Just got back from the boundary waters a few days ago. It
was a pretty sweet adventure, with a lot of canoeing along the lakes of beautiful
northern Minnesota and soaking in the pristine wilderness around our camps. But
instead of doing another travel blog, I thought this week I could do something
a little more thought provoking. Or attempt to do something a little more
thought provoking. At least something with a little more value than my usual
cynical pretentiousness. I don’t wish to make you feel my self-hatred through
the screen, that’s not what the internet should be for. I also freely admit
that I am not a member of the patrician class, I merely find it fun to pretend
to be. God have mercy on me for my sins.
CAMP SUNSHINE
One question that I have been
thinking about recently is what is the difference between Monkey and Man? How
do we as malformed naked primates differ from our animal cousins? Evolutionarily
speaking, we are not that different. We share a common lineage, a similar
anatomy, an even more similar cell biology, and the same genetic language. Furthermore,
human beings and other primates differ by surprisingly little in terms of
genetic makeup (be it granted physical expression of this genetic makeup may
differ to a marked amount). It is always difficult to generalize research, but
it is looking like the difference between the human genome and the chimpanzee
genome may be less than 10%. Humans and chimpanzees only diverged from a common
ancestor between 6-8 million years ago (seems like a lot, but life on Earth has
been squirming for billions of years). Is that enough time for a large enough
gap to emerge to say that there is a fundamental difference between us? If we
can’t say that there is a fundamental difference, in what way do we justify our
actions towards other species (putting them in little cages, making the movie
Kangaroo Jack, etc.)?
In the past, the fundamental difference between human and
animal seems to have simply been taken for granted. We are human; it is easy to
put ourselves first before other species. Most animals seem to do this. You
won’t see a wolf fight to save a baby squirrel from complete and utter
destruction in the talons of an eagle. The wolf is more concerned with other
wolves, it is more concerned with its own species. Yet only humans construct
rhetoric for why we are better than
other animals. One way we have constructed rhetoric has been through religion. There
have been various narratives throughout recorded human history, but the common
Western strain is that God gave us dominion over the animals, that we were the
only being created in HIS own image, and thus we were able to subjugate the
others. In Genesis, it was Adam who named all the various animals. This ability
to give names to others is a metaphor of our power over them.
There is another Biblical story that may illustrate more on
the matter. In the Garden of Eden everything is living in harmony. God’s
favorite creation, man, is skipping around with God’s other favorite creation,
woman, and everyone is having a grand old time (sex might be allowed!). Adam
and Eve are depicted naked as well, having no sense of being without clothing,
much like the other animals in the garden. And then the mean old serpent
convinces Eve to take a bite of a fruit off of the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil and share the fruit with Adam. Suddenly both of them are aware of
their stark nakedness, and they are kicked out of the holy garden to suffer by God.
God’s punishment stems from the fact they disobeyed him, but also seems to stem
from a fear that Adam and Eve would become too much like himself. There is a
line in Genesis that seems to get skipped nowadays by the televangelists who much
more interested in the fact that we were punished than the reason for which we
were punished.
Genesis 3:22-23 states: And
Jehovah God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and
evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life,
and eat, and live for ever. Therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the
garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
Thus God is afraid of humankind becoming like (insert gender
neutral pronoun)self. The two super-trees in the Garden of Eden would allow
this. The tree of knowledge bestows the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree
of life bestows immortality. Apparently the knowledge of good and evil +
immortality = God.
It is certainly a strange story, and like most sections of the
Bible, it doesn’t form any clear cohesive narrative with the rest of the book.
There are a myriad of meanings that one can come up with just looking at the
Garden of Eden account itself. However, I view this story to be about what
exactly separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom.
There is a certain grace all life seems to possess. Grace in
the sense that there is no second-guessing one’s actions. The simplest
lifeforms work on simple signal and response frameworks. E. coli, the most
widely used and studied bacterium on earth, undergoes simple changes in what
proteins its DNA makes based on certain molecules in the environment. Organisms
even simpler than E. coli, such as viruses, attach like matching puzzle pieces
to the surface of cells, and unload their diabolical contents into the host
cell as a consequence of that attachment. As life becomes more complex,
especially with the development of the brain, grace becomes obscured. The
bigger the brain, the less grace, because biologically, a constant stream of
stimulus needs to be integrated by the brain, and a response generated by it. This
is not to say that the integration is some abstract process by which the brain
acts (A goes in, mysterious process, B comes out); integration is just like an
incredibly complicated watch-mechanism. But this mechanism by which we do basic
arithmetic and take selfies results in a lack of an immediate response to a
signal, in fact it is based on a sort of evaluation of what response is best
enacted. In turn this results in a lack of grace. In humanity particularly, we
have to integrate information about our environment, which is socially varied
and dauntingly complex. Thus humans are the most awkward animal. Awkward
because of the fact that sometimes we have to think about what we should do. If
we view animal life and its grace as a sort of continuum of cause and effect,
then the close-talking weirdo at the post-office represents a sort of break
with that fluidity of existence.
But all this about the brain doesn’t fundamentally
differentiate human beings from other primates. We may have the biggest brain,
but it isn’t really a different brain. The difference comes in the little extra
accoutrements that our brain possess. Specifically the difference is in whatever
structures and pathways enable our affinity for language. If we view animal
life and the idea of grace from the continuum perspective, language represents
the ability to create separation between the continuous; language is the
ability to make things discrete. Calling something by its proper name, for
instance a ‘cup,’ defines it by what it is not. But ultimately it is an artificial
designation. A cup to us is a small vessel with an open top that serves as
something to drink from. It is also a collection of silicon, oxygen, sodium, calcium,
and carbon atoms. It may also be innumerable bands of energy vibrating in
different dimensions (sorry not a physics major). What makes humans
fundamentally different from animals isn’t anything physical; it is our ability
to be artificial, our ability to lack grace, our language. Other animals who
rank high in intelligence may have sounds that have meaning; they may have a similar
ability to learn and express themselves in unique ways. But what makes human
beings different isn’t innate in our biology, it is the curation of our
language.
Back to the story in Genesis, the question that needs to be
asked is what does it mean to know good and evil? To me it means being able to
separate the two, which is the fundamentally human binary. When Eve took a bite
of that fruit, she didn’t have ultimate wisdom and a perfect morality. She
simply realized she was naked. She was able to separate herself from her
surroundings. To me, the story of the Garden of Eden is about the metaphorical
evolution of human language because once Adam and Eve eat the fruit, they are
able to define what is and what is not. In a manner of speaking, they become
able to draw lines in the sand. They also become the first scientists, able to
examine reality because they can separate it into words.
This hardly seems like a God-like power, but think of this.
The computer you are using to read this blog is the result of years and years of
scientific investigation. That in itself is based on the development of the
middle class, the development of agriculture, the identification and
designation of what food was good to eat through language. It all adds up to
make our interesting little electronic creation. God’s fear in the Garden of
Eden is that we would eat of both trees; that we would know good and evil as
well as be immortal. In a way, we have found a way around being mortal. Writing
down our language, we enable the next generation to stand on our shoulders,
reaching ever higher. We become like God, able to create whatever we will.
One more point and I promise this post will be over. It is
not arbitrary that the Tree of Knowledge gave us the knowledge of good and evil.
I feel that this whole discussion is missing a very important piece. Why did
God fear us becoming like (insert gender neutral pronoun)self? What was the
danger in it? On what foundation does the tower we are building stand? I don’t
think God is a megalomaniac, so what is the reason?
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