EUROPA

A Performed Dialogue on Modernity and Post-Modernity in Two Acts

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Lazarus

Constance

Xenos

ACT I

Con. If we become gods, what then?

Laz. To become a god is to become master of fortune. We render it obsolete and antiquate it beyond recognition. From the earliest days we have sought to make harvests more plentiful, winters less harsh, the night less dark. Why should we not aim to perfect these ambitions?

Con. So you seek comfort then? Not only do you seek comfort, you seek to deify that comfort, and yourself, in one motion by rendering it the de facto nature of all human beings. You wish to enter Olympus, greeted as an old friend, sitting idly in pleasure and convenience. Let us be clear, you wish to master comfort, and in doing so you wish to render pain obsolete.

Laz. Is this such an ignoble aim?

Con. Ignoble insofar as you fail to recognize that pain is what imbues human beings with creativity. It is what allows us to affirm wholly and entirely what is and what is good. What you fail to see my friend is that life is not refuted by pain. If pain is removed from the human experience, tell me, what is left?

Laz. Why, unity of intention. And a perfect intention at that.

Con. I am not sure I understand.

Laz. Since Machiavelli, what have we set out to do? Yes, we hope to conquer fortune, but what else? We use science to parse the darkness, to illuminate what has so long lived in shadow, and in doing so, we have learned the secrets of nature. We employ those secrets to advance our estate, to ease our misfortune, and elevate our peaks.

Con. You speak as if you have given absolute wisdom to all when you have merely disposed of the old edifices and replaced them with a new set of shinier idols. You believe that you have illuminated the darkness and vanquished the shadows. The shadows still persist, only their contours have changed.

Laz. We are always governed by an edifice my dear friend. It seems an inescapable fact of human affairs. Yet should we not seek to understand and reduce nature so fully so that we may build edifices that perfectly represent what nature is, down to the quarks that compose them? Is it not our duty to build these perfect representations such that we understand their relationship with themselves and with the people they instruct? It seems likely that a society governed by perfectly reduced edifices is far superior to a society governed by false and uncertain ones.

Con. You assume then that your reductionist approach allows for a perfect understanding of nature, and that, I fear, is the fundamental mistake of your approach. I find it dubious that one might reduce something to its composite parts without projecting its own nature, thus tainting the perfection of the representation you wish to construct. What is more, your method can tell me the nature of degenerate Fermi gases at the core of stars, and the hydrostatic equilibrium that keeps a star from collapsing in on itself. Yet it misses the poetry of quality or nature of the star itself by tearing back the veil; it overshoots the truth of it. How did we find ourselves at this table on this bridge? But of course, my legs and feet are connected to my brain by a complex neural network that fired in such a way that brought my physical body to this exact spot. But this is an absurd depiction and does not illustrate the whole picture. I enjoy your company and the smell and sound of the Loire flowing beneath us. I hate the coffee at La Garde down the block and that office building does not obstruct the view of the cathedral. Your approach can explain the fluid dynamics of the molecules in the river below, but can it explain its wetness?

Laz. In a few short decades, my ‘approach’ will be able to explain the relationship between your distaste for La Garde, your love of cathedrals, the muscles in your legs, the wetness on your fingers, and the neurons and in your brain.
Con. Yet by going deeper you will only continue to lose sight of what is. You will be further and further away from an understanding of the whole by reducing and separating its composite parts. How can you fathom to know the body by just considering its divisions?

Laz. You mean to focus on the superficial.

Con. The superficial out of profundity2! I mean to see the whole as it shines forth! Not simply segments but wholes! What is required for understanding? To separate and reduce? To distinguish and eliminate? No! To stop courageously at the surface, to adore appearances and believe in the forms, tones, words, and poetry! To live well, we must, as artists, dare to climb to the highest and most dangerous peaks and adore all that we see.

Laz. You speak ridiculously my friend. What on earth can you mean by poetry and how could the scientific project benefit from such a thing?
Con. Poetry is of course the articulation of the world, an articulation of physical and human nature through an artistic representation. Your science has the capacity to be artistic, yet it fails once it no longer is an enterprise of human beings. If it is impartial and abstract, is it still human? Laz. If science is no longer impartial and abstract, it cannot function. It relies on that foundation. Con. What foundation do you speak of? The foundation of science itself? It is clear that the enterprise cannot support itself. So what then can support it? What other foundation than human beings themselves? What else could suffice?

