I had a question the other day from an author who was hoping I'd settle a debate that wasn't, believe or not, about sports or television, but actually was a question about writing. I was as stunned as you are.
The question had to do with variations of the word "said" and "asked." To rephrase her question, is it ok to use all those other words out there like "whispered," "shouted," "postulated," or, my personal favorite, "enumerated", instead of the word "said"?
So consider this exchange. Which do you prefer, Option A or B?
Option A:
"You two really are cowboys," Iceman said.
"What's your problem, Kazanski?" Maverick asked.
"You're everyone's problem," Iceman said. "That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous."
"That's right! Ice.... man. I am dangerous."
or
Option B:
"You two really are cowboys," Iceman scoffed.
"What's your problem, Kazanski?" Maverick asked confrontationally.
"You're everyone's problem," Iceman asserted. "That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous."
"That's right!" Maverick shouted. "Ice.... man," he said quietly. "I am dangerous."
I'm sure there is a lot of debate about this, and please feel free to register your opinion in the comments section, but put me in the Camp of Said (Option A).
Someone I know who went to creative writing school once told me (I'm paraphrasing here) that when you're writing dialogue it seems repetitive to keep writing "said" all the time, and it's tempting to want to change it up, thinking you're going to annoy a reader with all those "saids." But actually, a reading brain doesn't really register the word "said," and readers only need to be reminded who's talking. It should be apparent from the dialogue and context whether someone is "shouting" or "whispering" or, yes, even "enumerating," and using "said" keeps the reader's attention on the dialogue.
I'm sure there are great writers on both sides of the "said" divide, there is definitely a place for the occasional variation, and so please do not toilet paper my house tonight if you're in the non-said camp. Flip through some books to see how your favorite writers handle this one, and I bet you'll be surprised about how many "saids" you'll see. So let me know what you think on this one, and remember, you can be my wingman anytime.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
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67 comments:
I'll try to avoid the toilet paper throwing. I tend to agree that the first option is best, because "said" is basically invisible.
On some rare occasions I'll make an exception -- that's specifically to set the tone of a particular comment if its unusual. Sometimes people shout. But shouting "loudly" seems redundant.
E.B. White, in the Chapter he wrote concerning "Style" in The Elements of Style, came out decidedly in favor of "said." And if "said" is good enough for the creator of Charlotte and Wilbur--which is a book that is about as good as a book can get--it's good enough for me.
But you used "asked" when it's a question, right? You don't write, "Can I go home now?" Beatrice said.
Robert Parker does that, refuses to even use "asked" and it drives me nuts.
I vote for an exception for questions.
OBF-
"Asked" is the appropriate counterpart to "said" for questions. It's also invisible.
Actually, I use "asked" sparingly for questions. It has always seemed redundant to me. If the question mark's there, we already know it's a question. For questions, I tack on a "said," or use no dialogue tag at all.
Maybe "asked" jumps out less at other people than it does at me. "Said" is invisible to me, but "asked" is not.
"A" is somewhat better, but I tend to lean toward letting gestures and dialogue carry the weight whenever possible. Bear with me--my familiarity with the X-men is limited and my boys aren't around to ask.
"You two really are cowboys."Iceman's shield melted back into the atmosphere. He glared at Maverick.
Maverick pulled off his mask and rubbed the ash and soot from his face. His kevlar gleamed in the flames of the burning building behind him. "What's your problem, Kazanski?"
"You're everyone's problem. Everytime you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous." Iceman waved a hand in the direction of the building.
Maverick didn't move. He lowered his voice, his scarred face darkening. "That's right! Ice.... man. I am dangerous."
Actually, I prefer the option where you attribute dialogue as little as possible--instead of using "said" mid-stream, have the character DO something to make it obvious they are the active person in this paragraph. Also, you don't HAVE to attribute every statement. The reader can follow easily enough if there are only two people on the page, especially if the two characters have been drawn completely and have distinct speech patterns.
So, I guess my choice is "none of the above." In my mind, less is more.
Count me in Mary's paddock. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.) A is definitely better than B, but using some kind of action is even better (although that, too, can be overdone).
What drives me nuts is something like this:
"No," Bob said, shaking his head.
Better:
"No." Bob shook his head.
Once in my writers group, somebody in the too-many-saids camp was really getting carried away. We finally had to draw the line when he did something like this:
"Stop saying said," John ejaculated.
It wasn't THAT kind of story.
I was a cherub in Northwestern's journalism school when the professors gave us the "said" warning:
A budding J-student did a feature story about Capt. Seamen of the U.S. Navy. This student found all sorts of different synonyms for "said," so proud that he had not once used the term. The article ended with a great quote (now lost to history) due to this replacement: "Seaman ejaculated."
That said it all. Unless you're really trying to say something, "said" is the way to go.
I like using "said" and "asked" with actions between dialogue to show the confrontational tone, etc... The second example looks awkward and doesn't actually flow well.
Option 'A' for the same reason as your 'someone I know.'
I'm sure there are great writers on both sides of the "said" divide
I'd like to see an example of a great (or even good ... settle for published?) author that writes in the style of your second example. I was firmly of the belief that it was a standard beginners issue.
As for variants of "said" and descriptive adverbs in tags:
Dialogue should speak for itself.
It should be obvious whether a line of dialogue is whispered or shouted or muttered. I also use choreography, internal dialogue, gestures, and expressions as tags--I aim for about 50%.
Sure, there are writers on the "B" side of the debate.
"Bad writers," he harrumphed, scoffingly.
I'm definitely in camp A, but I think that there are times when you need to pull one from camp B. For instance, when people are literally whispering because they are trying to be quiet, or shouting because they are trying to be heard, or whatever--then that's the time to just say "he whispered" or "he shouted." There are probably a few other cases that I can think of that might be appropriate, but not very many.
And when it comes to tacking a random adverb to "said," I'm definitely with camp A. Sometimes it's tempting to add in those little adverbs, but they should generally be edited out after the first draft in favor of just letting the dialogue speak for itself (hopefully it already does), or adding in action cues/descriptors.
Whether or not using "saidisms" is always inexcusable is perhaps somewhat debatable, but I think that every writing professional would probably agree that having a large number of them is definitely the mark of an amateur.
Chris
Oh, by the way, I got a laugh from Mary thinking that Nathan was quoting X-men. This is from Top Gun!
I would just like to add that Val Kilmer was the absolute best part of that movie.
IMHO :D
The second example would actually be considered too scholarly, which is a turn off. I go with A. in this case. But to add a point, any good writer wouldn’t be limited to the use of “said” when the situation calls for other signs of speech. For instance, dialogue isn’t always set up along the lines of the conversations used in the examples. One could write:
Her speech dropped to a whisper now. “And Calvin didn’t even care to hear about the missing report.”
There are many variations on dialogue delivery, but in the examples used in the post, A. is the accepted form.
I'm firmly in camp A. "Said" is enough; any other information should be conveyed via character action or choice of dialog.
Sylvia, as to whether any published authors are on the other side of the said debate, I would say J.K. Rowling is. I don't have a book of hers handy for research, but I seem to recall a lot of non-said dialogue attributions and a good smattering of adverbs as well. You might argue about how legitimate she is in terms of literature, but you can't argue that her writing is worthless.
Personally, I'm somewhere between A and B... or maybe that makes me B. I really, really do not experience "said" as neutral. There are arguments against it, and I totally agree that some authors overdo it with the synonyms (to the point where it jumps out at me and really irritates me), but to me "said" is not invisible. Just to me though. I acknowledge that many people (as evidenced here) feel otherwise.
I'm with Mary. I try to use action rather than "said" if I can. I thought both A and B were hard to read.
Oh, by the way, I got a laugh from Mary thinking that Nathan was quoting X-men. This is from Top Gun!
Well, that figures. And I actually looked up whether Iceman had weapons or not.
I'm in Mary's paddock too; that's how I try to write. And when I need a dialogue tag, I use "said".
Even for questions. Sorry, OBF.
Speaking of invisible things, here's a cool demonstration.
Count how many times the letter "F" appears in the following. When you read the correct answer, you'll likely be very surprised.
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...
The correct answer is six.
If you actually counted six "F"s, that's very rare; most people only get three. If you didn't get six, go back and try again.
Did you still not get six? Okay; here's the ginormous, shocking, scandalous answer: the word "OF" has an "F" in it.
"OF" is invisible; your brain doesn't process it.
I don't like using 'asked', and generally work my way around it. If there's a question mark it's obviously been asked, so stating it again is pointless.
While you're at it, scratch 'replied X'
My preferred course of action is to provide the absolute minimum in terms of stage directions while still making it clear who's actually speaking, and to whom.
whitemouse-
I'm so glad you posted that brain teaser, because I was thinking of that as well. Some people have been saying that Option A doesn't read well, but that's only because you're looking for the "said"s. If it were in the middle of the book, I don't think you'd blink.
Well, other than wondering why there is Top Gun dialogue in the middle of a book.
I am in the said camp. Sometimes I use other variations when emphasis or clarification is required.
Still said is the way to go.
That F comment was fun.
This reads like a movie dialogue. It's not very interesting either way. Option A is dry and awkward. Option B is overblown and has too many adverbs that weaken the prose. I like option B a little better, but only trimmed down like this:
Option B:
"You two really are cowboys," Iceman scoffed.
"What's your problem, Kazanski?" Maverick asked.
"You're everyone's problem. That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous."
"That's right!" Maverick leaned over, his eyes glittering. "Ice.... man," he said quietly. "I am dangerous."
I'm with the "A" team - except when I'm on Mary's.
The A camp gets my vote. When I need to clarify who is speaking, I'd rather use an action tag.
I use said most often, though occasionally I will use something simple like whispered. I do prefer actions when at all possible; I think Mary's solution is best. Said, when used repeatedly, gets annoying too.
I don't like either one, tbh. The first doesn't reveal depth of scorn, and the second is just plain awkward.
****
"You two really are cowboys," Iceman scoffed.
"What's your problem, Kazanski?" Maverick demanded.
"You're everyone's problem," Iceman said. "That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe." He glared at Maverick. "I don't like you because you're dangerous."
"That's right!" Maverick leaned in towards Kazanski. "Ice....man. I am dangerous.
****
Some times said is appropriate. But using the wrong non-said dialogue tag with a vague adverb does no writing any good, like asked confrontationally.
The first doesn't carry as much emotional weight with the saids. There's no visualization there. The second has better visual simply because the dialogue tags, as inappropriate as many are, give us that kind of emotional weight.
"You two really are cowboys," Iceman said.
"You two really are cowboys," Iceman scoffed.
With the first, we have no idea if the guy is sarcastic, about to clap their hands in joy or wonder, or, really any other emotions. The second, scoffed, instantly lets the reader know exactly what's going on in tone of voice. That's quite a layer of meaning on one word, something that doesn't happen with "said".
Using non-said dialogue tags is hard. Learning to mingle action and dialogue tags takes time and dedication. But in the end, the writing becomes richer in meaning.
I prefer the second BUT (you knew that was coming)I've been taught to add action, action, action.
"Show don't tell".
I'm TERRIBLE at dialog tags. I get them cut by my cps all the time.
Instead of "Maverick shouted" I would have put the actual action which would be "Maverick stepped closer until he was toe to toe with the taller man," That's raw, but that's an action I'd put in there.
I'll play Lucifer's lawyer.
Catch-22. Joseph Heller. Random opening to pages 180-181: surmised, laughed, countered, agreed, inquired, conjectured, admitted, lamented, confessed, gloated, continued (twice), told, replied. Said--once.
The "rules", they can be broken. Pile on, I offer.
Option C:
Iceman's like, "You two really are cowboys."
Maverick's all, "What's your problem, Kazanski?"
"You're everyone's problem," Iceman goes. "That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous."
"That's right! Ice.... man. I am dangerous."
Okay, the dialogue does suck, which makes all the options read poorly. That aside, however, Option A is the best.
Mary Paddock: the idea of sometimes using actions as a way to attribute dialogue is good, but I think in the example you wrote it's over-used. If you write like this all the time, it takes the reader forever to get through a small snippet of speech, which can be annoying.
"Everything in moderation." Anonymous stopped typing.
Dear anonymous,
Mary Paddock: the idea of sometimes using actions as a way to attribute dialogue is good, but I think in the example you wrote it's over-used. If you write like this all the time, it takes the reader forever to get through a small snippet of speech, which can be annoying.
I agree. I would have spent a lot more time sweating it if it wasn't just an example :) . I over-played my hand because I thought it was X-Men and I got caught up in the untold story and was trying not to stray from the Nathan's dialogue.
