Man and Superman

In the 1960s, two alternative visions of the future burst onto the popular landscape.  Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was co-written and based upon a short story by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, was released in 1968, and two years earlier, in September 1966, the American television series Star Trek debuted.  While both of these science fiction productions immediately captured widespread attention, their receptions were not universally positive at the time.  2001: A Space Odyssey opened to decidedly mixed reviews, with some critics praising its vision and scope, and others deriding it for its plodding length and the lack of an engaging or compelling story line.  Star Trek also premiered to mixed reviews, and had less than stellar ratings during its entire original three-year run.  It is probably safe to say that time has been kind to both of these productions, however, since today they are both generally regarded as groundbreaking works of science fiction.  I have always been fascinated by the similarities and contrasts of these respective visions of the future.

Both, for example, shared what in retrospect was clearly an overoptimistic assessment of where our technology would take us by the beginning of the twenty-first century: conducting manned explorations of our own solar system, and on the threshold of interstellar travel.  (While the Star Trek setting was more than two centuries into the future, it is clear from certain episodes that manned space exploration had begun in earnest by the end of the twentieth century.)  At the time, however, such optimism was certainly warranted by what had taken place over the previous century.  After all, one hundred years earlier, conveniences that were commonplace in the 1960’s, such as telephones, radio, television, automobiles, and atomic power, were completely unimaginable.  It had been just a little over sixty years since the Wright brothers had successfully lifted off of the ground in their heavier-than-air flying machine, and in the succeeding two generations, their simple design was transformed into the modern jet airplane that could ferry passengers across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean in just a matter of hours.  Advanced propulsion systems also powered rockets that could send manned capsules above the earth’s atmosphere into outer space, and by the end of the 1960s, one of these actually enabled the first landing of astronauts on the surface of the moon.

Small wonder, then, that science fiction writers in the middle of the 20^th century envisioned a 21^st century world that would be as different from their own as theirs was from that of a hundred years earlier.  While the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 must have provided an ecstatic confirmation that such visions of the future were coming to pass, I can only imagine the shock that most of these writers would have felt back then if they could have looked ahead half a century, and seen a world in which there had been no significant further advance to the planets and the stars, no apparent general interest or desire in even making such an advance, and in fact a skepticism evident among many that human beings had ever actually walked on the moon.

The future conquest of space, for 20^th century scientific visionaries such as Arthur C. Clarke and Gene Roddenberry (the creator of Star Trek), was a given.  It was part of our collective destiny, and the trajectory of scientific discoveries – particularly those of the past century – suggested that this destiny was an imminent one.  This was the shared vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek: that we were on the cusp of a great leap into a new, exciting level of civilization, and that this leap would involve a movement outward, into the limitless reaches of outer space.  But as intriguing as the similarities of these visions were, there was a much more intriguing, fundamental difference, and this involved human beings themselves, and how best they should accommodate themselves to the future. 

In the universe of 2001: A Space Odyssey, humanity, and human civilization, have come into being through a process of personal transformation, or rather, transmutation.  At the beginning of the movie, we are shown a sort of creation story explaining the rise of Homo sapiens: how a group of ape-like creatures were suddenly endowed with the ability to conceptualize the creation of tools and weapons after encountering a mysterious black obelisk.  It is assumed that this endowment involved more than simply the transmission of an idea, but also a genetic mutation that gave these creatures the latent ability to use and retain such information.  The saga then moves forward, to the future, where scientists have discovered another of these obelisks on the moon, and a mission of astronauts is sent to Jupiter to find the destination of a mysterious, directed, signal emitted by that lunar structure.  The movie concludes with an encounter by one of these astronauts with yet a third obelisk, orbiting Jupiter, which transmutes the astronaut into a higher being: a “star child”.  In Arthur C. Clarke’s novel of the same name, the story ends with this new entity contemplating how it will re-engage with the human race, the implication being that – as the transmuted ape-men had done millions of years earlier – he will have a direct role in moving humanity and human civilization into its next, higher phase of evolution.  Hence, in this vision of humanity’s evolution, each milestone in development is catalyzed (presumably, with the help of an advanced alien race) by the appearance of one or more “supermen”, who, through both their actions and their genes, advance the species upward to the next rung.

It is ironic, then, that Star Trek, which was first broadcast two years before 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered, constitutes a sort of rebuttal to that movie’s vision of civilization’s advancement.  Because a recurring theme in this television series is that the improvement of civilization comes about through making do with what we have, and who we are, rather than through some sort of profound transformational process.  In fact, in the Star Trek universe, the “star child” was always the nemesis of such a process.  In episode after episode, the appearance of a prodigy always signaled potential disaster, and it was only through the valiant efforts of the series’ main characters that such prodigies were eventually reined in or destroyed.  Here are just a few of the episodes that touched on that theme:

·        In the pilot episode for the series, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, a crew member of the Enterprise – the starship which is engaged in interplanetary exploration – attains nearly god-like powers after having been irradiated with some strange energy source at the edge of the galaxy.  (And in an interesting twist, the actor who portrayed this crew member, Gary Lockwood, was also in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, portraying the doomed fellow astronaut of the man who would become the “star child” at the end of that film.)  Rather than using these powers to shepherd humanity onto its next phase of evolution, the affected man becomes a narcissistic tyrant, and is only destroyed after the series’ main hero, Captain Kirk, enlists the aid of a woman who has also gained some of these powers in opposing him (Captain Kirk convinces her that the man will never tolerate a rival with similar powers: in the end, he warns, there will only be “one jealous god”) and she successfully does so at the cost of her own life.

