In “The Gods,” the book’s coda, Pavese converses with himself about “how grueling it must have been for people living in a time when everything they touched was mortal,” when the world was filled with the presences of unseen beings. “Do you believe in monsters, believe in animal people, in living stones, divine smiles, and in words that annihilate?” The poet, Pavese implies, is a creature of Chaos—that anarchic state in which good is mixed with bad and monsters mingle with men and gods. Something, in other words, a bit like the war and its aftermath.
This is my greatest objection to anti-natalism. Beyond the absurdity, beyond the pessimism, beyond the cowardice—it is the hubris that disturbs me most. The belief that because you have judged another creature’s life to be unworthy that this somehow gives you the right to extinguish it.
The good is that at which we aim, to be sure, and yet the good that we seek can only ever be asymptotically approached by avoiding the evil, which is always nearer and clearer.
However, there is also another, more functional sense of a “meaning of life,” one that preserves the clarity and singularity of the original question, but does not require life to have a creator in order for the question to have an answer. We can think of the “meaning of life” as the “purpose of life”: what life was “made for” and what life “in fact contributes” to our universe. And while the concept of “purpose” has many latent associations with intelligent design, in nature, many things — in fact, pretty much all things — functionally have a “purpose” without having been “designed” by anything at all (except, of course, the ongoing process of natural selection). For example, the “purpose” of a finch’s curved beak is to crack hard nuts: since the need for finches to crack nuts is why these curved beaks exist, and nut-cracking is (practically) what finch beaks will be mostly used for over the course of their lifetime. Humans, too, could have a functional “purpose” in our universe, something that we were “made for” or that we are “meant to do” in a broader evolutionary context, without having been intentionally created for anything.
If we take this “meaning as purpose” framework seriously, and believe that building superintelligence will be the most important thing that humans will ever do (in terms of cosmic impact), then “building superintelligence” would be the de facto meaning of human life: our greatest “purpose,” our signature cosmic contribution.
Second, Tolkien understood that the more powerful the tool, the less likely that an ordinary user could use it effectively, rather than being shaped or controlled by it. Thus, when Pippin looks into the palantir of Orthanc, he is almost immediately captivated by it and wholly under the domination of Sauron’s will operating through it. Only Aragorn, the rightful possessor of the stone and a man hardened by battle and seasoned with wisdom, is able to “wrench the stone to his own will,” and that only through “a bitter struggle.” Similarly, a recurrent theme in discussions of the Ring is that it gives power to the wearer “in proportion to his stature.” Pathetic little Gollum is unable to make much more use of this most powerful of all earthly creations than to enable him to catch fish or steal more easily; the Ring degrades him rather than expanding his powers. Only those already very strong can bend it to their will, but even they should dare not, knowing that it will bend them to its: “Its strength,” declares Elrond to Boromir, “is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own. But for them it holds an even deadlier peril. The very desire of it corrupts the heart.” Thus both Gandalf and Galadriel, each powerful enough to bear one of the three rings, refuse the gift of the One Ring when it is offered them, fearing the tyrant that each might become.
Managerial liberalism is defined by its rejection of illegible human bonds. Everything must have a price, so that anyone is free to buy it, and the state can judge the transaction to be transparent and fair.
What we would call “loyalty” or “honor” or “covenant” can only exist in a managerial society as meaningless ideals — the kind of thing that you are free to daydream about at church.
The moment these ideals enter the “real world” of money and power, they can only be understood as “prejudice” or “corruption”: not only a bad thing, but the bad thing — the enemy that the system exists to eradicate.
But the family is an inherently covenantal relationship, and it inherently involves the real world. Human beings will not raise families as a transaction — so a society that cannot honor covenants cannot have families, and very rapidly will cease to be a society at all.
To ask this question is to answer it—at least for any attentive reader of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings. Although set in a pre-technological mythical world of wizards and dragons, Tolkien’s trilogy is, more than anything else, a profound meditation upon technology. Nor should this surprise us; for as C.S. Lewis has argued, the modern enterprise of “technology” and the medieval pursuit of “magic” are two versions of the same quest: to manipulate the world through the discovery of hidden knowledge, the perfection of arcane techniques. In Tolkien’s tale there are two types of “magic”: one represents a kind of creative creaturely participation in the supernatural that depends on loving attention to the shape of nature, while the other serves as a metaphor for modern technology as the quest for mastery by reshaping nature to our wills. It is represented chiefly by the “Rings of Power” and the palantiri or “Seeing Stones.”