Personally, I'm happiest when my dialogue is moving so quickly and the voices are so distinctive that gestures and speech tags are barely needed.
"I'm pointing a gun at your back."
"And that's suppose to mean what to me?"
"That I can shoot you anytime I want."
"Yeah. Did you happen to make sure it was still loaded?"
Pause. "Damn."
"Told you I was fast."
Here's something to muddy water. Should it be:
"A statement," Character said.
Or...
"A statement," said Character.
I picked a random selection of books off my shelf and they all used the latter, as do I, normally. It's only lately I've become aware of people using the former, including our host in his example.
Conduit, the first way is more modern and hence usually preferred nowadays. The second is seen a lot in older books. Maybe it's also used more in fantasy or some other genre (just guessing here) where it's more 'done' to use slightly archaic language.
I'm in the "said" camp, but the occasional "shouted" works for me. Not too often, I must insist.
I’m with Mary and Alson_C on this one – action or description, and distinctive voices, are better than either options A or B, though when I find this impossible to achieve I opt for said. Establishing a regular patter of ‘said’ means that when you do drop in the odd descriptor it has a much greater impact.
The thing I can’t stand is when an author switches at random between ‘he said’ and ‘said he’ because suddenly ‘said’ looses it’s invisibility – Rowling goes this an the Potter books, not often, but it’s glaringly obvious when she does.. Whatever you do, make sure you do it consistently, and only break your own rules when you want to create an additional effect.
Re:anonymous on "Character said" vs. "said Character"
the first way is more modern and hence usually preferred nowadays. The second is seen a lot in older books.
Is the use of the latter seen as a negative, or is it a matter of contemporary writing trends? I'll have to go look at my bookshelf. I hadn't noticed this. And I'm partial to the "old" way.
Mkcbunny,
I do think many people view "said Character" as a no-no these days. However, I also don't believe myself in cleaving to rules when it comes to writing fiction. I would do as you prefer, but then run it by your writing group or some astute readers, and if they don't like it, consider changing it. But then again that's just my opinion, and I'm some anonymous on the Internet.
Throw me in the said shed, too, for the most part, but, obviously, sometimes you don't need even said at all and sometimes you need more.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Vinnie asked.
but maybe this doesn't convey the correct tone for this specific statement, so sometimes...
"What the hell are you doing here," Vinnie whispered.
maybe even...
"What the hell are you doing here?" Vinnie whispered loudly.
because a loud whisper is a distinct type of whisper, a silly one, but distinct...
so probably not...
"What the hell are you doing here?" Vinnie whispered quietly.
because this is a standard issue whisper.
Dear Mr. Bransford:
Where should I send the following? Thanks!
Please consider for publication my 37,000-word manuscript, “Evolution and Afterlife: Toward an Honest Theology of Death.”
I HERE SUBJOIN: (Item 1) a SAMPLE OF THIS MANUSCRIPT, (Search “Item 2”) my NEW ARTICLE IN THE CURRENT ISSUE the periodical The Catholic World, with whose importance you may well be acquainted.
Target audience: Educated, religious or not.
A have been a Jesuit priest, and am author of 5 books, a score of articles, and 12 educational filmstrips. I am translator of some 60 (sic) books, mostly in religion and spirituality.
Thank you so much for your kind attention.
Sincerely,
Robert R. Barr, A.B., M.A., Ph.L.*,
S.T.B.,** S.T.L, S.T.D.***
* Pontifical Licentiate in Philosophy
** Bachelor of Sacred [i.e., not “natural, not “philosophical”] Theology
*** From the Institut Catholique de Paris, a university in a land where a
private university cannot be named “University”
[Item 1] Samples extracted from the manuscript
“Evolution and Afterlife: Toward an Honest Theology of Death”
Robert R. Barr, S.T.D.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Do not the following reflections represent an explanation of this universe, and that process, in an "acceptable unitary dimension" (Piero Camporesi’s desideratum)? The point of departure of our attempt at a synthesis of metaphysics and philosophy (including philosophical theology) is paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's extrapolation of the trajectory of evolution to the stage he regards as the “imminent” one. We here extend that extrapolation, correcting it where we deem necessary, and examining that trajectory for certain further implications, as it moves (in nondetermination) through the indefinite future toward its “asymptotic” term, infinitude and God.
I Compendium
of Our View of a Universe “diverging” Everlastingly, “asymptotically,” to a Pantheistic State
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
To “exist” means to “exist in time and space,” the latter expression being, thus, a redundancy. Atqui, time and space are, at least distributively, finite in every respect. Atqui, a “receptacle” must be adequate to its “content.” Therefore time and space are inadequate to “contain” God. Therefore God or C∞ does not literally “exist,” as such, as infinite. When God is properly said to “exist,” the meaning is either: God exists conceptually in (successive) time (and space) as “projected to infinity”; or else that God “exists” in a finite modality, one proportioned to the finite effects of a nevertheless per se transcendent cause. See no. 20, below, 5th-last parag.: “However (and now we return . . .).”
The “instantaneity” to which we shall be referring as “Einsteinian time” is“perceived,” or “experienced,” by a patient who is under a general anesthetic.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thus, God is a process: an ever finite, very often magnificent and beneficent, very often cruel and pitifully incomplete, process. God is precisely one-over-infinity of the “asymptotic” divine total, at any stage of the evolution of the process! Or: God is now, and always will be—in our successive time--at “only” the beginning point of his/her evolution! (And as we have seen above, in our Compendium, the same will necessarily also hold true of our own, creaturely, evolution). Cf. Jung’s faulty God in “Answer to Job,” the God who “learns from Job” that he must become a human being in an Incarnation in order to have a choice between moral right and wrong. (The pollyannaish conclusion of the Book of Job is a later accretion . . .
Thus, God is the only thing that is not a being. Instead, God is a becoming.
The proposition, “God exists,” as referring to any given point in space or time, or even to all space and time, refers to an existence enjoying only a finite modality--the existence of matter enjoying [only] finite matter.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
As “process theologians” have sometimes regarded it, God is currently in a kind of adolescence, or at some “awkward age.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . Continuously, more and more matter becomes conscious. As the twenty-first millennium gets under way, the conscientization of matter to C2 must be proceeding at a rate of some 8.5 tons per minute (see the table in no. 5, below).
The latter calculation is based on the increase in the total weight of the human species in terms not of the weight of the brain, but only of the rest of the body. Why not on that of the brain?
Science teaches that it is the human brain that is conscious, and not the rest of the body. Philosophically, however--that is, really, since philosophy is reality theory, rather than another instance of scientific, i.e., constructural, theory (theory in terms of metaphor or mental construct) it is only the rest of body that is conscious (by means of the—unconscious—brain).
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thus again, and finally, the present life anticipates a life of sublime happiness and love, to be enjoyed by all matter, including the macroparticles that are the individual human beings of yesterday, today, and tomorrow (see above, no. 4), for whom a new life dawns at the Einsteinian moment of their death.
To be is to be material.
To be material is to be the adequate vehicle of consciousness, life, love, and God.
The present essay is a study of time and eternity, and of what afterlife—that is, continued life-- is to be celebrated thanks to the continuing evolution of matter.
II Evolution: Yesterday and Today
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
(When, in terms of conception, gestation, and birth, do you become a person? A rather compelling position would seem to be: When you look at your mother!—at arm’s length, and therefore at your (genetically conditioned, by natural selection) ocular focus. Here is doubtless the first moment of your “bonding,” and of your personhood, Here you may very well recapitulate the experience of the historical Adam in the first moment of his personhood, fulfilling your capacity for an “I-Thou” experience, and attaining “consciousness-squared,” reflexive consciousness, or “knowing that you know.”
(Indeed, your potentiality for personhood could be said to have passed from merely “potential” to “virtual” in the third week of the sixth month of gestation, when your encephalogram became specifically human. From that moment, you will have had all of the “psychic equipment” that you need for “reflexive consciousness,” or “consciousness squared,” although it will not be before birth that you will have the actual experience of “knowing that you know,” in the reflexive perception of “something other” from “yourself.”)
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. We extrapolate from C2 to C3.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. .Basis of the extrapolation: the sweep of evolution to consciousness, and its pattern.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
There is nothing in either the mechanics or the subject of the evolutionary process to suggest a cutoff point, anywhere, for the mechanism of evolution. Nor is there anything in those mechanics or subject to suggest that we are in anything but the relatively earliest stages of evolution (in any extrapolation from C2 and C3 "through" C3+n.) What is unique in the implications for evolution of our immediate state of consciousness is that, if evolution is to continue, it will continue through the free decision of the evolving subject. It will now be willed, then engineered, then executed, all, by the evolving subject itself.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
What is to be engineered is the enhancement of consciousness, that of individual subjects of consciousness and that of collective consciousness. Of what should this enhancement consist? Altruism, and anything that contributes to altruism, will have to be “engineered”: a sense and spirit of creativity; enjoyment of matter and spirit, such as we find it in nature; the spiritual—consciousness, especially in persons, medicine (as with a defeat of AIDS, and the indefinite prolongation of human life, for instance via artificial organs and parts of organs, including the brain) and science; the defeat of the horrendous catastrophe of global warming, as also that of war (which is unimaginably worse than can be imagined by any who have not “been there,” as can readily be demonstrated from Ken Burns’s film “The War”); improving education exponentially; especially, a sense of well-being in the exercise of the human faculties; most especially, a profound satisfaction in beneficence (e.g., in the engineering of true egalitarian social justice, or the defeat of racism), acts of love and active peace, the promotion of peace in the world with true justice—giving to, sharing with, serving, embracing, comforting, and, especially, improving the corporal, mental, and emotional lot of persons--beings whose consciousness is “squared,”-- even by (genetically or otherwise) arresting or reversing the aging process, such as by transplantation, and/or by destroying or otherwise manipulating the aging gene/s, and in one or some of these ways even defeating death--colonizing (actually, by immediate personal presence and contact and/or virtually, i.e., electronically) outer space--with technology, and with all other manifestations/means of union of selves, including any acts analogous to those we perform today when we do someone a “favor” because we “care about them”; and, to be sure, the aesthetic. Then too, the recreational, and the sensual, with emphasis on emotional depths (Do I enjoy “fun”? Then try to imagine enjoying everyone’s fun!) All of this even at the cost of self-sacrifice, and all of it channeled into a unification of persons at every level. (We have been introduced to: white liberation, from serfdom and other enthrallmet; black liberation, from slavery; and women’s (and thereby men’s) liberation. What should come next? Likely, children’s liberation: genuine respect and equality for children and young adults. Following may be taken as a symbol of the need for children’s liberation. “Child” means a sexually immature person. Thus, there are no children older than puberty. And yet we continue to call post-pubertal persons “children,” “boys,” and “girls,” instead of “men” and women.” Perhaps we ought not to.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nietzsche’s Priincipal Thesis Verified
Thus, Nietzsche’s thesis is verified, that what all persons desire is not happiness (John Stuart Mill’s thesis—but actually, happiness is only a “spinoff” of the attainment of that which is desired), but power. (“Man does not seek happiness,” Nietzsche growled. “Only the Englishman does.”) We agree, with certain qualification. Our own thesis is that what all persons ultimately desire is the other—unification with that person in love. But unification in love, the ultimate oneness, is the ultimate possession.. But possession of an object is the ultimate power “over” that object. QED.
The greatest power is power over a person, because of the ontological excellence of the object. The greatest power over a person is, at one extreme, in the enslavement of that person,--her or his compulsion, and pretended possession. At the other end of the spectrum of power over a person is the exercise of altruism, with its necessarily implied self-surrender on the part of the subject to the object (and possession of the “other precisely as other”). The greatest altruism consists in an ontological identification of subject and object, such as occurs, directly with God and indirectly with one’s fellows, in creaturely divinization--power over very God? Well, yes!--(see below, no. 16), and in the Christian myth of the Holy Trinity (for the truth of myth, see below, no. 16).
The practice of sadism can be understood as the purest temporal demonstration of the fact that what all persons seek is actually power. The ultimate purpose of the sadist’s gratuitous cruelty is power over another person. Thus, even the pleasure of sadism—which pleasure is precisely the sadism itself!—is transcendently, limitlessly, sublimated, with all other pleasures, in the possession in love of the “other”—in possessing God, and other persons—in the unifying act that is the ultimate exercise of power, and the most beatific act, to be exercised throughout C2+n.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Or: In love, the loving subject actually becomes—we make bold to say—numerically identical with the object loved (as presaged n the old Vaudevillian ditty, “. . . Friendship, it’s the perfect blendship . . .”?)