·        In the original, failed pilot episode, “The Cage” (which was later incorporated into the series as “The Menagerie”), a race of beings called Talosians have evolved their mental faculties to such a high level that dreams and fantasies have become more important to them than reality, and they are desperately in search of some other, less-evolved species which can rebuild their world for them.

·        In “Charlie X”, a teenaged-boy who had gained telekinetic powers from a race of advanced aliens terrorizes the crew of the Enterprise, as he lashes out at them while struggling with the typical emotional upheavals and insecurities of adolescence.  The crew is only saved when the aliens return and take him away, explaining that because of his new powers he will never again be able to coexist with other human beings.

·        In “Space Seed”, the crew encounters a spaceship with human beings in suspended animation.  After reviving their leader, Khan, Captain Kirk learns that these people are survivors of a eugenics experiment in the late 20^th century: a plan to create a race of supermen and superwomen with heightened mental and physical capabilities.  Rather than saving the world, however, these super-beings had nearly destroyed it, as they behaved like marauders and conquerors, rather than sages and guides, until they were finally defeated and sent out into exile.  Captain Kirk is forced to defeat them again, and exile them again onto another planet.

These are just a few of the many variations of this theme that played out through the entire run of the series.  In Roddenberry’s vision of the future, the star-child, the superman, is the bane of humanity, not its savior.

Was Roddenberry right?  Is there no place for the superman or superwoman in our world?  They have certainly found a place in our mythologies, our popular dramas, and even our histories.  Perhaps a cursory inspection of some of these will help to shed light on the role, if any, of the superman.  And there is probably no better place to start than with the philosopher of the superman himself, Friedrich Nietzsche. 

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche used a historical figure, the Persian sage Zoroaster, as the mouthpiece for his own philosophies about God, morality, power, and the purpose of existence.  The real Zoroaster had preached that existence consists of a struggle between truth and falsehood, and that the goal of life is to sustain truth through the practice of good works and constructive acts, and the shunning of ignorance.  Such behaviors increase the divine force within the world, while moving those who engage in them closer to union with God.  Nietzsche’s Zoroaster (Zarathustra) also preaches the pursuit of truth, but for this Zarathustra, truth comes from exposing the lie that is inherent in conventional concepts of morality.  “God is dead”, he declares, and man is merely a being in a precarious state of transition between ape and superman.  Ignorance and chaos are overcome, not by the practice of good works, but through self-mastery, courage, and enhancement of one’s power and abilities.  Nietzsche’s Zarathustra declares:

I teach you the superman.  Man is something that shall be overcome.  What have you done to overcome him?

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man?  What is the ape to man?  A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.  And man shall be just that for the superman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.  You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm.  Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape. . . .

Behold, I teach you the superman!  The superman is the meaning of the earth.  Let your will say: the superman shall be the meaning of the earth!  I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!  Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not.  Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!

In 1896, less than a decade after Nietzsche published his novel, Richard Strauss composed the musical tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, which had been inspired by that work.  It is the opening bars of this musical composition which are heard at the beginning and the end of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Of course, for those who have been alive within the past half century, and particularly for Americans, the word “superman” probably produces a very distinct image, which seems to have little connection to the Nietzschean one.  It is of the tall man with the red cape and the letter “S” on his chest, the Superman of the comic books.  His story is actually not that far removed from that of Kubrick’s movie:  He was a “star child” in his own right, sent by a benign, advanced extraterrestrial civilization to improve the lot of humanity.  In probably the best and most memorable depiction of this story, the 1978 movie Superman, with Christopher Reeve, Kal-El, the alien, receives an explanation in recordings from his long-dead father, Jor-El, of why he has been sent to earth:

Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and where your power are needed. . . . They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be.  They only lack the light to show the way.  For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you . . . my only son.

Now this speech of Jor-El’s in the 1978 movie, along with the presentation in that movie of Superman’s early life history – evidence of precocious abilities as a child, his apparent withdrawal from the world during his late adolescence and early adulthood, followed by his return at the age of thirty with a clear sense of his mission – brings to mind another “star-child” who has played a major role as a religious figure in western civilization, but more on that later.  Those who have seen this or any of the Superman movies, or read the comic books, while marveling at his powers and admiring his heroism, must be left wondering exactly what sort of lasting legacy to the human race he was supposed to leave.  Because, quite frankly, it seems that he spends all of his time doing good deeds – fighting crime, saving people from natural catastrophes, playing the role of valiant knight for his fair lady and occasional damsel in distress, Lois Lane, and dispatching the occasional megalomaniacal evil genius – but doing nothing else of consequence that will move humanity onto a higher plane of being.  One can only imagine that after spending a lifetime of putting out fires, rescuing cats from trees, and chasing down felons and petty criminals, this super being would be left asking himself what it all amounted to.  I am reminded of a comedy sketch in which the comedian Jerry Seinfeld portrays Superman in an interview.  The interviewer asks if he might consider helping out with garbage collection while the garbage workers’ strike is going on, to which he angrily replies that he will do no such thing, regardless of how easy it would be for him to do it.  But really, what Superman does do to occupy his time does not seem that much more consequential, in the grand scheme of things.  What is the lasting, world-changing, lesson that his life would impart to us: that we should all devote a greater amount of our time to civic activities, such as joining the volunteer fire department?

Perhaps, like the transmuted ape men in Kubrick’s movie, he would leave us with an improved genetic heritage, after marrying Lois Lane and fathering children with her.  But what guarantee would there be that all of his descendants, each of whom would have at least a part of his remarkable powers, will be as high-minded as he was, with the same sense of mission?  What if one or more of them chose to use their powers strictly for their own self-aggrandizement, possibly in very brutal ways?  And isn’t there a real danger that this lineage of supermen and superwomen would merely set themselves aside as an upper caste of superior beings, and run roughshod over the rest of humanity?

