SAVING THE WORLD: A DIALOGUE    "You mean really save the world? You can't be serious!" "Don't you find it even a little extraordinary that such an idea should seem extraordinary? Are we so demoralized that even the very idea of rescuing ourselves seems ridiculous? What's wrong with trying to save the world, anyway? I happen to believe the world is worth saving. And if I don't do it, who will?" "Well, you can't! I mean, nobody can save the world." "Does that mean you think we're doomed?" "I didn't say that. I don't mean an apocalypse is imminent, or even inevitable. Nobody knows that for certain. I simply mean that you, personally, can't save the world. If the world is to be saved, it's going to involve lots of people, and major reforms and alterations to just about every damn arrangement there is." "I know that. But somebody has got to get the ball rolling. Many people would like to see this happening. But who's doing it?" "Okay, okay. So how do you propose to set this particular ball in motion?" "Initially, perhaps by writing something. Something that helps people to understand the human condition, situation, and dilemma, from a unabashedly modern and anthropocentric perspective, and that effectively encourages them to do something constructive, pointing them in some of the hopeful directions. Plainly it has to be something that hits a lot of the right buttons, and elicits a response." "Do you really imagine that's going to help? Every day there's a new book full of proposals and formulas. Sometimes they make a splash, and people get excited. But the excitement quickly subsides, and nothing changes." "Ah, but things do change, if very slowly. And you ask if I can imagine that such a contribution could help. That's exactly what I imagine. To envision a more optimistic scenario that doesn't appear implausible to ordinary, sensible people is a sine qua non of the whole enterprise. Naturally, I can't predict whether anything I do will work, or even make the slightest difference. But, since I believe it might, I also believe it should be tried --I've sort of painted myself into a logical corner. "There is a Chinese proverb that says something like "every child that is born must try to save the world". At first it sounded odd to me, but finally I saw the logic --if it isn't the duty of every living human to try to save the world, then whose duty is it? Who is responsible, and who is just along for the ride? The only sensible and prudent position is that it is everybody's responsibility. To the extent that enough people acquit this responsibility wisely and resolutely, the prospects for human survival will be enhanced. I can think of no other way of enhancing them, can you? "No, all right, I get your point. But it's a pretty vague concept. Not exactly a program for action. If everybody --or even a large enough minority of people-- behaved in ways consistent with human survival and a healthy, sustainable physical and social habitat, that would certainly solve the problem. But why would they? People are short-sighted and selfish. They are overwhelmingly concerned with themselves and their own security, status and prosperity. And even if the net impact of six or seven billion people all scrambling to survive, to reproduce, and to improve their relative positions, is to endanger all life on earth, I don't see how you're going to persuade them to stop, not for the sake of some notion of the common good, or even for the survival of their children or grandchildren." "Fair enough. But let's not forget that civilization is based on the successful reconciling of self-interest with the wider interests of society. That's what human history is all about. We have managed it, with lots of glitches, of course, but for very respectable periods of time, on the tribal level, and in city-states and nations and international alliances. All that's new is that we must now do the job on a planetary scale, if we can." "So, I assume you don't think the United Nations is up to the task, or organizations like Greenpeace." "The UN represents governments, and governments typically represent the most powerful elites of each nation --the people least likely to want to address global problems, since they are the ones who suffer the least from them, and who benefit the most from the preservation of the status quo, at least in the short term. I'm all for the Red Cross, Greenpeace, Amnesty, and many other activist groups. Their impact is largely positive, but hardly sufficient to the task, as I'm sure you will agree." "Yes, too little and too late. So what's your message going to be about?" "Saving the world." "How?" "By appealing to a "sense" that I suspect may be commoner than supposed, defending a few propositions, and making a few proposals." "Like what?" "Before I start, let me ask you some questions, okay?" "Ask away." "Try this: what's good about life?" "Life in general? My life? Human life?" "Just being alive." "Well, I suppose it's better than being dead, or not having been born, though I can't think why. Probably it's because I'm alive, and on balance I'm glad I was born, and I don't want to be dead. Not in the slightest." "Does the idea of death frighten you?" "Frankly, there are moments when it absolutely terrifies me. It just seems so unfair, so