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Therefore even the perverse love of sadism is a drive for numerical identity. (Corroboration from psychology: Some psychologists think they have discovered that the unconscious reason children tear up bugs is not to cause them pain, but to “get into them,” get inside of them.)
Ergo this is what the sadist seeks, what any sadist, and not just the (seemingly) sadistic child, seeks to do: attain the same end as with any love, including love for God--numerical identity of subject with object.
(We recall the Nietzschean ultimate object of human willing: power.)
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
II Evolution Tomorrow: Everlasting State of Blessedness
4. All persons who have ever existed will also exist in the future.
My personhood, while not the particles themselves, would be an interrelationship among my particles: a pattern of their activity. In this work, we call this interconnective energy radial . . . .
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By virtue of the open ended “interfacing” of all matter in the future, all mere things must become person. If Hume’s implication is correct that personhood is memory, then a fusing of two memories (e.g.., electronically) would yield a corporate personhood. If it is not correct that personhood is in some way memory, then personhood would be something under/overlying memory.
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By virtue of the open ended “interfacing” of all matter in the future, all mere things must become person. To cite just one (practical!) example of a thing, in this case an animal, becoming a person, surely the child's poignant query at the death of a pet, "Is there a puppy heaven?" is adequately to be answered only in the affirmative. Instead of some "play funeral," then, for the burial of a pet, why might there not be a perfectly serious one, with perhaps even a solemn prayer in the following vein?
Almighty, everlasting God,
Who hast solemnly decreed
that all flesh shall see Thy salvation:
Grant, we beseech Thee, that,
as we have loved and played with [name]
for a short while in this present life,
so may s/he be happy together with us
forever in the next,
in the vision of the glory of Thy Face.
Amen.
(Thus anticipating the conscientization of the animal to a higher exponent by virtue of a further complexification of its brain, or indeed its complexification with a person / persons, and the consequent propriety for it of a proper name. The writer even likes to fantasize that the child who has originally “owned” the pet might come to be the individual person particularly concerned to “revive/receive” it now by “interfacing” with it her/himself! (Why in the world not?)]
After all, the "puppy" is matter of the universe today, and thus must be “interfaced” matter tomorrow.
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5. Evincing the arrival of evolution at a saturation point, or critical concentration, or threshold of a further qualitative leap, the rate of the conscientization of matter is sharply accelerating.
The rate of conscientization of matter (which is the rate of the conscientization of matter to the degree of C2) today, in 2007, would seem to be in the vicinity of eight tons per minute (basically limited to the conscientization of matter to the degree C2, since the mass of matter enjoying C1 remains basically stable). (See Compendium.) Here we may invoke the analogy of the gradual heating of a volume of water to a temperature of 99o C., thus approaching 100o or the limit temperature of H2O in its liquid state at sea level: the threshold or saturation point of the temperature of water in its liquid state (critical temperature). The following table demonstrates the current suddenly sharpened acceleration of this rate, that of the conscientization of matter measured in the mass of its subject (over the last few centuries, and especially during the last few decades, a century representing some mere 0.00002 "two one-hundred thousandths" of the duration thus far of the life of C2 in the universe, and a decade, of course, representing a mere one tenth of that time).
[[Line-graph the following table.]] Estimated Rate of Conscientization of Matter in the Universe (Various sources)
[By whole-body weight. Let us recall that it not an animal’s brain that is conscious, but the rest of its body (see “State of the Question,” above, parag. “Our calculation. . . .”)]
Between 5,000,000 and 10,000 BCE: 0.0000001 tons/minute*
Between 10,000 BCE and CE 1: 0.003 tons/minute
Between CE 1 and 1650: 0.012 tons/minute
Between CE 1650 and 1750: 0.190 tons/minute
Between CE 1750 and 1850: 0.+9 tons/minute
Between CE 1850 and 1950: 1.312 tons/minute
Between CE 1950 and 1970: 5.062 tons/minute
Between CE 1970 and 1978: 7.653 tons/minute
Between A.D. 1978 and A.D. 2007: some 9.0 tons/minute [world population in 1995 = 5.7 billion]
If, as has been reckoned, the population of the world in 10,000 BCE was only some 10 million persons, population growth throughout the 5,000,000 years since the appearance of homo sapiens (not homo sapiens sapiens) by then must have averaged only two persons a year!
A line graph of the above statistics would show a relatively gradually ascending curve culminating in a virtual right angle upturn in our own era.
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7. What could be the place of an electronic consciousness or its successors in C1+n? Could a computer, say, or battery of computers, be conscious?
For example, could a computer some day not only work a problem, but enjoy doing so? Yes, in either of two widely differing hypotheses: (1) if that battery of interfaced computers were to be as complex as, say, the brain (or ganglion) of a conscious organic (carbohydrate) being; or (2) if it that computer were to be electronically “interfaced” with, say, the brain or pre brain of a human being or other conscious or pre-conscious organic being.
The interim privilege of carbohydrates as the seemingly sole subject of consciousness is owing not to any particular "smarts" on the part of carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen, of course, but to an accident of their collective valences.
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8. . . . “God” includes all finitudes, including feminine/masculine.
This will obtain in virtue of the metaphysical principle that an effect must be (in a qualified and particular way) “pre-contained” in its cause (which has been paraphrased colloquially, “You can’t give what you haven’t got”).
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Indeed, our view posits a "Jungian God," if we may so speak, such as appears in C. G. Jung's "Answer to Job." There, God is attributed moral evil, or, at least, amorality, and the consequent need to conscientize His unconscious material (which, according to Jung, ibid., He proceeds to do via His incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth).
9. The time intervals between qualitative evolutionary leaps grow shorter.
The time intervals between C2 and C3, C3 and C4, and so on, rapidly shrink with each new leap. We base our assertion on an extrapolation from the lapses of time during which C1 and C2 have prevailed (5,000 million years, and 5 million years, respectively), or perhaps C0, C1, and C2 (15,000 million years, followed by the succeeding two intervals). Thus, it comes as no surprise that it is relatively so promptly that [our current evolutionary state].comes to its saturation point (in a ratio of 1,000:1 vis-Ã -vis the time interval immediately preceding).
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Evolution happens by pure chance. A thoroughgoing analysis of all of the "probabilities" at play, could such an analysis be made, would demonstrate that evolution proceeds in all of its "throws" strictly according to the same probabilities as does Einstein’s“honest game of dice.”
God’s causality is transcendent; and therefore the argument against the existence of God from the (indisputable) fact that “we are here by the sheerest chance, against inconceivable odds” is unsound. Analogously: a student one asked his philosophy professor, apropos of a discussion of the transcendence of the First Cause, whether a certain wonderful experience that he had had (indeed a purely coincidental one) had (indeed) been “a coincidence”--:or did God do that?” The professor’s response (correct, in the traditional scholastic view and in our own, came): “That was a coincidence. [Pause . . .] God did that.” [Pause . . Then, rhetorically:] “Well, could you cause a coincidence?”
(“Why” does a porcupine have quills? Coincidentally, that’s why. It has quills because, simply, had an ancestor not had quills, the porcupine species would have no quills, and gone extinct for lack of this survival mechanism, and the current porcupine about which the question “Why quills?” is being asked, would simply not be. THERE IS MO “FINAL CAUSALITY” IN NATURE, EXCEPT AS WILLED BY THE HUMAN BEING. The question “Why,” therefore, as a question about sub-human nature, must refer only to “efficient” causality—“Why” can only mean, “What is the mechanism of the coming-to-be of the thing or phenomenon?”—and not to any imagined “final” causality or “purpose.”)
Thus, there has been no compelling or impelling force, in the mechanics of the phenomenon of evolution, except that of the attraction of matter for matter. But, beginning with the present stage of that evolution, and throughout C2+n, evolution must be actively engineered and impelled, by that species of attraction of matter for matter called love. And of course love is not compelling, invincibly impelling though it be. Thus also, any further exponent of "consciousness-squared,” including impending C3, must and will occur without determinism.
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III Demonstrations
15. Our prognostication of further evolution is not deterministic.
Now that consciousness squared, which comports free will, has been attained, any further evolutionary leap must needs be a product of the exercise of the evolving subject's free will.
Any evolving subject, in attaining to a higher level of being or higher species, continues to maintain the “constitutive essentials” of its former being as well.
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Thus, the evolving subject C2 is to be transformed into C3 precisely in that subject's current quality as C2--precisely as human consciousness, and therefore precisely as endowed with free will. Thus, the leap to C3 can only emerge from an act of the free human will. Heavily “pressured” as it may be, that free act will not be simply determined any more than a person fleeing our burning building is simply determined to do so in the sense of somehow never actually deciding to.
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(Dare we say?—Were there to be such a thing as a “virtual-altruism room,” in which the subject upon entering would begin to receive, generated electronically, the same electro-biochemical processes in his/her brain as are at hand in an actual act of altruism—then the sensations and emotions at hand would now be no more possible to neglect in subsequent acts of her/his life, day by day and year by year, than it would be possible to omit the free decision to flee the burning building of our analogy in no. 2, above, parag. beginning “Here let us remark.” Only, now, absent the electronic effects of the virtual altruism room, only actually altruistic acts of the free will would produce these satisfying effects. (In other words, the will of the erstwhile occupant of the electronic virtual altruism room would henceforward be relatively “helpless,” concretely, to perform selfish acts—precisely because the (an) altruistic act occasions so much more self- satisfaction than does the selfish one!)
(And convicted transgressors could be sentenced to a stint in the altruism room!)
Less efficacious, ceteris paribus, will be unilateral love . . . .
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What is love? Love is appetition for another person precisely "in that person's otherness." It need not always entail “self sacrifice,” in the colloquial sense of the expression. Of course, it will be “ready” for that self sacrifice, should the beloved's interest, in his or her concrete personhood, suggest the good of it
Even more concretely, what deeds will be authentically those of love? They will of course be those that most enhance the personhood of others. Therefore the mightiest, in the concrete moment, may be: the extirpation of a structural poverty and other physical misery, beginning with the abolition or correction of an economic system, our particular capitalist one, that automatically widens the gap between rich and poor (nowadays even "transnationally”). In tandem, one desiderates an international justice-and-peace organ that could function more effectively.
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. . . Mozart's "Et Incarnatus" (“Mary rocking her Baby”—Louis Cyr, S.J.) from the Grosse Messe, with attention to the text; for children, a new pet, or a roller-coaster ride. All of this will make life ring with new meaning, engendering a subconscious desire for "more" life. And, of course, C3 will be a (paragonal) instance of "more" life.
Even such an ultra-short “list” of transcendent experiences could very well include the Russian Liturgy (Mass), especially (but not only) for its (whollychoral) music, perhaps the most beautiful of all sacred music.
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The leap to C3 may be seen by human beings as the sole alternative to the destruction of their species, we grant. It may begin to be implemented at the moment, doubtless mere decades hence, when a terrorist will be able to hold a "home made nuclear bomb" to today's collective human head and thus “take it hostage.” Even before the date of this writing, a high schooler in Wisconsin was able to draw up complete plans for such a weapon on the basis of his amateur scientific knowledge. He lacked, for its actual creation, only weapons grade fissionable material. The terrorist will need to overcome that lack only once. (In C3, there will be no pernicious secrets: it will be neither feasible nor desirable to “keep a secret” from oneself!
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Corollary: “When someone dies that you love very much, she is no longer wherevef she was; now she is wherever you are” . . . As someone has put it, “You not only hold her in your heart, you hold her in your arms.”
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The truth or doctrine of "heaven" (in most Western languages, the same word is used for “heaven” as for “sky”) in the sense of a life apart from matter, is mythical. All religious enunciations or truths are mythical, since, although finite, they enunciate the transcendent (God, evil, and so on), whose “concept(s)” they are incapable either of containing, or, therefore, of expressing literally.
Truth of Myth
Thus, there are three sorts, or species, of narrative discourse. There is fiction, in which concepts and the words enunciating them do not (per se) correspond to reality. (Thus, we pass over the case of metaphor.) There is fact, in which those (finite) concepts--and words—correspond to finite realities. Finally, there is myth, in which finite concepts and words correspond to transcendent reality--reality whose surmise arises in the human unconscious, but is “unenunciable” there, precisely because it is unconscious—and thereupon is also “unenunciable” consciously, since it is transcendent: “too big” for a concept, such as God, good, evil, and so on.
Or: Fiction consists of nouns, verbs, etc., that name things not actually existing.
Fact consists of nouns, verbs, etc., that name actual things.
