POSSIBILITY
OF UTOPIA
Copyright, Dr. A.B.
Kelly, Flinders University, 15th July 2002
Abstract
I argue that human
nature is not immutable. There is a variable component to human nature, a
cultural component that is capable of modification. As human moral cultures are
processes of human self-creation, the possible achievement of a Utopia is
dependent upon the development and orientation of this cultural component.
There
is a general consensus that a better social order is possible, and may even be
necessary. There is very little consensus as to precisely what is wrong with
the present social order, and no real consensus as to what a better society
might look like. The recognition that the process of the cosmos involves human moral-cultural
self-creation, can provide us with a new perspective
on the past and a better grasp of the possibility of achieving a Utopia.
It
is clear that if the organization of society were to change significantly,
human nature would first have to change. It is generally believed that human
nature is fixed, or at least cannot change significantly. But there are two
components of human nature, our basic nature and our cultural nature. Our basic
nature is found in our natural endowment, in Aristotle’s terms, as rational
animals. It is this rationality that drives humans to form cultures. The second
component of our human nature derives from our culture. The differences
between the people of different societies is primarily a result of the
differences between their cultures. People form cultures and cultures, to a
significant extent, form the people of a culture. Different cultures form
different people.
If
we are to move towards a better society we need a better understanding of human
nature, particularly of the variable or cultural component of that nature. No
science or technology can function without first developing a
knowledge of the material of its projects. The material of any social
project is human nature, as formed by human cultures. We have to develop our
knowledge of the variable part of that material, with a view to its
improvement, before we could hope to construct a Utopia utilising that
material.
Rousseau
did not realise the need to modify human cultures when he wrote his treatise on
the Social Contract. He assumed that human nature was both stable and
immutable. But human nature is not immutable. It is the product of a series of
separate and quite different processes of human moral-cultural self-creation.
Human nature is largely formed by human cultures, and those human cultures have
all been formed by humans. People raised in different cultures tend to differ,
often significantly.
Rousseau
sought to achieve a revolutionary advance in social progress, but he put the
cart before the horse. He failed to recognise the need to consider the human
material that goes to make up societies. He proposed to simply “take men as
they are, and States as they ought to be”. He implied
that human nature was fixed and that only social organization was variable.
If
society is to change for the better, if we are to form “The Good Society”,
people have to change. For people to change, cultures have to change. But how
do we change a culture? We first have to understand what a culture is. It is
self-evident that a culture is a process of human self-creation. People make
cultures and cultures, to a significant extent, make the people of the culture.
A culture can be static or it can develop. The development of any culture can
only come from within the culture, that is, from the ideas of the people of the
culture.
The
essence of a culture is to be found in the ideas that the people of that
culture take for granted as to the meaning and purpose of human life. (Dix 1967,7) It is the “taking for granted” that is presently
important, particularly in present-day Western culture. Western culture could now be categorised as
largely post-Christian. Most of the ideas that are taken for granted in the
West about appropriate forms of Government and the appropriate way to treat
people, have their basis in Christian thought, which provided the West with
meaning and purpose. Fundamental human equality is such an idea.
Culture
is necessary for man. Mary Midgley demonstrates that man is formed in such a
way that he needs a culture to complete him. We have an innate need of a
culture, and cannot live without one. Rather than standing in the way of the
development of the individual, culture provides the necessary matrix for that
development. (1978,286)
If
a culture is to change, the ideas held by the people of that culture, relating
to the meaning and purpose of human life, have to change. There is a change in
such ideas occurring in the West at present. The old certainties as to the
meaning and purpose of human life, derived from Christianity, are loosing their
grip on people’s minds. The new faith of Scientism teaches that everything
happens by chance. Neo-Darwinism attributes the development of Homo sapiens to
chance mutation and natural selection. Hence there is neither meaning nor
purpose to human life. This view holds sway among many despite the fact that
chance is merely an epistemological concept. Ontologically there is no such
thing as chance. Chance is a label we use when the determining factors of an
event are not fully known.
When
the essential foundation of a culture is lost the ideas that the people of that
culture take for granted, as to the meaning and purpose of human life, tend to
fade over time. They diminish in effectiveness. Experience shows that the
result of this diminution can be an increase in wrongful behaviour, substance
abuse, criminality and suicide. The rate of this decline will be greater if
there is also an overt attack, from within the culture, on the basis of the
ideas that the people of the culture have taken for granted. This is
particularly the case if the attack is purely negative and is not associated
with the provision of a new basis of human meaning and purpose.
The
symptoms of cultural decline can only be ameliorated in one of three ways.
These are either by a return to the original foundational ideas of the culture,
the adoption of a credible reinterpretation of those foundational ideas, or by
the development of new ideas that provide meaning and purpose to human life.