intolerable --it's like a nightmare. I can remember times when I was sick or in danger --or thought I was-- and believed I might really die. I felt not just anguish, but cold sweats, utter panic. Still, I also admit that there have been times when I have been so miserable that I sincerely wished to die, just to disappear, to stop thinking and feeling, to be totally and finally relieved of my troubles, of the whole burden of existence. But, then again, there have been times when I have felt so elated that the thought of dying didn't frighten me at all, and I realized it. Hearing music can do it. Some drugs can do it, and some experiences --relief, reconciliation, or just happiness. It's probably all a question of mental states. I've often thought it is that elation that keeps me from freaking out on airplanes. It's such a wonderful feeling to be flying through the clouds, seeing the earth below. It seems like magic, and it's impossible to feel scared. Unless there's a bump --that's another story. "I know everybody eventually dies, including me, my parents, even my children. But the idea doesn't ever really sink in. I suppose I don't want it to. It's such an unwelcome thought, and although intellectually I know it's true, it is hard to accept, or even to quite believe." "I know the feeling. Sometimes I think it stems from a sort of logic problem, a genuine conundrum. How can we expect a living, conscious animal to try to contemplate its own non-existence, and to accept that non-existence as a future certainty? When, as infants, we awakened to consciousness of the world outside ourselves, the central feature of that world, from our point of view, was ourselves. How can we erase ourselves from our own picture of the world without setting off a logic storm in the brain, triggering all those terrible neurochemicals? "I'm sure cows are not troubled by morbid musings over mortality. Probably not apes or dolphins or whales, either, although here we can't be quite so sure. But our anguish over death seems to be one of the prices we humans pay for the privilege of being conscious and intelligent. I read somewhere that paleontologists and anthropoligists use evidence of burial customs to establish that a given group of people has crossed the threshold from unconscious animal existence to thinking human life as we now know it. They see others die, and, once they're able to add two and two together, they see their own future prospects pretty clearly. They typically rebel against this by cooking up some more or less plausible story whereby life doesn't really end, and our dead loved ones are not really lost forever. "But let me ask you another question. Do you believe life has a purpose?" "You mean some intrinsic purpose? Well, no, I suppose not. I've read enough Darwin and post-Darwin science to understand that life is just something that emerged accidentally from a particular chemical environment on planet Earth (and maybe elsewhere --why not?), sort of a mold that began to grow and spread. Further accidents --mutations-- and changes in the physical environment brought about the differentiation of species and their gradual evolution. Nature, at the physical or biological level, hasn't really got a purpose, in the sense of a conscious or unconscious goal, or even a direction. Individual organisms are genetically programmed to try to survive, to grow, reproduce, and die, passing their genetic blueprints along  to another generation. Given time and changing conditions, all species seem to become extinct, and I've heard that biologists find no evidence at all to suggest that humans will be an exception. But I suppose you could say that the simple survival of genetic information is a sort of "purpose" that is built in to every organism." "What I think is that, as humans, we might reasonably assign ourselves the additional purpose of trying to perpetuate non-genetic information, too. And make sure that there's always somebody left to appreciate it. Does that makes sense to you?  "Sure, we should try. But that doesn't mean we can succeed." "Oh, I don't claim that we will --my position is much more cautious. I simply believe that if the use of human intelligence and technology has accelerated the risk of extinction, and that if we want humanity to survive, then we are obliged to apply our intelligence and technology to devising strategies, marshalling resources and implementing reforms that may forestall our extinction, possibly for a very long time. If our survival is not a foregone conclusion, why must our extinction be? "One more question. Say we knew human life were going to end in a few months, and there was nothing we could do about it. What should our priorities be?" "Enjoy ourselves to the fullest, I guess, and go out with a blaze. Although it makes some kind of sense to send up a few space capsules with as many records of our existence as we can cram in. Floppies, pictures, books, films, maybe even DNA, in case some other intelligent being should happen across it someday." "That's an interesting notion. But what's the point? Why should we care, if we're not even going to exist?" "Well, if there is any chance that our experience as a conscious and at least half-intelligent species could be turned to profit, even somebody else's