CHAPTER 1
CACO ERGO SUM
In ámadano, budano,
raftan be che bud?
(What was this
coming, being and going for?)
Omar Khayyam, The Robáiyát
Just
as Descartes’ reflections led him to “Je
pense donc je suis;” just as the authors of the Bible received the
Revelation
that God created Adam and Eve; just as the Vedas evoke Kâla and
Prajâpati as
sources of the universe, Indra or Varuna as its creators and Purusha’s
sacrifice as the beginning of man; just as the Pueblo tradition traces
the
beginning of mankind to the time when the Great Spirit brought humans
out of
Shipapu darkness; I wonder and ponder on what it is all about – in
current
lingo, about “the meaning of life.” It
seems to be in the nature of the human species to pose the question and
to
search and fear the unknown.
According
to statistics 98 percent of humanity believes in some kind of
supernatural
power. Indeed, even those who attempted
to distinguish the species as a thinking animal were not free from the
ascendancy of the gods. Plato's androgynes, those creatures that
were
so
intelligent and agile that they threatened the gods, were created by
the gods. And the gods proceeded to cut each of them into two
halves to make a woman and a man out of
each, each
half eternally seeking the other half, leaving the gods in peace.[1] Descartes
posited his “I think therefore I am” as a proof for the existence of
God. His attempt to envelope his rational
method
in God’s grace was in a large part genuine and was not motivated only
to avoid
the wrath of the church and a fate similar to those of Giordano Bruno
or
Galileo.[2]
The
high percentage of believers and the acrobatics of thinkers to wrap
their
thoughts in the divine are intriguing. Some
suggest that the idea of God may actually be located
in the brain.
According to recent research, increased neural activity in the temporal
lobes
would trigger the ecstasy of being in the presence of God – epilepsy
causes a
keener sense of that.[3] Increased
activity in the frontal lobe
associated with decreased activity in the parietal lobule could lead to
the
ultimate goal of transcendental meditation’s freedom from time and
space.[4] These are presently results of clinical
experimentations. If they were definitively established we could
reduce
the
idea of God to electro-chemical activities in human brain.
We would then classify man's need to believe
in supernatural powers along other physiological and psychological
drives, and
wonder about the two percent of humanity who do not manifest that urge.
Posing
the question about the two percent, however, misses a major
point: that
most of
the 98% who do believe, do not believe in God because they experience
mild
epileptic strokes
or meditative bliss. They believe in
God because the society, parents and peers channel their fear and awe
of the
unknown through institutionalized religions in order to appease their
fear
and make
them socially functional.[5] It is
interesting to note that even those
who do the neuroscientific experiments make a point of expressing their
faith
in God. And religious institutions make
sure to keep their flock within bounds – the conference on the
neuroscientific
experiment on transcendental meditation was sponsored by religiously
oriented
Templeton Foundation. For most, God is
not ecstasy or Nirvana but the rampart which gives them security at the
edge of
the abyss.
Being
among the two percent, I do have to
search the
unknown. I do lack the fear and awe of
the believer. I either understand or I don’t. I don’t
believe. Where I don’t understand I seek to
learn in
order to understand. St. Augustine’s
believing before understanding is a cop-out.
I
am among the two percent of non-believers probably because I was
brought up
that way – which proves my point about the influence of
the
environment and parents on one’s approach to the unknown.
I recall coming home from school one day and
telling my father about the "Ascension." He
asked me to raise my feet. I lifted one. He said:
"No, lift
both!" I said I can’t, I’ll fall. He said if you cannot
lift both feet
at once
ten centimeters off the ground, how did Jesus lift off to go to
heaven? Later in
life, I
learned that my father’s question was not that original.
According to Moslem tales, it is the question Abu Jahl put
to
Mohammad after the latter recounted his night journey -- “The Israelites” Surah
– a tale
which is said to have generated the myth of “Boraq”, the fair-faced
winged
horse which transported Mohammad.
It
is not that I was told to reject religious dogma off-hand, but to
question. Indeed, I was reprimanded
when I did not question and did not ask the how and why of
things.