Myth consists of nouns, verbs, etc., that, as it were, nickname “things” that cannot be named because they “transcend” the finite, which alone can have a name.
To put the same thing even more succinctly: Myth considers a transcendent reality and gives it an immanent “nickname.”
(Examples: Is there a “God”--or a “Zeus”? No, but just wait until you see what there is instead! Did Mary of Nazareth “come down to Fatima”? No, but just wait until you see what she did instead, unenunciable because transcendent. In both instances, the reality transcends its literal discourse.
(Or: Not literally . . . but nevertheless!)
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(The realities of fact are in successive time. The realities of myth are in “instantaneous,” Einsteinian time.)
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17. Being almighty and all good, God rights all evil, in the reality with which that evil is endowed in the collective “actualizing memory” of C2+n. Indeed, God does simply everything for the creature.
God herself is infinitely sorrowful at the occurrence of evil. Think of the Iranian twins . . . .What a horrible evil. And yet less evil than a million other evils, in the history, and present, of humanity. Hundreds of witches were subjected to sadistic rape and sex torture and then burned alive. And God cannot “stand” it. It tears His heart out.
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(As the author has heard, in identical words, from two different mystics (from the one directly, and from the other indirectly) of the two distinct genders, on two different continents, in widely separated decades, have both put it: “Everything will be all right—and already is.” A mystic is a person who confronts God not only indirectly, as in prayer, liturgy, or reading, and so on, but also directly—as it were, face to face,
(Your little girl awakens from a nightmare, weeping. You catch her up in your arms. “Don’t cry, dear. Everything’s all right!”
(Everything’s all right? With wars,genocides, disease. . . .You complete the list. (Take your time. You’ll need it.)
(“Oh, you respond. I didn’t mean everything’s all right, I meant, ‘It’s all right, dear--it was only a dream!’”
(Oh, it’s all right, is all you meant. Why didn’t you say that, then? Last night you did! Do you know something you’re not telling--not even telling yourself?)
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Thus, Dostoevsky’s case (intended as an attack on the existence of divine providence and of God—an attack he elsewhere counters, leaving it quite intentionally to the reader to decide) of the mother who, in Christian doctrine, is expected to forgive her son’s torturer in the afterlife . . . No, according to Dostoevsky, she MAY NOT (ought not to), indeed CANNOT (is unable to) perform this act of forgiveness--forgive this (now altogether repentant) person not only for her own pain that he has caused, but also for the pain and death he has caused her child. Dostoevsky’s proposition here is that such forgiveness would be intrinsically evil and, indeed, self-contradictory—for the pain of her child is so personally his that she cannot touch it.
In our own view, the torturer is now (in the collective persona of the future) identical with the child (as well as with the mother), and he “remembers,” on both a mental and an “existential” level--along with "everyone else" remembering--his foul deed in all of its heinousness. The evil that he has perpetrated is now virtual (or actual?) reality present to him—all about him and, indeed, permeating him—“forever.” Nor is this pain punishment, but merely cause-and-effect at its most simple and most direct. Therefore not only are there no purposes in nature, but neither are there any finite purposes for nature, except such extrinsic ones as the rational will may assign it.
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Therefore there is no natural moral law. A creature, whether a tree that might of course be cut down, or a sex organ, that might generate pleasure or a baby, is being used morally provided only its use not contravene God’s infinite purpose for nature—that purpose being the only actual infinitude, the divine substance—love.)
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Ultimately she has to watch him put the gun to her head and pull the trigger, never even realizing that those who have loved her may well be deprived, through the concealment of her corpse and/or the scattering of her skeleton, of even closure or a final memorial service, or ritual burial.
Now she will never know the experience of giving or receiving a gentle, considerate, loving sexual touch . . . .
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Formally the most cruel and most heinous of the intrinsically evil elements applied by the agent will have been the display of the gun (with the promise of her life in return for perfect obedience), by whose means the victim has been constrained deliberately to further her own violation, moment by moment, without ever having to be pushed or pulled, terrified and imploring, from entering the car or truck at her home, to leaving it again at the location of her confinement, and throughout all of the rest of the motions commanded her by her captors.
Here, let us be honest, we have consensual rape . . .
Perhaps we ought to apologize to the reader for our realism in much of the present discourse. We hope that it will have been seen to be necessary for a full “existential” understanding of the fate of both the criminal and the victim after death, which we shall consider below , , , ,
Nor may we omit a consideration of the suffering of her family and friends. Her mother and father, with this needle of steel in their heart day after day, night after night, for life. (Her mother, for instance, will always feel that she is still alive!--“out there, somewhere, hurting” . . . .
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Furthermore and finally: limitlessly augmenting the degree of his guilt, by “factoring” its quality, the agent of the deed under consideration has been willing to assume the responsibility of thus violating both of the two key ethical norms in his condition as ontologically God (in the finite modality of his creaturely being . . . . Thus his guilt is transcendent. After all, as he knows perfectly well, he has done at least something somewhat unselfish and loving in his life—or even, perhaps, once upon a time, something marvelously unselfish.
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His hell (again, owing to his compenetration with the ontological reality of his victim—and of her ordeal as well, this time--is (A) that same everlasting forgiveness on her part, in, basically, a reversed reflection, or “mirror,” of his heaven, with her undeserved, now so excruciating, love, in her benign, compassionate smile--and (B) his everlasting objective compenetration with his act, in all of its actual and existential reality--in the full realism of all of the details of her suffering undergone, with all of its injustice, cruelty, and pain—and with all of the subjective evil, as well, of his intention, comprehension, volition, and external act. Now his deed, burning within him like fire, crushing him like the unbearable compression of a bodily member, his deed in all of its actual reality and concrete, numerically self-identical, being, is above him, below him, to the left and right of him, before and behind him, and within him--thus, with full ontological as well as existential “real-ization” of all of the torment that he has caused his victim herself and those around her (so that now he himself actually experiences that torment, that evil—both as “agent” and now, at last as “patient”!--in his ontological compenetration of and identity with this torment, in the sheer realism of the event and the existential being of all of its evil, in all of its pain, in the concretizing, realizing (virtualizing/actualizing), collective memory of all matter: his, hers, and ours, “forever.”
In other words, unspeakable as is the suffering that he has meant to cause his victim, and that he has indeed caused her, he has nevertheless not imposed upon her anything in the least comparable to the suffering that he must now impose upon himself, spontaneously and voluntarily, in endless terrors countless times more keen—and this with an excruciating, everlasting love that finally . . . “gets it.”
Now he must weep for himself, as he recalls having, when he was a little boy, done something unselfish and loving for someone (as we reflect above)—indeed, perhaps, once upon a time, as we have suggested, something marvelously unselfish,
After all, did he not, as we say, “take it upon himself” to do the deed? That is, did he not voluntarily take the deed upon himself, once upon a time? Now the deed that he has “taken upon himself” is “upon him” literally . . . .
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Nor, again, is this punishment. But simple cause-and-effect.
Even a process God will have to live with what s/he has allowed to happen to Job or Jesus,
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Nor is this reward. It is cause-and-effect, at it most simple.
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18. The supernatural mystery of the universe also has a natural explanation.
In the 1940s, Pope Pius XII placed Henri de Lubac, S.J. under virtual house arrest, at 35, rue de Sèvres, Paris, for having published his Le Surnaturel: Following a survey of patristic thought by this superb patrologist, his book now demonstrated that no patristic tradition makes any material distinction between the natural and the supernatural! Everything natural is a supernatural, gratuitous bestowal by and of God. And everything supernatural has a natural, finite explanation.
“Natural” and “supernatural,” then, are like two sides of the same coin, rather than simply distinct things (analogously as, we might suggest, in the Aristotelian Thomistic anthropology, the human body and soul are only--really distinct--facets of a single concrete substance, that of the human composite rather than, as in Neo-Platonic (and subsequent popular theistic, down to our very day) philosophy, the human being consisting of a soul inhabiting a body in a kind of “rider horse” (Augustine) or “ghost-machine” (Ryle) relationship (which, surely, would constitute a “zombie”!).
And yet, this is wha religious persons typically maintain.
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Pope John XXIII exonerated de Lubac, created him a cardinal, and concelebrated the Eucharist with him at the Second Vatican Council.
Now, perhaps a practical conclusion from the material identity of the natural and the supernatural: Does God want our gratitude? Or, instead, only our gladness? If gratitude is, of course, owed a creaturely beneficiary—then is gratitude also owed to God? Or instead, does God, somehow, “before” bestowing a divine gift (a miracle, because a gift of God is always formally supernatural), also perform the (ontologically) antecedent miracle of rendering the recipient worthy of it? Now, wouldn’t that be a gift? (Too good? Or, instead, G. K. Chesterton’s “Too good not to be true”?) So that the more generous even a creaturely beneficiary, the less s/he wills our gratitude, and the more s/he wills our joy?
Indeed, does our transcendent value as persons, just by itself, deserve every good thing that we ever receive, from whatever source?
(Or, entirely apart, logically, from the “miracle of our worthiness” whose possibility we have just considered: Instead, surely we must simply say: God, being infinitely generous, wills only our gladness, and not our gratitude, altogether independently of any possible “worthiness” on our part.
(What does a parent want from a child, per se?--Gratitude? Or only gladness? Or only gladness in a young child, but gratitude, as well, in an older child? But the parent wants the gratitiude of the older child, this time, only for the sake of the child, and not for the sake of the parent.)
19 Our view is atheistic.
God is as different from anything we can conceive as all is from nothing. Thus, God does not “exist” in any ordinary sense of the word. The atheists have been right all along.
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20. Our view is theistic.
A "fundamentalist" atheism, however, is excluded. ("There's no God, period.").
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A series of per se ordered causes cannot be infinite. True, the concatenation of (“second”--secondary) causes in the universe is endless circular: the universe is a “perpetual motion machine,” maintaining itself in its internal movement by virtue of the impossibility of any of its energy escaping outside itself. But even an endless circle (and all circles are endless!) is not infinite: it has a limited “size.” (Or, as a student put it, it is “limited sideways.”)
Finitude cannot “explain itself,” scholastics maintain. “Tell me the (even varying) number of quarks in the universe, and I’ll ask you, ‘Why?’" (in terms not of final, but of efficient causality). “Why not one more? Why not one less?”
The causality exercised by the First Cause is transcendent. That is, in causing all causality, God “adds” no energy to the universe—the law of conservation of energy is maintained--but precisely supports the energy of the universe in all of its causality.
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Finitude cannot be self explanatory. Let the universe rest on the shell of a great turtle as it will, and that turtle on the shell of another, and another and another, still the ultimate explanation of the universe will not be "turtles all the way down," as in the celebrated, variously attributed, exchange. An infinite per se ordered causal series or “chain” would be a self contradiction.
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(Thus, it is difficult to see how there could be such a thing as a ”miracle” in the sense of an event that God would cause “all by himself,” without the intervention of creaturely causality. This would be to inject new, in principle measurable, energy into the universe, in contravention of the law of the conservation of energy. On the other hand, to define a miracle as “something that only God can do” might save miracle from relegation to the realm of the fictitious.)
And "when" is God in our universe? In a finite modality, God is present everywhere and "everywhen," in immediate compenetration with any and every spatial or temporal point, in virtue, again, of the principle, Causa et effectus sunt simul. Qua talis, as such, instead, God in His/Her (God is androgynous . . . .
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God's causality is transcendent and infinite, and is thereby the metaphysical correlate of Karl Rahner's ascetical doctrine that God is neither watching us in order to "catch us" when we err morally, nor even watching us in order to care for us, but moving in the same direction as we, a fraction of a step ahead, clearing the obstacles from our path.
21. Our view is one of an anthropological, cosmological, and theological materialistic monism.
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In résumé:
To be is to be material.
To be material is to be the vehicle of consciousness, life, and love, and the very constitution of God.
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(Thomas Aquinas’s reduction of the Neo-Platonic dualistic body-soul duality to an Aristotelian matter-form anthropology comes very close to what we are saying. For Thomas too, body and soul form one substance: for him, body and soul are the matter and form, respectively, of the single human substance—somewhat as two sides of the same coin could be thought of as completely interpenetrating.)
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On all levels of the evolutionary scale, attraction among particles begets complexification, in a “new” particle which is thereupon attracted to other particles on the subatomic level as on the macroparticular level of persons.
Teilhard held, surely correctly, that, were it not for the mutual attraction of subatomic particles, we (macro)particles would be unable to love!
23. The ultimate reality (or "definition") of matter is: ultimate vehicle of consciousness, life, and love, and the very constitution of God.