profit, it would be a shame not even to try to make it available." "The implication of what you're saying is that we humans have created something potentially of value --or at least of interest-- to the universe, even a universe from which humanity has long disappeared. I tend to agree with you. Our consciousness and the learning that it makes possible --the so-called edifice of knowledge that we have built up over the centuries, not to mention artistic creation-- is a unique phenomenon, as far as we can determine. We are a part of the universe, and we are a means --albeit an imperfect one, and not even necessarily the only one-- whereby the universe is conscious of itself. A star doesn't feel, think, or wonder, or collect and refine a body of information. Neither does a solar system, or a galaxy. They merely undergo natural physical processes, all probably resulting from the initial explosion of a single point of tightly compressed matter, the so-called Big Bang. But we humans, fragile as we are, and short-lived as our species may prove to be, do feel, think, wonder, and learn, passing along extragenetic as well as genetic information to succeeding generations. And maybe someday even to other creatures from distant cosmic neighborhoods." "That does make us rather special, I suppose." "Yes, it does. Of course, every individual person instinctively feels that she or he is special. That's called egocentrism, and it is part and parcel of being an individual organism. By extrapolating from this insight that "I" am the center of everything, we can understand our inclination to think of our family, tribe, neigborhood, social class, nation, or race as special, too --ethnocentrism. These seem like silly and even dangerous ideas when they are held by others --people who are not "me", or "one of us". It seems ridiculous to me that some nondescript other person on a bus imagines herself or himself to be the most important creature aboard --especially when I am also riding. Or that some remote hill tribe believes its members to be the only "true men", and regards neighboring tribes as belonging to a particularly contemptible species of ape, and hence undeserving of the slightest consideration. "To overcome, at least partially, our natural egocentrism, is necessary for social life --it certainly helps that the primate group to which our species belongs is composed of gregarious, and sometimes cooperative, animals. Likewise, ethnocentrism must be partially overcome for civilization to prosper. Like most other animals, we are genetically programmed to compete aggressively with others --of our own or different species-- for limited territory, food, and mates. Happily, increasingly large and diverse human groups have managed to impose on aggressively self-centered behavior the constraints that alone make civilized life possible." "Aggression is the only problem?" "No. There's also stupidity, making mistakes, and accidents, not to mention culpable neglect. But aggression covers a lot of ground. Think about it. As an individual person, living inside your own skin, what do you want?" "Well, I want to be safe, at ease, comfortable, satisfied, prosperous, cheerful, happy, stuff like that." "You want to feel good." "Of course." "So the bottom line of your well-being is how you feel, not what you think, or what you do." "I suppose so." "All right, now, keeping that in mind, what is it about other people that concerns you? Is it their feelings?" "No, not directly. It's what they do, and what they say, assuming it affects me." "So, from your viewpoint as an individual, how you feel is important, and how other people behave is important. They concern you to the extent that their deeds or words may affect you, your physical safety or comfort, or your mental state, the way you feel." "Right." "So how do you want other people to behave?" "I want them to be nice to me, and helpful and considerate and polite and kind and loving and generous and forgiving." "Are they?" "Not very reliably." "And how don't you want them to behave?" "Well, I don't want them to kill me or torture me, injure me or rob or cheat me, imprison me, or be reckless with my safety, or vilify me, slander me, humiliate me, offend me, or deprive me of whatever I need to be secure and healthy and happy." "Those are all forms of aggression, wouldn't you say?" "I see your point. Maybe it simplifies things to see it that way." "I think so. It's important to remember that genetically, we are aggressive and competitive, like many other life forms. It is an underlying fact about ourselves and each other that we will always have to live with and deal with. "Fortunately, each little human is born into a family and a society whose members are not simply beasts, but also carriers of traditions, languages, social customs, information, and technologies --precisely the things that make us different, that make us human, and that are new in the world. Over not that many millennia --perhaps only 20,000 years or so, and remember that homo sapiens in roughly its present form has been around for about 2 or 3 million-- our innate and inescapable beastliness has been mediated to some extent by our conscious intelligence and the cultures that we have built up, and that we pass along by non-genetic means. We have