There does not appear to be any credible present candidate, anywhere in the
world, to provide new ideas that give meaning and purpose to human life. This
leaves the options for the West, in pursuit of the Good Society, of either a
return to the original foundational ideas of the culture, or the provision of a
credible reinterpretation of the basis of those original foundational ideas. I
will argue that these foundational ideas stand in need of a new interpretation
appropriate to a naturalistic and critical age.
Western
societies had their foundation in Christendom. Christendom arose from the focus
on what Theologians refer to as the Christ-event. This event was necessarily
interpreted, by the early Christians, in the perspective of their time. A
return to the ideas that were accepted in the original effort to make sense of
the Christ-event is unlikely. The perspective of that time is no longer our
perspective.
The
Christ-event was interpreted, in its time and place, in the light of beliefs
that were then taken for granted. People believed that the world was the centre
of a three layered universe, with Heaven above and Hell below. The world had
been created by God just as it was then perceived, except that it had been
created perfect. God had created man, who sinned and brought imperfection to
the world. But God would restore the world some day. A Messiah was expected,
who would restore perfection.
Jesus
perceived himself as Messiah. He lived, taught, was executed and, incredibly,
returned to life. Had he not returned to life he would be a mere footnote in
the history of Judaism and the Roman Empire. His immanent return to fully
restore the world was expected by his contemporaries, who had to eventually
adjust to his continued failure to return.
The
world of the early Christians was vastly different from ours. It was not a
world that had been developed from the Big Bang, billions of years ago. Mankind
then had not evolved from more primitive forms of life. To the early
Christians, the imperfection of the world, the penalty for Adams sin, could
only be redeemed by the death of an innocent sacrificial victim, provided that
victim was sufficiently important.
The
Christ-event could only be fitted into the existing mythical perspective on the
world. How different from our understanding was the perspective of the early
Christians? One example might suffice to illustrate this. Clement, the fourth
Pope, wrote his first epistle to the Corinthians about 96AD. There is much that
is sound in the epistle, but this is the argument he presents in support of the
Resurrection:
Look
at that strange portent that occurs in the East (in the neighbourhood of
Arabia, to be precise.)There is a bird known as a Phoenix, which is the only
specimen of its kind and has a life of five hundred years. When the hour of its
dissolution and death approaches, it makes a nest for itself out of
frankincense and myrrh and other fragrant spices, and in the fullness of time
it enters into this and expires. Its decaying flesh breeds a small grub, which
is nourished by the moisture of the dead bird and presently grows wings. This,
on reaching full growth, takes up the nest containing the bones of its
predecessor and carries them all the way from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to
the city called Heliopolis. There, in the full light
of day and before the eyes of all beholders, it flies to the altar of the Sun,
deposits them there, and speeds back to its homeland; and when the priests
consult their time records, they find that its arrival has marked the
completion of the five-hundredth year.”
(Source, “Early Christian Writings” (1968) Penguin Classics)
Clearly, the perspective on the world of the early
Christians was totally different from ours. The ultimate explanation of the
Christ-event, which is set out in the Nicene Creed, is also derived from within
a mind-set that is totally different from ours. This Creed was adopted as
Dogma. It was as if the perspective of that time was the only possible
perspective on the world, and as if all that could be known was then already
known.
The Categories of the Understanding
As
already noted, a culture can be static or it can develop. The source of any
culture is to be found in the ideas of the people of the culture. The ideas of
the early Christians served their time well, but that time has now passed. The
categorisation of any ideas as dogma, hinders the
development of new ideas. Dogma prevents the reinterpretation of facts in the light
of a sounder knowledge of the world, and particularly prevents any
reinterpretation of facts in the light of any new developments in the
fundamental categories of the understanding. These categories affect the
perspective through which we interpret reality. The selection of appropriate
categories was in issue at Nicea. Four sets of fundamental categories were
available for adoption. The question now is not whether an appropriate set of
categories was adopted, but whether the choice then available, between four
different sets of categories, was too limited.
According
to John Courtney Murray, the Council of Nicea had to consider “the issue of the
nature of reality and of the power of the intelligence to reach it”. They had
to ask “What are the ultimate categories of the real in terms of which the mind
conceives and affirms that which is? Are they the categories of space, time and
matter as in Stoic materialism or the categories of ideas as in the Platonic
tradition? Are they the intersubjective categories of Hebrew thought ‘I and
Thou’ or are they the categories of being and substance in the traditional of
metaphysical realism that originated in Aristotle and was renewed and
transformed by its contact with the tradition of biblical realism?” (1964,33)
The
question is whether there is now a more appropriate set of ultimate categories,
a set that would provide a better perspective on reality than the categories
available at Nicea. I suggest that there is. If there is a more appropriate set
of ultimate categories, the dogmatic conclusions of Nicea should be revised.
