How things Are, and What things Matter

(With this post, I need to begin by giving my deepest appreciation to Ursula Goodenough, the brilliant cell biologist who wrote The Sacred Depths of Nature, (Oxford University Press, 1998) and I am responding to some of her message.)

How things are, and what things matter: these are two questions essential to human being-ness. It is as though culture is as much built on these ‘heady’ matters as has been forged around the more corporal concerns such as the availability of food or sexual partners or shelter from the heat and cold. This thoughtful side of being human in itself says a lot about what it is to be human. It is a thoughtful enterprise and yet at the same time, rooted in flesh and blood, soil and water.

Now, to the next step, which would be to integrate a 'what is' with a 'what matters' so that these two can co-create a human community in both a self-nourishing and ecologically sound manner. Actually, they are a natural outgrowth, one upon the other, the second upon the first, like flowering branches stemming from the same trunk, drinking from the same sap… However, the 'what matters' grows out of the 'what is' as they both wind around each other towards the light.

Religion, importantly (given the human propensity for head-driven action), attempts to gather and disseminate broadly accepted mores that can align these two into a co-creative, co-productive concordance that serves to encourage life, and not destroy it. Religion begins with the determination of a ‘what is,’ and then installs a careful (let us hope) construction of a ‘what matters’ on top of this.

Well, it seems obvious that a planetary ethos is by all apparent data a requisite to a less tragic future. The list of reasons is well-known, and the self-interest governing the positions of so many key players is sadly familiar. Although I am uncomfortably troubled about the difficulties of humanity to respond together as a team, a little matter of human psychology might prove to provide a little hope: perhaps there is in humanity at large, a developmental aspect to the recognition of the ‘what is’ and ‘what matters’, as there certainly is one that shows over an individual human lifespan. Looking at the development of the individual gives at least some hope to similar potential growth among humans as a species, and this potentially gives some comfort to the prospect of humanity’s developing such insight and understanding.

However the acceptance of a global ethic, even a global metaphysics and epistemology, appears daunting, however well founded the need for it may be. What ‘is,’ in and of ‘itself’ is subject to perspective. It is not simple: physics alone raises deal-breaking questions about agreement regarding the universe’s construction: the argument in light’s being either a particle or a wave as a case in point. Concordance on the constitution of reality is not as immediately forthcoming, even among the scientists, as some might hope. These questions may dissipate with time and deeper understanding, but agreement regarding the basics of ‘what is,’ even from scientific perspective, is far from complete.

This said, if there were an opportunity for a generally global agreement on what was true, then it would makes sense that the ‘what mattered’ could be found to be more generally agreeable as well. This could logically mend the rifts forestalling improving our human behavior amongst ourselves as well as tending to our shared Earth, both matters of deep concern to people. Moreover, if there were to be a more global agreement regarding the nature of reality, it seems a better prospect that it came through observation and reproducibility that is scientifically founded, rather than by Confucian, Moses or Mohammed-like fiat.

Ursula Goodenough suggests that three things must exist if a global ethos – and possible religious formulation that supports it – can take shape: gratitude for life, reverence for life and its complexity, and an unflagging desire for life to continue. (Ursula, I am paraphrasing, and I hope I have this right enough.)

With respect to the first and third of these, it may be that we have our genetic heritage serving in our favor. Whomever has struggled for air, desperate for oxygen to fill her or his lungs, has already tasted the sweet thankfulness for being able to breathe. Moreover, the struggle itself testifies to an insatiable human appetite for living at least one more day.

The second of these necessary foundations to the prospect of a global ethos, however, demands a ‘foot up’ so everyone can take a good look at the ‘what is.’ It is hard to see the intricate dance and develop such a reverence for life in its complexity, to stand back in awe at the exquisite tapestry and the universal breadth and atomic depth of life, without access to its observation.

It was a moment of human evolvement when the first pictures of Earth transmitted to where you, I, and any street passerby of televisions illuminating store windows could first see Earth as a whole. It was a simple step in thought to then consider our own minuteness as a speck upon the screen, and face integrating this physicality of our own life with its wants, needs, hopes and fears, with this new-found broader perspective of the whole. We were forced to ignore, compartmentalize, or come to terms with some kind of integration of the distinct part that is our own life on the one hand, and the whole of life, which is the other.

One planet, one globe of water and air, a shared residence without – yet - a shared community.