learned how to live in ways that diverge importantly from mere beastliness. We have learned to restrain or rechannel our aggression, in return for the benefits of large-scale cooperation, and long periods of peace and social stability." "It's rather miraculous, when you think about it." "An interesting choice of word. To me what is 'miraculous', in the sense of being wildly improbable, is that conscious intelligence should have appeared and gained a foothold, however precarious, in the universe. Of course, scientists can explain how it probably happened, through natural processes that are now largely understood. "But let's consider the nature of this "miracle" of conscious intelligence. Humans alone can observe, remember, associate, detect similarities and differences, generalize, draw conclusions, and even make plans and carry them out. We can have original thoughts, and we can imagine, conjecture, and invent. We can anticipate the future consequences of present actions. We can experiment to verify our hypotheses. We can reason. We can and habitually do alter our behavior in accordance with our knowledge. We can use abstract languages to communicate our experiences, thoughts and feelings with each other. We can store and retrieve almost unlimited amounts of information in a myriad of forms. Our technologies allow us to obtain information not directly available to the senses. "How do these capabilities make us different? Mainly, they mean that we are no longer confined to the life of direct experience. A cow can distinguish between day and night, but not between Tuesday and Wednesday. She knows when she's hungry, but cannot devise a long-term strategy for improving her diet. We humans, in contrast, have forgotten what it was like to concentrate exclusively on each passing moment, and no other, with never a thought for what was, what will be, or what could be. We are privileged --or condemned-- to see the world from an almost god-like perspective. We experience today in terms of yesterday and tomorrow. While the passing moment is, in a strict sense, the only one that really exists, for us reality also encompasses the entire past and the future, as well as the even more abstract realms of what might have been, and what might still be. The human reality includes both the objectively, immediately real, but also the merely notional and abstract." "Let's see if I understand you. There is, so to speak, an 'objective' reality, which is limited to the passing moment --only the 'now' really exists. But we humans inhabit a sort of subjective reality, which is largely in our heads. Its ingredients are our memories, thoughts, expectations, and indirect or vicarious experience --what we read and hear about but don't perceive first-hand." "That's right. And this human reality is complicated or enriched even further by two other factors. First, there are the cultural conventions --some relatively fixed, others shifting-- that we learn from others and hold in common with others, such as the languages we speak, the idea that the earth is round, that the week has seven days, or that conditions are getting worse in central Africa. Second, there are the emotional filters that shape our perceptions of reality. "This emotional business is tricky, and needs careful consideration. Non-human animals know something comparable to human fear, lust, fatigue, hunger, and satiety, but only in response to immediate physical sensations. The sight of an approaching lion triggers the gazelle's flight response, for example. But non-humans dwell only in the present, and not in abstract subjective constructions. The other animals can't interpret reality in terms of memories or expectations, hence they can feel immediate fear, but are free of worry or apprehension. They can be idle, but not bored; vanquished by a rival, but not emotionally crushed by the experience; mortally injured and in pain, but not fearful of oblivion,  nostalgic for the good old days, or frustrated by thoughts of jobs left undone. Neither can they make plans, or cherish hopes. "We humans have the same instincts of fear, lust, and so forth, and they are also sparked by neurochemical responses to sensations. The difference is that most of these sensations spring not only from the objective reality that surrounds us --things that happen in each passing moment-- but from our own thoughts and interpretations. A solitary person on an uneventful day may run through a huge emotional gamut, solely in response to his or her inner life. Thoughts pop into our heads all day long --in fact, they originate there-- and each one rings some emotional bell. This succession of mental and emotional states is our life as we live it subjectively --from the inside, as it were. To someone else, of course, our life is what we actually do and say in the objective world. But to us, that's much less than the half of it. "Thus each of us simultaneously inhabits an outer world of objective reality, and another inner world of subjective perception and abstraction. The two worlds are linked, and impact upon each other --madness is what results when the connection between the two is broken. The bottom line, for each of us, is not what we think, or how objectively right or wrong we may be, but how we feel. It's our