JON FERGUSON
April 9, 2020
Saving Lives
I wonder about our civilization and the cries I hear about saving the planet. On the one hand, many people are talking about over-population and how it is a factor in the destruction of our beautiful human homeland, the earth. On the other hand we are very angry at the coronavirus; we think it is an absolute horror; we are doing everything possible to save as many lives as we can. All of this is understandable, but does it make sense? If I understand correctly, people who want to save the planet want to keep everyone who is already on it alive for as long as possible, but they don’t want the creation of new people. They want old human life to be prolonged and new human life not to appear. Is this fair to new human life? Is it fair to all the sperms and eggs that will be wasted?…To lovers who want to create life together?
It takes us back to the question of what “life” is worth living? worth having? worth saving? worth creating? It seems these questions are rarely thought about deeply….
So now, here in this diary, let us go to a place where very few men ever go. And why do I say “men”? This time men – “man” – is not referring to “mankind” as it often does, but actually to a few “men”…males…in the history of thinking. This has nothing to do with sexism or political correctness or uncorrectness, or elevating men and putting women down. (I wrote somewhere on “Women’s Day” that I have always seen myself as a slave to “women”, i.e. women I have loved…but that is another story…) I am simply saying that as far as I know the only human minds that have gone to where we are going in this passage have belonged to men, not women. Similarly, I have never seen a woman in a firing squad or a woman who drops the guillotine. It is possible that women are too good do such things and to have such thoughts…too caring, too loving, too human. I do believe that “men” and “women” are different, just like I believe ducks and elephants are different, or baseballs and moons, or one man is different from another man, or the fact that some men can run faster and jump higher than other men, or some men can think more “deeply” than other men. This does not mean women cannot be great thinkers. They can be, of course. Marie Curie was one of the greatest chemists and physicists of all time, but I don’t think she thought the thoughts we are going to talk about now. At least she is not known for having such thoughts. The only human beings I know who have had these thoughts are Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann (I think), Goethe, Walt Whitman, M.C. Gardner, and maybe Heraclitus and Spinoza. Schopenhauer is also a possibility, but he seemingly left out “the joyful” part of the equation. And there is a joyful part. Otherwise I know very few, if any, people who share this way of thinking about the world….(Actually in fairness to my son Jackson who studied physics at the university and eventually moved on to a very “Buddhist” feeling for life, it is very possible that many “Buddhists” share the vision we are going to talk about. That will be for my son and his friends to tell me.)
So what are we talking about? First, we must go “beyond” all standard ways of thinking about existence and the world. This is dangerous. It can cause one to lose a lot of friends. I know. I have lost some. Why? Because if you dig deeply where we are going to dig, you cannot end up hating Donald Trump, you cannot think Putin is an evil man, you will not think the planet needs to be saved, you will not believe in “race”, you will not think it is “racist” to say that people of African descent (the sons and daughters of people who were taken into bondage to build America) can, on the whole, “jump higher” and “run faster” than those of us of European descent, you will think that prisons are a disgrace to humanity (for reasons too complicated to explain here), you will not believe in “free will”, you will believe there are no such things as “equality” or “justice”, you will not believe there was a beginning, i.e. a “creation” or a “Big Bang”, you will see no God behind existence (imagine it took more that 6,000 years of civilization for Nietzsche to finally declare “God is dead”), you will not believe that man is capable of knowing “truth”, you will not believe in “history” because you see all existence to be tied together and you think it is impossible to separate existence into knowable understandable parts. I could go on and on…. In fact, I have written about all these subjects in two books, “Beyond the Rabble” and “Feeding the 5,000,000”, that I will probably have to publish myself because no editor or agent will even answer a query letter.
Let us now relate these thoughts to the subject at hand, the Covid-19 virus. Interestingly, it is very possible that three weeks of confinement – and long solitary walks every day – have led me to write this passage. Though I have thought these thoughts for more than forty years, it seems it took this “moment” in life to get me to finally write it down as clearly and precisely as possible. I know many of you will not “agree” with me for a second. You will dismiss me as a madman. I understand. You are simply proof of what I believe…that nothing – absolutely nothing in the universe – can be other than what it is. Including you and me and the 50,000,000,000,000 cells in our bodies.