Laz. Nothing, it would seem.

Con. So we must then recognize a specific and realistic foundation for science to operate on, one that is necessarily imbued by human nature and human affairs.

Laz. This is a bold project you suggest, but one I am willing to consider.

Con. The morning is giving way to afternoon, so let us then begin in earnest.

Laz. What is the appropriate end of politics?

Con. How is this relevant?

Laz. You speak of good living, human nature, and human affairs. Are these not matters of politic?

Con. I suppose they are.

Laz. Then what, I ask you again, is the appropriate aim of politics?

Con. To inculcate virtue within its citizens and to promote human flourishing in a fashion that transcends the pure control and mastery of the physical world.

Laz. But you concede that mastery of nature is a necessary component of political ambition? Con. It is not mastery that I will speak of, but a grappling between the power of nature and the power of human beings. That is to say, we are forced to a certain unavoidable truth once we feel emboldened to master nature. It seems to me that the human propensity towards a domination of nature ultimately engenders a peculiar loneliness. It stems, in part, from a feeling of desertion, as an attempt to reestablish discipline or jurisdiction over the domain that guards its secrets with a fierce intensity.

Laz. You suggest that the scientific project is a product of our loneliness, and a desire to reassert ourselves over our resultant fear and angst?

Con. Whether the isolation stems as a product or the cause, it is a science without passion that forces such loneliness to endure.

Laz. But does it not seem right to you that this project is the only thing we have left in facing our peculiar loneliness? What are we to do when we realize we’ve unchained this earth from the sun? Do we allow ourselves to plunge continually through an infinite nothing, away from all suns? Shall we embrace the cold breath of empty space and let it close around us? The onset of this loneliness you speak of seems to be the exact moment when science becomes fundamentally necessary in breathing light into that darkness. In an infinite void without a sun, mustn’t we birth some light to see? The horizon has been wiped away, how do you propose we are to reestablish our bearings?

Con. Your point is well met, yet you seem to place seeing above the human experience. You have, consciously or otherwise, deified that light and made it superior in all ways relative to all things. Is that not indeed what so many before us have done? Their light was simply of a different descriptive quality. With the scientific politic you envision, you conceive a stone titan, brandishing a torch toward the cosmos, a stone edifice comprised of human beings. I admit, I envision a similar colossus. Yet each stone, each person, exists toward that great edifice, that great purpose. Your stones, the human beings that comprise your titan, exist for the sole function of being stones, utilitarian in scope and purpose. What existence would you prefer?

Laz. If the existence as a stone so displeases you, let us operate on that desire and create a new physics or technology that satisfies our inclinations. We live in a perilous moment where the longevity and success of our species relies on our ability to unite towards this great titan you speak of. The stone itself seems to be of little consequence when the stakes are so high. The effort must be towards preserving that light in the infinite darkness. Why shed such effort in bringing together disparate aims when we can unify intention by reconditioning the desires of individuals. And let me be absolutely clear, this reconditioning that I speak of is not only in accordance with nature, it is a result of nature and a perfect understanding of nature that is achieved by science.

Con. How so?

Laz. By understanding the structure and behavior of the natural universe, and the changing cosmos at every stage as a result of the laws, we develop a unique naturalist objectivity that bases itself on what is more than other less subjective approaches.

Con. I am troubled by your notion of naturalistic conditioning. Is that what you believe the aim of politics must be? A blind habituation of the human slave toward scientific ambition? That humans must strive as one groping, disinterested mass, marching in perfect unison, toward freedom, peace, and security? This does not sound like a species worth propagating.

Laz. Is this not indeed what you suggested earlier? Did you not say it was the appropriate end of politics to inculcate virtue? I speak in terms no different than those employed by the Greeks, by Plato or Aristotle. How again do you suggest that your vision is so different from mine? You would teach your stones to embrace the greater project and convince them it is righteous to be a stone via the righteousness of your edifice. I would see those stones comfortable, secure, free from delusion, yet still supporting the greatest political project in human history.

