Post by Jeff InmanPost by Kater MogginThe main argument here is mechanical: taking various bits
and pieces out of the natural world might threaten its
'delicate and mysterious balance' -- like removing random parts
from a complicated watch -- with potentially negative
consequences for the creatures that remain. Not an affirmation
of life so much as an appeal to the self-interest of the
living. "Keep that up, your watch may stop working. How would
you feel then?"
It's mechanical if you reduce it to the mechanism. Just like a
human being is. "Keep that up and the watch may stop working".
Does one care if a mechanism stops working? Yeah, one might.
Right. You're pitching an argument to humans' interest in
their own survival: killing off wolves, bears, and so on
might also bring death to the world that human beings depend on.
Pragmatism. Not a defense of the natural world for its own
sake -- merely a reminder that humanity relies on its existence.
Post by Jeff InmanPost by Kater MogginConsidering the conditions of life you're describing, from
sharp-toothed predators tearing apart their prey to the
painful stings of poisonous insects to the suffering of disease
and death, it makes good sense to reject life-affirming
dogmatism and say to hell with the whole thing. Smash the damn
watch, ending the torments of the countless creatures being
crushed between its wheels. It's a torture-machine that should
have been destroyed long ago.
You've made this position very clear. It's an unusual one, and
worth having in the mix, but I've already gotten it.
Yeah, I figured. That's why I skipped ahead -- aside from
one still-unanswered question -- to an objection that I
thought would mean more to you. But you pasted your stuff back
in, so I answered.
Post by Jeff InmanIf we were to imagine the tragic brutal machine of life as one
grand mechanism, all of a piece, one could indeed say that there
is no one part of it that is any less "it" than any other part
of it. The argument seems a tad sophistical. It's a little like the
detractors of logical relativism who think it means that any one
conclusion is the same as any other. The counter is that
conclusions may be equally contingent on their premises without
being equivalent.
What's the counter here? I didn't claim Abbey is equating
all items in every way. He's calling all earthly things
paradisical while rejecting religion's "painted fantasy" of the
higher world. But he doesn't explain what's so damn good
about, say, having cancer or leprosy. And if everything in the
material world is paradise then there aren't any risks in
this life, since you end up in Eden no matter what the hell you
do.
You can put one boot on the barrail, tilt your cap ever-so
rakishly over one eye, fix a cocksure grin on your face and
say, "Life can be heaven or it can be hell. The fun is finding
out which comes next." Say it to the right person in the
right place and you may even get laid, at least if you have the
right hat on. But when everything's paradise -- apples to
emphysema and all points between -- that fighter-pilot attitude
becomes meaningless.
Post by Jeff InmanI think Abbey is making two points, (which I was leaning on to
make a metaphorical argument supporting noxious ideas in the
ecosystem of memes): (1) the ugly, dangerous parts are necessary
to the working of the whole, even if the intuition is that the
whole is Good and the noxious parts are Evil. (2) Since item #1
is so counter-intuitive that there seems little ability to even
slow the destruction of the seemingly-unnecessary noxious
components, having the consequence of injuring the whole --
because of that, someone who intuits item #1 might revel in the
noxious parts (as well as the apple trees and golden women), as
signs of the deeper foundations of the whole.
Your talk, not Abbey's. He's doing Nietzsche-goes-to-Moab.
Praise of the earthly, attack on the heavenly, and a
sand-filled version of _amor fati_. _Twilight of the Idols_ in
south-eastern Utah.
But let's talk about your idea. The necessity of ugly and
noxious things for "the working of the whole" is critical
commentary on the entire contraption, not good reason to praise
its worst parts.
Post by Jeff InmanWhere you have an ideal of paradise that entails the absence of
any threat, there you have sterility and a rejection of life as
it really is.
Damn right you do. The hell with life as it really is and
its ever-breeding evils.
Post by Jeff InmanThat would be "losing the bet", as you put it;
forsaking any idea of life as "a grand adventure full of dares
and challenges". Where are you going to find adventure in the
paradise of the saints? You want challenge?
No. I'm saying there's an obvious _lack_ of challenge and
risk when everything on earth is paradise, "not only apple
trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and
flies...flash loods and quicksand, and yes -- disease and death
and the rotting of the flesh."
Post by Jeff InmanIt's tough to
think of a grander challenge than traveling with eyes open
through such a magnificently complex "torture-machine" full of
"sharp-toothed" predators, grief, loss, and bladderweed.
When grief is paradise, loss is paradise, getting attacked
by wolves is paradise, dying of cancer is paradise, and so
forth, then the challenge disappears. That's traveling through
Disneyland.
Post by Jeff InmanPost by Kater MogginPost by Jeff InmanThe speculation is a wondering at whether death could've
been something *invented* by life, rather than something
against which it has been in eternal struggle. Just a
question. I'm not sure.
How about Freud's notion in _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_
that death is life's aim, not its enemy? Or take a
theological angle: maybe God invented life in order to end his
divine boredom. Not a show to entertain him, but an
alternative to the infinitely dull sense of inevitability which
comes from being all-knowing and all-powerful: nothing
happens without his will and knowledge. A couple of eternities
and that would really get old, but his only way out is to
surrender his throne, allowing the universe to play dice. Talk
about risky business.
Makes an interesting analogy. This kind of personification of a
deity seems to me to be over-literalized, but it could make the
metaphorical foundation of an amusing joke. What would be the
punch line? ... "And the first thing they want to do is make
more of themselves!" Hahaha.
