Chapter Five
Searching for the meaning of life
Aristotle defined man as a social animal. Of course, humans are not the only social animals. There are many other animals, including some that are more social, by some standards, than humans. The division of labor between members of the social ant, ant, social bee, and wasp societies has reached a greater extent than in human societies. Most individuals of these insects are classified as “workers” because they have lost the basic function of reproduction; Or they are sterile, or if you like, confusing, neither male nor female, even though from an anatomical standpoint they are incompletely formed females or, as in the case of the female, male and female together. Reproduction has been delegated to a specialized group of individuals, fertilized males and females. The misleading name “queens” is given to fertile females who neither lead nor rule.
Human sociality is of a very special kind, as Aristotle clearly realized. The word social suggested life in city-states; Man is therefore a “political animal.” While human sociality depends on self-awareness and symbolic communications, animal sociality is nothing but inherited instincts. The basic unit in human social organization is the nuclear family, which is formed by the association of mother, father, and children. This nuclear family represents a human cultural universality despite the immeasurable diversity in customary relationships between individuals in different cultures.
Determining where and how the nuclear family originated during the evolutionary history of the human species is a matter of intuition and guesswork. It does not exist in its human form among non-human primates, which nevertheless display amazing diversity in social organization. The behavior, reproductive function, and child-rearing practices of primates have been the subjects of extensive and accomplished study. These studies have shown that the size of the social group ranges from 2 to 5 in human-like great apes and from 13 to 185 in some African apes. Groups that live and feed on the ground tend to be larger than those that live among trees and their branches. A pride usually consists of a significant number of sexually mature females and one to several adult males, in addition to some young ones who have not yet reached sexual maturity. Some adult females are sexually receptive, while others are pregnant or lactating. Except for the infants who are being cared for, all other individuals search for food on their own. There is no cooperation to obtain food between individuals in most species, and cooperation is very limited if it exists. But there is cooperation regarding mutual protection. In particular, strong males take defensive positions when the pride is exposed to danger, especially the threat of predators such as big cats.
There is a difference in views about the extent of fighting that takes place between members of the group. There may be a fierce fight between the caged male African monkeys who are defending the females who are wooing them in the zoo. In reality, observations reveal a completely different situation. There is a somewhat strict system of control and obedience among band members, and this system is usually established and maintained by ritual threats rather than actual fighting. In some species, weak individuals are excluded from the adult males who form teams of “bachelors” who loiter near the group waiting for their opportunity. Although dominant males have more opportunities to have intercourse with female recipients, it is not true that the entire group belongs to one male. The opposite is true because there are always a number of active males, and in some species there is a great deal of sexual freedom. The most important difference in sexual behavior between humans and their relatives lies in another area. In all primates except humans, the female is sexually receptive only during specific periods of the reproductive cycle. As for the sexually mature female human, she is always receptive.
Although only a minority of female monkeys in a troop are on the menstrual cycle at any given time, one to a few females are always in this state. Thus sexually active males have constant access to receptive females, but they are different females. This makes unilateralism and paternalism of care unlikely. In fact, as we mentioned earlier, the male monkeys are responsible for protecting the young and the rest of the group. At least in some species, the males are tolerant at best with the young, and are wary of their fathers and uncles. In humans, the continuity of receiving females helps reduce the intensity of competition between males and makes monogamous relationships possible.
The prolonged infirmity of human childhood imposes a far greater burden on mothers than the short duration of the more agile ape and monkey childhood. The female human is often unable to bring food for herself and her young after giving birth. This is even more true when providing food depends on hunting rather than gathering fruits, insects, and other small animals near the camp. This situation imposes on the human male to carry out the task of providing the family’s needs. According to Hockett and Asher's previously mentioned smooth phrase, “all of this leads to the feminization of fathers.”
The family is the oldest and most enduring human social institution. It is fixed, not in the sense that it does not change. The differences in the structure of the family are endless, but rather because it may remain in this or that form as a basic institution for man as long as the human species remains. There has been much debate about the relative importance of both genetic and cultural determinants of sexual drive and human family regulation. Clearly, both are important. Perhaps no one would doubt the fact that sexual drive is the product of functional mechanisms that are genetically established. But the manifestations of this motive are conditioned by the cultural framework. It is not permissible to assume that the genetic basis of human genes is regular because of their widespread distribution in the human species. Quite the contrary, genetic variation in different preferred forms of sexual satisfaction, and in their intensity and timing, is familiar and important. The complexity of customs and other socio-cultural factors determines overt behavior and the channels into which sexual desires should be directed. A huge edifice of behavioral rules and prohibitions has grown, imposed on genetically conditioned physiological drives. Some societies are more permissive and some are more strict in the rules they set to control sex, family, and offspring relationships. No known society, past or present, has left these matters entirely to the whims and discretion of individuals.