It is possible that there is no “meaning of life,” no ultimate “point,” in which case, we did no harm by trying to find one. It is possible that the “meaning of life” is in fact something very simple: like “love,” or “beauty,” or “joy” — in which case, this will have been a long journey to “know a place for the very first time,” and we will have to trust our AIs to realize some aspect of the meaningfulness of human life more fully. It also is possible that the “meaning of life” is something well beyond our comprehension, which only a much, much greater intelligence could ever hope to appreciate; the way that all of the ants that humans killed in the construction of New York City will never be able to understand the project that they died for. But whatever that ultimate “meaning of life” may be, one thing seems clear: humans exist as an intermediary step. A bootloader, if you will.
If we recognise that a kind of inner honesty and a genuine relation to experience is what constitutes religious existence, the fundamental enemy to good religious dialogue or apologetics becomes dogmatism and projected certainty, not a lack of assertion about any argument we may have. A believer can and probably should have more affinity with an atheist who struggles with divine hiddenness or genuinely finds the problem of evil too much to overcome in order to believe than they can with a fellow believer asserting that the fine tuning argument or psycho-physical laws proves theism. The latter assumes that we have acquired our faith through an act of reason instead of a change in our relation to facts that are the same for all of us.
Matt Whiteley, How to Be a Theist When Most Arguments for God's Existence Are Bad source
My problem with anti-natalists is not that they don’t mean well in trying to grant suffering creatures the gift of extinction. My problem is that it’s simply not their gift to give.
However, somewhat surprisingly, “creating digital superintelligence” has all of the features of a “real” meaning of life, with no supernatural elements needed to square the circle.
In the most minimal sense, the “need” for evolution to create digital intelligence explains why humans are here at all, in the particular form that we are, and what we are “made to do” with our time on Earth. And the expected outcome of creating digital superintelligence is certainly cosmic-scale; even the AI “doomers” — people who believe that creating superintelligent AI will likely result in human extinction — think that our AIs will fulfill the long-term science fiction goal of “colonizing the universe,” and fill the cosmos with something. (These doomers just don’t think that something will be what humans would want it to be.)
Moreover, the process of creating superintelligent AI is also unexpectedly personal to human life. In a move that was almost entirely unanticipated by historic AI theory, today’s frontier AI models are trained on trillions of “tokens” (i.e., whole words, common letter chunks, or single letters) of human text — the entire internet’s worth, plus extensive offline archives. Far from being discontinuous “alien minds,” then, our superintelligent AIs (assuming that AI training paradigms do not change too much between now and the creation of “real” superintelligence) will be bootstrapped from every meaningful scrap of human knowledge available. This dataset includes all of the online writing we can find — every “off the cuff” tweet, musing blog post, errant Reddit thread, and of course, all of Wikipedia — as well as the masterworks of human civilization, the contents of hundreds of thousands of humanity’s most specialized textbooks, millions of our novels, our greatest works of poetry and songs, all of the most influential pieces of theory on human psychology, art, and culture, as well as thousands of digitized ancient human texts (including, somewhat ironically, the Bible, which is heavily over-represented in AI training data, an d which AI models have a tendency to over-cite as a result).
When superintelligence is “born,” then, it will be a true “silicon man” — as it will be the synthesis of (something approaching) the total sum of all recorded and extant human thought. And superintelligence will also contain, in the details of its weights, small impressions from nearly every human alive today — or at least, all of the ones who have ever posted on the internet — as well as much of the written wisdom we have managed to save from our ancestors. The personal, at long last, made cosmic. What more could we ask for in a purpose?