This darker vision of the star child was presented in the 1995 science fiction film Species, in which scientists receive instructions from an extraterrestrial intelligence on how to use gene splicing in order to create a genetically-enhanced human being.  The female that is produced becomes ruthlessly fixated on propagating this new, superior, line, and the unfortunate human males that she attempts to enlist in achieving this end are given the same treatment as the mate of a female preying mantis or black widow spider – a reflection of the general contempt and complete disregard that she holds for ordinary humans.

In mythology, the intermixing of superman and man, or rather god and man, is not uncommon, and, with some exceptions, such as in the Old Testament, where when “the sons of god came unto the daughters of men” the result was a race of giants, these unions did not generally produce disruptive consequences.  Many of the royal lines of ancient civilizations, such as the pharaohs of Egypt, believed that they were descendants of divine beings.  And many of the heroes and heroines of Greek and Roman mythology were god/human hybrids, such as Achilles, Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and even Helen of Troy.  Aeneas, the legendary Trojan ancestor of the Romans, was the son of a human father and the goddess Venus.   Often, the supermen and superwomen of mythology – the gods and demigods – became the center of mystery cults, where secret knowledge was passed on to initiates.  A particularly interesting example is that of Dionysus, another god/human hybrid.  He became associated with wine, dance, and theatrical entertainments, and his cultic followers were reputed to be driven into ecstatic frenzies during their nightly gatherings.  Dionysus became the symbol of self-expressive, impulsive freedom, along with a contempt for oppressive, conventional mores and standards.  Nietzsche’s Zarathustra preached just such a Dionysian approach to living.

And lest one be tempted to think that the manic ecstasies that overcame the followers of Dionysus – the “Bacchanalia” – were purely the stuff of myth and legend, one need only look to the modern incarnations of Dionysus that appeared in the 20-century, such as Elvis Presley, whose fans screamed, swooned, and fainted during his performances.  It became customary for an Elvis concert to begin with the opening bars of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, and for the same reason that it was used in Kubrick’s film: to herald the imminent appearance of the superman.  Elvis’s impact on his audience was soon rivaled by the Beatles, and here, too, an almost supernatural aura eventually haloed these artists.  More than a few devotees of the band pored over the lyrics of their songs, hoping to tease out of them answers to the riddle of life.  The Beatles’ meteoric rise was nearly aborted when one of its members, John Lennon, declared that the band was “bigger than Jesus”, which created a firestorm of controversy that only subsided after Lennon subsequently distanced himself from the remark in a display of public contrition.  And this brings us to that most famous “star child” of religion, Jesus Christ.

Jesus has all the classic hallmarks of a “superman”: with extraordinary powers, an unnatural origin, and a sense of a personal mission.  He is linked with the Judeo-Christian god, but he is not a demigod like those of classical mythology: a hybrid between god and man.  Rather he is presented as God and man both, and his birth is not attributed to any sort of intercourse between his mother and a supernatural being.  And yet, in his incarnation as a human, he faces many of the same dilemmas and challenges as the other supermen described above.  In the first public miracle that he performed as an adult (as reported in the Gospel of John), he and his mother had been attending a wedding, and his mother informs him that the host has run out of wine.  With probably more than a little irritation (his mother’s implied request brings to mind Jerry Seinfeld’s Superman being asked to help out during the garbage strike), he replies “O Woman, what have I to do with you?” and then proceeds to turn water into wine.  The miracles that follow in his career are of a decidedly more altruistic bent, as he heals the crippled, the sick, and the insane, and even restores life to persons who had recently passed away.  But within the physical limitations of a man’s body, he can only do so much, regardless of his supernatural abilities.  This is tellingly portrayed in the rock opera Jesus Christ, Superstar, when, at one point, when he is mobbed by an overwhelming throng of people begging to be healed, he shouts “Stop . . . stop!”  There is simply not enough time and opportunity to heal everybody who needs healing, even for a God incarnate. 

One is tempted to wonder, had Jesus lived a long life, wandering about Judea healing the sick and the lame, if he would also have had an existential crisis, asking himself what enduring legacy his lifetime of good works had produced, if any.  I suspect not.  It seems that for Jesus, his real mission, all along, had been to leave the world with a new idea, about how one should relate to God and to one’s fellow human beings.  Clearly, there was no intent to leave some sort of genetic legacy (The Da Vinci Code novel notwithstanding) by producing a new priest caste with a supernatural lineage, although, according to some early church histories, the Romans actually had suspected that Jesus’ intent was to produce a sort of messianic or royal lineage in Judea, and so set about exterminating all of his living relatives, including those who had never been associated with his movement.  Nor did he ever seem to involve himself in the political revolt of Judeans against the abuses of the occupying Romans.  No, this particular superman always had a spiritual legacy in sight, never a hereditary or a political one.

Some religious scholars have attempted to draw parallels – or even links – between the Jesus story and the myth of Dionysus, with the special role of wine (and its symbolic relationship to blood) in the rituals of both of their followers, the mystical process of infusion of the spirit of God (or of a god) into devotees, and the common motif of the god-man that dies and is reborn.  But the morality of Jesus – or at least that of his later Christian followers – was distinctly anti-Dionysian, and it is this morality that Nietzsche directs most of his wrath against in his own philosophy of the superman.  For Nietzsche, Christianity – or rather his interpretation of it – was a slave morality, a religion of resentment, in which the weak and oppressed could look forward to a better life in the next world, while those who had been bold enough and/or powerful enough to savor life and its possibilities in this one would be punished for their impetuosity and advantages in the afterlife.  Clearly, all supermen do not sing from the same songbook.