Genetic and cultural factors are also intertwined in father/mother-child relationships. There is a great possibility that the focus of the mother's emotional attachment to her son or children is rooted in the genes, even if this subject has not yet been fully studied from a genetic standpoint. The same is likely to be true of father-son relationships, although the cultural roots are less deep here, and anthropologists have described culturally specific situations at length.
It is quite difficult to exaggerate the importance of the helplessness of the human child and its total dependence on the mother for human development. In order for the species to survive, evolutionary modification and control are necessary, and this modification and control is important from both biological and cultural perspectives. As Waddington (1960) noted, the child has a genetic capacity to be a “recipient of power” and to be a “moral being.” The evolutionary process did not provide man with specific moral principles and values, but it prepared his children and prepared them to absorb such principles and values from parents, relatives, and others in authority. This facilitates the transmission of morals and values that are culturally developed and passed down from generation to generation.
Some biologists, some of whom became advocates of the “humanist” doctrine, put forward the idea that morality was formed and established as instinctive and hereditary motives through natural selection. But what actually happened is more interesting and interesting. What is established by biological adaptation is not the nature and content of moral principles but the capacity for moral becoming. The nature and content of moral principles come from biological and cultural evolution. Perhaps we can say, in Freud's words, that what is inherited is the ability to form a higher self (subego), not the type of higher self that is formed. Those who conclude from this that the biological basis of the higher self is not important need to be reminded of the wide range of variation between those eager to receive authority and those who rebel against it, and that some of this variation may be genetic.
Fatherhood for man, assumed in the early stages of human development, acquired a meaning that no animal could have given it. This meaning comes from man's acquisition of awareness of self and death. The father became aware of his demise and his temporary nature. Children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are likely to live while the father is not alive. Man has a hope, perhaps an illusion, that he will survive in some way in his descendants. The life that an individual devotes to his family and offspring seems meaningful; He can teach him to capture a minute and very small part of that immortality that he aspires to and cannot achieve alone.
Fertility symbols are among the oldest evidence of human spiritual awakening. According to Hawkes and Lee (1963)
"The religious motives of the Paleolithic, ancient and modern, derived their strongest and most definite element of cohesion from the common desire for fertility. It has been observed that, despite the close overlap and connection of the Paleolithic religion with animistic totemic rituals and hunting magic, the most developed and most clearly articulated objects of these rituals are statues of the mother-goddess and inscribed organs of masculinity. These two symbols still have absolute dominance in the cultural monuments of the early Neolithic... whatever they may be." Doubts, nothing can shake the silent testimony of hundreds upon hundreds of little clay, bone and stone effigies of the Mother Goddess.”
These ancient Venusian statues, with their pregnant bellies and exaggerated buttocks, may seem ridiculous and out of touch with our modern mood. However, the carefully hidden fertility rituals still remain. Symbols related to the male organ are still prominent in our religions, both primitive and advanced. The god Shiva is symbolized in the Hindu religion by a penis and vulva engraved in a conventional way. The Russian philosopher Rozanov made a striking attempt to explain marriage and human reproduction as quasi-religious rituals. Goodenough (1965) introduced similar ideas.
In a broader sense, we can say that modern forms of fertility rituals give meaning to the existence of millions of living people. Man seeks sexual satisfaction, then family bonding, and strives to achieve the security and well-being of his offspring. This endeavor constitutes plans for life that are so deeply rooted in our genetically established instinctive drives that almost everyone accepts their intuition, and only a small minority have doubts about them. Although the biological roots of this human effort and endeavor are beyond doubt, at the human level it takes on the mastery and spontaneous cultural embellishment of symbolism, myth, mysticism, poetry and art. Motherhood is appreciated and perhaps revered by most people. The Madonna and Child became sacred symbols of Christianity. We do not need to go far to see here the mother gods who have regained their ancient dignity; The deep emotional attachment to the symbol of motherhood is completely clear.
Man is certainly not unique in that he seeks not only to have intercourse with his mate, but also to cooperate with him in raising offspring. This cooperation is completely understandable and expected from a biological standpoint. It evolved independently in the different animal groups in which it appeared. In many bird species, the parents are not only monogamous, but they also cooperate to feed and protect the offspring. Doesn't this explain the intense attachment of many to bird watching? Even the self-sacrifice of the parents for the benefit of the offspring is not entirely rare; In some birds and mammals, the father places himself in a position of danger to protect his young from harm from the attacking enemy. The issue of whether this altruistic behavior is objectively consistent with the altruistic behavior of humans is a different topic. Many observers tended towards that conformity; But it is quite doubtful that human altruism - love of goodness - exists when there is no ability to distinguish between alternative options and to make the free decision to choose one of them. On the other hand, parental care is certainly not limited to humans. But this instinctive drive is relatively weak and is not supported by the desire to belong to others except in humans alone. For this reason, only a person can be disappointed when parents meet disobedience and rejection instead of loving their children.