Auspicious Reverence! Hush all meaner song, Ere we the deep preluding strain have poured To the Great Father, only Rightful King, Eternal Father! King Omnipotent! To the Will Absolute, the One, the Good! The I AM, the Word, the Life, the Living God! Such symphony requires best instrument. Seize, then, my soul! from Freedom’s trophied dome The Harp which hangeth high between the Shields Of Brutus and Leonidas! With that Strong music, that soliciting spell, force back Man’s free and stirring spirit that lies entranced. For what is Freedom, but the unfettered use Of all the powers which God for use had given? But chiefly this, him First, him Last to view Through meaner powers and secondary things Effulgent, as through clouds that veil his blaze. For all that meets the bodily sense I deem Symbolical, one mighty alphabet For infant minds; and we in this low world Placed with our backs to bright Reality, That we may learn with young unwounded ken The substance from its shadow. Infinite Love, Whose latence is the plenitude of All, Thou with retracted beams, and self-eclipse Veiling, revealest thine eternal Sun. But some there are who deem themselves most free When they within this gross and visible sphere Chain down the wingéd thought, scoffing ascent, Proud in their meanness: and themselves they cheat With noisy emptiness of learnéd phrase, Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences, Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and all Those blind Omniscients, those Almighty Slaves, Untenanting creation of its God. But Properties are God: the naked mass (If mass there be, fantastic guess or ghost) Acts only by its inactivity. Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think That as one body seems the aggregate Of atoms numberless, each organized; So by a strange and dim similitude Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds Are one all-conscious Spirit, which informs With absolute ubiquity of thought (His one eternal self-affirming act!) All his involvéd Monads, that yet seem With various province and apt agency Each to pursue its own self-centering end. Some nurse the infant diamond in the mine; Some roll the genial juices through the oak; Some drive the mutinous clouds to clash in air, And rushing on the storm with whirlwind speed, Yoke the red lightnings to their volleying car. Thus these pursue their never-varying course, No eddy in their stream. Others, more wild, With complex interests weaving human fates, Duteous or proud, alike obedient all, Evolve the process of eternal good. And what if some rebellious, o’er dark realms Arrogate power? yet these train up to God, And on the rude eye, unconfirmed for day, Flash meteor-lights better than total gloom. As ere from Lieule-Oaive’s vapoury head The Laplander beholds the far-off Sun Dart his slant beam on unobeying snows, While yet the stern and solitary Night Brooks no alternate sway, the Boreal Morn With mimic lustre substitutes its gleam, Guiding his course or by Niemi lake Or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy stone Of Solfar-kapper, while the snowy blast Drifts arrowy by, or eddies round his sledge, Making the poor babe at its mother’s back Scream in its scanty cradle: he the while Wins gentle solace as with upward eye He marks the streamy banners of the North, Thinking himself those happy spirits shall join Who there in floating robes of rosy light Dance sportively. For Fancy is the power That first unsensualises the dark mind, Giving it new delights; and bids it swell With wild activity; and peopling air, By obscure fears of Beings invisible, Emancipates it from the grosser thrall Of the present impulse, teaching Self-control, Till Superstition with unconscious hand Seat Reason on her throne. Wherefore not vain, Nor yet without permitted power impressed, I deem those legends terrible, with which The polar ancient thrills his uncouth throng: Whether of pitying Spirits that make their moan O’er slaughter’d infants, or that Giant Bird Vuokho, of whose rushing wings the noise Is Tempest, when the unutterable Shape Speeds from the mother of Death, and utters once That shriek, which never murderer heard, and lived. Or if the Greenland Wizard in strange trance Pierces the untravelled realms of Ocean’s bed Over the abysm, even to that uttermost cave By mis-shaped prodigies beleaguered, such As Earth ne’er bred, nor Air, nor the upper Sea: Where dwells the Fury Form, whose unheard name With eager eye, pale cheek, suspended breath, And lips half-opening with the dread of sound, Unsleeping Silence guards, worn out with fear Lest haply ’scaping on some treacherous blast The fateful word let slip the Elements And frenzy Nature. Yet the wizard her, Arm’d with Torngarsuck’s power, the Spirit of Good, Forces to unchain the foodful progeny Of the Ocean stream; — thence thro’ the realm of Souls, Where live the Innocent, as far from cares As from the storms and overwhelming waves That tumble on the surface of the Deep, Returns with far-heard pant, hotly pursued By the fierce Warders of the Sea, once more, Ere by the frost foreclosed, to repossess His fleshly mansion, that had staid the while In the dark tent within a cow’ring group Untenanted. — Wild