Observe And Learn: Paradise Lost, Gained, Or In The Making?

The world is a complex place made up of complex interrelations. Atoms hook up with other atoms to make molecules to make substance-matter with mass and energy, while electrons spin round nuclei that don’t really exist unless we observe them and collapse their ‘probability to exist’ down to an eventual and solid outcome. Societies mesh into a unitary global economy, creating a super-society. Individuals engage and interact with individuals they don’t know, making up a giant culture of intelligence. It’s a complicated, wonderful place.

Setting aside all other dimensions of the physical universe and focusing just on us, humans, for a moment, we can see that we truly are the center of it all. We are after all self-reflecting creatures capable of abstract and technological miracles, with mouths to feed, minds to satisfy, and a very unpredictable psyche. We have whims and needs.

So we act accordingly. We use the world to our own advantage, as all life does, trying to survive and make it through the next age. In all practical terms we’re actors-directors to our own play, starring center stage all the time – though not in the blind-faith way we were taught over the centuries.

Judeo-Christian religion had this one right but in the wrong way. We are special but not on account of divine intervention. Fact is we were not bestowed special rights by the invisible hand in the sky to dwell on Eden for eternity, until that fateful moment when we tasted the forbidden fruit, which resulted in us getting plucked from the heavens, thrown down to earth, placed under the spotlight all the same, and anointed the star attractions of the cosmos. The insight bears more weight than that.

For one the story is a powerful metaphor. It’s a caveat on growing up and assuming responsibility. The symbols it uses are apt: apple = knowledge; and knowledge brings with it the burden of insight and all the worries that come hand in hand with analytical, critical thinking and foresight. It’s a grounding transition. What better symbol than a serpent to represent it.

In other words the Original Sin was the acquisition of a frontal cortex and the birth of awareness. Up came the neurons and gone forever was the bliss of unencumbered existence, exchanging Eden for a life of adventure and development, warts and all, angst notwithstanding.

In theoretical and theological terms our fall from grace was a tragic mistake, signaling the loss of all privilege. In practical terms it was the most wonderful thing that could have happened to us. And the most natural. No one stays a child forever. Eventually we grow up and assume responsibility.

With responsibility and awareness come opportunities. One can dream, take risks, draw out plans and pursue them, discovering things that wouldn’t have been discovered had everyone stayed put and not challenged the norm. Invention and innovation goes hand in hand with rebellion against the old and established. Challenging the norms is what progress is made of.

But it isn’t always welcome. Rebellion is more often than not praised, but only in retrospect, and only if it is successful. Rising up in the here and now is deemed subversive, heretic, fanatic, destructive. It is considered dangerous and threatening, and has nothing to do with the noble ideologies and symbols that gave rise to our celebrated victories over oppression and ignorance. As time passes by our priorities change and so does our sense of what is right.

Yet no matter where we are and what we stand for, we can’t deny that the world needs to progress in order to survive. And to progress it needs to move. To move it needs to break whatever stranglehold is keeping it pinned down. Which is where things get tricky. One person’s rebel ends up being the other’s evildoer. One culture’s savior is the other’s devil. Who’s right and who’s wrong?

History has a way of letting us know.

Many rebellions have gotten their dues and are being recognized as landmark events in the history of the species. The American and French revolutions are being cited abundantly over the years as the pivots on which life changed for the better, setting the cornerstones of freedom and democracy, of a more civilized and accommodating way of life. Other revolutions like the Bolshevik one started off in triumph but ended in tragedy and calamity, examples of an uprising gone awfully wrong.

For a while things are not certain. They’re up for debate, the results not yet consolidated. Outcomes vary and so do opinions on them. The French Revolution was an abomination for a long time as far as many people were concerned. Overthrowing a monarchy was sacrilege. But it worked. Slowly the effects of democracy showed and life followed suit, the revolution spreading to other countries. Ideas took root and people started rising up against tyranny, demanding freedom, representation, justice, opportunity.

One of these people were the Russians. Their revolution seemed like a monumental undertaking of colossal proportions. It could have been the most influential human transition to date. Instead it became a monstrous failure. For a while it was not clear how or why, as facts were debatable and subject to interpretation. It became apparent, and then indubitable, when the devastated and atrophied civilization it left behind surfaced.

Time heals, they say, but first it reveals. It sheds light on the past, changing the way we view things, stuff we didn’t know or knew little about or knew well enough but had taken for granted and misrepresented. It has a way of distilling old results down to eventualities, through the power of observation, shaping the world accordingly, collapsing multiversed perspectives down to universal, solid outcomes. Sometimes it conceals rather than reveal, keeping what has taken place from being found out, or distorting it. Whatever the case, time affects outcome.