· Is it then enough for a person to live to live, to live to give birth to more life, a life that extends the chain to eternity as he hopes? This is the only reasonable answer to the question of the meaning of life for many, as the series of eternal life is the only kind of immortality in which they can believe. If an animal could ask about the meaning of life, the only answer would be that life itself is the meaning of life. But is this answer sufficient for humans? The animal that first understands this question must be a human.
. Camus saw in a very insightful glance, “I know that everything in this world has a meaning, and that is man, because he is the only being who asks for it to have a meaning.” Here lies the strength and weakness of the eternal idea that life is an end in itself. This idea persists in life, so can it also satisfy a mind that has been given the blessing or curse of awareness of self and death? Is it necessary to find the meaning of human life in something that transcends it and rises above it, if finding this meaning is possible?
Man has always had to toil and struggle to preserve his life before he can ask what he lives for.
Those of us who live in prosperity and relative security fail to realize that the task of survival was and still is a time-consuming task for many people. Hunger has never been so far away, and diseases and disasters of all kinds follow people. Those who have experienced life under such conditions know that the drive to survive is intense and uninterrupted, but it does not completely replace the question of the meaning behind all that trouble.
Many anthropologists followed Taylor and Fraser by saying that man invented magic in his struggle to survive, and that it was from magic that religions arose. Not all students of these topics share this opinion, as many assume the existence of an independent origin for both magic and religion. Religion is what a person does with his primary concern, his destiny, while magic is utilitarian. Man wanted to manipulate the forces of nature that blinded him and did not understand them, to control them and bend them to his will. Malinowski described this utilitarian function of magic, and we have quoted that before (46). But magical beliefs are attached to almost all religions, both primitive and advanced. We do not need to enter the arena of debate here to decide whether witchcraft is sometimes useful. We do not have to be among the unseen to accept that witchcraft may be a miracle for those who believe in it.
Goode (1955) rightly emphasizes that:
They are required to give the same intellectual and scientific importance to each of the religious systems of Dahomey
And the Roman Augustans, the Zophos and the Tibetans, the Lacondists and the Utilitarians, in short, for the primitive religions
And urban alike. It is true that the impact of some religions was more severe on our private lives because they formed a large part of our collective traditions and beliefs, such as Hebrew, for example. But this does not distinguish them from primitive religions, as they are sources for searching for basic structural truths in religious systems.
The same is true of the side of the issue that concerns the evolutionary biologist. Man has developed a capacity, a need in fact, to have a religion. What do you think might have been the motives or functions that conferred selective ability and evolutionary fitness on those for whom this need was met? This is a pointless question, even if Goode is right that “the religions of innate man will forever remain unknown to all social scientists, though many scholar-poets will persist in the conviction that they have inspired them.”
Magic does not provide insight into the meaning of life, no matter how great the degree of belief and attachment to it. Whether magic is useful for survival or not, it is not useful for knowing what to live for. Religions are the ones that provide the answers to these questions, but the reliability of those answers is, of course, another matter. Man existed in the world by the will of God, and the meaning of his existence is to worship God. God or gods, whatever their perception in different religions, are eternal and never die. As for man, he is aware of his temporality and fragmentation. Hartshon describes religion as "man's acceptance of his fragmentation." Man overcomes his fragmentation and temporality by being part of the eternal and sublime life, at least in his imagination.
There are different perceptions of people’s participation in eternal life in different religions. There is no promise or promise of heaven or hell in the Torah, but the doctrine of resurrecting the dead took root in Judaism in the eras following the Bible. This doctrine is clearly evident in Christianity and Islam. The fundamentalist concept was depicted in thousands of paintings showing the final judgment in Christian churches, often in horrific detail; It was also described with the same amount of attention to its horrific details as in Dante's classic epic. Death is nothing but a passing pause in the eternal runway of the soul. Resurrection ultimately replaces death, not only the resurrection of the soul (which never dies) but also the resurrection of the body, which lives forever afterward. But eternal life has a terrifying dichotomy. It has only two alternatives: eternal reward and bliss for good deeds, or the torment and grief of hellfire for bad deeds.
Buddhism and Hinduism completely reject this type of immortality. Souls that are freed from the confinement of the body upon death are reincarnated here on earth, again and again, in other bodies. The share of nobility and decadence of successive incarnations depends on the good and bad deeds that were accumulated during the previous incarnation. The wandering of the soul through successive incarnations is not considered a good or desirable thing. The exact opposite is true because the goal of spiritual advancement is the end of the alienation of the soul and its integration into the divine self or into the essence of Brahma, the original universe, or nirvana.