Who told you to take it literally? But sure, go ahead and
joke it away if you need to. I thought that you'd like the
idea of a god freely giving up his kingship, putting himself in
the hands of chance and letting the world have a life of its
own. The epitome of risk, though not the brightest thing to do.
Post by Jeff InmanPost by Kater MogginPost by Jeff Inman"If a revelation from heaven of which no person
could feel the smallest doubt were to dispel the
mists that now hang over metaphysical subjects,
[...] such an accession of knowledge [...] would
in all probability tend to repress future exertion
and to damp the soaring wings of intellect."
--- Malthus, _Essay on the Principle of Population_,
chapter XIX
Malthus is objecting to heavenly revelation, not answering
the questions "who the hell made struggle-for-existence
necessary, and how could it be good?" Are you just saying it's
better not to know?
I'm not sure what knowing would be like, or whether it is
possible to imagine a part understanding the whole. Can a taste
bud experience eating a peach? Can a neuron understand network
flow optimization? But I am endowed with a longing to try to
experience more deeply, and understand further. I think Malthus
is saying that that this longing and its attendant satisfactions
are gifts of my position as struggling conflicted being.
Malthus is making the possibility of understanding a given
here, proposing "a revelation from heaven of which no person
could feel the smallest doubt" despite your personal skepticism.
He worries that hypothetical teaching from on high would
discourage thinking here down below. No answer to the question
"who the hell made struggle-for-existence necessary and how
could it be good?" He isn't even addressing the subject in the
quote you gave.
Darwin comes at it directly. Writing to Joseph Hooker, he
says:
What a book a Devil's chaplain might write on the
clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works
of nature!
Here he goes into the topic more deeply in a letter to Asa
Gray:
With respect to the theological view of the
question. This is always painful to me. I am
bewildered. I had no intention to write
atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as
plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do,
evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of
us. There seems to me too much misery in the world.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and
omnipotent God would have designedly created the
Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their
feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars,
or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing
this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye
was expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot
anyhow be contented to view this wonderful
universe, and especially the nature of man, and to
conclude that everything is the result of brute
force. I am inclined to look at everything as
resulting from designed laws, with the details,
whether good or bad, left to the working out of
what we may call chance. Not that this notion AT
ALL satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole
subject is too profound for the human intellect. A
dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.
Let each man hope and believe what he can.
Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at
all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a
man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the
excessively complex action of natural laws. A child
(who may turn out an idiot) is born by the action
of even more complex laws, and I can see no reason
why a man, or other animal, may not have been
aboriginally produced by other laws, and that all
these laws may have been expressly designed by an
omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event
and consequence. But the more I think the more
bewildered I become; as indeed I probably have
shown by this letter.
Despite his ambivalence and confusion, Darwin is incapable
of making himself believe the world's sufferings are
compatible with the notion it was designed by a "beneficent and
omnipotent God."
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1924.
html
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-2814.
html
Post by Jeff InmanPost by Kater MogginPost by Jeff InmanSo, I'm suggesting that the "paradise" of Abbey is not
death, per se, but rather a life in which life's transience
gives poignancy, urgency, meaning, value, etc, to life.
I found my copy of the book. In context Abbey is pledging
his "loyalty to the earth," rejecting what he calls "the
painted fantasy of a realm beyond space and time" and defending
"the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real
earth on which we stand." He isn't relying on death to provide
life with some meaning; he's including it in his earthly
paradise alongside flies, scorpions, quicksand, earthquakes and
sickness.
So, your question has been answered?
Not yet, no. I'm answering your idea that Abbey is saying
transience gives life meaning rather than finding merit in
death per se. He does value death as such, though with certain
qualifications:
Each man's death diminishes me? Not necessarily.
Given this man's age, the inevitability and
suitability of his death, and the essential nature
of life on earth, there is in each of us the
unspeakable conviction that we are well rid of him.
His departure makes room for the living. Away with
the old, in with the new. He is gonewe remain,
others come. The plow of mortality drives through
the stubble, turns over the rocks and sod and weeds
to cover the old, the worn-out, the husks, shells,
empty seedbeds and sables roots, clearing the field
for the next crop. A ruthless, brutal process --
but clean and beautiful.
_Desert Solitaire_, a couple of chapters after the one you
quoted, p. 242 in my paperback. Like I said, Abbey is
including death in his earthly paradise, not just borrowing its
drama to make life interesting.
Post by Jeff InmanPost by Kater MogginPost by Jeff InmanIt might be argued that one who has heaven waiting would hardly
need to attend to life, and therefore would be free to kill
off predators on principle, without regard to the real
effects of that slaughter on the natural world.
Same for anyone who expects to die within a standard human
lifespan. If you're not going to be around then you have
nothing invested in what happens after you leave, unless you're
expecting to be reincarnated or you worry about what may
happen to your kids. No need for heaven; death alone is enough
to trivialize the future.
It could be, if one does not value the larger system of which
one is a part, and makes no identification with it.
Same with heaven, tho: someone who's fool enough to value
the whole system respects the material world as well as the
one above, even though she may look forward to going there when
she dies.
Post by Jeff InmanThere are
lots of people like that. I suspect that they are in large part
the same as the ones who feel that immoral things should be
rubbed out, and that noxious challenges to their local interests
can be countered by direct action, and are expendable without
consequence.
"The greater part of what my neighbors call good, I
believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything it is
very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me
that I behaved so well?" Thoreau, _Walden_, sounding alot like
Oscar Wilde.
-- Moggin