This is apart altogether from the fact that we now have a better overall
factual perspective on reality than was available to anyone in the early
Christian centuries.
At
the time of Nicea all the available perspectives on the world were static. The
world was thought to be fixed and stable, rather than in a process of
development. That there was change was recognised, but it was cyclical change
or change of the sort adverted to by Heraclitis, in
which one body of water was being replaced by another body of water. Our
perspective on the world is one in which there has been, and will continue to
be, significant change. From the Big Bang there has been a continual
development towards greater complexity and greater freedom. This indicates the
need for a process perspective in understanding the world. There is now a new
set of those ultimate categories of the real, in terms of which the mind
conceives and affirms that which is. This new set comprises process categories.
These process categories were not available for consideration at Nicea.
At
the factual level also, we now have a more objective understanding of the history
and culture of Israel than was available to the early Christians. This is a
result of the work of Biblical criticism and of modern archaeological
research. Norman K. Gottwald,
in a demythologisation of Yahwism that takes account of these sources of
knowledge, depicts the religion of Israel as essentially “the symbolic bonding
dimension of a synthetic egalitarian, inter-tribal counter society, originating
within and breaking off from hierarchic, stratified Canaanite society.”
(1979,692) He argues that “Israel thought it was different because it was
different: it constituted an egalitarian social system in the midst of
stratified societies, a system which congealed diverse peoples and functioned
viably in the Canaanite highlands for at least two centuries” [1250-1050 BC]
(1979,693) This egalitarian society was eventually forced to adopt a monarchic
form of organization in order to combat the might of the Philistines, restoring
the hierarchic structures against which they had originally revolted. I have
proposed a similar demythologisation of the Christ-event in “An Evolutionary
Christology”.
Gottwald traces the process of the formation and
decline of an egalitarian Israel. The Israelites were the first people to think
and act independently. This could well have been influenced by the fact that
they were caught between the two massive hierarchic systems of Mesopotamia and
Egypt, on ground that was frequently fought over. Many of
them mercenary soldiers, not unwilling conscripts, when these battles had raged.
These circumstances affected the way they viewed the world and themselves.
The
character of the Jews obviously impressed the Romans, who extended privileges
to them that they did not give to other cultures within their Empire. That
character continues to impress. R.J.Neuhaus, in the
May 2002 issue of “First Things” points out that only about 2% of the American
population is Jewish, but that in certain important sectors of American life
they hold between 20% and 50% of the positions of greatest influence. The Jews
provide a demonstration of the self-creative power of a culture.
A
reinterpretation of the basis of the original foundational ideas of both
Judaism and Christianity is thus already available. This is not to argue that
these perspectives are not open to improvement, but at least they provide the
foundation of a significant re-interpretation of the Christ-event.
The
present culture of the West is in slow decline. The culture of the West is the
culture of Christendom, which had its genesis in the Christ-event. Western
culture has reached the stage where many of its ideals are taken for granted,
but at the same time the original justification of those ideals is no longer
intellectually acceptable. The foundational events that gave rise to those
ideals stand in need of a new interpretation using process categories. Any new
interpretation of past events has also to be credible to the present critical,
non-mythological mindset, if it is to restore meaning and purpose to the life
of the West. In “An Evolutionary Christology” process categories were applied
to the Christ-event. That paper revised some of the conclusions I had arrived
at in my Thesis on “The Process of the Cosmos”.
If
the organization of society is to change, human nature must first change. Human
nature is not immutable. It is formed by human cultures, and those cultures
have been formed by humans. Social change depends on cultural change, which
ultimately depends upon the development of a new perspective as to the meaning and
purpose of human life.
The
Cosmos can be understood as a process comprising four emergent stages. These
are the Physical, Living, Conscious and Human moral-conscious stages. The
process begins as a deterministic physical process. It develops and freely
evolves to the present stage of human moral-cultural self-creation.
The
Good Society can only be formed when the role and purpose that humans have in
the process of the cosmos is understood. Development towards this goal can now
begin.
Dix
Gregory (1967) Jew and Greek Westminister, Dacre Press
Gottwald N.K. (1979) The Tribes
of Yahweh New York, Orbis.
Kelly
A.B. (1999) The process of the Cosmos:
Philosophical Theology
And
Cosmology USA, Dissertation.com
Kelly
A.B. (2001) “An Evolutionary Christology” in The
Examined Life
Vol. 2 Issue 7.
Midgely
M. (1978) Beast and Man Sussex, Harvester Press
Murray J.C. (1964) The Problem of God Newhaven, Yale
University Press.
THE
EXAMINED LIFE is authorised to publish this work. (Sent 16th July
2002)