It seems that creative thought in Christianity tends towards a kind of representation of conflicting views related to immortality. Modern man is disgusted by the arbitrariness of the dichotomy between heaven and hell, happy and miserable. It is clear that the purity or corruption of human life constitutes a continuous chain, not an arbitrary division into two separate categories. Tillich (1963) attempts to solve this form as follows:
Christianity must completely reject the demolition of the symbol of immortality and its use to express this colloquial myth.
Because participation in eternity is not the “next life.” No, it is not a natural qualitative characteristic of the human spirit.
Participation in eternity is a divine creative act that allows the temporal to separate from the eternal and return to it.
Tillich continues:
The symbol of resurrection is often used in general terms to emphasize the inevitability of the emergence of eternal life from the death of temporal life. In this sense, it is a symbolic way of expressing the basic theological concept of the new existence.
Just as the new existence is not another existence, but rather a transformation of the old existence, resurrection is not the creation of another reality in the face of the old reality, but rather a transformation that arises as a result of the death of the old reality and emerges from it.
People in every known human society, and in every civilization that has preserved and maintained a historical record, have arrived at patterns of religious ideas regarding the meaning of their lives and the appropriate way to direct them. Although the different religious systems are not similar, and sometimes even conflict on some points, they perform an indispensable function. Religion enables people to make peace with themselves and with the terrible, mysterious world into which forces greater than themselves have created them. Religion has been a comprehensive cultural generality for the human species since ancient times because its symbols, myths, and philosophies provided answers to questions of human existence that go beyond description. Because religion answers these questions, or because it seems to do so, it has become an instrument of social cohesion.
It has often been claimed that religion is socially and even biologically beneficial because it provides a metaphysical sanction of morality; This function has ended or will inevitably disappear after people stop considering such unseen belief necessary. But religion was only able to provide this recognition because it gave meaning to man's actions by giving them a reference in his fate. The lives of individuals, and perhaps the societies to which they belong, are viewed as part of a grand plan imposed by the authority of importance. Indeed, this idea has been exaggerated from time to time to create false justifications for wars and religious persecution. However, on the other hand, it prompted many to devote their lives to serving their fellow men out of benevolence, humility, and love, reassured that in doing so they were serving the Lord. Religion thus enabled the individual to acquire an identity that identified him with other, more stable groups than his descendants and nuclear family.
.The tribe, the nation, and humanity as a whole last longer than the lifetime of the individual, and perhaps forever.So too, it is hoped, will a profession such as science and art, or a movement such as a church or sect, or its founder such as a political party. Time after time, people have demonstrated their ability to sacrifice themselves for a cause, real or imagined, for movements that continue to survive and grow after the person who sacrificed their life dies. The ability of people to acquire an identity through their identification with particular groups, movements and institutions gives them a strong cohesion. This cohesion is very important in human evolution. They make human history different from biological history. The essential point is that the cohesion of human groups is derived from their self-awareness, while the cohesion of the swarm, the flock, the beehive, or the ants is derived from instinctive behavior transmitted from one generation to another through biological genes.
It is necessary, regardless of one's religious or non-religious choice, to recognize that religion is an essential part of culture. Toynbee (1961) goes further as he agrees with another historian, Dawson, that “the great civilizations in the world result from the great religions, as they are a secondary cultural product; the great religions are the foundation upon which the great cultures are built.” Whatever the case, it is impossible to utter part of a culture without causing harm to the whole. As Mead (1955) pointed out, “Whether a civilization is tightly cohesive or flexible and relaxed, whether its morals are internally consistent or deeply contradictory, whether practices in one aspect of life are identical or opposite, or whether upon external examination they appear separate from other aspects, it must become clear upon careful anthropological examination that they belong to each other in a systematic way.”
Western civilization was founded on the Judeo-Christian religious foundation (including the Russian one, which Toynbee called the Orthodox Christian civilization). For more than a thousand years, Christianity has provided that civilization with the meanings and goals of individual existence and collective projects that lie in the depths of our cultural heritage. But this religious foundation has been eroded for two and a half centuries due to its real or apparent conflict with the growing power of scientific discovery, and this influence continues to grow steadily. Thousands of books and articles have been written about this dispute, some of which seek what is called “reconciliation” between science and religion, and some of which attempt to show that only science is capable of providing the spiritual foundation for human existence, considering that all religions have exhausted their purposes. It is not my intention to summarize this confusing and confused literature even briefly. I believe that science, and biology in particular, has a close relationship with human destiny, and to clarify this relationship, it is necessary to recall some facts, and some attempts to link these facts within the general framework of the matter under discussion.
