How to go extinct
By Michael Nagler
I USED TO GET a German peace magazine called Grasswürzel (R)evolution, or ‘Grass Roots (R)evolution’. One day it ran a cartoon that made me laugh out loud, and I still think of it with a chuckle from time to time today 𑁋 a chuckle, but a sense of deep reflection. It showed a dinosaur with bristling plates running down its back behind a ludicrously small head, with the caption:
Ausgestorben: zuviel Panzer, zuwenig Hirn!
Extinct: too much armor, too little brain!
This warning to Europe’s to cold warriors was clear 𑁋 but unheeded. The arms get more and more gruesome, human understanding not only does not keep pace but actually seems to recede; as M.L. King said, “We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
We have plenty of ‘brain,’ as far as that goes, but somehow it doesn’t steer us away from the yawning chasm of annihilation; what is going wrong?
“We are body, mind, and spirit. (…) Another, more scientific term for ‘spirit’ is consciousness.”
The problem is that we have an additional capacity which is inherently far more powerful, but in its present condition far less developed. Here and there in human evolution, rare souls have indeed developed it, with dramatic results 𑁋 Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi. They were human, like us, but they changed history, very much for the better.
What are they saying, collectively, about us and our destiny? I can, of course, only draw on my indirect encounter with some of them through reading, but one aspect of their message comes out as a clear, and critical consensus: they all seem to be saying that we are body, mind, and spirit 𑁋 that additional, largely ignored capacity just referred to. Another, more scientific term for ‘spirit’ is consciousness. This consciousness, though scientists have great difficulty defining it, is in fact the principle by virtue of which we are alive. And, critically, because consciousness cannot be limited in space and time, it is identical in every one of us: this is what those advanced souls 𑁋 advanced by virtue of being aware that they are in fact consciousness 𑁋are referring to when they say we are part of one another.
There is in every one of us this core of living consciousness, which means that life is sacred in every one of us. As the Quakers put it, ‘there is that of God in every man’ or person. The conclusion must be emphasized: by virtue of this life-principle in the core of our being, we are identical; indeed, because consciousness, our universal heritage, is not located in space-time (to use the terms of contemporary science), we are one. Though most ‘science,’ as we understand it, confines itself to the material universe and the forces acting on it, positive and negative indirect evidence for this unity of life, universally insisted upon by the mystics in their own idioms, is not lacking in scientific terms either. Negatively, there is a concept now current of “moral injury” that denotes the psychological damage we cause ourselves when we damage others. Carried to extremes, as in military personnel and many others, it leads to suicide. As Washington Post journalist David Ignatius observed recently, “Beyond its awful cost in Palestinian lives, this war has damaged Israel. And I don’t simply mean the country’s international reputation, but its heart and soul.”
Positively 𑁋 and here I cite only one recent example 𑁋 an award-winning documentary to be released soon on Netflix, tells the story of men in a Missouri maximum-security prison designing and sewing beautiful, personalized quilts for foster children. The men describe how it gives them, often for the first time, a sense of meaning in their life; when they were shown a video of the children receiving their quilts, one of them was sobbing.
Tragically, for reasons not entirely clear to me, our culture, our education system, and our media flatly deny this core reality. When I went to school, for example, I was told that as a human being I was “a primate with flat fingernails.” What a travesty! Back then, it made me uncomfortable; now I fear it for the immense damage it causes all of us.
We should be far from content with a ceasefire in one conflict or another 𑁋 if indeed we can even achieve even that much without deeper changes. Now is the time not for incrementalism but bold ideals; not for a pause in Gaza, Ukraine, or Syria but nothing less than an end to violence. “What is well done,” Thoreau said, “is done forever.” And it can be done.
In the light of the simple facts about human nature that derive from the existence of the same life principle in all that lives we should work on reorienting our whole culture 𑁋 again, formal and informal, universities and media 𑁋 so that every person knows there is a spark of non-material consciousness in every one of us that embodies the unity of all of us, a spark that can be covered over, but never extinguished; that can be fanned into a flame of reality.
This (R)evolution cannot be done overnight, and there will be much harm we have yet to endure in the long process of doing it. But barring divine intervention, there is no quick fix out of this present storm of mutual recrimination and violence. The only way out at present is long, sure, and permanent. It is time to divert the great energy we’re putting into Artificial Intelligence into real intelligence 𑁋 the intelligence that we have a powerful capacity beyond our intellect that can bring us together into a real human family.