Con. I do not quite see how your stones could be free from delusion and comfortable, but let us not speak of stones. Let us speak of human beings, as that is what we are discussing, no? We are implicitly considering, as you wisely articulated, that political ambition and the human good are one in the same. It seems that you rank comfort and security as the greatest human goods attainable by politics.

Laz. Not as the greatest goods, but rather those goods that work as means to greater scientific achievement.

Con. This is well met, but this greater scientific achievement you support produces what? Knowledge of the natural world? Yes, but ultimately it seeks to aggrandize an even greater and more perfect comfort and security. Would you agree?

Laz. I suppose I must.

Con. Not only a physical security from disease, meteors, blizzards, catastrophes wrought by the heavens or by chance, you seek security from a fear of your own incapacity. We hurtle through the cold void heavens, not a star to be seen, and the mere possibility that we may never re-anchor ourselves fills us with such consuming terror that we cower behind our stone protectorate. Suppose we never do anchor ourselves, what then? Suppose that when we last drank up the sea, it remained quenched, barren, and desolate. What then?

Laz. In a depleted basin we do not idly admire its parched quality, we devise new ways to fill it. Your quenched sea is an opportunity for a lush ocean of human will.

Con. Yes but again, what if the sea were to forever remain dry? Are you suggesting that you would exert yourself until that arid vessel became a graveyard, brimming with the cracking bones of failed will and wasted resolution? I fear that your pursuit of comfort and security affirms weakness and extinction by virtue of its motivation. Should we not affirm great health in lieu of great illness? We, as you say, isolated and premature births of an as yet unproven kind need a new goal. For this goal, as again you say, we need a new means. Yet are these means not of new health? A stronger, tougher, more audacious and more joyous health than any previous health? That basin of bones may be inevitable, I concede, yet we must affirm life, an existence affirming and blessing itself as that which must return eternally. Why not affirm what you work so hard to see?

Laz. Do you believe that science has led us to nihilism?

Con. What do you mean?

Laz. You seem to suggest that the scientific enterprise is itself incapable of an affirmation of what is.

Con. I see no other possibility. You yourself said that science must function as an objective, impartial, and abstract enterprise, otherwise it ceases to serve its aim. How can something affirm impartially?

Laz. This is indeed a curious question. Do you believe affirmation requires some sort of moral judgment? That is to say, does the act of affirmation require some knowledge of the good, and that what is being affirmed must in fact be affirmed because of its goodness?

Con. Or do you suppose that the act of affirming renders it good? Either way, it seems there remains an inescapable moral component that your science is unfit to judge. Your science, as it is not of human beings, is not a moral one. And to be clear, when I say that your science is not a moral one, I am not insinuating that scientists are incapable of making ethical decisions, I merely wish to highlight that, according to your formulation, once the enterprise begins to formulate moral judgments, it subverts and destroys itself.

Laz. I see the potential shortcoming, yet an inability to affirm or produce moral judgments does not equate to nihilism. A scientifically minded political project transcends this nihilism insofar as it acquires knowledge of what is good from what is. Consider the following examples: once it was learned that, qualitatively speaking, only a few differences separate the human genome with the genome of a snail, humanity perceived itself afresh. When it was learned that the atoms comprising every single human body stemmed from a unified place, the cores of suns long extinguished, humanity perceived itself afresh.

Con. But I might argue that the true naturalist sees the difference between a snail and a human and realizes how little is expressed in that genetic discrepancy. By seeing wholes as they shine forth, the genuine naturalist comprehends the difference between the activity, virtue, and agency of the human being against and those of the snail, and therefor sees what actually is!

Laz. You earlier insinuated that our scientific approach lacks morality. You critique reductionism and favor the shimmer of superficiality. Yet I would argue that is a naturalist reduction that reveals the true profundity of our origin and circumstance. Once nature has been reduced, the resultant lessons may be applied to wholes. You are right; science remains incapable of issuing moral judgments, whether normative or conditional. The human condition may still be identical to the condition that Thucydides described two millennia ago, yet we cannot avoid the reality that our experience has changed greatly, and that change in experience has dramatically altered our conception of self and goodness. As a consequence of our changing experience, we employ science as the beauty of certain knowledge compels us. Our thrusting eros forces us to eternally affirm the nature we discover as what is and what is good.