Copernicus was on his deathbed when he published his book in which he explained that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and that it is merely a planet revolving around the sun, in 1543. The book attracted little attention at first. Calvin dismissed his results with contempt, asking, “Who dares to place Copernicus’s argument above the authority of Scripture?” But the matter was not left to rest at that point. Kepler demonstrated in the years 1609 and 1619, and Galileo in the years 1610 and 1632 AD, that Copernicus was right. This sparked a storm, and Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition and forced to renounce his heresy. Then came Descartes' book "Discourse on Method" in 1637 AD, Newton's book "Mathematical Principles" in 1682, and Locke's book "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" in 1690 AD. Newton saw fit to describe himself in his later days as “the collector of shining pebbles on the shore of the great unknown.” But Newton's picture of the world nevertheless found such general acceptance that the Church was cautious in opposing his discoveries in the way it did with Galileo. But that inappropriate scene was repeated two centuries later, in and after 1859. Darwin's theory of organic evolution was dismissed on the grounds that it contradicted what some believed to be the inspired story of creation. In 1925, the world was exposed to the farce of the “monkey trial” in Tennessee. At about the same time, the superiors of Teilhard de Chardin in the Society of Christ, one of the most profound religious philosophers of our time, prevented him without any fanfare from publishing his book, which outlines his concept of man as a product of evolution.
There are still many people who feel happy and comfortable adhering to their fundamentalist beliefs. This should not be surprising, since a large majority of them are as ignorant of scientific discoveries as people who lived centuries ago. But the truly unusual phenomenon is the continuing presence of a small minority of scientifically literate religious fundamentalists who know that their beliefs are in complete, clear and blatant conflict with established scientific discoveries. The Journal of Flood Geology is published in the United States (or perhaps was until recently), and at least one “scientific” book dealing with this strange subject has been printed. I had a fruitless and exasperating correspondence with a "creationist" opponent of evolution who cannot be accused of not knowing the facts and scientific evidence. Discussing with such people is a waste of time, and I think they are miserable people who envy those whose sheer ignorance helps them to hold such ideas.
Science and religion deal with two different aspects of existence. For simplicity, we can say that they are two aspects of truth and meaning. It is possible for one to study facts without caring about their meaning. But there is one enormous truth that confronted people throughout the stages of their enlightenment, and they tried to find out its meaning without interruption. That truth is man. The holy books (Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and others) are not scientific references. She speaks in religious symbols. These codes open:
“A level of reality that would remain completely closed and hidden without it. We can call this depth after reality itself...that these religious symbols open up the experience of this depth in the human soul and that the discussion of ultimate truth is after the sacred. Thus we can also say that religious symbols are symbols of the sacred (Tillich 1964).”
This does not mean that a person should separate his scientific and religious ideas from each other and put them in two tightly closed containers. Therefore, we are always facing the danger that Santayana (in Murray 1960) saw clearly:
A religion that puts its hand on the essence of life, such as Christianity, should be an eternal religion. But it can lose this advantage when it entangles itself in the traps of certain narratives related to the world of facts, which are issues that have nothing to do with its optimal importance.
.Such complications arise all the time. Clearly, the scientific understanding of nature is incomplete. Some natural phenomena are understandable and others are incomprehensible. It seems tempting to some people, and even to some scientists, to fill those gaps in scientific knowledge with divine power. We have previously discussed the futility of this religious strategy in the second chapter. There is nothing easier than discovering such gaps, because any natural scientist who hopes to be of any use knows many of these issues and phenomena that are still under research or that are difficult to understand. Are these the preferred matters for the gods to intervene? Do scientifically understood phenomena fall outside the scope of divine action? No one can seriously defend such dysfunctional thinking. However, there is no limit to the pleasure that can come to the common type of religious people when they are told that science cannot explain or justify this. What is not explained is taken as inexplicable, although the priorities of knowledge in the history of science are sufficient to refute this ancient fallacy. Attempts have been made to obscure vast swaths of knowledge from science, from Cardinal Bellamine, who said of Copernicus and Galileo that “their false discoveries spoiled the entire project of Christian salvation” to William Jennings Bryan, who said, “It is better to put our trust in the rock of time than to know the times of rocks” and that “the dispute between evolution and Christianity is fought to the death.” There was always one motive for this, which was to protect the religious heritage from attacks by skeptics and doubters. The reason is the belief that if any part of the religious heritage is accepted, there will be no limit to the concessions that can be reached. This led to the inability of religious leaders to perform their main duty. It is a distinction between the eternal in their beliefs and the temporary components that came in consideration of a certain level of general understanding or the socio-political situation in which the religion found itself during its history. This intense opposition has led to the continuing and disgraceful decline of fundamentalist religion.