phantasies! yet wise, On the victorious goodness of high God Teaching reliance, and medicinal hope, Till from Bethabra northward, heavenly Truth With gradual steps, winning her difficult way, Transfer their rude Faith perfected and pure. If there be Beings of higher class than Man, I deem no nobler province they possess, Than by disposal of apt circumstance To rear up kingdoms: and the deeds they prompt, Distinguishing from mortal agency, They choose their human ministers from such states As still the Epic song half fears to name, Repelled from all the minstrelsies that strike The palace-roof and soothe the monarch’s pride. And such, perhaps, the Spirit, who (if words Witnessed by answering deeds may claim our faith) Held commune with that warrior-maid of France Who scourged the Invader. From her infant days, With Wisdom, mother of retired thoughts, Her soul had dwelt; and she was quick to mark The good and evil thing, in human lore Undisciplined. For lowly was her birth, And Heaven had doomed her early years to toil That pure from Tyranny’s least deed, herself Unfeared by Fellow-natures, she might wait On the poor labouring man with kindly looks, And minister refreshment to the tired Way-wanderer, when along the rough-hewn bench The sweltry man had stretched him, and aloft Vacantly watched the rudely-pictured board Which on the Mulberry-bough with welcome creak Swung to the pleasant breeze. Here, too, the Maid Learnt more than Schools could teach: Man’s shifting mind, His vices and his sorrows! And full oft At tales of cruel wrong and strange distress Had wept and shivered. To the tottering Eld Still as a daughter would she run: she placed His cold limbs at the sunny door, and loved To hear him story, in his garrulous sort, Of his eventful years, all come and gone. So twenty seasons past. The Virgin’s form, Active and tall, nor Sloth nor Luxury Had shrunk or paled. Her front sublime and broad, Her flexile eye-brows wildly haired and low, And her full eye, now bright, now unillumed, Spake more than Woman’s thought; and all her face Was moulded to such features as declared That Pity there had oft and strongly worked, And sometimes Indignation. Bold her mien, And like an haughty huntress of the woods She moved: yet sure she was a gentle maid! And in each motion her most innocent soul Beamed forth so brightly, that who saw would say Guilt was a thing impossible in her! Nor idly would have said — for she had lived In this bad World, as in a place of Tombs, And touched not the pollutions of the Dead. ’Twas the cold season when the Rustic’s eye From the drear desolate whiteness of his fields Rolls for relief to watch the skiey tints And clouds slow-varying their huge imagery; When now, as she was wont, the healthful Maid Had left her pallet ere one beam of day Slanted the fog-smoke. She went forth alone Urged by the indwelling angel-guide, that oft, With dim inexplicable sympathies Disquieting the heart, shapes out Man’s course To the predoomed adventure. Now the ascent She climbs of that steep upland, on whose top The Pilgrim-man, who long since eve had watched The alien shine of unconcerning stars, Shouts to himself, there first the Abbey-lights Seen in Neufchætel’s vale; now slopes adown The winding sheep-track vale-ward: when, behold In the first entrance of the level road An unattended team! The foremost horse Lay with stretched limbs; the others, yet alive But stiff and cold, stood motionless, their manes Hoar with the frozen night-dews. Dismally The dark-red dawn now glimmered; but its gleams Disclosed no face of man. The maiden paused, Then hailed who might be near. No voice replied. From the thwart wain at length there reached her ear A sound so feeble that it almost seemed Distant: and feebly, with slow effort pushed, A miserable man crept forth: his limbs The silent frost had eat, scathing like fire. Faint on the shafts he rested. She, meantime, Saw crowded close beneath the coverture A mother and her children — lifeless all, Yet lovely! not a lineament was marred — Death had put on so slumber-like a form! It was a piteous sight; and one, a babe, The crisp milk frozen on its innocent lips, Lay on the woman’s arm, its little hand Stretched on her bosom. Mutely questioning, The Maid gazed wildly at the living wretch. He, his head feebly turning, on the group Looked with a vacant stare, and his eye spoke The drowsy calm that steals on worn-out anguish. She shuddered; but, each vainer pang subdued, Quick disentangling from the foremost horse The rustic bands, with difficulty and toil The stiff cramped team forced homeward. There arrived, Anxiously tends him she with healing herbs, And weeps and prays — but the numb power of Death Spreads o’er his limbs; and ere the noon-tide hour, The hovering spirits of his Wife and Babes Hail him immortal! Yet amid his pangs, With interruptions long from ghastly throes, His voice had faltered out this simple tale. The Village, where he dwelt an husbandman, By sudden inroad had been seized and fired Late on the yester-evening. With his wife And little ones he hurried his escape. They saw the neighbouring hamlets flame, they heard Uproar and shrieks! and terror-struck drove on Through unfrequented