Why Reality Matters (Part 2)
But feels like it doesn't
In Part 1, we took a cursory glance at how the world changed its understanding of knowledge.
To make the idea even more cursory: when it came to gleaning the truth, authority was out and evidence was in. This was cool, because, not only did it make knowledge more reliable, it also meant anyone could participate.
If you had an idea, it didn’t matter who you were; the idea could – in theory at least – be accessed, evaluated and tested by anyone. As we saw in Part 1, this huge shift in thinking was partly inspired by the Scientific Revolution, but there were also other elements that contributed to it. What we now call the Age of Enlightenment was a movement encompassing many areas of thought – and many of the ideals we now consider essential to a civilised society emerged at this time. Note the word “ideals” there, by the way; we don’t live in an ideal world, and you’d struggle to find a society that even professes to fulfill them entirely.
With that caveat out of the way, it’s interesting to note how neatly Enlightenment principles formed a coherent whole, and how that whole challenged the mores of the previous era.
Reason and Evidence
This wasn’t the first time that reason had been espoused by great thinkers. We know the Ancient Greeks were discussing it, for a start. I also think it would be a stretch to suggest that ordinary humans weren’t using reason in some way to try and work out what was, in general, going on; it’s such a a natural human faculty. I guess this was limited to causes and effects that happened right in front of the naked eye; it’s no coincidence that a key aspect of science is the use of tools that allow us to see beyond that scale. But suffice it to say that science extended reason to all aspects of knowledge, including those that were very much on the church’s turf.
If knowledge could be accessed and understood by anyone (again, in theory), then it was no longer the property of any authority like the Catholic Church. The ramifications of this went far beyond science itself and were, I believe, the source of the egalitarianism that underpinned the entire movement. And that leads us on to…
Egalitarianism
Again, the Ancient Greeks had explored this concept; they invented democracy, after all. But, with the Scientific Revolution, the old dependence on authority as a guarantor for knowledge was undermined forever.
This was the Age of Reason, and what reason could there be for the Divine Right of Kings? By what logic were some people born into a higher position in life than others?
What did it mean to be an aristocrat when a new class of wealthy industrialists were emerging, with their technology, factories and booming profits?
The old Europe – that world of peasants who produced whatever came out of the ground, weavers and bakers who crafted expensive one-offs, and Lords who produced nothing at all, was dying. The new inventions and factories multiplied the value of natural resources. The power this afforded the industrialising nations then enabled them to plunder those resources from around the world. Western Europe, probably because of its unique geography as a large, easily traversable landmass with highly variable weather, was the uncontested leader in this new world of machines and transport.
I think there’s a strong argument that, ultimately, this benefited the whole of humanity. Living standards and life expectancy have both surged since we started making the wonderful products we now depend on. But, even amongst the winners of this revolution – those denizens of Europe living in luxury – there was unease.
Dark Satanic Mills
It’s not hard to see why. Apart from anything else, industry is ugly. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that humans find beauty in green surroundings that support life. I’m probably at my most contented sitting by a body of water with lots of trees around me. I suspect my ancient ancestors liked it too, even if they didn’t think consciously about how such an environment would support their lives. But it’s not just about beauty; there’s also something about stories that we are drawn to.
We humans live in stories. We describe the way things happen in simple, linear terms and, these narrative structures can serve as a vaguely accurate description that is good enough much of the time. We’ll quite confidently state that “He got lung cancer because he smoked cigarettes his whole life”, and that’s often fine as far as it goes. We know that smoking cigarettes massively increases the risk of lung cancer, but they don’t actually cause it.
The true cause of cancer is random mutations in cells. They happen by chance and anyone surviving long enough will get cancer at some point; it’s only a matter of time before the repeated copying of DNA will go wrong. Those who don’t get cancer just die of something else first. What cigarettes actually do is increase the chances of lung cancer developing, by creating an environment in which mutations are much more likely.
So the truth is nobody has got lung cancer because they smoked cigarettes their whole lives; they got cancer because copying stuff doesn’t always proceed as it should.
Oh now, will you look at that?! I’ve just fallen into the trap of writing a story, rather than telling the truth! Did you spot it? See that “should” up there? That’s a very human narrative device.
Who says how cells should divide? Who gets to decree that? I’ve ascribed intention where there is none, because that’s what humans do. We think birds’ ancestors developed wings so they could fly. They did no such thing; the bird’s ancestors didn’t plan to start flying and grow wings to achieve that. Their DNA certainly didn’t consciously miscopy itself either. Wings are the result of gazillions of miscopied DNA that, by pure chance, gave some early lifeforms a survival advantage. But, in a particularly human way, it looks like wings developed so these animals could fly.
“Should” is for value statements and “so” is for intention statements; as far as we know, much of the universe simply doesn’t operate on those terms.
We’re not even sure how conscious of their own intentions animals are. It looks like my cats chase flies so they can eat them, but how do we know they have the capacity for that kind of planning? More likely, they catch flies because it feels fun and then there’s suddenly a dead fly they can eat, which they do because it feels satisfying. Certainly, in terms of evolution, that’s all it would take to keep them alive (ok, it’d take a lot of flies; our cats are lucky because we feed them proper food too).
We have evolved to anthropomorphise so many things, because why not? For most of our history, it wouldn’t have mattered whether the lion was planning to eat us, or was just going to end up eating us by doing what felt fun. And, when we didn’t understand what was causing the weather, why not attribute intentions to some being powerful enough to do such a thing?
As intelligent, social animals with empathy, imaginations and an in-built capacity to plan, it’s hardly surprising that we assumed the rest of the universe is just as clever, and doing so kept us alive. Because we didn’t know any better.