(It should be noted, however, that the Christianity which Nietzsche rails against bears little resemblance to the actual sayings of Jesus.  The Jesus of the gospels is a vocal critic of an overly structured and legalistic approach to religion and ethics, advocating instead a positive morality grounded in love and compassion which is organic rather than rigid, and which could even be considered - according to the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev - as a dynamic, creative morality.  In this respect, the morality of Jesus, if not that of formal Christianity, might not be so "anti-Dionysian" after all.)

What role, if any, has the superman played in the recorded history of civilization?  If we leave aside the supernatural, and the extraterrestrial, then what we are left with are prodigies – human beings with special gifts that allowed them to leave a lasting impact upon posterity.  These are almost invariably intellectual gifts, associated with philosophical or scientific geniuses who lighted the way to material advances in civilization, men such as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.  We might also include great artists, architects, musical composers, and industrialists.  Perhaps we could also include political or military geniuses, who founded or overthrew empires, and created new systems of government. 

Interestingly, few if any of these prodigies, I think, would have regarded themselves as supermen, or would have espoused a philosophy of the superman.  (Although the popular 20^th century philosopher Ayn Rand, in her novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, promulgated a philosophy that celebrated the gifted engineers, entrepreneurs, inventors, architects, and artists of the world, and which suggested that the bane of civilization has been those who have attempted to undermine or even sabotage their achievements and contributions under the banner of altruism.)  There were, of course, notable exceptions, most memorably in the twentieth century: men such as Hitler, and Stalin (a name that he gave himself, which means “man of steel”).  Whatever genuine personal abilities that these men possessed, they certainly were the architects of ambitious programs among their respective peoples to try to achieve greatness, with horrifying consequences.  At the height of his popularity, Hitler had that same Dionysian quality of the 1960s rock stars which enabled him to stir his audiences into a hysterical, ecstatic, frenzy.  Many have even suggested that – with his intent to create the “master race” – he drew direct inspiration from the Nietzschean philosophy, but if so, it was a garbled application of it, since Nietzsche’s Zarathustra would have abhorred the conformist and regimented society of Nazi Germany as antithetical to the impulsive, self-expressive personality of the superman he envisioned.

In fact, many if not most of the authentic benefactors of our civilization would probably have regarded themselves as very ordinary human beings who simply answered a higher calling.  In some cases, this calling was thrust upon them, as in the case of the Old Testament’s Moses.  For persons such as he, there is often an initial reluctance to answer the call, because they are certain that there must be somebody else out there, infinitely more qualified than them, to answer it.  I am reminded of one of my favorite movies, Zulu, which depicts the true story of the desperate resistance put up by British soldiers in a solitary outpost in Africa against several thousand Zulu warriors who had recently defeated and massacred a British army that had greatly outnumbered them.  There are only about one hundred and fifty soldiers stationed at this fort, and so the odds of their survival – let alone victory – against this Zulu army seem overwhelmingly low.  In one particular scene in this movie, as the occupants in the fort are preparing to fend off an assault by the Zulu warriors, a young British soldier, frightened, weary, and very distraught, turns to his sergeant and says, “Why is it us?  Why us?”  The sergeant replies, stoically, “Because we’re here, lad.  Nobody else.  Just us.”  The British soldiers ultimately prevail, fending off wave after wave of attacks by the Zulus, until the native warriors finally give up on their assault, salute the occupants of the fort as fellow braves, and leave them in peace.  At the end of the movie, a narrator (the actor Richard Burton) reads the names of the British soldiers who received the Victoria Cross for valor in this battle, and what impresses the viewer is that some of these soldiers, before they had been thrown into this conflict, had been most conspicuously un-heroic characters.  It was the extraordinary circumstances that they had been compelled to face that had made them great, by meeting and overcoming these challenges.

Other ordinary people found their greatness by actively seeking out some great calling to answer in their lives: persons such as Winston Churchill, who had shown himself to be a most unremarkable and unpromising student as a youth, but who went on to become one of the most legendary statesmen of the 20^th century because of his personal passion for engaging in the affairs of the world.  The American inventor Thomas Edison had received little formal education in his youth, and one of those who had attempted to educate him considered him “addled”, with a wandering, undisciplined mind.  But he devoted himself to scientific innovation and the creation of new things by addressing problems with an open mind, avoiding preconceived notions on how to solve them.  Had anyone called Edison a genius, he probably would have protested that his accomplishments came about from his commitment to look at the world in creative, unconventional ways, and not from any innate, superior abilities.  Even many if not most of the spiritual innovators in our history, such as the man who would eventually come to be known as the Buddha, did not possess innate talents or gifts that predisposed them to their insights, but instead came to these insights through a devoted, intensive search for truth and revelation.

And, too, many of the most accomplished persons in our history have actually been handicapped human beings: blind, deaf, disabled, or with other limitations that would seem to make them the opposite of “supermen”.  Yet, in spite of these limitations, or perhaps because of them, they made great, lasting accomplishments in the world.  Thomas Edison and Ludwig Van Beethoven both had to contend with deafness before the end of their lives.  Steven J. Hawking, one of the greatest physicists of our time, has been crippled for much of his life with Lou Gehrig’s disease.  Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, two very popular composers of the past century, are both blind.  Look at just about any noteworthy artist or innovator in human history, and you will probably find something about them that was conspicuously imperfect.