I enjoyed reading the different versions of the Bible, whether
Judaic,
Christian or Moslem and found them imaginative. They
were great
stories. The Vedic tales were riveting. But
I was always reminded that believing in their or any other religion's
supernatural
pronouncements would become blinders in
the search, and magnify the fear and awe, of the unknown. Granted,
a part of the fear and the awe is
used to inculcate patterns of behavior for moral and ethical conduct,
but the
greater part is for the perpetuation of the religious dogma and the
primacy and
control by the religious institutions. No other cause has made human
beings
kill each other more than religion.
It
was with that perspective and the question of being on my mind that I
was
looking at the drawing in my biology book illustrating the role of
nitrogen and
carbonic acid cycles in nature. It showed a deer standing on the
grass
among
the trees; grazing, digesting and excreting – re-establishing the
balance of
the ecological chain by providing fertilizer and nutrients to grow the
food it
eats.
I
replaced the deer with man. And
Eureka! “Caco
ergo sum”.
I
was a link in the ecological chain. The first undeniable function
of
man within
the context of his environment is to turn the foodstuff provided for
him by
nature into shit. As I eat, digest and
excrete, I fertilize the plants. One
organism among others meant to contribute to the balance of nature. And what an organism! A
self-perpetuating machine with its own
reproductive organs. No factories
needed! Something man has not yet
managed to achieve through the machines of his making. As man
breathes
the air
to produce carbon dioxide, drinks and eats to produce urine and feces,
the
process provides him energy to breathe more, drink more, eat more and
to
reproduce. In other words in the
ecological complex, the energy the animal produces by processing
nutrients is
used for the drive to further search for more raw material in order to
produce
the
finished product.
And
when the machine is used up, it disintegrates and is recycled back into
the
process – sooner than later if not hampered by a multi-layer casket. The reason for my existence, then, was
obvious. In the cycle of nature I was a
processor of food, a shit-making machine: Caco ergo sum
– I shit therefore I am.
In
their search for raw material, different organisms adapt to different
processes
depending on their instinctive and intellectual complexity. Organisms
which man
calls protozoa such as amoebae are examples of direct processes of
intake,
output, reproduction and decay. In more
complex organisms the process involves more indirect interaction with
the
environment. The squirrel gathers and
stores the nuts, ants grow mushrooms and, of course, man goes farther
and
processes the raw material to different degrees before taking it into
his
organism for final processing. The
chain of man's contact with nature is thus much farther stretched than
simple
cells and distances him from direct understanding of his role in the
universe. That may be the reason why
man has the drive to search and fear the unknown. Does
the deer also ask the question: “What is
it all about?” And what about the amoebae?
Does
the amoebae ask the question “am
I ?” – Is it conscious of being? I ask
the question because I think I am
conscious of being – as distinct from not being.
If I were not conscious of being, would I be? My being may well be
due to my consciousness of being. Is it consciousness that is?
Is
consciousness different from being? Can
the amoebae be without being conscious
of being? Or can it be conscious
without being conscious of being? Conscious
of what? Conscious
of
the universal without being conscious of being. With
these questions about the different states of amoebae's
conscious in mind, I pose the problem at three levels:
1.
Is the amoebae conscious of its own being? In other words, is it
“self-conscious”?
2.
Is the amoebae conscious of its being within its environment? Of
being
there.
Of being-in-the-world – Dasein?
3. Is
the amoebae's consciousness of its
environment confounded in the universal? To the extent that the
amoebae
does
not question its own being and being-in-the world is it conscious of
being one
with the universe? Does it need to?
These
three levels of consciousness refer to the three propositions we have
touched
upon so far, namely: 1. the image of God (man's quest to commune with
the
universe), 2. I think therefore I am
(consciousness) and 3. I shit therefore I am (partaking in the
cycle of
being within the environment). The universe, consciousness, and the
self within
the environment evidently need to be further explored.[6]
*
* *
Addendum
Some, exposed to
my idea of human
beings as "shit-making machines," have expressed concern about the
consequences
of letting the species loose from the wrath of God.