But once we started knowing better, a great many of us wished we didn’t. We’d evolved to easily understand stories, with their intentions and their values, that it was just too hard to let go.
If you read William Blake’s poem “And did those feet in ancient time” you’ll see that he just wished everything was a bit more natural, a bit more biblical, and a bit less industrial. Like before.
In fact, let’s read it now; it’s a beautiful piece:
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
William Blake and the other Romantics registered their beautifully meaningful protests against the cold new world of industry, with its enormous rectangular buildings, crammed cities and noise, because it seemed so unpleasant.
It was so inhuman.
Except it wasn’t.
The Modern Human Tragedy
It’s easy to see the natural world as everything that isn’t human but, again, that’s just anthropomorphism. We evolved to be the way we are, and the way we are is intelligent. Through some incredibly specific mutations lots of thousands of ages ago, our brains started getting bigger. Some experts suggest our fate was sealed once we started cooking our food; cooked food is easier to digest, and therefore more nutrient rich… but we could do with a pot, and next thing you know you’ve got Uber Eats.
Making things easier for ourselves is just what we naturally do, and we’re intelligent enough to adapt our environment to do so.
But the weird thing about the brain is it’s very much like an old city. The really ancient bits of our brain are in the middle and they deal with the same sorts of things other animals experience: emotions and smells and urges.
And just like the beautiful historical centre of a city, we feel more aligned with these things. It’s no coincidence that all art, regardless of whether it’s considered part of the Romantic movement or not, is about amplifying those emotions and urges. I can’t think of many pop songs about being sensible, logical and industrious. There are some, such as “It’s Like That” by Run D.M.C, but I think it’s safe to say that the majority are about following your heart and feeling stuff.
But, anyway, just like the ugly newer parts of the city, our outer brains are where the actual thinking happens – where the work gets done. I won’t go into too much detail here, as I covered all this in my other essay, The Modern Human Tragedy.
But basically, our brains work like this: The old central bit (the feeling brain) sends a message up to the new outer bits (the thinking brain) and we experience that message as an emotion or an urge.
Then, experiencing this urge, we start deciding how to satisfy it. The thing to be clear on here is that the dumb old feeling brain is in charge. The thinking brain is a servant whose job is to stop the urges. And because it’s clever, it’s good at stopping those urges. It can even understand that stopping some urges might cause problems down the road, but there’s little it can do about it.
If the feeling brain wants crack, then the thinking brain will make the arrangements, even though it knows it’s a terrible idea. And this has been going on ever since humans came along; the urges came and we satisfied them in ever more ingenious ways. We invented agriculture, ships, massive buildings, concrete, flyovers, airports and all sorts of amazing things because our feeling brains wouldn’t shut up and our thinking brains had no choice.
This is our nature, and we are as natural as any other animal. We’re just really, really clever; perhaps not quiiiiiiite clever enough, but damn clever all the same.
And we’ve created this new world so quickly that our old brains haven’t evolved to catch up. We will never love, in a deeply visceral way, the solutions we create to solve our urges better than before. We’ll keep finding better ways to get what we want, and rearranging the world to do so, and the world will move further and further away from what we are comfortable with, what feels right – what feels natural.
William Blake was a Romantic poet, and Wikipedia says the Romantic Period lasted from 1800 to 1850, but what Wikipedia doesn’t say is that romanticism has always been in us to a greater or lesser degree.
Stick to the Poetry, Guys
Romanticism has lived on in many different guises. Most markedly, the Twentieth Century gave us Postmodernism, which can be very loosely summed up as bitching about anything that isn’t apparently natural and can’t be described in a narrative. Science and motorways and stuff like that.
And I get that, because I’m a human too. Where Postmodernism went wrong was when it started tying itself in knots, inventing new long words to use in essays and books. It tried to defend the most innate humanlike qualities by using logic, just like science did. It took the battle to the universities to prove it had grown up and should be taken seriously. And it would only ever fail.
Postmodernism is great in poems, comedies and pop songs, but absolutely fails in the field of logic and reason. This movement tried to use every tool in the book to undermine things like logic, reason, science and the very fabric of reality. And it did this because factories and airports are ugly. Postmodernism was feelings masquerading as thoughts, and it was only a matter of time before it would be defrocked.
But, as I’ve stated, romanticism will never go away. It’s a part of us, I feel it too, but the world is never going to go back to how it was. Because, frankly, it was awful – Beautiful, but awful.
Almost everyone died young, and that was probably a good thing because their lives were full of suffering. Hunger, disease, freezing to death were all part of life for basically everyone. And that’s how most animals live today; they’re either scared, starving or freezing to death. Or being eaten alive. The fact that, as a species, we’ve managed to largely overcome these problems is the Modern Human Miracle, and while it might be mundane, it’s better this way, isn’t it?
“Well, if we continue the way we are, we might not be around for much longer!”
Yes, perhaps that’s true. But to have reached the point where billions of our species live without any real suffering is something magnificent. To live without suffering and to have the gift of experience is a feat that no other species on earth has achieved. Even if our successors all get nuked or starve to death, that remarkable fact won’t change.
We achieved this wonderful outcome through studying how things really worked, by building our understanding and sharing it. We are the part of the universe that saw itself, saw suffering, and worked out how to reduce it.
Believe me, though; I lived, laughed and loved long before it was cool. I followed my heart for years and nearly destroyed my life. I know the lure of stories and following my heart.
But won’t you tell me the last time that love bought your clothes?
(And that’s as far as we go for this part. In the next and final part, we’ll explore what all of this means for our continuing journey through the Twenty-First Century)