This, really, is the mark of the hero, as opposed to the superman.  The hero is somebody who is ordinary, or less than ordinary, but who finds their inner greatness by rising to meet extraordinary challenges.  This process of confronting the extraordinary might change them – and usually does – but only because it forces them to rise above themselves and what they had perceived to be their own limitations, and to find ways to draw upon inexhaustible resources within and without them to achieve what had once seemed impossible.

Of course, often the lines have been blurred between the superman and the hero: between those who have accomplished great things because they felt that they had the innate ability to do so (and perhaps felt an obligation to manifest their talent), and those who addressed great problems simply because they felt that these needed to be faced or overcome.  (Who for example, would not call the comic book Superman a hero?)  Was Nietzsche’s philosophy of the superman really a call for a new, superior line of human beings, or merely an exhortation to all of us to embrace the Dionysian spirit of courageous self-expression, and by doing so move closer to that brand of behavior that might actually be characteristic of the hero?  And sometimes, those who have applied themselves to great trials or undertakings actually discover that they do possess talents or abilities that they never dreamed of.  (One wonders how many potential chess masters never came to be, simply because they were never introduced to the game, or how many great pieces of music were never written, because the geniuses that would have composed them had never learned how to play a musical instrument.)  On the other hand, many persons who have accomplished remarkable things by boldly engaging with the world have subsequently succumbed to the temptation to falsely believe that they are “supermen”, or at least men of destiny, such as Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte, with ultimately disastrous consequences.

The hero and the superman:  Perhaps our civilization actually has benefited from them both.  I believe, however, that the hero’s course has always been the harder one, because it compels one to face challenges and to abandon preconceived notions of oneself and the world that one is facing.  On the other hand, the ideal of the superman has always been a lure, a temptation, a hope.  We want to be saved by supermen: each of us may even want to be a superman.  And in the coming generation, gene technology may actually provide us with the means to make this possible.  We may have the capability to change – if not ourselves, then our descendants – in ways that will present advantages in the future world.  Like plastic surgery, we might be presented with a menu of such improvement options.  But I cannot help but wonder if recourse to such technologies – which may only be available to those who can afford them – will only serve to deepen the already growing gulf that we are experiencing between the haves and the have-nots.

And it is for this reason that I tend to rest my hopes for the progress of civilization on the hero, rather than the superman or star child.  I think that the vision inherent in the Star Trek series is the more compelling one than in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey:  we will find our future destiny by facing the challenges of an evolving technological civilization with the capabilities and limitations that we currently have.  By accepting and embracing our humanity, with all of its latent potentials, but also its inherent and inescapable shortcomings, we will best be able to continue this progress of civilization, and bring out the greatness that is within all of us.

Heaven and Hell

I was very surprised to learn recently that a close friend of mine believes in Hell: a place in the afterlife where sinners will be tormented for an eternity.  Hell is a concept that I have never been comfortable with, and for much of my life I have adopted a rather smug attitude toward those who believe in it.  But over the years, as I have encountered – both in writing and in person – others who ardently believe in it, including not only people who are good, but also people who are extremely intelligent, I have felt an increasing sense of discomfort over the acceptance that these others have of the idea.  Could I be wrong?  Is my smugness a symptom of an impious pride that is blocking me from the truth?

Several years ago, I happened to meet a woman who was a devout Christian, who had five children.  Somehow or other, the subject of the afterlife came up, and I asked her if she believed in Hell.  She replied that she did, declaring that this fate would befall not only those who had been wicked during their lifetimes, but also those who had rejected the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith.  I pointed out to her that, with five children, there was a rather significant probability that at least one of these would be among this class of sinners, if for no other reason than that he or she would not choose to follow her religious beliefs and practices.  Could she find true happiness in heaven, I asked, knowing that one of her own children was being tortured for all eternity?  Oh yes, she replied, because in that case the Creator would erase from her memory all traces of the existence of that particular child, thereby enabling her to enjoy her eternity of bliss completely undisturbed.  It was a reply that I found to be both horrifying and humorous at the same time.

I have always thought that the concept of Hell is particularly incongruent with the Christian religion, which counsels that one should have compassion for all living beings, including one’s enemies and oppressors.  It seems rather strange to me that the practice of such compassion and sympathy should end as soon as one passes into the afterlife.  And yet, very wise and very good persons such as St. Augustine insist (as he does in City of God) that there will be eternal torment for the damned, that in fact this will probably be the lot of the majority of humanity, and that such a condition will not disturb the happiness of the saved.  I have never read Thomas Aquinas – another very good and very intelligent man – but I have heard that in his writings he goes so far as to contend that one of the sources of pleasure for the saved in Heaven will actually be that they will be able to watch the torments of the damned.

Should I be a member of that fortunate minority who makes it into Heaven (and I am certainly not claiming that I believe that I have a good chance of doing so), I couldn’t imagine myself being happy there if anybody who I had known in this lifetime was being tortured for all of eternity: even those who had generally been causes of unhappiness in my life.  Eternity, after all, is a very, very, very long time.  I think of the most horrifying, miserable conditions that human beings have been subjected to in their lifetimes, such as being prisoners of war in the camp of a brutal enemy, and even in those circumstances, the victims could at least take consolation in the knowledge that a final release from their suffering would come at the end of their lives, if it didn’t come sooner, with a release from their captors.  Civilized human beings generally believe that there is such a thing as cruel and unusual punishment, which should be prohibited, even for the most heinous crimes.  It is a standard of mercy that all of us – or nearly all of us – subscribe to.  But I cannot imagine a more cruel and a more unusual punishment than one that would last for an eternity.

