OUR SIMPLE 1940 A.D. SITUATION

Abstracted and rearranged from 'The Human Situation' by W. MacNeile Dixon.

Part 1 – both material and immaterial.

Let us begin with ourselves. We are alive, are aware of our surroundings and have characters to enjoy, or to grieve over our condition. The Sun rises and sets, the tides rise and fall and people eat, drink and take their pleasures regardless, as if nothing is happening. Yet the first and fundamental wonder is existence itself. That 'I' should have emerged out of nothingness, that the Void should have given birth not merely to things but to 'me', a conscious, live person, is astonishing. During our early years, when all was fresh and new, we took the miracle for granted. We were busy becoming accustomed to living, and nothing of this appeared startling. We accepted life without even asking, "Why should there be anything at all?" But let our minds once awake and this emergence from the womb of the immeasurable Universe rises to its full significance. To find oneself a member of a particular society, with all its own multitudinous affairs, and not knowing why this should be, and how we came into possession of our own particular characters, provokes numerous philosophical questions leading one to become a member of a very negligible minority. Few humans have become concerned with such musings. Most have died, whatever their pursuits, in the vigour of their sensuality and in the full stride of their ignorance. If there has been one God acknowledged universally and worshipped throughout all ages and countries; it is money.

All forms of life, all organisms that have been made manifest, are engaged in an unceasing struggle to maintain themselves against the forces of nature. "To live, my dear Lucullus, is to make war." Each of us, is born with no reasons given, as a man or a woman, an Arab, an Andaman islander, a Chinese coolie, an English gentleman, a St. Thomas, or an Ivan the Terrible. Each is born in the Stone Age, the fifth or fifteenth century, a vegetarian, cannibal, of base or noble stock, the child of half-witted parents, an imbecile, or a fanatic. As an accident of birth, each of us inherits a family blood feud, a belief in Voodoo, or in a Christian creed of love and charity, and so on. Is it accidental, or is it a selection made by each one of us in a previous state? And what is the justice, if one of us languishes on a bed of sickness, while another enjoys health and happiness? These inequalities of place, time, heredity and circumstance are strewn among us with a monstrous partiality. Under what conditions are we allotted good looks, a musical ear, a sunny temper, a talent for figures, or denied these qualities? And from these bodies of ours there is no escape. They do as much as they please with us. What a despot is the stomach! We can be nauseated by ourselves, or nervously and shamefacedly avert our eyes from the dishonours we must endure.

Good health too, has always been prized as the first and greatest of blessings. Yet perfect health is not common. That bad health lies at the root of a great proportion of human suffering and misery, is beyond dispute. A legion of ills spring from this cause, ranging from bad temper to theft and from drugs and drunkenness to suicide and murder. Health is the high road to Earthly happiness. Both health and illness are, in part, a matter of inheritance, yet hardly, if at all less, a matter of climate. The tropics induce inertia and enfeeble purpose, while in too stimulating climates, the struggle to keep alive is exhausting. Possibly, the British Isles enjoy the healthiest climate in which mankind is at its best, both physically and intellectually. As for the British, "Time, the ocean and some favouring star, in high cabal, have made us what we are."

We may also ask whether we have been created by a nature with no interest in man. Men are simply animals, one species among many thousands. Lords of creation maybe, but certainly not heirs of heaven. Viewed from the dimensions of space, no comparisons can better express the insignificance of man among the cosmic magnitudes. In a Universe so wide, how can we creatures of a day strut, pose and bluster, or look upon ourselves without contempt? Also, how slight a thing is man, even amid the works of man himself. The pyramids belittle the pharaohs who built them. Caesar in his capital of Rome, the archbishop beneath his cathedral's soaring towers and the captain on the bridge of his battleship, are barely visible among their magnificent surroundings, and so present but a poor appearance.

However, we should not accept the philosophy, either of the telescope, or the microscope – to be overpowered by mere magnitude is preposterous. This material perspective is the most distorting and cheapest of our many illusions, overlooking the mind that knows more about the stars than they ever will know themselves until their dying day. But man is at once contained within, and yet himself contains, the World in his thought. Thus, if his outer and physical visions minimise his importance, his inner and intellectual ones restore and enhance it.