Christianity was a religion that deeply permeated every aspect of people's lives in Western civilization. Then the “enlightened ones” discovered in the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, that God’s hypothesis was unnecessary. The world is a huge but very precise machine that operates according to the fixed laws discovered by Newton. Some "enlightened people" admitted that perhaps there was a God who designed and built that machine, but he no longer interfered in its operation after it was set, like the mechanism of a huge, highly accurate clock. It is like an absentee owner who rarely or never participates in the management of the affairs of his property. It is clear that there is no benefit in turning to this absent Lord in prayer and supplication. Now agnosticism and non-differentiation are no longer the privilege of the highly enlightened elite. Perhaps the majority of people in the West and in the developed countries of the East, such as Japan, no longer believe in their religions except verbally, not coming from the heart. This is true even for some who go to church every Sunday morning and inflate the records of religious boredom.
However, modern man, this enlightened and suspicious non-religious person, cannot stop himself from wondering, at least secretly, about ancient issues: Does my life have a meaning and purpose beyond and higher than preserving my life and continuing the chain of life? Does the universe I live in have any meaning? Or is everything in it nothing more than a farcical comedy and a satanic dance? What is truly strange is that these questions have recently become more urgent after philosophers said that rational people should stop asking these meaningless questions. Alternative religions have begun to grow as a result and gain many followers, because they deny themselves contradictions with science and claim to answer these ancient questions “scientifically”. The incomparably greater alternative religion has its prophets Marx and Lenin. He claims that it is not based on abstract faith, but rather that its sincerity can be proven by scientific proof. He promises every human being his fair, though not necessarily equal, share of the fruits of the earth, and pledges to prevent the greedy from usurping the public domain. It is committed to stopping man's exploitation of his fellow man and to enabling each individual to fully develop and fully realize his individual talents, tastes and socially useful abilities. He will also make each individual live and work for the common good - the benefit of those who live now and those who will come later.
Now, that is what Christianity also considers desirable, but it has clearly failed to achieve it during its fifteen hundred years of dominance over Western civilization. Communism comes and adopts the social program of Christianity and promises to achieve it globally and quickly, and declares that everything else in Christianity is an illusion, a pill, and opium for the exploited masses. For this reason, communism is considered a Christian heresy “in the sense that it singled out a few elements and focused on them to the exclusion of other elements” (Toynbee 1961). The pruning and simplification of religious ideas in communism, compared to their complexity and paradoxes in Christianity, increases their temptation for millions of people. It has become a global power, and it seems that its power is still increasing in developing countries. It inspires a clear and complete devotion in some people, especially young people, and awakens a social dynamic of unprecedented intensity.
But the resemblance to the communist religion collapses when one recognizes it and approaches it in a way that is more complete than any other religion. No one explained the reason more simply and decisively than Pasternak: “All of this (the communist model) is still far from being achieved, but the rivers of blood I shed just talking about it does not make the end a reality that justifies the means.” That conversation brought to the countless millions of dead, tortured, and spiritually mutilated victims of Stalin nothing but fear, oppression, muffled opposition, grief, and almost nothing of simple human happiness.
In the entire communist philosophy there are only passing remarks to convince the honest, doubting person that a life devoted to the service of others is better than a life devoted to direct self-interest. It is not self-evident that the future of humanity is dear to us to the extent that any one of us dedicates, and perhaps sacrifices his life, those hypothetical, distant people who will exist in the future. And we certainly won't be there just to watch, let alone participate, in that bliss. Dostoyevsky makes this quite clear with these words: “I suffered, not, so that my torment and misery might fertilize the earth for the sake of someone else's success. No, I wish to see with my own eyes the heads of the lion and the deer lying in peace side by side, and the murdered man rising to embrace his killers.”
The noble, sublime view that the meaning of life lies in the struggle to make the world a better place than we found it is certainly part of a number of alternative secular religions other than communism. There is no obvious reason why people in democratic societies should not be imbued with such noble ideas and the same enthusiasm as at least some zealous communists. But in reality this only happens to small minorities. The reason for this deficiency does not lie in propaganda and education. Politicians of all colors constantly pay lip service to this idea, especially in the wonderful introductions, introductions, and embellishments with which they decorate their statements. These statements often include a passing reference to Christianity or other great religions to support the argument. The truth of all this is not without, at least, skepticism, and living for noble goals can also be recommended as a secular moral. In writing about the issue of modern man, Frankl (1959) presented a strong and eloquent defense of this moral principle, considering it the basis of what could be a secular religion. But neither he nor anyone else could answer the doubts and suspicions of Ivan Karamazov.