How is it that persons who are very scrupulous about the humane treatment of the most violent criminals in this lifetime can suddenly cast this sympathy to the winds in matters of the afterlife, and believe with no reservation or discomfort that intelligent beings will be tormented for a time without end?  Many of these persons are quite ready to accept such a fate for beings who were not even evil in the commonly understood sense, but rather whose greatest sin had merely been that they had not had belief and faith in the appropriate religious doctrine.

Now I am not above taking consolation myself in the idea of some higher form of justice, meted out to all rational beings.  I have observed with just as much bitterness and frustration as everyone else the phenomenon of persons who had been immoral, abusive, exploitative, and wicked during their lifetimes, and who seemed to have been able to engage in these behaviors with little or no negative consequences upon themselves, and in some cases even enjoyed great material success.  Conversely, I have seen good, charitable persons suffer during their lives, and never gain the reward to which they seemed entitled.  I want to believe that there is some sort of process beyond the mortal confines of our existence that will mete out rewards and punishments fitting for the behaviors practiced by each of us while we were on earth.  But at the same time, I have to believe that such rewards and punishments will be grounded in similar standards of justice as those practiced by temperate, moral people in this world.  Is it unrealistic to believe that a perfect being – as we understand the Creator to be – will be a perfectly just one, and a perfectly compassionate one as well?  And is it my own limited capacity to understand and comprehend such perfection which causes me to regard a perpetual, never-ending punishment as both unjust and uncompassionate?

(There is, admittedly, a great comfort in the idea that not just death, but an afterlife as well, will serve as a great “equalizer”, bringing down the proud, wealthy and powerful, and bringing up the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden back to a common level.  I have known persons, however, who have been a little too enamored with this idea: who want to believe that a reckoning awaits not only those who were evil, but also those who had been able to enjoy life much more than they had.)

It is not just traditional conceptions of Hell, however, but those of Heaven as well which have given me problems.  Will an existence without goals to achieve, or problems to overcome, be a truly happy one?  As I pass my time in Heaven (again, assuming that I merit such a reward), will I truly find happiness by looking upon each new day as one that will be empty of complications, or conflicts, or challenges?  “Ahhhh, another blissful, trouble free day, where I can love everybody unconditionally and be loved in return in exactly the same way.  And after this, another just like it, and one after that, and another after that, and . . .”.  Now I must admit that when I have shared reservations such as these with others about Heaven, I have encountered some potent and potentially valid criticisms.  My complaints about Heaven, after all, are based upon my current, mortal conceptions of time and of experience.  Beyond this present, earthly existence, how we relate to time, and the nature of our experiences, might be something that is entirely different, and well beyond our capacity to understand it now.  My conception of happiness is at present an earth-bound one, and may be incongruent with the type of happiness that beings in an afterlife will experience.

And yet, one cannot resist wondering what the source of such happiness will be.  I would like to think that there is at least some congruence between what will make me happy there (in Heaven) as what has made me happy here.  The wonderful Albert Brooks movie Defending Your Life comes to mind, where, upon passing on into the afterlife, his character discovers that one of the pleasures there is that he can eat as much of his favorite foods as he likes, with absolutely no guilt or fear of consequences.  Of course, if the sources of pleasure in heaven really do reflect the sources of pleasure on earth, including the sensual ones, then one can’t help but wonder why we were adjured during our lives to abstain from them, or at least practice them in moderation.  Why hold back from enjoying them during our lifetime, if the goal of our existence is to enjoy them in an unlimited way for an eternity in the afterlife?

I am reminded of a joke by the Irish comedian Dave Allen.  A businessman is taking a stroll and encounters a young vagrant, loitering in the park.  “Young man,” he says, with irritation, “why don’t you get a job?”

“Why would I want do to that, sir?” the vagrant replies.

“Because then you could make money, and if you work hard enough and long enough, you will be able to put away savings, so that someday you can retire and live a life of leisure, lying around and doing whatever you want,” the businessman explained.

“But I’m already doing that now, sir,” said the vagrant.

If the sources of happiness in this life and the next are incongruent, so that we should shun or at least limit the first kind, and look forward to an unlimited helping of the other, then why are they incongruent?  Why should any source of happiness (aside, of course, from those which are derived from the sufferings of others) in this life be toxic?

Recently, the wife of a popular American television preacher ran into controversy, after she declared that if we focus on making ourselves happy, then this will make God happy.  She was roundly criticized by more traditional clergymen, such as the pastor of a church who, when invited to come on television and share his views on the matter, said that we should focus instead on making God happy, and by doing so we will eventually find true happiness for ourselves.  Now as I watched this controversy unfold, I realized that I had some fundamental difficulties – not just with the remark that the preacher’s wife made, but also the one made by this self-proclaimed expert on theology who was publicly rebuking her.  If God is perfect, omnipotent, the uncaused First Cause, etc., then how can God’s “happiness” or other mental and emotional states, whatever these are, be contingent upon anything that we do?  We can no more “make” God happy or unhappy than we can make God roll over, or jump up and down.  Of course, this implies that there is really no way that we can ever please God, no matter what we do, which would seem to make much of the rest of this discussion about Divine reward and punishment mute.  One possible way out of the conundrum is to engage in a little wordplay, and say instead that God can “take pleasure” in our actions.