We know this well. We, as observers, use time systematically to establish our positions and recalculate our course through the ages. History is our chart, our map in time; and our struggles our main ports of call, where we return to every now and again to rest, reflect, replenish ourselves, and gear up for another leap into the unknown.

Perhaps the most popular struggle of all – and most influential port of call – is that of the heavens. Lucifer rising against God is the mother of all confrontations, an ongoing battle that has entangled billions of people in its wake. It has spawned religions and literary movements, debates, missions, wars, traditions and generations of believers and non-believers who are in some way or other involved in it. It is an epic blockbuster that keeps getting reinvented and revamped, always popular, endlessly appealing. No one really knows what its outcome will be, though the apostles tried to preempt the future by writing out the finale in apocalyptic terms, announcing the end result i.e. the triumph of God – or good over evil – a belief tantamount to the preservation of orderly society and as a result very popular and desirable.

But is the story that simple? Is God good and Lucifer evil? Was the disenchanted angel’s uprising against the Lord an abomination?

The answer may well be no. Lucifer’s rebellion against God and his subsequent fall from the heavens may in fact be the most noble and underrated rebellion ever recorded, one that receives no attention for the spunk it holds. If one examines it closely it represents the rise against absolute power and the birth of the individual mind; Lucifer dared dream of a world where not everything had to do with God, where not everything was geared in pleasing Him – and was punished for his individualism.

It may be provocative to speak in such terms, buttering up the Devil himself, likening his defiance of God to an inspired insurgency, but the symbolism is there, like that of the forbidden fruit and Man’s fall from grace, apt and potent and filled with metaphorical insight. We have to present it, examining the ramifications that come out of it.

They branch out in two main directions.

One is that God represents order, everything good and just. Complete obedience to that order ensures the smooth functioning of the framework. Resistance to it means breakdown and mayhem. Which is as far as the philosophical goes. In more practical and realistic terms, God represents harmony among the physical universe. He embodies the way things work in an organic, self-calibrated way – and Heaven, His abode, represents life being allowed to continue unencumbered by external and dubious forces – in which case yes, the introduction of a selfish agency to this setup represents the tilt of the physical equilibrium and the breakdown of harmony and the whole system at large. Great damage can be done to the entire framework of life when this takes place, and the one behind this interference is guilty of an abominable act. He is a meddler of unscrupulous caliber, trying to hijack life and everything in it, and is rightly singled out for his deeds and cast away.

So Lucifer may have been the ultimate villain and rightly expelled from the heavens for the simple reason that he tampered with natural equilibrium. His iconic fall into darkness is a symbolism of what his actions would have brought about had he succeeded. It’s also a warning. Tampering with life is punishable by eternal damnation.

The problem with this analogy of course is that it places humanity on par with the devil. For if we stop and take a look at ourselves for a moment, we will see uncanny and disturbing resemblances in how we treat life on earth, not to mention how we affect the general equilibrium. We are tilting it too much in our own self-interest, skewing every measure of its delicate dynamic, in effect jeopardizing the entire natural order on the planet.

Yet we don’t consider our rise as a species evil but rather as an act of brave defiance against ignorance, finding solace in what we do. We are not guilty of trying to bring down heaven. We are striving to bring down a tyranny, an absolute dictatorship that holds us captive and keeps us in one mode of existence forever and ever. God, or in this case ‘life as we know it,’ restrictive as it is when left unchallenged for too long – running itself at will, with no prod, challenge, or contention – may prove an arrangement too static to be content with, despite its benevolent and well-meant intentions. We need to break out of it.

It has been done before with positive results. When Columbus sailed for the new world for example, he went against the grain of everything holy and just. He was a dangerous heretic and fanatic, his work likened to the devil’s. But he was successful. His instincts were right, and a new world revealed itself before his ships, opening up a horizon full of awe and wonder. Reality was never the same again.

So much for the simple explanation of the War in Heaven and what the main characters are about. One God’s Satan is a rebel demonized while God’s earthy children may be doing harm to all life on earth including themselves because they feel privileged. And God, Agent of Good – once inextricably connected with the popular bearded figure of man living in sky – is suddenly not constrained by dogma and now represents whichever belief system is in line with a proper and functional sense of order and harmony. Which means that Good shifts according to the times, as systems become corrupted and lose their moral high ground to others. Whether the corrupt ones are nasty devils trying to hold on to what is not rightfully theirs – or whether they are gods once benevolent and now gone senile and oppressive, squelching all that is good and fresh – is a matter of perspective.