“A Corona Diary” has finally brought this thought to the surface. If you believe in God, morality, heaven and hell, sin, a creator who lays out laws etc. stop reading now. But, if like many “modern” thinkers, you don’t believe in such things, then let us proceed…
I believe existence has no built-in meaning. There is nothing “guiding” it, nothing “behind it”. There is no table of “value” written into the fabric of existence. Existence simply exists. Things simply exist…all things.But in reality there are no things because, as the greatest physicists today will tell you, everything is in flux. Being – existence – is a great swirl. There is no such thing as a you or a me or a Trump because we are all changing at every second. This is very hard to fathom, but it must be understood. Everything is in constant flux. During our whole lives we have been taught the opposite, i.e. that there are things. But if all being is in constant flux, then there are no things.
Not only is everything constantly changing, but the human vision of what reality is very limited and piecemeal. Yes, we think we know some things. At least, our world makes sense for us. We have cut it up into pieces and made it livable. But so have cats, dogs, chimpanzees, elephants, chickens, ants, and eagles. They too have a vision of reality that works for them. Where is it written that ours human view of reality is “correct”? Nowhere that I know of.
We are not gods. There is no omniscience. Our vision of reality is not that of a god. We are human. We are part of nature. God is dead, but we did not replace him. We are not all-knowing. There is no such thing in the universe. We are one creature among many others that grovels to survive. We are what we are, just like the lion and the mouse are what they are. We all struggle in our own ways, to survive…to live…to be. And eventually we all die.
So what is our “situation”? We are on a large ball flying at 67,000 miles per hour in an orbit around the sun. It is also spinning at about 1,000 miles per hour (almost 500 meters per second…but of course we don’t feel it!). We human beings are all part of this incredible flight in infinite space. We are but tiny specks of existence…of nature. Everything that exists, exists naturally. We are not an exception. All existence does what it does. The sun shines, the earth turns, birds migrate south in winter, LeBron James plays basketball, my cat Tilou kills a mouse almost every night, Columbus and friends brought diseases to the Americas and decimated the Aztec, Inca, Maya, and Cherokee worlds, slaves were forced into boats, “America” became a promised land for many hungry Europeans, the motor car was invented, the Spanish plague killed 30,000,000 or more, nations rose, wars came, peace came, major league sports came, TV came, Internet came, we found a vaccine for polio, fast food came, and on and on. All parts of the world were being what they are. Just like the rest of the universe. It is simply Being being what it is! It is not free. It is not good or evil. It is existence being existence…
What have we on the earth ? A slaughterhouse? A theater for the struggle for power? A kingdom of enlightenment? A kingdom of that invents gods and explanations for existence? A place where earthquakes and tsunamis and famines kill and kill, and men kill and kill in spite of pretending that liberty and justice reign? A circus wherein people try to get rich and possess lots of shit and fame? A place where many people try to help each other and be nice to each other? A hell-hole where all creatures must kill to eat?…Of course it is a little of all these things. But it is all nature. It is all nature being nature, including mankind and everything we do.
And what does man do? He kills termites, rats, mosquitos, snakes, spiders, cows, chickens, pigs, flies, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, bacteria, viruses, etc., i.e. everything he needs to kill in order to live and get what he want and “needs”. Sometimes he kills some of his own kind. He has been king of the jungle for quite a while here on this earth. And it is a jungle, not a Garden of Eden. Life has never been fair and never will be fair. It can be beautiful and lovely, as we all know. But it is never fair and nice to all creatures. Some creatures always get the short end of the sick. Billions and billions die every day. And this has been going on and on for a hell of a long time…in human time that is.
But the universe doesn’t care about human time. The universe doesn’t care if man kills termites or if viruses kill man. Only men care and termites care. We care about our own skin and maybe some other skins like cats, dogs, and elephants. But even they are killed sometimes for various reasons. We don’t care about everything, that’s for sure. We can’t. It is impossible. There is too much to care about.
And what if all creatures on earth were not killing each other? What would happen on the earth then? Imagine if everything kept living and reproducing with no killing. There would be a total overcrowding of the planet in no time…Things have to kill each other. It is the nature of nature. It is built into our earth…or world…our existence.