feelings, and not the objective facts, that tell us how well or how badly we are doing. It is also our feelings that tend to determine our often objectively unreasonable behavior." "Sentiment precedes reason, then." "I think so. Our experiences and thoughts are ultimately validated --become "real" and meaningful to us-- by the emotional response they produce. And here's something else about feelings: the range of possible feelings at first glance would appear almost unlimited, but on consideration, there are only a few categories. Or perhaps only two: good and bad. "Feeling good, for example. What does that mean, exactly? Let's start from the bottom. We can't feel good if we are hungry or exhausted or too hot or cold, or if we're ill or in pain. We can't feel good if we are frustrated, or afraid, lost, or hopelessly confused. Like any other animal, we have certain basic requirements. We need food, warmth, shelter from the elements, and safety from predators and physical dangers. As gregarious primates, we need the company of our own kind, or at least access to it. We need affection, and a sense of belonging. We also have sexual impulses that demand satisfaction. For that matter, we need to exert --and assert-- ourselves, in general --we are designed (so to speak) not only for feeling and thinking, but also for action, for doing things, making things, and communicating with others. "But, as humans who occupy abstract domains, in order to feel good we also need to feel that we are not in danger of being deprived of any of the conditions I've just named. In other words, we need a sense of security, or a least of hope. The impulse to gain or to restore that sense of security and well-being is what drives us to constructive action, and also to deliberate self-deception, and sometimes to drugs. This impulse makes being human a more complicated proposition than being a cow or a crocodile. The latter eat when they are hungry and are able to find food, whereas we humans often can't feel comfortable unless we have secure supplies of everything we need for today and tomorrow and next week. The fact that we are able to think about the future somehow obliges us to anticipate it and take the appropriate measures. At a considerable cost in anxiety, we habitually imagine dire or unwelcome future scenarios, and then try to prevent them from materializing. By the same token, those of us who are lucky enough not to live in subsistence economies or dangerous circumstances may also imagine highly desirable scenarios, and try to bring them into existence. "Our knowledge and our memories of the past supply the information that we use to interpret the present, and to try both to predict and to shape the future. But our purpose is always the same --to feel secure, to feel 'good'. That's all any of us wants, although there is an infinite number of ways of going about it." "How many people, or better, what proportion of people living today, are secure, or feel secure, having their basic needs met, and enjoying reasonable prospects that they will continue to be met? An even more important question is, what are the current trends in this respect? I imagine that there is data to support all positions, from smug complacency to alarm and panic. If we look at the historical record, it's probably true that the proportion of people whose basic requirements are being satisfied has increased. But it is equally true that the total number of living people has also increased, that there are absolute limits to our terrestrial resources, and that some sort of day of reckoning is approaching. "When our needs are met, and we have a sense of security, we all feel "good" --every animal does. You might say it is our natural state, our baseline. It means we are surviving, the balance is even or positive, and the outlook promising or at least not threatening. Exceptionally, we may feel elated or even ecstatic, under certain, usually very temporary, circumstances. And by the same token, even when our situation and prospects are bright, we can suffer setbacks that undermine our satisfaction or comfort. And finally, as we have seen, the inner emotional roller-coaster is not bound to any objective sphere, so even the most fortunate people are familiar with dread and anguish, grief and loss, shame and humiliation, disease and pain, not to mention the fear of death, or the loss of loved ones. "I think it's very important to incorporate the realm of emotion in our calculations, since we are sentient first, and rational second. Empathy --the insight that each of us is a "me", and hence deserving of the same consideration we want for ourselves-- is justified by the facts, and should underlie all our thinking and behavior. There has to be a reconciliation between subjective feeling and objective behaving, the inner and outer worlds. From this reconciliation could emerge a positive system of values and ethics that can offer both species-wide survival value and greatly enhanced prospects of individual security and satisfaction. Do you follow me? "More or less. But I'm not too clear about where this is all leading." "I'm not either. This may be a good time to recap, and to try to give you a picture of the whole picture. "I think we should do several things. The first is to try to