People are animals with amazing brains.
Brains are wonderful, very useful. But the
trouble is, our capacity for ideas, for
modelling concepts with words, is so
highly developed that we easily confuse
and delude ourselves.
I have spoken with many people who
seek the truth through science.
I have no problem with pure science.
I have very serious misgivings about
what people do with the discoveries which
spring from science. Like giving an assault
rifle to a child. It seems to me, that humans
do not have the wisdom or maturity to
carry the responsibilities which scientific
knowledge is imposing upon us all.
It seems to me, that we are being led by the
nose, dragged by applied science and
technology, into a very black hole.
The forces we have found, are out of our
control. Instead of people deciding what sort
of world they want to have, people have to
deform themselves to adapt to a world
which science and technology, harnessed
to an ideology of industrial expansion and
corporate capitalism, is inflicting upon us.
I don't believe this is a wise path. We are
not following the Tao. We are getting
pulled by a blind stampede which is
heading for a big cliff. The vested interests
which started the stampede, and which
drive it ever faster, care not a jot about the
resulting catastrophic consequences.
As in Mary Shelley's amazing prediction,
Dr. Frankenstein's Monster is endangering
the future prospects of everyone alive today,
and of their children even more so.
"Ah, yes, we are all vainly seeking after
happiness in the wrong way. It was with
us once and ours, but we despised it, for it
was only the old common happiness which
Nature gives to all her children, and we
went away from it in search of another
grander kind of happiness which some
dreamer - Bacon or another - assured us we
should find. We had only to conquer
Nature, find out her secrets, make her our
obedient slave, then the Earth would be
Eden, and every man Adam and every
woman Eve. We are still marching bravely
on, conquering Nature, but how weary and
sad we are getting ! The old joy in life and
gaiety of heart have vanished ..."
W. H. Hudson.
Science has revealed astounding knowledge.
But, just as water is a good thing when you
are thirsty, a very bad thing when you are
drowning, the promise that science would
improve our lives - which it has, in many
ways - begins to turn sour, when the fruits
of science take precedence over our basic
humanity.
Penicillin was wonderful. CFC's a major
catastrophe.
Anybody who thinks that creating creatures
that are half sheep, half goat,' chimeras ', is
being done for altruistic, benign reasons
to help us all, is gravely mistaken.
We don't get what we want, or need.
What we get is whatever makes the
maximum profit for some anonymous
stockholders who don't care a toss for the
Planet, the future, or the general good
of humankind.
Science is wonderful, because the Universe is
wonderful. The more that science discovers,
the more amazing it all turns out to be.
Why can't we stop there ? Why do we use
the discoveries to try and make a quick
profit by exploitation, which just makes for
even worse problems than we already have ?
Science is marvellous. But even if the
scientists manage to explain how the
Universe formed and reached its present
state, and how life came into being and
evolved into the life forms we find around
us, that understanding still misses the
fundamental question as to why there is
anything at all.
Such a difficult question cannot be
answered by the intellect. No amount of
scholarship and research can help. But an
answer can be found. The mind must be
silent and stilled. One has to find one's
true being, by determined and skilfull
meditation.
Then one can ask the Universe, as a koan,
' Why ?' and, by that route, receive a
thoroughly satisfactory answer.
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