For the last few millennia – the ones that we “know” about – man has had explanations for existence that have always given him a “justification” and “reason” for everything he does. He has Bibles, Korans, Declarations of Independence, Ten Commandments, and charters for national rights, human rights, women’s rights, animal rights, children’s rights, etc. But no matter what man and animals do, the world will always be a slaughterhouse. Some things will always have power over other things, and everything will do what it does and will eventually die.
But wait…I can see you now! But life is getting better! We have democracies! Many countries are prosperous! Fewer people are going hungry! etc… Yes, you are right. But you are right about “your world”. You think your world is “the” world. You think you understand the world…like Greta. You think there are solutions for the world. You think the world is a puzzle that can be “solved”…But no! What you don’t know is that the world can be nothing other than what it is. This is what your eyes and minds cannot see. Everything that is is. There is no free will in nature. Nothing asked to be what it is. Nothing. Even if a God existed, could God be other than what It is?. Being is being. Man will never understand being. It has no “reason” or “logic” behind it”. We all grovel to survive. We all are born into a “world” and we try to get by as best we can in that world. But nothing…absolutely nothing in the entire universe, in all existence, in all “nature”…can be other than what it is. This is the thought that only a few “men” can have, feel, and dare I say…understand. When we look at the world, we see innocence – absolute innocence – everywhere…in the stars, in the sun, in a tree, a flower, a crocodile, an ant, and a human being…yes, even in a human being…every last one of us. None of us can be other than what we are. We are all innocent.
And we who see this vision of Being also see innocence in a virus, even a coronavirus. It is, of course, doing what it does. It goes inside humans and lives in their lungs. It multiplies and sometimes kills, just like men do. The coronavirus is part of nature. We are part of nature. Of course we don’t like the coronavirus. Just like we don’t like earthquakes and tsunamis, or a Hitler. They too are all part of nature. Cows and chickens that go to slaughter probably don’t like us, though their ways of liking and disliking might be a little different from ours.
The coronavirus is as innocent as everything else on earth. We humans will naturally try to destroy it. That is the way we are. All over the world things destroy other things. That is the way they are.
Now let us think for a moment. If we put ourselves in the “shoes” of Nature, perhaps the coronavirus is just one of nature’s ways of keeping the human population of the earth at a reasonable number. Imagine if no virus or war or heart problems killed any human being. There would be way too many of us very very quickly. We would very quickly have to get rid of some of ourselves. And imagine if we killed no cows or chickens or termites or rats, etc. In no time there would be far far too many of all of those creatures.
No, the world is not a nice place. The Garden of Eden was a myth of man that gave him a false vision of existence. Nature knows nothing about morality. Only man invents visions of goodness and truth. But they are not real. They are not the way nature works. The coronavirus is not “evil”. It is part of nature. We will try to avoid it and eliminate it and “cure” ourselves because that is the way we are. That is what we do. And it will come back another day in another form because that is the way it is.
And CNN and Fox News and BBC and the New York Times will continue to do what they do, i.e. bombard us with horror stories about the coronavirus, because that’s the way they are. And Trump will continue to be Trump and Biden Biden and Putin Putin and Maureen O’Dowd Maureen O’Dowd and the woman at the post office the woman at the post office. Because that’s the way they are. And you will continue to be you and I will continue to be me, because that’s the way weare.
Nothing can be other than what it is. And “nothing” is fixed. Everything is in flux. There was no first cause. There is no god. There is no free will. Man is part of nature like the grasshopper and the whale. It all constantly changes. It has no reason to be. For our human eyes it can be beautiful and it can be ugly. Of that there is no doubt. But is makes no sense to think it can or should be other than what it is. And we who see it this way have no choice but to accept it. All of it – its greatest joys and its greatest agonies.
Existence is a deep mystery, deeper than any of us can see. But some see deeper than others. No, man is not the measure of all things. He is the measure of his things. He is no more divine or meritorious of life than any other creature. He is part of nature, a strange and mysterious part like all the rest.
When one sees this and accepts it, is it a day for gnashing of teeth or a day for great celebration?
We know. Do you?
Almost every night Tilou kills a mouse and brings it through his window into the house. Every morning I cringe when I pick up the bloody remains of the tiny creature and flush them into eternity, yet always knowing that somehow the whole scene reeks of necessity. I know the same when sunlight appears and reveals the lovely tulips in the garden.
Amor fati…