That a person lives a decent life, helps others who are in need of help, and does what he can to make those who come after him happy. These are moral principles that find general acceptance, at least in theory. The theoretical feasibility of these principles in the West comes from the Judeo-Christian religious heritage, but they have now been completely freed from reliance on it. Whether these moral principles alone can satisfy man's longing for a meaningful life is questionable. These attempts have faltered as a result of the sweeping criticism extended by the writings of modern existentialists. As befits true intellectuals, hardly two of them agree on a single point of view. Therefore, I take Sartre as a model for these ideas, but I admit my inability to do justice to the many ideas with overlapping shades and meanings of this distinguished writer.
It seems to me that the most accurate expression of Sartre's philosophy comes, not from his basic philosophical writings, but from Les Morieles, a serious play in a comic form about Aeschygus's O rtsteia, a parody of Aeschylus' Oresteia. Sartre's Oreste defies the gods rather than submit to their rule. He defies Jupiter's ultimatum, "I created you and everything, O Oreste," with a rebellious cry, "I am a stranger to myself and I know it. I know that I am out of nature, against nature. I have no excuse for it, and I have no refuge but myself. But I will not return to your law; I am doomed to have no law but my own law. I will not return to nature, where there are a thousand paths, all leading to you. I can only follow my own path. That is because Man Jupiter, and every man must discover a way for himself.” But the revolution ends with feeling “nauseous.” There is no God, and there is no meaning in the universe. Man has no meaning in a meaningless universe:
"Without formulating anything clearly, I understood that I had found a guide to existence, to my nausea, to my own life. Everything I could come up with then boiled down to that basic absurdity. Absurdity: just another word."
There is no real beauty in the universe. ".......The real is never beautiful. Beauty is a value that applies only to the imaginary, and requires denying the world in its basic structure." Evil, by contrast, is quite real. Evil is not only real, there is no salvation from it either.” Some of Sartre’s ideas about evil are almost an interpretation of the ideas of Ivan Karamazov, Dostoyevsky’s hero. Although man is meaningless absurdity, he nonetheless has the capacity for freedom. But his freedom is of an abnormal kind; it is the freedom to say “no.” In ways that seem to me incomprehensible, “Freedom is man’s disruption of his past by excreting his triviality.” And also “the freedom that unfolds in Man's anguish and anguish over the obligation to reformulate the self into the form of the embodiment of a free being” (quoted in Cumming 1965).
Sartrean philosophy seems conducive to either suicide or asceticism. But Sartre, on the contrary, was an active member of the French resistance against the Nazi occupation, a prolific writer, and a brilliant and shrewd polemicist. He directs his grudge against social hypocrisy and false claims of integrity, and against the powerful, hostile bourgeois establishment. He sought partnership with communism, but the party's orthodox ideological confinement was beyond his tolerance. He made one of the outcasts a “saint,” because that downtrodden person “puts the mirror in front of us, so there is no escape for us to look in it and see ourselves.”
Barzun (1964) credits artists with discovering the “dry rot of the soul” in the modern world, which the author definitely attributes to science and technology. He assumes that artists “glorify scientific culture and despise it” because “something permeates it that differentiates, not between civilized man and savage, not between man and animal, but between man and robot, something that becomes numb, hardens, falls off like dead, blackened flesh when technology attacks the feeling and science takes over the mind.” However, the artist’s rebellion against society with his knowledge and technology ends in “betrayal.” The modern artist has become an ally of science in the process of stripping man of his human personality, which was the reason for his rebellion; The artist, in turn, discovers that the human condition, and life itself, is nothing but a “detestable deception.”
Feelings of nausea, disgust, dry rot, emptiness, and the disgusting deception of life, etc., are no longer limited to artists and the intellectual elite, of which Sartre and Barzun are among the most prominent representatives. These feelings have leaked into the “man of the sentence”. Obviously, this was not because the writings of Sartre and Barzun became the preferred reading of the masses. The reason lies deeper than that. It brought together common experiences from all social, economic and educational groups. There were two world wars in which nations known for their highest levels of civilization committed acts of barbarism beyond description. We know about Hitler and Stalin's concentration camps and their genocide programmes. Scientific discoveries of superhuman intelligence were harnessed for military use. Abundance and material luxury have turned into phlegm in our mouths, because too many are consumed by the impersonal immensity that produced this abundance. Many, especially young people, are satiated with all the things that are supposed to make life beautiful - food, drink, nice clothes, and money. But because these beautiful things come so easily, what a person does not struggle to obtain becomes less valuable and the contentment it brings decreases.