As in no. 21, above. Cf. “Compendium,” above, 4th parag., “C∞ is necessarily God. . . .”
24. We reject any theological explanation of matter in terms other than of the immediate (“direct”) “salvation” of matter.
We reject the Origenistic (and, still today, widespread popular ascetical) explanation of matter as a prison, punishment, or test of the soul, to the effect that matter, being incapable of consciousness, cannot be saved.
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We likewise reject the immaterialism of George Berkeley, in which what we perceive as external material reality, while reality indeed, is neither external nor material: rather, it is internal to the perceiving subject (soul), and is spiritual. Berkeley, and, later, on a popular level, Mary Baker Eddy, are engaging in a theodicy calculated to respond to the all but universal human concept of matter’s intrinsic unavailability to “salvation,” . . . on grounds of an inherent incapacity of matter as such for consciousness. . . . But . . . it “turns out” that matter can indeed be . . . conscious [by way of evolutionary congestion and complexification, Teilhard’s discovery].
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In our view, matter is saved directly: as conscious subject, matter has all of the privileges of God's salvific intent that are currently ascribed in traditional Western (i.e., Neo-Platonic) theism to the substantial soul (for whose reality there is no authentic evidence of any kind).
25. The problem of evil does not constitute an absolute mystery.
The problem of evil is ultimately solved in terms of a process God.
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Thus, God does not cause evil: evil, being pure nothing, neither requires, nor can have, any cause. Evil, then, for Thomas, being a privation—“nonbeing where something ought to be”—is, as a negation, nothing positive. (Existentialists—predictably enough, to their credit--have challenged Thomas to “stand at the crib side of a baby dying of leukemia and call that evil ‘nothing positive’!”) For our own part, we shall go further than, as we think, Thomas went: “Evil is pure negation”? Yes, we shall concur. But this “A proposition,” we maintain, happens to “convert,” as logicians put it! Yes, evil is pure negation; but conversely, negation is pure evil. All metaphysical negation is evil—a privation, “a nothing where something should be,” a nothing that makes you afraid, a negation that is simply the finitude of th/e universe--this awful nothing at the edges of being, this evil that makes you angry and that makes you love--this evil with its incalculable pain and unlove, with its death, wars, selfishness, injustice, unfairness, greed, accidents, . . .catastrophes and unlove such as are experienced by a mother having to watch her child die of starvation, or intentionally cast into to the flames of a her their burning home, or the unspeakable (or so it would seem) torments of terrorism erstwhile unnamed locations on the body, for which our gentle media have now appropriated the euphemistic codeword “gruesome,” or ignorance, fear, sorrow, sadism, and hopelessness--this evil, this negative, this nothing which we will not simply reject, but which we shall combat--step by step, as we evolve in the direction of the infinitude of the eschaton, while our process God rights it with us, in step with the evolution of consciousness. “All creation groans and is in travail until now” (Rom 8:22).
Yes, evil is something endowed with reality, a reality to be attacked and defeated with all of the impatience and urgency that we experience at grasping it. (But it is not a metaphysical problem.)
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How can our God actually COMMAND genocide, and the sex slavery of children, and in one and the same breath? But a “process God” does so. See Numbers 31:18, and preceding verses. Neither this nor the modern-day wars of annihilation of whole peoples are tolerable to consciousness.. We urgently need everything that we can possibly do to engineer and build collective consciousness and collective activity. And this without an exponential limit, everlastingly toward infinity. We must, we will engineer and produce this process God.
Evil prevails, yes, and we are angry. Angry enough to love.
26. No one will be compelled to accept collective consciousness.
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First, however, a short, sorrowful history by way of analogy: “Once upon a time,”—but upon a time in the future--a neurologist developed a method of incorporating foreign cells into the composition of a human brain, whereby they would join with the other cells of the brain in producing human consciousness, C2. She approached an amoeba with the offer. At first the amoeba was enthusiastic at the prospect, and about to accept—musing, what infra-human life wouldn’t wish its consciousness to be enhanced in this way?—until it learned that the transition would comport its deprivation of individuation--its numerical individuality—although not of its consciousness, which would be almost measurelessly improved--whereupon . . . it declined the offer!)
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(Thus, one no reason why the advance to C3 must needs occur in all existing individuals, or indeed in any minimum number of individuals, at a single stroke.)
No one will be compelled to accept collective consciousness, then, but the opportunity to share the thoughts, desires, pleasures, and happiness of “anyone” willing to share them will constitute as strong a motivation to enter the collectivity of consciousness as a fire is to leave a burning building.
In conclusion, another tale, this time with a happy ending. The same “meta-neurologist” as above, having survived to the future (but still in C2), has used a method of recording persons’ brainwaves during their lives, so that, after their death, via this electroencephalic code, their “selves” could be reconstituted into new brains—these being the product of the latest electronic technology, pre-crafted with all of the elements of a living brain necessary to be a person except one: precisely the neurological factors of a “self.”
One day, after she has electronically “called up” the self of a person, who, during life, has agreed to this procedure, she momentarily leaves her “keyboard.” Now her assistant shuffles in, a casual sort, notices that there is coding on the monitor, assumes that a new, “empty,” brain is ready to receive it—and downloads it into the same new brain in which the scientist has just constituted the previous “patient’s” self! Now there are two selves in one brain!
Well. When the scientist returns to her monitor, does the assistant get a dressing-down! Look what he’s done, he’s never to do that again, and now what is she going to say to the “patient”--or “patients”—when he, she, or they come into her office with two selves? But then, to the colossal relief of both, at the standard debriefing . . . lo and behold, he or she, or they, is, or are, actually . . . quite happy together! After all, now, to their astonishment and delight, not only can they “appreciate” the qualities and operations of another person, as they have done in their previous lives, but they actually share those qualities and operations--those thoughts and sensations, feelings and emotions, actions and exertions, all the rest of the consciousness of that person who enjoys these concrete attributes and performs these operations--and thus actually share both of these as well! (Talk about “getting to know you”!) And all four—well, or three--live happily ever after.
Now, as it happens, the same scientist—a remarkable one, as we gather—has also developed a method of recording brainwaves of human persons of the more distant past, reflected back to earth in minuscule, but “readable,” quantities, from heavenly bodies. Of course, these signals are inextricably intermingled, so that, until now, the scientist has refrained from downloading any of them into new brains: she would have “mingled selves,” as she says, on her hands. But now, thanks to the fortunate accident in the lab, she sees that there is no disadvantage—on the contrary!--in simply using the codes of the selves of any of the celestial reflections, intermingled though they are, in convenient quantity, to reconstitute these numerous (willing) selves in the brain of a, now, collective person! Daily, several new, complex persons report to her office, rich with some of the being and experience of each of the many persons they have been once upon a time.
And the universe proceeds apace, at the hands of loving persons such as these—by now, as it happens, very numerous over the face of the earth and its satellites.
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27. Death both (1) is and (2) is not the annihilation of the human subject . . .
. . . inasmuch as (1) it comports the collectivization in the substance of God of (and thus the abolition of the individuation of) that human subject, (2) except in its ultimate subjectivity, the ultimate subject of its awareness, its “ego.”
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Death is (2) not the annihilation of the person, especially in the sense that it is not the annihilation of the individual ego, which becomes one of the subjects of a corporate persona (throughout C2+n), and secondarily in the sense that it is not an annihilation of the individual persona or self qua integral element of the corporate persona or self.
28. The leap to C3 may be preceded by limited planetary catastrophe, such as the "small nuclear war" postulated by way of example by Dom Hélder Câmara.
Any critical evolutionary threshold, marked as it is by a critical mass at a saturation point, is typically marked by catastrophe for all of the members of the evolving species but one, which is spared for (in constructural terms) “purposes" of the survival of that species in a new, superior complexification. One hopes that, in view of the autonomous character (with its (free will) of our immimemt evolutkionary leap, such catastrophe could be "bypassed," or at any rate attenuated, so that it would not be marked by catastrophe for most of the members of our evolving species (C2) . . .
30. The entropy death ("heat death") of the universe can be averted.
The mechanics of such rescue would consist of the deliberate conversion of some of the matter of the universe into energy and the application of that energy to the work of halting . . . containing, or reversing the expansion (or other cause of the heat death) of the universe or of the conscious part(s) thereof. The rate of conscientization of matter is accelerating at a rate doubtless more than adequate to overtake the rate of universal entropy. See no. 5, above. If the universe is expanding at escape velocity, conscious matter will have to engineer an exception for itself, for example by converting some (any) matter into energy, and “retro-firing.”
An afterlife beginning at the moment of death, or, more exactly, continued from the moment of death.
For the unconscious or nonexistent subject, Einsteinian (relative) time is (objective) “instantaneity.” Atqui, the dead are nonexistent. That is, they are nothing: nothing in their graves, nothing elsewhere. They are no more anything after they have existed than they were before they existed (Dalai Lama).
34. The dialogue between Judaism and Christianity ought to proceed on a common basis of expectation of the coming of the Messiah (in C3).
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36. In ethics, in C2+n, the norm of utility ("the greatest good of the greatest number" of sentient beings) of an act or rule could no longer conceivably be at odds with the intrinsic value (in terms of rights theory, Kantian duty, etc.) of that act or rule.
As a kind of paradigmatic example, let us take a potential moral conundrum in the field of genetic engineering. . . .
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37. Again for metaethics: Consciousness as the Ultimate Nonmoral Good
That good may well be precisely consciousness.
It has been attributed to World War II journalist and correspondent Ernie Pyle
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Human gestation recapitulates evolution. Thus:
Inasmuch as personhood corresponds adequately to cerebral activity (cf. no. 3, above, parag. “My core self. . . .), brain development will correspond to or constitute the development of my personhood. But fetal neurological activity does not support C2 (except, “virtually,” from the third week of the sixth month of pregnancy . . .
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Toward a Convergence of Cosmology and Metaphysics
Thus, concrete metaphysics and cosmology as yet tend toward convergence completely, and only, in the human person at C2. Here cosmology and metaphysics completely identify materially.) As the course of evolution continues, through consciousness in higher exponents, evolution continues to represent the full (and only--to the extent that matter evolves quantitatively) convergence of concrete cosmology and metaphysics. And now the sciences themselves enjoy perfect mutual correspondences, not only in the material identity of their proper object, but in perfect mutual correspondences formally (without alteration or confusion, in any respect and to any degree, of the formality of either).
Thanks to the phenomenon of evolution—by chance until now, “against all odds” (were that a scientific concept!)—and through the operation of the human will henceforward, cosmology and metaphysics are ever, “asymptotically,” approaching formal identity, each coming to be a science of all, “massive” and conscientizing, matter.
[SAMPLES]
Evolution and Afterlife: Toward an Honest Theology of Death
Robert R. Barr, S.T.D.
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Do not the following reflections represent an explanation of this universe, and that process, in an "acceptable unitary dimension" (Piero Camporesi’s desideratum)? The point of departure of our attempt at a synthesis of metaphysics and philosophy (including philosophical theology) is paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's extrapolation of the trajectory of evolution to the stage he regards as the “imminent” one. We here extend that extrapolation, correcting it where we deem necessary, and examining that trajectory for certain further implications, as it moves (in nondetermination) through the indefinite future toward its “asymptotic” term, infinitude+e and God.
I Compendium
of Our View of a Universe “diverging” Everlastingly, “asymptotically,” to a Pantheistic State
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To “exist” means to “exist in time and space,” the latter expression being, thus, a redundancy. Atqui, time and space are, at least distributively, finite in every respect. Atqui, a “receptacle” must be +adequate to its “content.” Therefore time and space are inadequate to “contain” God. Therefore God or C∞ does not literally “exist,” as such, as infinite. When God is properly said to “exist,” the meaning is either: God exists conceptually in (successive) time (and space) as “projected to infinity”; or else that God “exists” in a finite modality, one proportioned to the finite effects of a nevertheless per se transcendent cause. See no. 20, below, 5th-last parag.: “However (and now we return . . .).”
The “instantaneity” to which we shall be referring as “Einsteinian time” is“perceived,” or “experienced,” by a patient who is under a general anesthetic.
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+Thus, God is a process: an ever finite, very often magnificent and beneficent, very often cruel and pitifully incomplete, process. God is precisely one-over-infinity of the “asymptotic” divine total, at any stage of the evolution of the process! Or: God is now, and always will be—in our successive time--at “only” the beginning point of his/her evolution! (And as we have seen above, in our Compendium, the same will necessarily also hold true of our own, creaturely, evolution). Cf. Jung’s faulty God in “Answer to Job,” the God who “learns from Job” that he must become a human being in an Incarnation in order to have a choice between moral right and wrong. (The pollyannaish conclusion of the Book of Job is a later accretion . . .