Still, if God is merely “taking pleasure” in our actions – preferring that each of us lives our lives according to a certain moral code – in a way that involves no real stake in the matter for God (else this would take us back to the contingency problem), then what is the purpose in that?  It would seem to make of each human life the equivalent of a television “game show”, with those who acted correctly (or, according to some religiously-minded people, those who believed correctly) winning a prize, and those who failed the test not winning a prize (or worse, being punished, perhaps for an eternity).  This idea – of each human life getting a final “pass” or “fail” – seems rather unfair, given the diversity of circumstances, both innate and situational, that predispose a human being to one mode of conduct (and belief) rather than another.  It is rather naïve to assume or believe that every human being, regardless of their unique life circumstances, has an equal opportunity (let alone probability) of choosing and living the right path rather than a wrong one.  Even St. Augustine, in his City of God, wrestled with the problem of what would happen to human infants who never had the opportunity to commit to any form of behavior or belief.  And to the extent that these opportunities are not equal among all human beings, then the idea of a perfect, divine justice underlying all existence is seriously undermined.

It is for this reason, I think, that the idea of reincarnation has become a tenet among various spiritual disciplines.  If the Creator desires (another awkward verb to use in conjunction with a perfect, omnipotent being) that all of Its sentient creations achieve some sort of moral perfection, then it is much more just and reasonable to assume that more than one lifetime will be allotted to each sentient being to attain this goal.  Whatever mistakes we make in this lifetime can be corrected, and atoned for, in one or more future lifetimes.  Hell, in such a case, may not exist, or may not need to exist.  There is, for example, a particular type of saint in eastern religion called a bodhisattva: a saint that refuses to enter Heaven until all other sentient beings are saved.  Such a saint could never bear the idea of some fellow soul being barred from Heaven, let alone being tormented for ever in some form of perdition.  Hence, there is no contradiction between the compassion practiced by such a saint during life and that saint’s capacity to exercise similar compassion in the afterlife, as there so often seems to be in western religions.

But while reincarnation seems to be a more “humane” system of religion, I no longer believe that it is a more personally satisfying one to believe in.  There was a time when I warmed up to the idea of being able to attend to “unfinished business” in future lifetimes, correcting personal flaws and somehow atoning for past sins, and in particular found it appealing to believe that I could survive beyond the limits of my present life into those future incarnations.  This consolation, however, lost its allure to me many years ago after I read a discussion of the idea by the American philosopher Hazel Barnes.  In her book, An Existentialist Ethics, Barnes observes that a characteristic of reincarnation, as it is generally understood, is that a person living now has no conscious recollection of any of his or her prior incarnations.  Where is the comfort, Barnes asked, in believing that my soul essence will survive beyond my death into the existence of some yet to be born person, if that person will have no active memory of me?  Everything that made my existence important to me – my experiences, my feelings toward others who were close to me, my goals, accomplishments, and challenges – will be gone from the conscious memory of that future incarnation.  That person, in their day-to-day existence, will no more care about me and what had happened in my life than the typical person who I encounter in the street today.  Under such circumstances, how can I feel any kind of genuine satisfaction in the belief that I will “live on” beyond the end of this present life?  Everything that makes up “me”, in any meaningful sense of the word, will still be very much dead and gone.  (It seems to me – if current popular accounts of reincarnation are true – that the best I could hope for is that some future incarnation might dredge up fleeting mental images of my life in “past lives” hypnotic regression therapy.  Surely I would stand a much better chance of having my experiences make a tangible mark on the conscious minds of future persons if I just left behind a journal!)

And, Barnes added, there is another problem with reincarnation.  If the purpose of mortal life and existence is indeed to somehow “fix” ourselves, by growing spiritually, correcting our faults and shortcomings, and atoning for any wrongdoings that we have committed, then an endless (or nearly endless) cycle of births and rebirths will remove any sense of urgency to the project.  If the western religious concept of one life, one opportunity, seems too harsh and unforgiving, then the eastern one seems to err in the opposite extreme.  One can keep throwing the dice, so to speak, over and over and over again.  Why should I bother correcting a particular vice in this lifetime (particularly if I enjoy it), if I can fix it in the next life, or the one after that, or the one after that?  The finitude of time, Barnes observes, is what gives it its value, and it is also what confers an importance upon the choices we make.  If I truly believe that if I don’t fix a particular mistake now, then another opportunity may never arise in the future to fix it then, it will motivate me to take the proper action – now.  But if I believe that I will have a limitless stream of opportunities to do so, the motivation is diminished, perhaps entirely.  Even the capacity to enjoy life itself may be diminished, if I believe that I have an infinite store of time in which to do so.  “You only live once,” is a popular expression, and implicit in that expression is an exhortation to savor life, and live it to the fullest, because you only have this one chance to do it.  Every moment is precious, because it is part of a finite collection of moments allotted to us, and though these may seem uncountable (particularly in our youth), we develop a growing appreciation of the fact that our time here on earth is limited.  Another popular expression of late is “bucket list”: the idea that as we become more cognizant of the limited number of days still available to us, we want to rush out and have those “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences that will give us a greater sense of a fully-lived life.  The underlying message of the aforementioned movie, Defending Your Life, in which the recently deceased main character is literally put on trial, with lawyers for the prosecution and defense, is that the real purpose of life is to honor it by boldly “seizing the day”, and having the courage to strive for what (or whom) one truly loves and cares about.

In Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, the main characters learn only too late – after death, in fact – how truly priceless the seemingly commonplace moments in their lives were, when they were spending time with their families doing ordinary things, such as sitting together at the dinner table.  The gravity of the realization that those moments are now gone forever is painfully apparent to the deceased characters, and they regret that when they had lived them, they had been preoccupied with other things, and did not relish them and treasure them as they had experienced them.  The deceased want to shout out to the still-living and exhort them not to make the same foolish mistake by squandering their own precious moments with the loved ones in their lives, but cannot communicate with them from beyond the grave.