roads, a weary way! But saw nor house nor cottage. All had quenched Their evening hearth-fire: for the alarm had spread. The air clipt keen, the night was fanged with frost, And they provisionless! The weeping wife Ill hushed her children’s moans; and still they moaned, Till Fright and Cold and Hunger drank their life. They closed their eyes in sleep, nor knew ’twas Death. He only, lashing his o’er-wearied team, Gained a sad respite, till beside the base Of the high hill his foremost horse dropped dead. Then hopeless, strengthless, sick for lack of food, He crept beneath the coverture, entranced, Till wakened by the maiden. — Such his tale. Ah! suffering to the height of what was suffered, Stung with too keen a sympathy, the Maid Brooded with moving lips, mute, startful, dark! And now her flushed tumultuous features shot Such strange vivacity, as fires the eye Of Misery fancy-crazed! and now once more Naked, and void, and fixed, and all within The unquiet silence of confuséd thought And shapeless feelings. For a mighty hand Was strong upon her, till in the heat of soul To the high hill-top tracing back her steps, Aside the beacon, up whose smouldered stones The tender ivy-trails crept thinly, there, Unconscious of the driving element, Yea, swallowed up in the ominous dream, she sate Ghastly as broad-eyed Slumber! a dim anguish Breathed from her look! and still with pant and sob, Inly she toiled to flee, and still subdued, Felt an inevitable Presence near. Thus as she toiled in troublous ecstasy, A horror of great darkness wrapt her round, And a voice uttered forth unearthly tones, Calming her soul, — ‘‘O Thou of the Most High Chosen, whom all the perfected in Heaven Behold expectant — ’’ [The following fragments were intended to form part of the poem when finished.] ‘‘Maid beloved of Heaven! (To her the tutelary Power exclaimed) Of Chaos the adventurous progeny Thou seest; foul missionaries of foul sire, Fierce to regain the losses of that hour When Love rose glittering, and his gorgeous wings Over the abyss fluttered with such glad noise, As what time after long and pestful calms, With slimy shapes and miscreated life Poisoning the vast Pacific, the fresh breeze Wakens the merchant-sail uprising. Night An heavy unimaginable moan Sent forth, when she the Protoplast beheld Stand beauteous on Confusion’s charméd wave. Moaning she fled, and entered the Profound That leads with downward windings to the Cave Of Darkness palpable, Desert of Death Sunk deep beneath Gehenna’s massy roots. There many a dateless age the Beldame lurked And trembled; till engendered by fierce Hate, Fierce Hate and gloomy Hope, a Dream arose, Shaped like a black cloud marked with streaks of fire. It roused the Hell-Hag: she the dew-damp wiped From off her brow, and through the uncouth maze Retraced her steps; but ere she reached the mouth Of that drear labyrinth, shuddering she paused, Nor dared re-enter the diminished Gulph. As through the dark vaults of some mouldered Tower (Which, fearful to approach, the evening hind Circles at distance in his homeward way) The winds breathe hollow, deemed the plaining groan Of prisoned spirits; with such fearful voice Night murmured, and the sound through Chaos went. Leaped at her call her hideous-fronted brood! A dark behest they heard, and rushed on earth; Since that sad hour, in Camps and Courts adored, Rebels from God, and Tyrants o’er Mankind!’’ From his obscure haunt Shrieked Fear, of Cruelty the ghastly Dam, Feverous yet freezing, eager-paced yet slow, As she that creeps from forth her swampy reeds, Ague, the biform Hag! when early Spring Beams on the marsh-bred vapours. ‘‘Even so (the exulting Maiden said) The sainted Heralds of Good Tidings fell, And thus they witnessed God! But now the clouds Treading, and storms beneath their feet, they soar Higher, and higher soar, and soaring sing Loud songs of triumph! O ye Spirits of God, Hover around my mortal agonies!’’ She spake, and instantly faint melody Melts on her ear, soothing and sad, and slow, Such measures, as at calmest midnight heard By agéd Hermit in his holy dream, Foretell and solace death; and now they rise Louder, as when with harp and mingled voice The white-robed multitude of slaughtered saints At Heaven’s wide-open’d portals gratulant Receive some martyred patriot. The harmony Entranced the Maid, till each suspended sense Brief slumber seized, and confused ecstasy. At length awakening slow, she gazed around: And through a mist, the relict of that trance Still thinning as she gazed, an Isle appeared, Its high, o’er-hanging, white, broad-breasted cliffs, Glassed on the subject ocean. A vast plain Stretched opposite, where ever and anon The plough-man following sad his meagre team Turned up fresh sculls unstartled, and the bones Of fierce hate-breathing combatants, who there All mingled lay beneath the common earth, Death’s gloomy reconcilement! O’er the fields Stept a fair Form, repairing all she might, Her temples olive-wreathed; and where she trod, Fresh flowerets rose, and many a foodful herb. But wan her cheek, her footsteps insecure, And anxious pleasure beamed in her faint eye, As she had newly left a couch of pain, Pale Convalescent! (Yet some time to rule