Thus, God is the only thing that is not a being. Instead, God is a becoming.
The proposition, “God exists,” as referring to any given point in space or time, or even to all space and time, refers to an existence enjoying only a finite modality--+the existence of matter enjoying [only] finite matter.
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As “process theologians” have sometimes regarded it, God is currently in a kind of adolescence, or at some “awkward age.”
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. . . Continuously, more and more matter becomes conscious. As the twenty-first millennium gets under way, the conscientization of matter to C2 must be proceeding at a rate of some 8.5 tons per minute (see the table in no. 5, below).
The latter calculation is based on the increase in the total weight of the human species in terms not of the weight of the brain, but only of the rest of the body. Why not on that of the brain?
Science teaches that it is the human brain that is conscious, and not the rest of the body. Philosophically, however--that is, really, since philosophy is reality theory, rather than another instance of scientific, i.e., constructural, theory (theory in terms of metaphor or mental construct) it is only the rest of body that is conscious (by means of the—unconscious—brain).
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Thus again, and finally, the present life anticipates a life of sublime happiness and love, to be enjoyed by all matter, including the macroparticles that are the individual human beings of yesterday, today, and tomorrow (see above, no. 4), for whom a new life dawns at the Einsteinian moment of their death.
To be is to be material.
To be material is to be the adequate vehicle of consciousness, life, love, and God.
The present essay is a study of time and eternity, and of what afterlife—that is, continued life-- is to be celebrated thanks to the continuing evolution of matter.
II Evolution: Yesterday and Today
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(When, in terms of conception, gestation, and birth, do you become a person? A rather compelling position would seem to be: When you look at your mother!—at arm’s length, and therefore at your (genetically conditioned, by natural selection) ocular focus. Here is doubtless the first moment of your “bonding,” and of your personhood, Here you may very well recapitulate the experience of the historical Adam in the first moment of his personhood, fulfilling your capacity for an “I-Thou” experience, and attaining “consciousness-squared,” reflexive consciousness, or “knowing that you know.”
(Indeed, your potentiality for personhood could be said to have passed from merely “potential” to “virtual” in the third week of the sixth month of gestation, when your encephalogram became specifically human. From that moment, you will have had all of the “psychic equipment” that you need for “reflexive consciousness,” or “consciousness squared,” although it will not be before birth that you will have the actual experience of “knowing that you know,” in the reflexive perception of “something other” from “yourself.”)
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2. We extrapolate from C2 to C3.
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3. .Basis of the extrapolation: the sweep of evolution to consciousness, and its pattern.
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There is nothing in either the mechanics or the subject of the evolutionary process to suggest a cutoff point, anywhere, for the mechanism of evolution. Nor is there anything in those mechanics or subject to suggest that we are in anything but the relatively earliest stages of evolution (in any extrapolation from C2 and C3 "through" C3+n.) What is unique in the implications for evolution of our immediate state of consciousness is that, if evolution is to continue, it will continue through the free decision of the evolving subject. It will now be willed, then engineered, then executed, all, by the evolving subject itself.
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What is to be engineered is the enhancement of consciousness, that of individual subjects of consciousness and that of collective consciousness. Of what should this enhancement consist? Altruism, and anything that contributes to altruism, will have to be “engineered”: a sense and spirit of creativity; enjoyment of matter and spirit, such as we find it in nature; the spiritual—consciousness, especially in persons, medicine (as with a defeat of AIDS, and the indefinite prolongation of human life, for instance via artificial organs and parts of organs, including the brain) and science; the defeat of the horrendous catastrophe of global warming, as also that of war (which is unimaginably worse than can be imagined by any who have not “been there,” as can readily be demonstrated from Ken Burns’s film “The War”); improving education exponentially; especially, a sense of well-being in the exercise of the human faculties; most especially, a profound satisfaction in beneficence (e.g., in the engineering of true egalitarian social justice, or the defeat of racism), acts of love and active peace, the promotion of peace in the world with true justice—giving to, sharing with, serving, embracing, comforting, and, especially, improving the corporal, mental, and emotional lot of persons--beings whose consciousness is “squared,”-- even by (genetically or otherwise) arresting or reversing the aging process, such as by transplantation, and/or by destroying or otherwise manipulating the aging gene/s, and in one or some of these ways even defeating death--colonizing (actually, by immediate personal presence and contact and/or virtually, i.e., electronically) outer space--with technology, and with all other manifestations/means of union of selves, including any acts analogous to those we perform today when we do someone a “favor” because we “care about them”; and, to be sure, the aesthetic. Then too, the recreational, and the sensual, with emphasis on emotional depths (Do I enjoy “fun”? Then try to imagine enjoying everyone’s fun!) All of this even at the cost of self-sacrifice, and all of it channeled into a unification of persons at every level. (We have been introduced to: white liberation, from serfdom and other enthrallmet; black liberation, from slavery; and women’s (and thereby men’s) liberation. What should come next? Likely, children’s liberation: genuine respect and equality for children and young adults. Following may be taken as a symbol of the need for children’s liberation. “Child” means a sexually immature person. Thus, there are no children older than puberty. And yet we continue to call post-pubertal persons “children,” “boys,” and “girls,” instead of “men” and women.” Perhaps we ought not to.
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Nietzsche’s Priincipal Thesis Verified
Thus, Nietzsche’s thesis is verified, that what all persons desire is not happiness (John Stuart Mill’s thesis—but actually, happiness is only a “spinoff” of the attainment of that which is desired), but power. (“Man does not seek happiness,” Nietzsche growled. “Only the Englishman does.”) We agree, with certain qualification. Our own thesis is that what all persons ultimately desire is the other—unification with that person in love. But unification in love, the ultimate oneness, is the ultimate possession.. But possession of an object is the ultimate power “over” that object. QED.
The greatest power is power over a person, because of the ontological excellence of the object. The greatest power over a person is, at one extreme, in the enslavement of that person,--her or his compulsion, and pretended possession. At the other end of the spectrum of power over a person is the exercise of altruism, with its necessarily implied self-surrender on the part of the subject to the object (and possession of the “other precisely as other”). The greatest altruism consists in an ontological identification of subject and object, such as occurs, directly with God and indirectly with one’s fellows, in creaturely divinization--power over very God? Well, yes!--(see below, no. 16), and in the Christian myth of the Holy Trinity (for the truth of myth, see below, no. 16).
The practice of sadism can be understood as the purest temporal demonstration of the fact that what all persons seek is actually power. The ultimate purpose of the sadist’s gratuitous cruelty is power over another person. Thus, even the pleasure of sadism—which pleasure is precisely the sadism itself!—is transcendently, limitlessly, sublimated, with all other pleasures, in the possession in love of the “other”—in possessing God, and other persons—in the unifying act that is the ultimate exercise of power, and the most beatific act, to be exercised throughout C2+n.
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Or: In love, the loving subject actually becomes—we make bold to say—numerically identical with the object loved (as presaged n the old Vaudevillian ditty, “. . . Friendship, it’s the perfect blendship . . .”?)
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Therefore even the perverse love of sadism is a drive for numerical identity. (Corroboration from psychology: Some psychologists think they have discovered that the unconscious reason children tear up bugs is not to cause them pain, but to “get into them,” get inside of them.)
Ergo this is what the sadist seeks, what any sadist, and not just the (seemingly) sadistic child, seeks to do: attain the same end as with any love, including love for God--numerical identity of subject with object.
(We recall the Nietzschean ultimate object of human willing: power.)
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II Evolution Tomorrow: Everlasting State of Blessedness
4. All persons who have ever existed will also exist in the future.
My personhood, while not the particles themselves, would be an interrelationship among my particles: a pattern of their activity. In this work, we call this interconnective energy radial . . . .
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By virtue of the open ended “interfacing” of all matter in the future, all mere things must become person. If Hume’s implication is correct that personhood is memory, then a fusing of two memories (e.g.., electronically) would yield a corporate personhood. If it is not correct that personhood is in some way memory, then personhood would be something under/overlying memory.
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By virtue of the open ended “interfacing” of all matter in the future, all mere things must become person. To cite just one (practical!) example of a thing, in this case an animal, becoming a person, surely the child's poignant query at the death of a pet, "Is there a puppy heaven?" is adequately to be answered only in the affirmative. Instead of some "play funeral," then, for the burial of a pet, why might there not be a perfectly serious one, with perhaps even a solemn prayer in the following vein?
Almighty, everlasting God,
Who hast solemnly decreed
that all flesh shall see Thy salvation:
Grant, we beseech Thee, that,
as we have loved and played with [name]
for a short while in this present life,
so may s/he be happy together with us
forever in the next,
in the vision of the glory of Thy Face.
Amen.
(Thus anticipating the conscientization of the animal to a higher exponent by virtue of a further complexification of its brain, or indeed its complexification with a person / persons, and the consequent propriety for it of a proper name. The writer even likes to fantasize that the child who has originally “owned” the pet might come to be the individual person particularly concerned to “revive/receive” it now by “interfacing” with it her/himself! (Why in the world not?)]
After all, the "puppy" is matter of the universe today, and thus must be “interfaced” matter tomorrow.
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5. Evincing the arrival of evolution at a saturation point, or critical concentration, or threshold of a further qualitative leap, the rate of the conscientization of matter is sharply accelerating.
The rate of conscientization of matter (which is the rate of the conscientization of matter to the degree of C2) today, in 2007, would seem to be in the vicinity of eight tons per minute (basically limited to the conscientization of matter to the degree C2, since the mass of matter enjoying C1 remains basically stable). (See Compendium.) Here we may invoke the analogy of the gradual heating of a volume of water to a temperature of 99o C., thus approaching 100o or the limit temperature of H2O in its liquid state at sea level: the threshold or saturation point of the temperature of water in its liquid state (critical temperature). The following table demonstrates the current suddenly sharpened acceleration of this rate, that of the conscientization of matter measured in the mass of its subject (over the last few centuries, and especially during the last few decades, a century representing some mere 0.00002 "two one-hundred thousandths" of the duration thus far of the life of C2 in the universe, and a decade, of course, representing a mere one tenth of that time).
[[Line-graph the following table.]] Estimated Rate of Conscientization of Matter in the Universe (Various sources)
[By whole-body weight. Let us recall that it not an animal’s brain that is conscious, but the rest of its body (see “State of the Question,” above, parag. “Our calculation. . . .”)]
Between 5,000,000 and 10,000 BCE: 0.0000001 tons/minute*
Between 10,000 BCE and CE 1: 0.003 tons/minute
Between CE 1 and 1650: 0.012 tons/minute
Between CE 1650 and 1750: 0.190 tons/minute
Between CE 1750 and 1850: 0.+9 tons/minute
Between CE 1850 and 1950: 1.312 tons/minute
Between CE 1950 and 1970: 5.062 tons/minute
Between CE 1970 and 1978: 7.653 tons/minute
Between A.D. 1978 and A.D. 2007: some 9.0 tons/minute [world population in 1995 = 5.7 billion]
If, as has been reckoned, the population of the world in 10,000 BCE was only some 10 million persons, population growth throughout the 5,000,000 years since the appearance of homo sapiens (not homo sapiens sapiens) by then must have averaged only two persons a year!
A line graph of the above statistics would show a relatively gradually ascending curve culminating in a virtual right angle upturn in our own era.
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7. What could be the place of an electronic consciousness or its successors in C1+n? Could a computer, say, or battery of computers, be conscious?
For example, could a computer some day not only work a problem, but enjoy doing so? Yes, in either of two widely differing hypotheses: (1) if that battery of interfaced computers were to be as complex as, say, the brain (or ganglion) of a conscious organic (carbohydrate) being; or (2) if it that computer were to be electronically “interfaced” with, say, the brain or pre brain of a human being or other conscious or pre-conscious organic being.
The interim privilege of carbohydrates as the seemingly sole subject of consciousness is owing not to any particular "smarts" on the part of carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen, of course, but to an accident of their collective valences.
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8. . . . “God” includes all finitudes, including feminine/masculine.
This will obtain in virtue of the metaphysical principle that an effect must be (in a qualified and particular way) “pre-contained” in its cause (which has been paraphrased colloquially, “You can’t give what you haven’t got”).
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Indeed, our view posits a "Jungian God," if we may so speak, such as appears in C. G. Jung's "Answer to Job." There, God is attributed moral evil, or, at least, amorality, and the consequent need to conscientize His unconscious material (which, according to Jung, ibid., He proceeds to do via His incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth).
