On the Human Condition
I’ve admired Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition since first struggling through it as an undergraduate. The passing of my beloved wife, Joanne Cain, on October 10th, (significantly?) my 77th birthday has led me to ponder the concept harder and longer than I had for a long time. Herewith, some of the results of all this pondering of the past couple of months.
Let me begin with this proposition: the existence of God is irrefutable. That is not to say that God exists for a certainty. It means we cannot prove God does not exist. If you can answer the following questions for me, then I will entertain your argument that there is no God:
What was there before the material that comprised the Big Bang? Was it always there, waiting to go bang?
What lies beyond our universe? Into what is it expanding?
I submit to you that science is limited to answering questions about our universe from the Big Bang down to the present, and from the center of the universe to its outer edge. Before and after are unanswerable. If this argument is refutable, I cordially invite its refutation.
Sadly, however, this doesn’t prove that we humans have immortal souls. Like all of you reading this, I wish this were not the case. The urge to survive, to defeat death, the urge to immortality is universal and powerful. Nothing else can explain the persistence and power of the organized religions, such as Catholicism. And yet, the power and persistence of organized religion, and the pervasiveness of the concept of an immortal soul, only prove how strong is our desire to believe. It does nothing to prove the truth of the immortal soul.
A more compelling argument to my mind is given be a rabbi I discovered on YouTube. He uses what he describes as a seemingly silly analogy. Assume that a refrigerator was self-aware. It runs on electricity and assumes that the electricity is a part of its being. When the plug is pulled, the refrigerator stops working, but the electricity continues to flow and to power millions of other appliances. This, it seems to me, is an apt metaphor. We humans are material bodies that are “plugged into” the life force of the universe… to God. In this state we have an opportunity to act and to experience and to feel. When our plug is pulled, God’s energy continues to flow. Our body ceases to think, to feel, to experience. It begins the process, fast or slow, of returning its atoms to the totality of matter for other uses.
If I’m right about this, what then? My first principle is that life is meant to be lived. We need know no more than that in order to affirm the worth of our existence. We are meant to try to excel to the best of our varying abilities. The harshness and pains of life are mitigated by our ability to love one another, to enjoy the pleasures of our senses, and the gift of work.
“Far and away, the best prize life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” —-Theodore Roosevelt.
“Work worth doing”… to what end? For the survival and advancement of the species… the Human Race.
Here in the West we place great emphasis on the individual: the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Is that compatible with our primary purpose: the survival and advancement of humanity? I say that it is, not because we individuals are singularly important (albeit, the contributions of some seem infinitely greater than the contributions of most). But because this concept ensures that most of us will maximize our contributions. Adam Smith famously pointed out that he was assured that the baker would have bread to sell him, not because the baker was a humanitarian, but the opposite: his personal interest —-greed, even—-led him to contribute to the common good. Totalitarian states believe that individuals live to serve the state. In so holding, and in enforcing this precept, they cause untold misery and waste the talents and life force of millions and millions of lives.
If the Human Race is meant to survive and advance, then we can ask —- as we ask about the universe —-where are we going, as we expand in shear numbers, in knowledge, and in achievements. Only God knows. Just as I firmly believe that life is meant to be lived, my form of faith is that humanity does have a destiny. While I wish with all my heart that my Joanne and I —-and all of you —- could live forever as self-aware individuals, my humble reasoning ability rejects that thesis. Nor am I a Marxist; I don’t believe in Hegel’s dialectic. I do, however, choose to believe that our species has a purpose in what is often called “the Grand Scheme.” We can no more know that purpose for certain than we can know the origin of the Big Bang or its final destination.
Such, I believe, is the Human Condition.