Let us turn now to the surrounding World. When life appeared, it did so in a World that somehow supported it. Life depends upon nutrition, and cannot get along using only its own resources. Somehow the World supports us and we are nourished in both body and mind. Also, on its arrival upon the scene, the living creature anticipates that it will receive the necessary assistance. The baby is extremely annoyed if its food is not forthcoming. Nor, despite this tremendous assumption, is it usually disappointed. Animals, the moment that they are born, are already experts in their several ways of life. These strange circumstances suggest a harmony between living things and their surroundings. The World is just as suited to be the home of living things, as they are to make it their home. Certainly, there are some remarkable features of our planet that suggest that it was designed as a grand theatre, as if the coming and conduct of life had been anticipated somehow. Had things been otherwise, we should not have been here to discuss them. At first sight, the conditions looked far from promising. But there were notable peculiarities in the situation. For example, the greatest density of water occurs at a temperature of 4C, so that when ice forms, it floats on the remaining water in order that life can continue in the cold water beneath. Probably, this property of liquid water, being denser than its solid form, ice, is unique among liquids. Also, life is not comfortable, save within the narrow limits of temperature of between about -10C and +55C. Note also, that although local changes are taking place continually, during 4,000 millions of years, the climate of the Earth has remained astonishingly uniform. This is due, in part, to the greater stability of the binary Earth-Moon system compared with that of the Earth by itself.

Yet much was needed to fit the Earth for human habitation, namely the chemical and physical preparation of its surface; the breaking of the rocks into soil, so that plants could take root and grow and provide food for the earliest animals. Even volcanoes assisted in the process by raising the surface and scattering, as dust, the deep-lying strata, rich in lime and phosphates, to form fertile plains. There seems to be a certain something to show that nature cares for the continuation of life.

How then are we to be distinguished from the rest? Superior intelligence perhaps, but it seems that we are merely creatures among innumerable others, from bacilli to elephants, inhabiting for a moment, a small planet, like a mote of dust, of a minor star, the Sun, itself like a diminutive firefly. We may be sure that for every human being in the World, there is not just one star apiece, there are ten thousand of them.

If nature gave us logic, she appears to be singularly lacking in what she bestows, exhibiting an inconsistency, which in a person would be accounted as madness. Her habit seems to turn upon herself. She sends hailstones to destroy her own blossoms and fruits. The sand of the desert, or the encroaching sea, turns fertile fields into barren wastes, reducing whole populations to distress, or starvation. In nature's speech there is equivocation, an irony clearly discerned. Note that this nature, which wars upon itself, is the same nature that has constructed the exquisite fabric of the living organism, and with a physician's art ministers to the diseases she inflicts, producing in the body anti-toxins to defeat the toxins. That nature should create a World full of difficulties and dangers, and thereupon to place within its fabric an infinite delicacy and complexity to meet these very dangers and difficulties, is a contradiction to baffle the understanding. What best nourishes, or what damages, the delicate machinery of nerve and brain? Poisons circulate in our blood from origins unknown. And indeed, our characters are no less vulnerable than our bodies. Our affections are thwarted, or forbidden, or we discover too late that they have been foolishly misplaced, and are destroyed. Our very sympathies can also lead us astray. Instinct and desire point one way, while mature reflection points to another. To live at all, without inflicting injuries upon others, is well-nigh, if not altogether, impossible. Insensitive nature remains insensitive to Earth's misery and looks down upon the interminable procession of the living to join the countless hosts of the dead. Unemotional, passionless nature has given birth to passionate, emotional man. The worst is that the World should be wholly senseless and without meaning, and this has happened. The power and energy of the Universe is doing nothing. It is lunatic, making and breaking, endlessly and aimlessly. The Universe is found wanting – its absence of mind and indifference to itself and to all its works and ways, is amazing. But man does think. Remove man and the vast machinery has no point. Thus time was, until recently, when our world was not, although our World is almost four billion years old! And nature has not changed. Life is a perilous adventure, and a perilous adventure for men (and for their empires) it will remain. Yet if man perishes, then still the ridiculous performance continues. It is extremely curious!

Yet it is the broken hearts that appal us. What elicits human horror and indignation, is not so much the suffering that the strong may with courage endure, as the suffering, at random, inflicted upon the weak, innocent and helpless. Nor would the heroic race of men, shrink from grief and wounds, were it only assigned a noble task. But nature prescribes none. To all our queries, nature never answers a word. The discovery of a goal is by far the most difficult task, but this she leaves to us. We must think, breathe and walk for ourselves, and although thinking is burdensome, nothing can extinguish our curiosity. But let's have laughter rather than holiness, beauty rather than birth (though, at times, these can go hand in hand) and commonsense, only if sheer nonsense is appreciated also. We choose our path, uncounselled, and at our own peril, and yet the unlikely track may still prove to be the best one.