establish a framework for thinking profitably about the issues involved in saving the world. The main issues are probably: a) the nature of the individual person as a unit of consciousness and feeling, and an agent of behavior that interacts with the social and physical world; b) the biological nature, the history and the present circumstances of the human species, in all its cultural variety; and c) the current situation and prevailing trends of our physical, economic, social and political habitat. These things should be described in the most sensible, direct and down-to-earth terms, so they will ring true --or at least sound plausible-- to the largest possible number of people, regardless --almost-- of their cultural, ideological, or religious positions and traditions. We don't want to go out on any theoretical limbs, or be too exhaustive, but rather confine ourselves to information and insights that make sense in light of the common experience and thinking of reasonably sensible adults with a critical minimum of information. "The second thing we should do is to advocate a mature, pragmatic, constructive approach to the problems of saving the world, and of making it worth saving, by making it a place where a much larger proportion of people can live plentiful lives. I think we should stress the fact that defeatism is uncalled for, and could be a self-fulfilling attitude, and that while it would be imprudent to expect miracles or magic cure-all formulas, there are ways to address our problems sensibly, vigorously, and constructively. Even if humanity were doomed, it is better to die trying that to sit back and wait for the axe to fall --we might at least gain some time. "The third thing is to suggest some approaches that are consistent with the context already described --the individual, the species, the habitat. We will have to name and describe the obstacles to survival, safety, stability and general contentment, and try to devise ways of overcoming them. "Fourth, we should come up with a plausible description of a future world in which today's negative trends are reversed, and a steadily increasing number of human beings can expect to live full and satisfying lives, and humanity can continue --safely-- to progress in realizing its ultimate potential as a sentient, conscious, intelligent, knowledge-seeking, information-collecting, technology-using species of animal. This scenario involves posing at least the basic principles and outlines of an ethical-legal system and a political-economic system. "And finally, we might even consider 'sacralizing' the humanist, humanitarian, down-to-earth, pragmatic, utilitarian, secular values --turn the whole plan into a kind of substitute religion that is not based on parochialism, fear, myth, magic, romance, promises, or threats, and that shuns what I call "the culture of grievance", along with self-righteousness, and blaming or de-humanizing others. Such a 'religion' may offer a sort of solace and find a sort of transcendence in the human experience of sentient consciousness and the accumulation and refinement of knowledge, and of belonging to a species of which we living individuals are the constituent components and the active ingredients. This is an ongoing epic in which we are the main actors and possibly the entire audience, the setters of the standards and the critics of the performance. And yet it is a story that certainly transcends us as individuals --we are short-lived cells in the continuing process known as human history. We might also get a transcendental buzz from contemplating the enigmatic cosmic backdrop to our existence --which doesn't mean pretending to understand it." "Transcendent or not, this is high drama. The human saga really happened. It's still happening. The fate of our species is undecided. Our knowledge is incomplete and imperfect. Enigmas and mysteries remain, and there may be formal limits to our understanding, but we haven't yet reached them. Could humanity have any more natural, more human, or "higher" mission than to try to put its house in order and to keep on trying to understand the world and how best to live in it? "The exigencies and contingencies of evolution, prehistory and history have not yet allowed us to know true happiness and fulfillment. Selfish aggression, cruelty, exploitation, and repression are still too much a part of our lives and our societies. So are physical and mental disease, and accidental injury and death. So are poverty, ignorance, and emotional deprivation and abuse. You don't have to be much of an idealist to believe improvements to the human situation should and could be made, and that we should devise and strive for happier scenarios. "We now understand that our material successes as a species have raised dire ecological dangers, threatening the survival of civilization and possibly of life itself. We may have enough brains and knowledge to devise and effect the necessary corrections. I think it is at least imprudent, and perhaps suicidal, to deny that it is any other than a human responsibility to attempt to do so." "Sounds good to me!" "Oh, it's probably full of holes and contradictions. But maybe it's a start. Shall we put up a website, and see what happens?" "Why not? There's no harm in trying." [Back to main page]