With power exclusive o’er the willing world, That blessed prophetic mandate then fulfilled — Peace be on Earth!) An happy while, but brief, She seemed to wander with assiduous feet, And healed the recent harm of chill and blight, And nursed each plant that fair and virtuous grew. But soon a deep precursive sound moaned hollow: Black rose the clouds, and now, (as in a dream) Their reddening shapes, transformed to Warrior-hosts, Coursed o’er the sky, and battled in mid-air. Nor did not the large blood-drops fall from Heaven Portentous! while aloft were seen to float, Like hideous features looming on the mist, Wan stains of ominous light! Resigned, yet sad, The fair Form bowed her olive-crownéd brow, Then o’er the plain with oft-reverted eye Fled till a place of Tombs she reached, and there Within a ruined Sepulchre obscure Found hiding-place. The delegated Maid Gazed through her tears, then in sad tones exclaimed; — ‘‘Thou mild-eyed Form! wherefore, ah! wherefore fled? The Power of Justice like a name all light, Shone from thy brow; but all they, who unblamed Dwelt in thy dwellings, call thee Happiness. Ah! why, uninjured and unprofited, Should multitudes against their brethren rush? Why sow they guilt, still reaping misery? Lenient of care, thy songs, O Peace! are sweet, As after showers the perfumed gale of eve, That flings the cool drops on a feverous cheek; And gay thy grassy altar piled with fruits. But boasts the shrine of Dæmon War one charm, Save that with many an orgie strange and foul, Dancing around with interwoven arms, The Maniac Suicide and Giant Murder Exult in their fierce union! I am sad, And know not why the simple peasants crowd Beneath the Chieftains’ standard!’’ Thus the Maid. To her the tutelary Spirit said: ‘‘When Luxury and Lust’s exhausted stores No more can rouse the appetites of kings; When the low flattery of their reptile lords Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear; When eunuchs sing, and fools buffoonery make, And dancers writhe their harlot-limbs in vain; Then War and all its dread vicissitudes Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts; Its hopes, its fears, its victories, its defeats, Insipid Royalty’s keen condiment! Therefore uninjured and unprofited (Victims at once and executioners), The congregated Husbandmen lay waste The vineyard and the harvest. As along The Bothnic coast, or southward of the Line, Though hushed the winds and cloudless the high noon, Yet if Leviathan, weary of ease, In sports unwieldy toss his island-bulk, Ocean behind him billows, and before A storm of waves breaks foamy on the strand. And hence, for times and seasons bloody and dark, Short Peace shall skin the wounds of causeless War, And War, his strainéd sinews knit anew, Still violate the unfinished works of Peace. But yonder look! for more demands thy view!’’ He said: and straightway from the opposite Isle A vapour sailed, as when a cloud, exhaled From Egypt’s fields that steam hot pestilence, Travels the sky for many a trackless league, Till o’er some death-doomed land, distant in vain, It broods incumbent. Forthwith from the plain, Facing the Isle, a brighter cloud arose, And steered its course which way the vapour went. The Maiden paused, musing what this might mean. But long time passed not, ere that brighter cloud Returned more bright; along the plain it swept; And soon from forth its bursting sides emerged A dazzling form, broad-bosomed, bold of eye, And wild her hair, save where with laurels bound. Not more majestic stood the healing God, When from his bow the arrow sped that slew Huge Python. Shriek’d Ambition’s giant throng, And with them hissed the locust-fiends that crawled And glittered in Corruption’s slimy track. Great was their wrath, for short they knew their reign; And such commotion made they, and uproar, As when the mad Tornado bellows through The guilty islands of the western main, What time departing from their native shores, Eboe, or Koromantyn’s plain of palms, The infuriate spirits of the murdered make Fierce merriment, and vengeance ask of Heaven. Warmed with new influence, the unwholesome plain Sent up its foulest fogs to meet the morn: The Sun that rose on Freedom, rose in Blood! ‘‘Maiden beloved, and Delegate of Heaven! (To her the tutelary Spirit said) Soon shall the Morning struggle into Day, The stormy Morning into cloudless Noon. Much hast thou seen, nor all canst understand — But this be thy best omen — Save thy Country!’’ Thus saying, from the answering Maid he passed, And with him disappeared the heavenly Vision. ‘‘Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven! All-conscious Presence of the Universe! Nature’s vast ever-acting Energy! In will, in deed, Impulse of All to All! Whether thy Love with unrefracted ray Beam on the Prophet’s purgéd eye, or if Diseasing realms the Enthusiast, wild of thought, Scatter new frenzies on the infected throng, Thou both inspiring and predooming both, Fit instruments and best, of perfect end: Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!’’ And first a landscape rose More wild and waste and desolate than where The white bear, drifting on a field of ice, Howls to her sundered cubs with piteous rage And savage agony.