Con. Are you not disturbed though, dear friend, that the abusing of nature and the civilizing of humanity have gone hand in hand since we realized our physical capacity? You speak of deriving human ‘Nature’ from nature, yet you have so violated that nature in the process. How can you suggest that you have seen nature clearly, pristinely, when in reality all you have seen is yourself projected onto what you presume to know objectively? Both the civilizing of humanity and the invasion of nature defy each element, the one by venturing into it and overpowering its creatures, the other by securing an enclave against it in the shelter of laws and cosmopolitanism. We cannot forget that man is the maker of his own existence and life qua human. We bend and manipulate fortune and circumstance to our need, and I am afraid of the naivety in asserting that it is possible to purely and objectively derive ‘Nature’ from nature. I would go so far and say not only is it naïve, such a derivation could have tremendously dangerous implications.

Laz. What sorts of implications do you have in mind?

Con. Justification, on seeming moral grounds, for horrific and tyrannical political ambition. The same reductionist poetry that you claim unites humanity could without difficulty divide it into self-annihilation. The last century is unfortunately full of examples.

Laz. If not from nature, then where do you propose we derive the morality of our existence?

ACT II

Xen. This is a difficult question, indeed.

Con. Pardon me?

Xen. No, please excuse me, my dear companions. I could not help but to so rudely overhear your alluring conversation. I must admit, I was most struck by the passion with which you both have spoken, and that I became increasingly estranged from my book with each of your passing observations. If you both will allow, please do continue, where do you believe one must derive morality, if not from nature?

Con. It seems to me that our morality must stem from that which induces the greatest health in human beings. We must strive towards a morality that affirms the wellness of the greatest beings in a way that informs and curbs our propensities in the wake of the death of God.

Xen. An interesting proposition, but how then might we begin to assert who the greatest beings are and prove to ourselves that they are in fact the greatest beings? What standard might we employ to build this morality that you speak of?

Con. The health of a being or of a system reveals itself without much difficulty, does it not? For example, one may point to the healthy city and call it well as compared to the ill city, and merely support such a judgment by pointing to the laws that made that city well or diseased.

Xen. Let us extend the ordering of these cities to the ordering of bodies. The laws would then simply extend to the morality we hope to define. How are the laws of a healthy city established? Do we say some law is good by pointing to the city’s health as justification? How, similarly, is the morality of a healthy body established? Do we say some morality is good by pointing to the body’s health as justification?

Con. Yes, a phenomenological approach seems to be the only way of ascertaining the truth in this matter.

Laz. As opposed to a reductionist approach, you mean?

Con. The reductionist approach, in its hastiness to rush past the surface, has in effect spoiled an appreciation or some acceptance of the phenomenology of all things and the insight it may provide us in action and virtue.

Xen. Yet I am afraid we have still not answered the fundamentally pressing question. Who will be the image-makers? What standards of health should they employ and on the basis of what knowledge? Our physical capacity has gestated for three and a half centuries, and for the first time in the history of human beings, we are met with the apocalyptic pregnancy of our impetus. As you both have astutely identified, we now have the capacity to form our nature. So let us be bold. Let us dance on the precipice for a moment and try to answer this question: what shall the image of human beings be in five hundred years?

Laz. This is a bold question you propose indeed, stranger, and what is more, in answering, let us also attempt to demonstrate why this conception of human beings is best and most ideal.

Xen. Do you know the story of Enceladus, dear companions?

Laz. I know the moon of Saturn by that name. A fresh, clean sheet of ice covers its surface. It ejects plumes of salt water with silicon rich sand, nitrogen, nutrients, and organic molecules from a liquid ocean that we believe resides under its crust. The hydrothermal activity under the crust suggests a potential environment conducive to life.

Xen. And the story of the being whose name was given to this moon?