Perhaps there are people, in every place and in every generation, who feel that things in the world are not going well, or that they are going from bad to worse. But the expression alienation is recent. In any case, it is not a normal or healthy situation for people to feel alienated from the communities to which they belong. Social anthropologist Jules Henry finds this situation to be common in the United States to the point of concern. He made the title of the book in which he presented the results of his study, “Civilization Against Man” (1963): “Our civilization is driven. It is driven by the motives of its achievement, the motives of competition, profit, and mobilization, and by the motives of security and a higher standard of life. Above all, it is driven by its ability to expand.” What prevents us from being satisfied and satisfied with this driven civilization? As Henry sees it:
“With the exception of professionals and executives, most Americans do not participate in their emotions, neither in their craft (what they do) nor in their work (where they do it). In the end, what the average American attributes to life, place, and people is his own personal economy - his family, his home, his car, etc. The fact that the majority of people do not participate, or almost do not participate in the institutions in which they work means that work, which was considered a factor of social cohesion and continuity in most non-industrial civilizations, has become abstracted People of social cohesion in America. For almost any American, work companions, no matter how pleasant their company, can be replaced by a similar group in the next job, and this sense of substitutability, that others can dispense with one, that another person is equally suitable, has become a depressing and effective factor in the American character.
The most frightening chapters of Henry's analysis deal with the vulgarity of man, the fate of those who are not fortunate enough to die before the ills of old age. I suspect that it was Toynbee who observed the phenomenon, unparalleled in known history, that the elderly now lost their traditional right to be cared for by healthy members of their nuclear or extended family.
In any case, Henry became “affected by the gap that separates adults from children, even when adults are mentally alert, because our civilization has become the recklessness of vulgarity that throws itself into the sea of non-existence.”
Every one of us has felt at least sometimes that life has no meaning, that the world is going nowhere in particular, that man is only an insignificant part in the order of things, that history can end in a human massacre, and that its end, whatever it may be, is of little importance to those who live now and will soon die. Some resort to traditional religions. Others flee into the worship of pleasures. Others, perhaps the majority, follow the easiest path, and end up submitting and complying, and accepting the latest forms of “fertility rituals.”
A life dedicated to building a home, starting a family, and then quietly disappearing seemed meaningful to primitive man, so why wouldn't it be appropriate for all people? In his famous and interesting book, The Response to Inventing the Future (1964), Qabour claims that such a life is suitable for the “ordinary person,” but it is not suitable for the “extraordinary” person. In his estimation: “Life is a cycle for the average person. It begins with the discovery of the world in which everything is new around the child, then it progresses to the great discoveries of sex and love, and reaches its peak in the small family. Within these large circles are other small circles of work, rest, and entertainment, and modest desires are met. This life can be happy to the end if it is free of severe physical suffering, and if the adult men and women learn to love the new generation more than they love themselves.”
Qabour was optimistic when he decided that “this paradise of the common man is within reach.” But it seems completely unattainable to the average man who “wants to leave a world better than the one in which he found it, a better world, enriched by his own abilities. To achieve this goal he is prepared to sacrifice most or all of the happiness which the average man enjoys.”
But the dichotomy of the ordinary man - the extraordinary man is a dangerous simplification. Its use fuels the arrogance and arrogance of individuals and groups. If we follow it to its logical end, it may lead to terrifying doctrines, such as Dostoyevsky's great detective, or to absolute rulers, such as Hitler and Stalin, and those who follow their path. However, human natures actually constitute a spectrum that extends from the lowest level of normality to the highest level of abnormality, according to Gabour’s definitions. Moreover, the thousands, even millions, of people who had ambitions for the extraordinary human being, especially in their youth, and who failed to achieve those ambitions for many reasons, settled for contenting themselves with what was possible of plucking the happiness of the extraordinary human being that fell into their hands. These people can maintain hope that general conditions will change for the better in the future. They may hope against hope that their lives will contribute, even if only slightly, to this general improvement, even indirectly.
In any case, normal humans and abnormal humans are members of the same societies and civilizations, making them heirs to similar historical experiences. The major religions have shaped the prevailing belief systems of the great civilizations of the East and West, and these major religions pursue the ideals and values of the “unusual” human. This fact prevents anything below these values and ideals from being fully accepted, for the same reason that reading material designed for children and adolescents is not suitable or convincing for adults who are accustomed to adult reading material.
Suppose that you live for your children, and that the children will live for their children, and that the grandchildren will live for their children as well, and so on, and so on, and so forth. This makes sense biologically, but it is a meaningless repetition for some ordinary and extraordinary people alike. We would like to see, or at least hope to reach, a situation that is not only new but also better. In the nineteenth century, most people in the West believed that progress was uniform, and that its occurrence was perhaps inevitable. But we no longer have the same confidence now. However, there is a glimmer of hope for new representation.