We are in fact faced with a conundrum. Leaving God and Lucifer aside and coming down to earth again, it seems that each new liberating discovery bears the crushing burden of knowledge, a fruit the establishment sometimes prefers to leave untouched for fear of giving rise to instability and havoc. New knowledge is often hard to manage and can be damaging, at least in the beginning. It can be damaging later on too, continually subject to distortion and perversion as it is. Fire for example gave us warmth, safer food and technology, but it also became a means to sinister ends such as war and intimidation. There are many ways in which knowledge can go wrong. So the establishment fears it.

Beyond fear and the establishment’s need to hold on to power and familiarity, there is also a point worth noting in the forbidden fruit analogy. Namely, certain things are best left untouched and not questioned – if peace of mind is of the essence of course. Certain knowledge can be disturbing in all sorts of ways, no matter how well prepared we think we are or how much we want to find out more about them. If harmony and peace is what we want, and a smoothly functioning setup what we are striving for, then stirring the waters can only bring up things previously laying low. Sometimes too much can surface too fast. Exercising discretion is the better part of valor. Showing restraint when called for may be the way to go.

Who decides when it’s time to lay quiet and enjoy the calm of heavenly harmonious existence – and when it’s time to challenge the norms, pluck the dangling apple, and take a big crunch out of it, is a tough call. History suggests that there is no right time. Just timing.

The premise of timing is simple, based on relativity. It depends where things are in relation with each other. On the one hand for example we have order, which is good. But too much of it, or too much time spent in it, brings stagnancy, complacency and abuse. So up rise the renegades to challenge the norms, replace the pillars, and restructure reality.

On the other hand we have inquisitiveness, which is also good. But too much of it too soon too rapidly, or prolonged periods of it without any effective coordination or common cause, bring instability, volatility and turmoil. Lawlessness and anarchy give way to a vicious circle that keeps consuming itself. Discipline is required to settle things down, find functional solutions, establish a sense of order, and lay out a course for the future in a coordinated way – until things get too tight again and another spin takes place, thrusting us further down our revolutionary course.

Heroes and villains, lords and rebels… God and the devil. Interesting concepts once you take a closer look. Fascinating symbols of life, representing different forms of power engaged in a constant, endless confrontation, balancing out the forces of creation and destruction, the powers of nature – of the universe itself – carving out the way of life as we know it, both organic and biological or inorganic and artificial.

Who we are and where we choose to place ourselves within this dynamic is a tough call. It depends where we think we are right now in the greater scheme of things: in a position that needs a shakedown; or in a situation where order needs to be restored?

The jury is still out on that one and will probably never reach a consensus. This is an irreconcilable subject that always fails to respond to logical analysis alone. Its verdict tends to be the result of history and retrospect, a matter of timing, action, chance, conviction and faith in one’s choices. The most fitting point of view prevails. Whether it’s a fit and surviving one or a misguided self-defeating one is another matter, for time to tell.

Regardless of where we are or what we choose, one thing holds firm. We are special. We can’t not be. We are the creators of our own reality, perceptively-inclined entities that see the world they create by creating the world they see. We are both process and product of our own sensations. We have come a long way to be where we are.

Religion had its finger on the pulse on this one. We were once upon a time blissfully unaware of the bigger picture, living in beautiful Eden with no worry in the world, until one day we started developing a frontal cortex, assuming the burdens of conscious, innovative intelligence. As a result, reality in its rich and endless nature revealed itself to us in tandem with the abilities we were mastering and the sensory apparatus so busily rewiring our perceptions. We became practically-minded, forward-thinking, philosophically-inclined and technologically-adept, taking culture and society to the next level. As a result communication grew, trade flourished, records were created, knowledge was stored, references were made, plans were drawn out, and visions were formulated for the future. From monkey in tree and clever ape in the plains we became humanity on earth, a sophisticated, social species, innovative, inquisitive, competitive, aggressive, and relentless in our pursuit for knowledge, power and comfort.

Our legacy is deep and fierce. Monkeys, these wild social critters who first took for the trees in search of security from predators – only to come down to the ground again in search of a better, more stable life – armed with opposable thumbs and inventive chatter, laid out a superb course for us. We took that course all the way to the next level, putting our growing frontal cortex, or mental thumbs if you like, to work. Everything changed from then on. We left our ancestors behind and never looked back.

But there is still something of them in us. Or something of us in them. It’s hard to differentiate. Whether it is divine or diabolical, noble or beastly, is a matter of debate. Point is we share some attributes, like it or not. All we have to do is take a closer look and see for ourselves. It will help us understand why we do some of the things we do and what it takes to get past them and reach a more advanced, more refined state of existence, where we will be in greater harmony with our surroundings, in a state of equilibrium and symbiosis, or, as the poets would call it, in paradise.

About Nicolas Sampson

Author and columnist. Specializes in short stories, historical fiction, social commentary, and Globe psyconomics. Facebook: Nicolas D. Sampson....

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