Mandela of South Africa.

Gautama Buddha

These and other sages have shown us the heights of human wisdom, love, and fraternity. Ironically enough, much of this wisdom has been around since ancient times: so much for modern progress and final evolutionary scenarios. Indeed, this kind of wisdom actually violates the basic evolutionary impulse of self-preservation and species propagation.

For there is a wisdom without which human life is simply another animal species competing for domination in the food chain. Without such wisdom, the human, dare I say it, may not be worth preserving. And it is our only hope, lest our scientific knowledge and inane pursuit of material success so far outpace our human wisdom and character, that we render life on this planet a purgatory, or end ourselves altogether.

That would be most tragic. For if there is a great cosmic record of all things -- an Encyclopedia Galactia -- there will be but a tiny footnote on one of its countless pages that reads:

"Human Race, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy: Extinct from stupidity."

Jesus preaching "The Sermon on the Mount."

Or, the human race can become an inspiring and important part of the galactic story.

But for this to occur, we must acquire and live by the ancient wisdom that is not motivated by nor captivated to mere "animal" impulses and pursuits.

It is a wisdom from the Outer Limits, and it has long taught us such timeless principles as:

--Examine your lives and question what you think you know. (Socrates, paraphrased)

--"Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely." (Buddha)

--A good idea put to action is better than just an idea. (Buddha, paraphrased)

--"Treat everyone as you would wish to be treated," "You cannot love both God and money," "The greatest commandments are these: Love God, and your neighbor as yourself," "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." (Jesus)

--"Be the change you wish to see in the world." (Gandhi)


Nothing of this wisdom is dependent upon or proven by the mere progress of science or evolution. The Wisdom from the Outer Limits is available to us all, here, now.
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O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1900.
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