9. The time intervals between qualitative evolutionary leaps grow shorter.
The time intervals between C2 and C3, C3 and C4, and so on, rapidly shrink with each new leap. We base our assertion on an extrapolation from the lapses of time during which C1 and C2 have prevailed (5,000 million years, and 5 million years, respectively), or perhaps C0, C1, and C2 (15,000 million years, followed by the succeeding two intervals). Thus, it comes as no surprise that it is relatively so promptly that [our current evolutionary state].comes to its saturation point (in a ratio of 1,000:1 vis-Ã -vis the time interval immediately preceding).
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Evolution happens by pure chance. A thoroughgoing analysis of all of the "probabilities" at play, could such an analysis be made, would demonstrate that evolution proceeds in all of its "throws" strictly according to the same probabilities as does Einstein’s“honest game of dice.”
God’s causality is transcendent; and therefore the argument against the existence of God from the (indisputable) fact that “we are here by the sheerest chance, against inconceivable odds” is unsound. Analogously: a student one asked his philosophy professor, apropos of a discussion of the transcendence of the First Cause, whether a certain wonderful experience that he had had (indeed a purely coincidental one) had (indeed) been “a coincidence”--:or did God do that?” The professor’s response (correct, in the traditional scholastic view and in our own, came): “That was a coincidence. [Pause . . .] God did that.” [Pause . . Then, rhetorically:] “Well, could you cause a coincidence?”
(“Why” does a porcupine have quills? Coincidentally, that’s why. It has quills because, simply, had an ancestor not had quills, the porcupine species would have no quills, and gone extinct for lack of this survival mechanism, and the current porcupine about which the question “Why quills?” is being asked, would simply not be. THERE IS MO “FINAL CAUSALITY” IN NATURE, EXCEPT AS WILLED BY THE HUMAN BEING. The question “Why,” therefore, as a question about sub-human nature, must refer only to “efficient” causality—“Why” can only mean, “What is the mechanism of the coming-to-be of the thing or phenomenon?”—and not to any imagined “final” causality or “purpose.”)
Thus, there has been no compelling or impelling force, in the mechanics of the phenomenon of evolution, except that of the attraction of matter for matter. But, beginning with the present stage of that evolution, and throughout C2+n, evolution must be actively engineered and impelled, by that species of attraction of matter for matter called love. And of course love is not compelling, invincibly impelling though it be. Thus also, any further exponent of "consciousness-squared,” including impending C3, must and will occur without determinism.
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III Demonstrations
15. Our prognostication of further evolution is not deterministic.
Now that consciousness squared, which comports free will, has been attained, any further evolutionary leap must needs be a product of the exercise of the evolving subject's free will.
Any evolving subject, in attaining to a higher level of being or higher species, continues to maintain the “constitutive essentials” of its former being as well.
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Thus, the evolving subject C2 is to be transformed into C3 precisely in that subject's current quality as C2--precisely as human consciousness, and therefore precisely as endowed with free will. Thus, the leap to C3 can only emerge from an act of the free human will. Heavily “pressured” as it may be, that free act will not be simply determined any more than a person fleeing our burning building is simply determined to do so in the sense of somehow never actually deciding to.
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(Dare we say?—Were there to be such a thing as a “virtual-altruism room,” in which the subject upon entering would begin to receive, generated electronically, the same electro-biochemical processes in his/her brain as are at hand in an actual act of altruism—then the sensations and emotions at hand would now be no more possible to neglect in subsequent acts of her/his life, day by day and year by year, than it would be possible to omit the free decision to flee the burning building of our analogy in no. 2, above, parag. beginning “Here let us remark.” Only, now, absent the electronic effects of the virtual altruism room, only actually altruistic acts of the free will would produce these satisfying effects. (In other words, the will of the erstwhile occupant of the electronic virtual altruism room would henceforward be relatively “helpless,” concretely, to perform selfish acts—precisely because the (an) altruistic act occasions so much more self- satisfaction than does the selfish one!)
(And convicted transgressors could be sentenced to a stint in the altruism room!)
Less efficacious, ceteris paribus, will be unilateral love . . . .
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What is love? Love is appetition for another person precisely "in that person's otherness." It need not always entail “self sacrifice,” in the colloquial sense of the expression. Of course, it will be “ready” for that self sacrifice, should the beloved's interest, in his or her concrete personhood, suggest the good of it
Even more concretely, what deeds will be authentically those of love? They will of course be those that most enhance the personhood of others. Therefore the mightiest, in the concrete moment, may be: the extirpation of a structural poverty and other physical misery, beginning with the abolition or correction of an economic system, our particular capitalist one, that automatically widens the gap between rich and poor (nowadays even "transnationally”). In tandem, one desiderates an international justice-and-peace organ that could function more effectively.
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. . . Mozart's "Et Incarnatus" (“Mary rocking her Baby”—Louis Cyr, S.J.) from the Grosse Messe, with attention to the text; for children, a new pet, or a roller-coaster ride. All of this will make life ring with new meaning, engendering a subconscious desire for "more" life. And, of course, C3 will be a (paragonal) instance of "more" life.
Even such an ultra-short “list” of transcendent experiences could very well include the Russian Liturgy (Mass), especially (but not only) for its (whollychoral) music, perhaps the most beautiful of all sacred music.
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The leap to C3 may be seen by human beings as the sole alternative to the destruction of their species, we grant. It may begin to be implemented at the moment, doubtless mere decades hence, when a terrorist will be able to hold a "home made nuclear bomb" to today's collective human head and thus “take it hostage.” Even before the date of this writing, a high schooler in Wisconsin was able to draw up complete plans for such a weapon on the basis of his amateur scientific knowledge. He lacked, for its actual creation, only weapons grade fissionable material. The terrorist will need to overcome that lack only once. (In C3, there will be no pernicious secrets: it will be neither feasible nor desirable to “keep a secret” from oneself!
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Corollary: “When someone dies that you love very much, she is no longer wherevef she was; now she is wherever you are” . . . As someone has put it, “You not only hold her in your heart, you hold her in your arms.”
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The truth or doctrine of "heaven" (in most Western languages, the same word is used for “heaven” as for “sky”) in the sense of a life apart from matter, is mythical. All religious enunciations or truths are mythical, since, although finite, they enunciate the transcendent (God, evil, and so on), whose “concept(s)” they are incapable either of containing, or, therefore, of expressing literally.
Truth of Myth
Thus, there are three sorts, or species, of narrative discourse. There is fiction, in which concepts and the words enunciating them do not (per se) correspond to reality. (Thus, we pass over the case of metaphor.) There is fact, in which those (finite) concepts--and words—correspond to finite realities. Finally, there is myth, in which finite concepts and words correspond to transcendent reality--reality whose surmise arises in the human unconscious, but is “unenunciable” there, precisely because it is unconscious—and thereupon is also “unenunciable” consciously, since it is transcendent: “too big” for a concept, such as God, good, evil, and so on.
Or: Fiction consists of nouns, verbs, etc., that name things not actually existing.
Fact consists of nouns, verbs, etc., that name actual things.
Myth consists of nouns, verbs, etc., that, as it were, nickname “things” that cannot be named because they “transcend” the finite, which alone can have a name.
To put the same thing even more succinctly: Myth considers a transcendent reality and gives it an immanent “nickname.”
(Examples: Is there a “God”--or a “Zeus”? No, but just wait until you see what there is instead! Did Mary of Nazareth “come down to Fatima”? No, but just wait until you see what she did instead, unenunciable because transcendent. In both instances, the reality transcends its literal discourse.
(Or: Not literally . . . but nevertheless!)
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(The realities of fact are in successive time. The realities of myth are in “instantaneous,” Einsteinian time.)
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17. Being almighty and all good, God rights all evil, in the reality with which that evil is endowed in the collective “actualizing memory” of C2+n. Indeed, God does simply everything for the creature.
God herself is infinitely sorrowful at the occurrence of evil. Think of the Iranian twins . . . .What a horrible evil. And yet less evil than a million other evils, in the history, and present, of humanity. Hundreds of witches were subjected to sadistic rape and sex torture and then burned alive. And God cannot “stand” it. It tears His heart out.
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(As the author has heard, in identical words, from two different mystics (from the one directly, and from the other indirectly) of the two distinct genders, on two different continents, in widely separated decades, have both put it: “Everything will be all right—and already is.” A mystic is a person who confronts God not only indirectly, as in prayer, liturgy, or reading, and so on, but also directly—as it were, face to face,
(Your little girl awakens from a nightmare, weeping. You catch her up in your arms. “Don’t cry, dear. Everything’s all right!”
(Everything’s all right? With wars,genocides, disease. . . .You complete the list. (Take your time. You’ll need it.)
(“Oh, you respond. I didn’t mean everything’s all right, I meant, ‘It’s all right, dear--it was only a dream!’”
(Oh, it’s all right, is all you meant. Why didn’t you say that, then? Last night you did! Do you know something you’re not telling--not even telling yourself?)
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Thus, Dostoevsky’s case (intended as an attack on the existence of divine providence and of God—an attack he elsewhere counters, leaving it quite intentionally to the reader to decide) of the mother who, in Christian doctrine, is expected to forgive her son’s torturer in the afterlife . . . No, according to Dostoevsky, she MAY NOT (ought not to), indeed CANNOT (is unable to) perform this act of forgiveness--forgive this (now altogether repentant) person not only for her own pain that he has caused, but also for the pain and death he has caused her child. Dostoevsky’s proposition here is that such forgiveness would be intrinsically evil and, indeed, self-contradictory—for the pain of her child is so personally his that she cannot touch it.
In our own view, the torturer is now (in the collective persona of the future) identical with the child (as well as with the mother), and he “remembers,” on both a mental and an “existential” level--along with "everyone else" remembering--his foul deed in all of its heinousness. The evil that he has perpetrated is now virtual (or actual?) reality present to him—all about him and, indeed, permeating him—“forever.” Nor is this pain punishment, but merely cause-and-effect at its most simple and most direct. Therefore not only are there no purposes in nature, but neither are there any finite purposes for nature, except such extrinsic ones as the rational will may assign it.
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Therefore there is no natural moral law. A creature, whether a tree that might of course be cut down, or a sex organ, that might generate pleasure or a baby, is being used morally provided only its use not contravene God’s infinite purpose for nature—that purpose being the only actual infinitude, the divine substance—love.)
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Ultimately she has to watch him put the gun to her head and pull the trigger, never even realizing that those who have loved her may well be deprived, through the concealment of her corpse and/or the scattering of her skeleton, of even closure or a final memorial service, or ritual burial.
Now she will never know the experience of giving or receiving a gentle, considerate, loving sexual touch . . . .
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Formally the most cruel and most heinous of the intrinsically evil elements applied by the agent will have been the display of the gun (with the promise of her life in return for perfect obedience), by whose means the victim has been constrained deliberately to further her own violation, moment by moment, without ever having to be pushed or pulled, terrified and imploring, from entering the car or truck at her home, to leaving it again at the location of her confinement, and throughout all of the rest of the motions commanded her by her captors.
Here, let us be honest, we have consensual rape . . .
Perhaps we ought to apologize to the reader for our realism in much of the present discourse. We hope that it will have been seen to be necessary for a full “existential” understanding of the fate of both the criminal and the victim after death, which we shall consider below , , , ,
Nor may we omit a consideration of the suffering of her family and friends. Her mother and father, with this needle of steel in their heart day after day, night after night, for life. (Her mother, for instance, will always feel that she is still alive!--“out there, somewhere, hurting” . . . .
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Furthermore and finally: limitlessly augmenting the degree of his guilt, by “factoring” its quality, the agent of the deed under consideration has been willing to assume the responsibility of thus violating both of the two key ethical norms in his condition as ontologically God (in the finite modality of his creaturely being . . . . Thus his guilt is transcendent. After all, as he knows perfectly well, he has done at least something somewhat unselfish and loving in his life—or even, perhaps, once upon a time, something marvelously unselfish.
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His hell (again, owing to his compenetration with the ontological reality of his victim—and of her ordeal as well, this time--is (A) that same everlasting forgiveness on her part, in, basically, a reversed reflection, or “mirror,” of his heaven, with her undeserved, now so excruciating, love, in her benign, compassionate smile--and (B) his everlasting objective compenetration with his act, in all of its actual and existential reality--in the full realism of all of the details of her suffering undergone, with all of its injustice, cruelty, and pain—and with all of the subjective evil, as well, of his intention, comprehension, volition, and external act. Now his deed, burning within him like fire, crushing him like the unbearable compression of a bodily member, his deed in all of its actual reality and concrete, numerically self-identical, being, is above him, below him, to the left and right of him, before and behind him, and within him--thus, with full ontological as well as existential “real-ization” of all of the torment that he has caused his victim herself and those around her (so that now he himself actually experiences that torment, that evil—both as “agent” and now, at last as “patient”!--in his ontological compenetration of and identity with this torment, in the sheer realism of the event and the existential being of all of its evil, in all of its pain, in the concretizing, realizing (virtualizing/actualizing), collective memory of all matter: his, hers, and ours, “forever.”