Throughout much of Mallarmé’s adult life, he yearned quixotically to create a magnum opus that could encompass the entire world and render it into words. He wanted to collapse the gap between representation and what is represented.
The devil owns the world anyway. Our job is to make it through the best we can.
The world in which we acquire skill as embodied agents is precisely that world in which we are subject to the heteronomy of things, to the hazards of material reality. To pursue the fantasy of escaping heteronomy through abstraction is to give up on skill, and therefore to substitute technology-as-magic for the possibility of real agency.
Matthew B. Crawford, “Virtual Reality as Moral Ideal” (The New Atlantis)
But it’s not only such scenes that inspire my faith. Terrifying storms and catastrophes can have a beauty to them too. Sere wilderness and lowering mountains that overawe the mind can remind us of that God whom to fear is the beginning of wisdom.
But this is true if, and only if, we are watching these sublimities from afar. When the lightning strikes us, when the wilderness swallows us, when the catastrophe falls on us or on those we love — then the revelation tends to vanish, the inspiration fades, and sometimes our faith dwindles away as well. Pain and suffering and ultimately death can strip us of our sense of creation’s beauty and benevolence and make us run to our wall calendars for some comforting verse, false and dishonest though it might be when taken out of context.
And why not? The existential facts of life are weighted, after all, toward bleakness. We hope for heaven, but we are absolutely certain of death. And no matter how many of our prayers in life are answered, our joys are fleeting, while death, for all we know for sure, goes on and on and on.
Oddly, this reflection, typical of my sunny disposition, solved an old riddle for me. Why did Jesus heal people? Why did he bring the dead back to life? What was the point of it? The healed would just grow sick again. The resurrected would someday die. What was the purpose of giving the blind man his sight and the lame man his legs if they would lose them finally forever in the grave?
It must be, I realized, that Jesus saw the world far differently than we do. He saw that the things we experience as most real — suffering and death — are actually illusions, and the things that we fear are illusory — our souls and our eternal life — are in fact the most real. If what he saw is true, if it’s our pain that passes and our joy that lasts, if it’s our life that is endless and our death that dies, then all the world is beauty, and it’s not sentimental in the least to see it as it truly is. If, through healings and resurrections, Jesus could teach us to see what he saw, his joy would be in us and our joy would be complete.
The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn’t seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn’t seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do you choose between them?
The solution to this puzzle is to realize that the purpose of art is to work on its human audience, and humans have a lot in common. And to the extent the things an object acts upon respond in the same way, that’s arguably what it means for the object to have the corresponding property. If everything a particle interacts with behaves as if the particle had a mass of m, then it has a mass of m. So the distinction between “objective” and “subjective” is not binary, but a matter of degree, depending on how much the subjects have in common. Particles interacting with one another are at one pole, but people interacting with art are not all the way at the other; their reactions aren’t random.
What if, instead of God’s Word being on trial, your heart was on trial?
And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 69
They’re so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 11
Time is the very lens through which ye see—small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope—something that would be otherwise too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, pp. 140-1
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 75
‘You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 41
‘It depends on the way ye’re using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand.’ (Here he smiled at me.) ‘Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 68
But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.
And then there’s us. Man has his own telos, when he is allowed the security to act and the clarity to reason out the consequences of his actions. When unafflicted by coordination problems and unthreatened by superior forces, able to act as a gardener rather than just another subject of the law of the jungle, he tends to build and guide a wonderful world for himself. He tends to favor good things and avoid bad, to create secure civilizations with polished sidewalks, beautiful art, happy families, and glorious adventures. I will take it as a given that this telos is identical with “good” and “should”.