Before proceeding any farther, I would like to refer them
to my
“Moral Code” which would eventually be the conclusion of this essay:
Moral
Code
The moral code
of behavior inspired by religion but
liberated from its hocus-pocus, superstition and fanaticism could be
quite
succinct. It would boil down to:
It sums up and
broadens the Ten Commandments. It does not
cover only those acts enumerated
in the Ten Commandments, but also disagreeable behaviors such as
aggressiveness, harsh words, disorderly conduct or sloppiness. And it calls on you to apply it to every
body, not only your neighbors. You
should not do to anybody what you
don’t want him or her to do to you.
It does not need
Moses to talk to the burning bush and come
down with the tablets. It is reciprocal
common sense behavior that would create mutual trust and make
harmonious social
life possible. It is simply in your own
self-interest: for your comfort and peace of mind.
And don’t go
about “doing onto others what you want them to
do to you.” As George Bernard Shaw put
it: “they may not like it.” It is
misplaced altruism, intrusive and counter-intuitive.
It is the
introspective active side of the first premise of
not doing unto others what you don’t want them to do to you. Without being intrusive, be positively good
in your intercourse with others.
It reflects the
Zoroastrian tenets of Pendare neek, Kerdare neek, Goftare
neek without
the need for fire temples. In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignacio de Loyola,
the founder of Jesuit branch of Christianity, enumerated them as
precepts for
the “General Examination of Conscience.”
It permits you
to look inside yourself and see whether you
are not inadvertently doing to others what you don’t want them to do to
you,
and whether your thoughts, deeds and speeches are good.
It is a Sufi
precept, but you don’t have to be a whirling
Dervish to exercise it.
* * *
More chapters to follow.
All rights reserved
[1]
Plato, The
Symposium.
[2] Descartes, Méditations
II, III etc.
[3] Jeffrey L. Saver & John Rabin, “The neural substrates of religious experience” in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 1997, 9 pp. 498 -510; Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, San Diego.
[4] Andrew M. Newberg, A Neuropsychological Analysis of Religion: Discovering Why God Won’t Go Away, paper presented at the AAAS Conference on the Neurosciences and Religion, February 10, 1998, and Eugene d’Aquili & A. M. Newberg, “Researchers find clues to religious euphoria” in the University of Pennsylvania Health System Media Review, May 1998.
[5]
For more on the
subject see A.
Khoshkish, The Socio-Political Complex, Oxford, Pergamon Press,
1979. pp. 23-24, 76 et
seq.
[6]
I am, obviously,
posing perennial
philosophic questions. In the back of my mind are such concerns as:
Hume’s
causal skepticism and discourse on natural religion. See notably his The Treatise on Human Nature, The Natural
History of Religion and Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion. Kant’s questioning of man's capacity
to move
from the understanding of the phenomena to the conception of the
noumena and
the handicaps of reason which inevitably falls into contradictions when
attempting to “think the whole”. See
notably his Critique of Pure Reason.
Hegel’s treatment of consciousness and self-consciousness in the
context of
reason, spirit/mind (Geist) and
religion, and conception (Begriff) as
the essence of being. See notably his Phänomenologie des Geistes. Husserl’s
transcendental phenomenology arguing the limitations of Descartes’ “I
think” to
explain consciousness. See his Ideas. Heidegger’s ontological approach to the
question of
“being” and making
it conditional to Dasein –
“being-there”, “being-in-the-world”. And Sartre’s the transcending for-itself consciousness, being
conscious of being other than itself, whether pre-reflective or
reflective –
thetic – consciousness. See his La Transcendance de l’Ego and Being and
Nothingness. And others. Those
familiar with these works
will recognize the ideas of these and similar philosophers, either
sustained or
refuted, all along this essay. The
purpose here is not to review or regurgitate the ideas of these
thinkers but to
pick up their ideas where they left them and reflect further.
The reason for this revisit of
age old inquiries is to see
whether there is a remedy for the divorce between philosophy and
science which
since the nineteenth century has handicapped human understanding, ever
more
accentuated by segmentations, compartmentalizations and specializations
of
fields of inquiry and further aggravated by the prevailing utilitarian
approach of “what is it good for?”