35. MAN: LONELY ISLAND ?
THIS world is a web of connections, inter-relatedness. No life form flourishes or thrives or even survives in isolation. There is something in nature which connects or unifies even apparently contradictory things in unseen ways. The modern science of ecology is just discovering some hidden relationships.
Among modern scientists Fritjof Capra has written about it. In his book "The Web of Life", he sets forth
" a new scientific language to describe interrelationships and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social, and cultural phenomena--the "web of life."
Book cover shown here for educational purpose.
Published by Anchor, 1997.
Photo of Fritjof Capra: By Zenobia Barlow
CC BY-SA 3.0 Creativecommons via Wikimedia Commons.
Man: part of Nature
All pre-Christian religions regarded man as part of the larger Nature. They did not make man its master, but guardian or trustee, because he was endowed with superior intelligence. They did not regard Nature as made for man's convenience or pleasure. Man was expected to live obeying Nature's laws, not to bend them to serve his immediate purpose or pleasure. The world was like a transit camp for man, on his way towards his permanent home.
Christianity changed this, saying the world was made by God for man's purposes. It asked man to "subdue " the earth. After nearly 15 centuries of this shibboleth, Enlightenment and Scientific revolution took over. They obscured the old wisdom even more, and toppled old ideas and approaches.They refused to recognize any purpose or concede anything sacred in Nature. Economic, Industrial and commercial interests immediately took advantage of the situation to engineer a new economic system. Exploitation of Nature was its core element. The rise of Western imperialism and colonialism spread the ideas and arrangements worldwide, so that it now reigns as default. Exploitation has turned destruction.
Threefold Connection:
The ancient wisdom recognised a threefold connection for man:
- his innate connection with Nature and all living systems
- his connection with the human society, though it was conceived as being structured and hierarchical, with fixed relations and mutual obligations
- his connection with a Higher Power which ordained the Universe and its natural and social systems.These were the three pillars on which the structure of life in the world rested. They were three strands of one Great Truth.
The rise of science and the resultant industrial and commercial culture obscured this ancient insight and the discipline it enforced. It made life wholly materialistic and secular.
The first to react to this were the great poets of the Romantic movement, and the great social critics like Carlyle , Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin.
The immediate result of the rise of science was a brutal assault on nature. It disconnected man from his roots in nature, made him an economic animal, seeking bodily comfort and satisfaction in the name of progress. Carlyle dubbed economics "the dismal science". No one described the situation better than William Wordsworth.
The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
This sums up neatly how man is to regard nature: it is not something owned,but experienced . We coexist. Wordsworth indicates here how the so called "Pagan" religions had a more intimate sense of connection with Nature- something lost in the Christian and subsequent Industrial civilizations. Written two centuries ago, in the first flush of the Industrial Revolution, it shows how prescient the great poet was! Humanity has not heeded the call of the poet, but slid further and faster on the path of alienation from Nature, in the days since.
No Man is an Island!
As the industrial civilization advanced, all relationships became commercial. Everything came to be exploited for immediate commercial or economic gain.
Our social relationships became the next victim.
John Donne had written in 1624 how no man exists alone - how we are all interconnected.
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Though John Donne was a Christian, he is expressing here the core of all ancient religions which always considered man as part of society, considered society as anterior to the individual. In fact, this interconnectedness embraces all forms of life on this planet: just think how essential the insects and birds are for agriculture ! Somehow, humans are not complete without the plants,insects, birds and animals!
But the rising science and industrial society obscured this aspect of man's connectedness. Means of communication have multiplied, and new gadgets have been invented. Man now lives in huge residential complexes and urban conurbations,involving physical proximity, and not in isolated huts and houses. But people communicate less, even within modern families; they would talk to a phone, rather than to one another! We have truly become little islands! This was recognised by social philosopher, critic and poet Matthew Arnold as early as in 1852 when he wrote:
To MARGUERITE: CONTINUED
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
Yet, man feels a deep sense of despair and longs for the restoration of the original connection:
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain—
Oh might our marges meet again!
But it seems that this longing will not be fulfilled!
Who order'd, that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.
Matthew Arnold
This God is the god of Science, and it will not let humans relate to each other as humans!
We are actually witnessing how in spite of all the modern gadgets, we are still distancing ourselves from each other! There is a phoney feeling to all forms of modern association.
A Higher Power?
With two pillars fallen, what about the third- our connection to a Higher Power?
There is some hope here. Science as it developed in the West, assaulted Christian theology and rejected its notion of God. Organised religion was increasingly given up by the educated class. Unfortunately, this was extended to all religions other than Christianity too, which had different theologies or even no theologies! Religions which did not deny or contradict science in any way !
There is realisation now among true scientists [ as distinguished from the vast army of professional mercenaries] that the world is much more mysterious than can be comprehended by science and its instruments ! Whether it is the atom or the cosmos, the more scientists explore, the less they feel they know ! Science does not have the last word on the Universe, however spectacular its findings may seem. They are all but interim statements. Science is thus as incomplete now, as religion was once supposed to be imperfect!
There is also the realisation that true religion is more than theology. The spiritual instinct is natural to man who refuses to accept death as the true end of life! True religion or spirituality is not necessarily concerned with God, however conceived, but with eternal life or a state transcending the cycle of birth and death! This is stated succinctly by Swami Chidananda ( of Divine Life Society):
Wisdom alone, Self-realisation, Self-knowledge, brahma-jnana, alone can liberate one, not ritualistic worship, outer ceremonials, not sacraments, not pilgrimage, nor vows, disciplines, charity or merits. These are good, but even if you engage in such meritorious, pious religious activity for a hundred births, nay a hundred thousand births, unless you have illumination or gnosis or jnana there is no liberation
Thus we have movements like "spiritual but not religious". The dramatic revival of the religious spirit in Russia after the fall of the USSR clearly demonstrates that the religious instinct in the human breast cannot be extinguished by the most brutal organised assault and inhuman suppression!There is also a revival world wide of old Pagan religions, Mother Goddess cults, etc which emphasize both man's inter-connectedness to Nature and to one another! [This is in spite of nearly two millennia of sustained Christian hostility!]The Higher Power is the ground of both!
Wisdom alone, Self-realisation, Self-knowledge, brahma-jnana, alone can liberate one, not ritualistic worship, outer ceremonials, not sacraments, not pilgrimage, nor vows, disciplines, charity or merits. These are good, but even if you engage in such meritorious, pious religious activity for a hundred births, nay a hundred thousand births, unless you have illumination or gnosis or jnana there is no liberation
Thus we have movements like "spiritual but not religious". The dramatic revival of the religious spirit in Russia after the fall of the USSR clearly demonstrates that the religious instinct in the human breast cannot be extinguished by the most brutal organised assault and inhuman suppression!There is also a revival world wide of old Pagan religions, Mother Goddess cults, etc which emphasize both man's inter-connectedness to Nature and to one another! [This is in spite of nearly two millennia of sustained Christian hostility!]The Higher Power is the ground of both!
There is the growing realisation among the thoughtful that unchecked exploitation of nature is not sustainable, that its consequences cannot be adequately dealt with by human science or ingenuity. This has however not yet come to the mainstream which continues to be ruled by vested interests.
Let us conclude with the thoughts of Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the last century.
Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
Pictures are taken from various Web sites, for which I record my thanks.