Con. Enceladus was one of the Greek Giants, the offspring of Earth and Sky, a race of beings of great strength and aggression. During the Gigantomachy, the battle fought between the Giants and the Gods of Olympus for supremacy of the cosmos, Enceladus is known to have fought Athena. Enceladus, along with the other Giants, was defeated and buried in a tomb underneath Mt. Etna in Sicily. Why do you speak of Enceladus, stranger?

Xen. Are we not these very giants you have described? To conquer fortune is to vie for dominion over the cosmos. This is the project you have described, is it not?

Laz. I suppose in quality it is the same.

Xen. And how should we understand the conclusion of this great myth? A myth that, in large part, was presumably instrumental in the education of young Greek citizens? It was a victory of order over chaos, the defeat of barbarism by civilization, the defeat of discord and violence by rationalism. But you presume our intentions to dominate the cosmos are cut from a nobler cloth, do you not? We are the prescription of order to assuage the chaos of the heavens. Please correct me if I falsely assume to know your words.

Laz. I see the intention of science, or to use your words, the dominion of the cosmos, especially in a civic or political context, as walking into Olympus, finding it deserted, and devising some method to strive forward, alone.

Xen. Do you believe it is simply a question of moving forward? Before you spoke of conquering fortune. One seems to be reactionary while the latter, more aggressive, not unlike our Giants. How must we reconcile this notion of finding Olympus empty and the desire to inhabit it?

Con. Say more, stranger.

Xen. Well, it seems that one is not synonymous with the other. We have indeed experienced the death of gods. We have become homeless, isolated, and forced to wander, accompanied only by our frustration and fear. As a result of this fear, we seek to prescribe order to the chaos of the heavens. Or is it something more? Do we not seek to prescribe order to the chaos of our own souls? Tell me, dear companions, must we find a new home or is it better to simply be at home with our homelessness?

Laz. We must overcome it.

Con. I suppose I would support different means, but yes, we must.

Xen. So you both suggest that in order to realize true human greatness, we must overcome the fear, frustration, and isolation that are inherent to our condition. You see a political philosophy, teleologically guided, yet eruptive in potential that would, necessarily, thrust human beings into the heavens, to become like gods, and to join in the act of creation? You see this as the only means by which we might finally be at home?

Laz. I suppose yes, necessarily.

Xen. How far in the future do you see human beings accomplishing such power, both in science and in virtue?

Laz. I cannot begin to presume to know, but I might suggest a millennium must pass before we reach such technological and scientific heights.

Con. And relative to our consciousness, before we transcend our sentimental tendencies, a similar period of time must pass.

Xen. So one thousand years must pass, at the very least before we, as a human species, can be at home. And this is of course assuming the possibility exists in the first place, which I find doubtful. But what shall we do for the next millennium? I fear our apocalyptic potential, in technology and morality, might not allow us another hundred years on this planet. Let us speak in terms of the coming millennium, by your instruction. As a result of the last 400 years of modernity, to be a human being is to be dislocated. The act of reducing everything in the cosmos to a sphere of immanence, matter and interaction, has left us none but ourselves. And then we saw our self-portrait. An image beamed across the solar system by the spacecraft Voyager, an image of a pale blue dot floating in a sunbeam. And what terror my friends. It was in that precise moment that humanity saw itself and comprehended the gravity and depth of its vacuous solitude. Frenzy erupted from the horror. Thoughts of fleeing that faded, innocuous, and fragile spec moved our thymos to impossible heights. We could not conceive, in our great power and capacity, the possibility that our destiny should be restrained by such perverse innocuity. In an instant, the sovereign wanderer became a sovereign conqueror, convinced by its virtue and justified by its capacity. In a single thrusting instant, the honesty and dignity of our condition dissipated.

Con. You speak of wanderers and conquerors. What, may I ask, is the fundamental difference you see between the two?

Xen. The wanderer observes, witnesses, loves intensely, and beholds in humility the entirety of the cosmos. The conqueror dominates, converts, adjusts and projects themself onto the entirety of the cosmos.

Laz. And you see these two types as necessarily and wholly disparate?

Xen. As opposed as Dionysius and Apollo.

Con. Say more, dear stranger.

Xen. Apollo of course, is the god of reason and of rational. Dionysius, of irrationality and chaos. The Apollonian is the individual who bases action on reason and logical thinking while the Dionysian appeals to emotions and instinct. Human beings, in your estimation, should fall into which category?