What if the dead characters in Our Town were given that second chance, and each could live their entire life over again, with a full memory of their previous pass through that life, and the ability to live parts of it differently, if desired?  What if they could live just one day of their life over again?  In the movie Groundhog Day, the main character finds, upon visiting a town as part of a work assignment, that he is living the same day over and over and over again in that town.  He initially rebels against the experience, acting in absurd and even destructive ways during repeats of this day, but eventually settles into the phenomenon, using each repetition as an opportunity to improve himself (he learns, for example, how to play the piano proficiently), and also to become more fully engaged in the lives of those around him – most of whom had merely been strangers to him during that very first passage through the day.  When he is finally liberated from this recurrence, and finds himself passing into a genuinely new day, it is apparently as a consequence of the fact that he has finally lived that previous day perfectly.  Perhaps this really would be the result of an ability to relive one’s experiences in an endless cycle of repetition: an ultimate perfection of those experiences by correcting, broadening, deepening, and savoring them, along with a perfection of one’s self as well.  On the other hand, it seems just as likely that the phenomenon of eternal recurrence would eventually leave one in a state of catatonic apathy, unwilling to engage with the world at all.  Perhaps, in time, both of these results – the positive and the negative – would occur.  Is this what the eastern concept of “nirvana” really means: the perfection of oneself through a seemingly endless cycle of births and rebirths, followed by a profound world-weariness in which one willingly ceases from engaging in any future rebirths, and chooses, instead, a complete detachment from existence?

Of course, in the traditional concept of reincarnation, we are not living the same life over and over again, but a different one each time.  But if the purpose of reincarnation is to “fix” ourselves, by atoning for wrongs committed against others, and learning better how to react to certain situations, then there has to be some sort of congruence between each life.  If I have wronged somebody in this lifetime, and need to atone for it in some future one, then it must be the case that my future “incarnation” will encounter that other person’s future “incarnation”, even if neither of us remembers our first encounter in a previous lifetime.  Similarly, if I need to perfect myself by learning better how to act and react in certain situations, then it has to be assumed that I will encounter identical or at least similar facsimiles of these situations over future lifetimes.  (And if I don’t remember what I did wrong or incorrectly the first time, then how will I be able to atone for it or improve my behavior the next time?  Are my actions being guided by some unconscious force which does have a memory of all of my previous incarnations?)  The very fact that my future lives will not be identical to this one really complicates things, because with novel experiences come novel challenges, and completely new ways to make mistakes that I could not have prepared for (unconsciously, it is assumed) through the benefit of living those previous incarnations.  But there’s an even bigger technicality.  The human experience has become more complicated over time, as a result of the evolution of civilization and the technological development that supports it, and its problems and challenges have become more complicated as well.  If, for example, as a caveman in a previous lifetime, I bonked somebody over the head with a club, I may find it easy to make amends for that particular transgression in this lifetime, but may find myself committing all sorts of new sins that were unimaginable back then (like making an unsavory remark about somebody on Twitter).  If my challenges and potential transgressions are becoming more complicated with each new incarnation, will I ever be able to completely settle the balance sheet, or will I constantly find myself stumbling over some new problem that I could have never possibly prepared myself for in a million previous lifetimes?  Maybe reincarnation was intended to be like a television soap opera, with problems arising and eventually being solved, but new challenges arising in their wake, along with the occasional introduction of new characters never encountered before, to keep the ongoing drama vibrant and interesting, and perhaps even never-ending.  (This strategy, after all, has enabled some television soap operas to last for a very, very long time.)

It is certainly a lot less complicated (and less mind-numbing) to simply believe that there is a Heaven and a Hell, and that our lot is determined after one shot at life.  But that idea has always left me with a much more fundamental underlying problem:  How could a perfect Watchmaker possibly make an imperfect watch?  If existence – not just mine, but existence in general – is a product of a perfect Creator, then how can it be less than perfect?  The solution to this paradox, for me, has always been a rather simple and obvious one: imperfection is a prerequisite of existence.  Existence in any meaningful sense involves hope, desire, and growth through the overcoming of obstacles and the meeting of challenges, and all of these imply that the present state is not as good as one would like it to be.  If we were all perfect beings in a perfect world, there would be nothing to do, because there would be nothing that had to be done.  

Perhaps each of our lives is like an individual dream of the Creator’s.  As in each of our own dreams, in which we exist as self-contained entities living out particular dramas with little or no memory of our waking, wider existence, perhaps each of us is living a part of the Creator’s existence, and doing so by “forgetting”, in the brief relative moment that our lifetime lasts, that we are something more than this individual person living this particular life.  Through death, or “nirvana”, we wake up to that wider sense of being – that being that transcends the imperfection of transient existence and embraces all of the lives that it has lived through the “dreams” that collectively make up existence in time.  This has always been a comforting belief for me, and admittedly a convenient one.  It is convenient, after all, for a middle-class American who has never known hardship, deprivation, or catastrophic turmoil to believe that life is imperfect because that’s what makes it interesting.  I wonder how comforting or convenient such an idea would be for someone who was poor, abused, or suffering from painful, crippling disabilities or infirmities.  And even I would like to believe that somehow, some way, it matters whether we are good rather than not good, and that our actions have genuine consequences.

Who knows which of these views, if any, are close to the truth: close to reconciling the existence of this imperfect universe with the designs of a perfect Watchmaker?  We can only wait, and hope, that the answer will be made known to each of us - someway, somehow - in the course of our unfolding existences.  Time will tell.