Preface

This book is going up on the blog as it is written, not in its final order. Hence the Preface comes here. This is probably a good thing.

Preface—
We are in part a product of our experience, which both informs and constrains us. We cannot escape this, and the harder we try the less free we become. This is true both individually and as a society. Our personal experience remains with us always, although organized not as a videotape, but as a narrative hung on our ideas of causality. The experience of society, as far as we know, is not passed on automatically, as happens with DNA. It apparently must be transmitted as information, and it too falls together on the basis of belief systems operative when the experience occurred. Social memory is constructed, not recorded. And it is transmitted via tradition. No one reads us quotations from the past as we are growing up. They impart the condensed version of that experience through their actions. By their deeds we know the past.

We are also, obviously, constructed of something, although no one seems to understand just what. We appear to be physical, mental, and perhaps spiritual beings. Neither is necessarily certain. People can explain the physical on the basis of mental and mental on the basis of physical, and most often they presume more than one component. Most of us today are dualists, followers of Descartes, who conceived of us as both mental and physical beings, somehow interrelated.

And then we are moving forward as societies and can understand to a degree that this happens on the basis of systems. Marxism sees it as all a result of the technology we employ. Sociologists make analogies to Darwin’s natural selection. But we function only in a society and the nature of the society determines the parameters of how we live. There are two (perhaps three) social choices: individualism, collectivism, and maybe theism (the question being whether theism is simply a form of collectivism). Unfortunately, people tend not toward dialogue on these systems. More often they are inclined to exterminate those not sharing their view. The crusades were conflicts about theology. The World Wars of the twentieth century, which somehow suddenly seem like ancient history, pitted socialism against capitalism. We had better get this right because our capacity individually is restrained by society, and our function individually will determine the fate of the planet. William Hocking, one of my favorite philosophers, feels that the doctrine of mutual nuclear destruction gives humanity a pause in its headlong rush to jump off a cliff. He thinks this respite is our last chance.

This book then is an attempt to help save the planet. The odds of success are long, although criticism will come not so much about improbability as about arrogance. But new ideas are never formed by committee. Individuals somewhere always think them up. So I am willing to risk the charge of arrogance, even impudence, on the chance that something in this book might prove useful. That, of course, is not certain, but for certain the solution will not be the product of a presidential commission. Government is about coercion, not creativity, thus we can expect interference rather than assistance from that quarter. And we appear to have run out of stone tablets. That leaves only us.

Hocking said that one does not ask if something is possible. One asks if it needs to be done and whether the finger of responsibility points in his/her direction. Of course this needs to be done, and somehow a finger seems to be pointing at me.

There need not be a conflict with a higher power here. In fact, I do not believe our task is possible without a belief in something greater than us. Without a God we have no fixed position. There is then no final cause, no absolute truth, and hence no meaning. Also, without a God we start to act like one ourselves, and in the process transform earth into hell. Yet we canot simply sit back and trust in a higher power. To do so would be to presume we are merely spectators, void of purpose and responsibility. That would be a waste of a perfectly good design. There is no conflict between “praising the Lord and passing the ammunition”. So let’s do it.