Perhaps nature may have meant well by us, but could only give us second best. She could confer life, but not preserve it. But we may ask, "Was it really necessary that man's superiority should prove his bane and that his aspirations should end in death?" And there is another pervasive artifice of nature by which she induces us to invest in a future that we cannot hope to see. Why should hope have a place, heroism a place and renunciation a place, in this our automaton nature? Is cajolery among nature's talents? The Spartans at Thermopylae were flattered to their ruin by a ridiculous pride of race!

And yet, at the heart of existence, there lies an undeniable sweetness, which no philosophy has fathomed. As a result, Addison wanted us to consider the World in its most agreeable aspects. But the complaints against it are legion. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." All that exists is evil; so much for life; no value anywhere. So what sort of pessimist is this, who plays the flute? Even pessimists, philosophers and Christians marry and are given in marriage. They succumb, at times, to song and laughter. Cheerfulness keeps lurking in odd corners of the horrid gloom. Though not to be compared with the ineffable bliss we demand, but as an alternative to nothing, a case for existence can be stated. In fairness to life/nature, we must enter this natural sweetness into the ledger of our account of it. The ecstasy of lovers, the joy in activity, the glow, the radiance, the sunlight, the perfume – omit these and you have only drawn a caricature. There is music in the air. The adventurous and the courageous, somehow, are more inspiring than the defeatists.

"I think, therefore I am," said Descartes, as an undeniable proposition of his philosophic thought. His successors have found this to be either deniable, or insufficient. Alternatives such as, "I act," or "I desire," "therefore I am," similarly have been rejected. Pessimists have relieved us of our personality, freedom, souls and our very selves, but have left us our sorrows. Let us take as our proposition, "I suffer, therefore I am," and the converse, "I am, therefore I suffer." The privilege, if so it is, of existence/life is ours, and we hope that nothing can any longer intimidate us!

What kind of World is this that we inhabit? What are some of the possible, and alternative interpretations of things as they are?

We can begin with everyone's experience: we did neither make our natures nor their surroundings. Here we are in a state of being not of our own choosing and it is this astonishing situation for which we require some sort of explanation and/or interpretation (but we must beware of the danger for our logic when our affections, or interests, are involved!)

From the first to the last of our life's complicated situation, the stupefying fact is that we seem to be wholly in the dark about everything. Life and the World "beggar all description", let alone comprehension. Our business then, is not to solve problems beyond mortal powers, but to see to it that they are worthy of the task in hand. We could say that human affairs are hardly worth considering with any great seriousness, and yet we must be in earnest about them. Indeed, what else is there to be earnest about? Justice is justice, and tyranny is tyranny, whether a Sultan's or a God's. We are nature's children, her contradictions are ours and ours also her talents and graces.

These days, on every side, we meet with an exaltation of the intellect at the expense of the spirit. One may trust one's thoughts but not one's aspirations. Thought, truth and lies dwell only with those living creatures who have the use of speech. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous chasm between language and the reality of which it speaks. Words are clearly not the things themselves. Even more doubtful is whether shades of thought, let us say in French, can be expressed adequately in Chinese, and vice-versa. The most persuasive thought/force throughout history has been metaphor, or figurative expression. Man has lived by imagination. However, the human mind is not as philosophers would have us think, i.e. a debating hall, but rather a picture gallery. Certain opinions give satisfaction to some minds, which to others seem irrelevant and even meaningless. Historians are familiar with what are called, "climates of opinion". At another extreme, our minds may resemble a sea-shell, placed to our ear, in which the murmuring of the waves, is nothing more than that of our own blood. And so, reason may introduce us to a World as unreal as the shell heard sea.

Our times, in which we are privileged to live, are revolutionary, to brighten our intelligence. All the old conceptions, the belief in religion, in politics and in science, have been wholly transformed. But to accomplish anything at all, we need a genuine interest, a motive, or a centre for our thought. Knowledge has been the aim of our day and generation, and never has it been sought with greater determination, and never with greater success. In fact, we may even start to consider that man may be more interesting and important than his teachers desired him to be; possibly even a star of some magnitude within many a galaxy. Our admiration should be for man, and for his native power, his imagination, industry, ingenuity and understanding. Yet despite knowing more now than ever before, from which so much was hoped, we are concerned that we still know nothing of what we most wished to know. Presently, we exist in the Scientific Revolution. But science has failed to minister to our innermost needs for guidance and for understanding the complexities of the modern World.