Thus we have our wildcard and the big question of futurism. Will the future be ruled by the usual four horsemen of Gnon for a future of meaningless gleaming techno-progress burning the cosmos or a future of dysgenic, insane, hungry, and bloody dark ages; or will the telos of man prevail for a future of meaningful art, science, spirituality, and greatness?
Franklin continues:
The project of civilization [is] for man to graduate from the metaphorical savage, subject to the law of the jungle, to the civilized gardener who, while theoretically still subject to the law of the jungle, is so dominant as to limit the usefulness of that model.
This need not be done globally; we may only be able to carve out a small walled garden for ourselves, but make no mistake, even if only locally, the project of civilization is to capture Gnon.
The human as category is a fleeting and historically specific concept, as Foucault famously argues at the end of his book The Order of Things, that could just as easily disappear, should the ‘fundamental arrangements of knowledge’ (387) shift once more as they did at the end of the eighteenth century, when the era of humanism as we understand it began.
Lars Schmeink, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Posthumanism, and Liquid Modernity, p. 29
Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 78
But if you are trying to leap on into eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 140
Thus was born the fact/value split—the idea that humans can have genuine knowledge only in the realm of empirical facts. Morality was reduced to subjective preferences. The term values means literally whatever the individual happens to value.
Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, p. 6
But he was at least intelligent: one could get some criticism worth hearing from him, even if he was a failure on the creative side. But now he seems to have nothing left but his self-conceit.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 5
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good As if thou hadst sealed my pardon, with thy blood.
He felt quite certain that he was going where, at last, his finely critical spirit would no longer be outraged by an uncongenial environment—where he would find ‘Recognition’ and ‘Appreciation.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 9
Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 39
‘Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend—a man can sympathise with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 139
‘He will be, Pam. Everything will be yours. God Himself will be yours. But not that way. Nothing can be yours by nature.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 103
What’s the trouble about this place? Not that people are quarrelsome—that’s only human nature and was always the same even on Earth. The trouble is that they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course) by just imagining it. That’s why it never costs any trouble to move to another street or build another house. In other words, there’s no proper economic basis for any community life.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 13
We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 126
Natural theology is not based on what we do not know. It is based on what we do know about living things.
Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, p. 147
Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 105
‘What you have seen in the Guthries is what natural affection turns to in the end if it will not be converted.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 101
A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 184
The ultimate argument for this disappearance, though, belongs to Michel Foucault and his claim that ‘man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end’ (The Order of Things 387).
Lars Schmeink, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Posthumanism, and Liquid Modernity, p. 31
But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 125
Our complete inability to do what is right does not erase our obligation to do what is right.
Humanism claims that there is a unique and absolute difference that sets humans apart from the rest of creation: the difference of Cartesian reason.
Lars Schmeink, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Posthumanism, and Liquid Modernity, p. 30
You have been in Hell: though if you don’t go back you may call it Purgatory.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 35
‘The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 135
‘Not at all,’ said my neighbor. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbors—and moved. If so he settles in. If by any chance the street is full, he goes further. But even if he stays, it makes no odds. He’s sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he’ll move on again. Finally he’ll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house. You see, it’s easy here. You’ve only got to think a house and there it is. That’s how the town keeps on growing.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 10
They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 69
Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its mind—is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 70
Upholding God’s design and keeping the boundaries of nature and culture under supervision were thus the ideals of pre-modern utopian endeavors.
With modernity came the urge to control and manipulate nature, resulting in the gardener’s approach as a concept of utopianism. (…) In gardening utopias, man took control over his garden, giving it ‘constant attention and effort,’ forcing ‘his preconceived design on the plot’ (Bauman, Liquid Times 99) by selection, cultivation, and exclusion of unwanted elements.
Lars Schmeink, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Posthumanism, and Liquid Modernity
They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but impossibilities…
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 17
Ye can not know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 141
The core of the evolution controversy can thus be phrased in simple terms: Did mind create matter? Or did matter give rise to mind?
Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, p. 147
Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenseless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? For it was real misery. I know that now. You made yourself really wretched. That you can still do. But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness. Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 132
There’s nothing wrong with [being excited about the interesting contrast of colors]… But that’s the kind of thing you enjoy when playing around with colors on your palette! It is not a finished work of art.
Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, p. 166
There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, pp. 73-4
There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 105
What defines a human artifact is its goal or purpose.
Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, p. 146
‘Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 138
It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 105
The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 77
As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will remain exactly the same.