Laz. Apollonian, but of course.

Con. I am inclined to disagree and favor the Dionysian.

Xen. Ah, the optimist and the pessimist. Both out of profundity, of course. It seems we have answered your question.

Laz. Which question again would that be?

Xen. The question of whether or not these two types are necessarily disparate.

Con. How have we answered this question?

Xen. The Apollonian perspective represents a view of the great peaks of human potential. The Dionysian represents a view of life that affirms tragedy in order to see what is and thus affirm the peaks and valleys, as they exist separately. Is a vision of human nature complete without both of these components?

Con. I suppose not.

Laz. So then we are both wanderers and conquerors?

Xen. I do not disagree, my dear companions, that we must affirm the peaks of human capacity, yet to do so with such arrogance, such conviction, such assuredness of virtue and capacity will ensure our plunge across infinity, with no hope of finding a home among the stars or within our own spirit. The humility of the wanderer tames the stride of the conqueror, and without that modesty, we will dominate, convert, and project ourselves into oblivion. The future of humanity harmonizes its Dionysian and Apollonian quality in order to, with honesty and dignity, affirm all that is, particularly the distinct possibility that we may forever wander, friendless and forsaken. We who are homeless, we children of the future, must clasp in hand our capacity to know and direct physical nature with a purposeful and intimate relationship with our own Nature. We are ripe for it, my dear companions.

Con. Ripe for what?

Xen. When we consider the human being of five hundred years future, how might we look upon them? In what ways would they resemble us? In what ways would they differ?

Laz. It is difficult to imagine, I must admit. But I wonder, would they not be quite different from us? Their biotechnology would give them unprecedented control over the genetic structure of human beings, and thus of cities. Their ability to prolong life would far exceed our own capacity. People would live for centuries in youth and spontaneity, emboldened and made brazen by human enhancement technologies. Their physical and intellectual capability, furthered exponentially by the power of digital computation, will seem of a divine condition.

Con. And yet, these new adventurers, individuals who dare to sail bold seas would still understand their extended life in terms of their mortality, and utilize the occasion as an enduring extension of their will to power as a means to eternally affirm all of existence.

Xen. Quite so. Their experience will most certainly be of a dramatically different quality. But what of their Nature? Will the human beings of tomorrow, qualitatively, be the same as you andme? To use your earlier observation, will the great health of today’s greatest being be the same health of tomorrow’s?

Laz. By Zeus, how could it be?! The good for human beings has changed dramatically as technology has altered the conceivable possibility of human good!

Con. On the contrary, my friend. When considering the truth of human beings, those who wish to peer into the truth of what the future holds must look to the truth of what was done in the past, as the future is simply the recurrence of human condition in new circumstance.

Xen. Let us suppose what you say is true, assuming no intentional effort is made to alter it, that human nature remains constant and unchanging if left unchecked. But do you see it possible, in principle, with sufficient knowledge of neurochemistry, biotechnology, and the rest, to change our conception of the human good? Additionally, would any change to human nature naturally be a degradation of that which makes us unique creatures? Let us consider two types of consciousness. The first consciousness is the sort of a child, grown sophisticated while maintaining its innocence. In its humility, it avoids self-consciousness, and enjoys the beauty of the cosmos, both natural and artificial, without judgment, weariness, guilt, or shame. This sort of consciousness can devolve into a second kind. It consumes its modesty and replaces it with aggression, utterly annihilating its innocence once it comes face to face with itself. As a result of the consciousness’ inability to deal with the implications of its self-meeting, it becomes sentimental, manipulative, and cruel.

Laz. And you believe, dear stranger, that we are of this second type of consciousness, and that we were at one time of the first?

Xen. It is certainly difficult to be sure, but I might suggest we are of a third type of consciousness. Your discussion this afternoon has proven to me that we are the consciousness that is aware of its unfortunate plight as sentimental and cruel. And now we seek help.

Con. Surely the first consciousness that you speak of is of the best type. But how might we re- achieve this first type? Who must we seek help from then?

Xen. Who else but ourselves?