In other words, unspeakable as is the suffering that he has meant to cause his victim, and that he has indeed caused her, he has nevertheless not imposed upon her anything in the least comparable to the suffering that he must now impose upon himself, spontaneously and voluntarily, in endless terrors countless times more keen—and this with an excruciating, everlasting love that finally . . . “gets it.”
Now he must weep for himself, as he recalls having, when he was a little boy, done something unselfish and loving for someone (as we reflect above)—indeed, perhaps, once upon a time, as we have suggested, something marvelously unselfish,
After all, did he not, as we say, “take it upon himself” to do the deed? That is, did he not voluntarily take the deed upon himself, once upon a time? Now the deed that he has “taken upon himself” is “upon him” literally . . . .
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Nor, again, is this punishment. But simple cause-and-effect.
Even a process God will have to live with what s/he has allowed to happen to Job or Jesus,
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Nor is this reward. It is cause-and-effect, at it most simple.
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18. The supernatural mystery of the universe also has a natural explanation.
In the 1940s, Pope Pius XII placed Henri de Lubac, S.J. under virtual house arrest, at 35, rue de Sèvres, Paris, for having published his Le Surnaturel: Following a survey of patristic thought by this superb patrologist, his book now demonstrated that no patristic tradition makes any material distinction between the natural and the supernatural! Everything natural is a supernatural, gratuitous bestowal by and of God. And everything supernatural has a natural, finite explanation.
“Natural” and “supernatural,” then, are like two sides of the same coin, rather than simply distinct things (analogously as, we might suggest, in the Aristotelian Thomistic anthropology, the human body and soul are only--really distinct--facets of a single concrete substance, that of the human composite rather than, as in Neo-Platonic (and subsequent popular theistic, down to our very day) philosophy, the human being consisting of a soul inhabiting a body in a kind of “rider horse” (Augustine) or “ghost-machine” (Ryle) relationship (which, surely, would constitute a “zombie”!).
And yet, this is wha religious persons typically maintain.
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Pope John XXIII exonerated de Lubac, created him a cardinal, and concelebrated the Eucharist with him at the Second Vatican Council.
Now, perhaps a practical conclusion from the material identity of the natural and the supernatural: Does God want our gratitude? Or, instead, only our gladness? If gratitude is, of course, owed a creaturely beneficiary—then is gratitude also owed to God? Or instead, does God, somehow, “before” bestowing a divine gift (a miracle, because a gift of God is always formally supernatural), also perform the (ontologically) antecedent miracle of rendering the recipient worthy of it? Now, wouldn’t that be a gift? (Too good? Or, instead, G. K. Chesterton’s “Too good not to be true”?) So that the more generous even a creaturely beneficiary, the less s/he wills our gratitude, and the more s/he wills our joy?
Indeed, does our transcendent value as persons, just by itself, deserve every good thing that we ever receive, from whatever source?
(Or, entirely apart, logically, from the “miracle of our worthiness” whose possibility we have just considered: Instead, surely we must simply say: God, being infinitely generous, wills only our gladness, and not our gratitude, altogether independently of any possible “worthiness” on our part.
(What does a parent want from a child, per se?--Gratitude? Or only gladness? Or only gladness in a young child, but gratitude, as well, in an older child? But the parent wants the gratitiude of the older child, this time, only for the sake of the child, and not for the sake of the parent.)
19 Our view is atheistic.
God is as different from anything we can conceive as all is from nothing. Thus, God does not “exist” in any ordinary sense of the word. The atheists have been right all along.
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20. Our view is theistic.
A "fundamentalist" atheism, however, is excluded. ("There's no God, period.").
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A series of per se ordered causes cannot be infinite. True, the concatenation of (“second”--secondary) causes in the universe is endless circular: the universe is a “perpetual motion machine,” maintaining itself in its internal movement by virtue of the impossibility of any of its energy escaping outside itself. But even an endless circle (and all circles are endless!) is not infinite: it has a limited “size.” (Or, as a student put it, it is “limited sideways.”)
Finitude cannot “explain itself,” scholastics maintain. “Tell me the (even varying) number of quarks in the universe, and I’ll ask you, ‘Why?’" (in terms not of final, but of efficient causality). “Why not one more? Why not one less?”
The causality exercised by the First Cause is transcendent. That is, in causing all causality, God “adds” no energy to the universe—the law of conservation of energy is maintained--but precisely supports the energy of the universe in all of its causality.
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Finitude cannot be self explanatory. Let the universe rest on the shell of a great turtle as it will, and that turtle on the shell of another, and another and another, still the ultimate explanation of the universe will not be "turtles all the way down," as in the celebrated, variously attributed, exchange. An infinite per se ordered causal series or “chain” would be a self contradiction.
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(Thus, it is difficult to see how there could be such a thing as a ”miracle” in the sense of an event that God would cause “all by himself,” without the intervention of creaturely causality. This would be to inject new, in principle measurable, energy into the universe, in contravention of the law of the conservation of energy. On the other hand, to define a miracle as “something that only God can do” might save miracle from relegation to the realm of the fictitious.)
And "when" is God in our universe? In a finite modality, God is present everywhere and "everywhen," in immediate compenetration with any and every spatial or temporal point, in virtue, again, of the principle, Causa et effectus sunt simul. Qua talis, as such, instead, God in His/Her (God is androgynous . . . .
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God's causality is transcendent and infinite, and is thereby the metaphysical correlate of Karl Rahner's ascetical doctrine that God is neither watching us in order to "catch us" when we err morally, nor even watching us in order to care for us, but moving in the same direction as we, a fraction of a step ahead, clearing the obstacles from our path.
21. Our view is one of an anthropological, cosmological, and theological materialistic monism.
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In résumé:
To be is to be material.
To be material is to be the vehicle of consciousness, life, and love, and the very constitution of God.
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(Thomas Aquinas’s reduction of the Neo-Platonic dualistic body-soul duality to an Aristotelian matter-form anthropology comes very close to what we are saying. For Thomas too, body and soul form one substance: for him, body and soul are the matter and form, respectively, of the single human substance—somewhat as two sides of the same coin could be thought of as completely interpenetrating.)
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On all levels of the evolutionary scale, attraction among particles begets complexification, in a “new” particle which is thereupon attracted to other particles on the subatomic level as on the macroparticular level of persons.
Teilhard held, surely correctly, that, were it not for the mutual attraction of subatomic particles, we (macro)particles would be unable to love!
23. The ultimate reality (or "definition") of matter is: ultimate vehicle of consciousness, life, and love, and the very constitution of God.
As in no. 21, above. Cf. “Compendium,” above, 4th parag., “C∞ is necessarily God. . . .”
24. We reject any theological explanation of matter in terms other than of the immediate (“direct”) “salvation” of matter.
We reject the Origenistic (and, still today, widespread popular ascetical) explanation of matter as a prison, punishment, or test of the soul, to the effect that matter, being incapable of consciousness, cannot be saved.
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We likewise reject the immaterialism of George Berkeley, in which what we perceive as external material reality, while reality indeed, is neither external nor material: rather, it is internal to the perceiving subject (soul), and is spiritual. Berkeley, and, later, on a popular level, Mary Baker Eddy, are engaging in a theodicy calculated to respond to the all but universal human concept of matter’s intrinsic unavailability to “salvation,” . . . on grounds of an inherent incapacity of matter as such for consciousness. . . . But . . . it “turns out” that matter can indeed be . . . conscious [by way of evolutionary congestion and complexification, Teilhard’s discovery].
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In our view, matter is saved directly: as conscious subject, matter has all of the privileges of God's salvific intent that are currently ascribed in traditional Western (i.e., Neo-Platonic) theism to the substantial soul (for whose reality there is no authentic evidence of any kind).
25. The problem of evil does not constitute an absolute mystery.
The problem of evil is ultimately solved in terms of a process God.
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Thus, God does not cause evil: evil, being pure nothing, neither requires, nor can have, any cause. Evil, then, for Thomas, being a privation—“nonbeing where something ought to be”—is, as a negation, nothing positive. (Existentialists—predictably enough, to their credit--have challenged Thomas to “stand at the crib side of a baby dying of leukemia and call that evil ‘nothing positive’!”) For our own part, we shall go further than, as we think, Thomas went: “Evil is pure negation”? Yes, we shall concur. But this “A proposition,” we maintain, happens to “convert,” as logicians put it! Yes, evil is pure negation; but conversely, negation is pure evil. All metaphysical negation is evil—a privation, “a nothing where something should be,” a nothing that makes you afraid, a negation that is simply the finitude of th/e universe--this awful nothing at the edges of being, this evil that makes you angry and that makes you love--this evil with its incalculable pain and unlove, with its death, wars, selfishness, injustice, unfairness, greed, accidents, . . .catastrophes and unlove such as are experienced by a mother having to watch her child die of starvation, or intentionally cast into to the flames of a her their burning home, or the unspeakable (or so it would seem) torments of terrorism erstwhile unnamed locations on the body, for which our gentle media have now appropriated the euphemistic codeword “gruesome,” or ignorance, fear, sorrow, sadism, and hopelessness--this evil, this negative, this nothing which we will not simply reject, but which we shall combat--step by step, as we evolve in the direction of the infinitude of the eschaton, while our process God rights it with us, in step with the evolution of consciousness. “All creation groans and is in travail until now” (Rom 8:22).
Yes, evil is something endowed with reality, a reality to be attacked and defeated with all of the impatience and urgency that we experience at grasping it. (But it is not a metaphysical problem.)
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How can our God actually COMMAND genocide, and the sex slavery of children, and in one and the same breath? But a “process God” does so. See Numbers 31:18, and preceding verses. Neither this nor the modern-day wars of annihilation of whole peoples are tolerable to consciousness.. We urgently need everything that we can possibly do to engineer and build collective consciousness and collective activity. And this without an exponential limit, everlastingly toward infinity. We must, we will engineer and produce this process God.
Evil prevails, yes, and we are angry. Angry enough to love.
26. No one will be compelled to accept collective consciousness.
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First, however, a short, sorrowful history by way of analogy: “Once upon a time,”—but upon a time in the future--a neurologist developed a method of incorporating foreign cells into the composition of a human brain, whereby they would join with the other cells of the brain in producing human consciousness, C2. She approached an amoeba with the offer. At first the amoeba was enthusiastic at the prospect, and about to accept—musing, what infra-human life wouldn’t wish its consciousness to be enhanced in this way?—until it learned that the transition would comport its deprivation of individuation--its numerical individuality—although not of its consciousness, which would be almost measurelessly improved--whereupon . . . it declined the offer!)
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(Thus, one no reason why the advance to C3 must needs occur in all existing individuals, or indeed in any minimum number of individuals, at a single stroke.)
No one will be compelled to accept collective consciousness, then, but the opportunity to share the thoughts, desires, pleasures, and happiness of “anyone” willing to share them will constitute as strong a motivation to enter the collectivity of consciousness as a fire is to leave a burning building.
In conclusion, another tale, this time with a happy ending. The same “meta-neurologist” as above, having survived to the future (but still in C2), has used a method of recording persons’ brainwaves during their lives, so that, after their death, via this electroencephalic code, their “selves” could be reconstituted into new brains—these being the product of the latest electronic technology, pre-crafted with all of the elements of a living brain necessary to be a person except one: precisely the neurological factors of a “self.”
One day, after she has electronically “called up” the self of a person, who, during life, has agreed to this procedure, she momentarily leaves her “keyboard.” Now her assistant shuffles in, a casual sort, notices that there is coding on the monitor, assumes that a new, “empty,” brain is ready to receive it—and downloads it into the same new brain in which the scientist has just constituted the previous “patient’s” self! Now there are two selves in one brain!
Well. When the scientist returns to her monitor, does the assistant get a dressing-down! Look what he’s done, he’s never to do that again, and now what is she going to say to the “patient”--or “patients”—when he, she, or they come into her office with two selves? But then, to the colossal relief of both, at the standard debriefing . . . lo and behold, he or she, or they, is, or are, actually . . . quite happy together! After all, now, to their astonishment and delight, not only can they “appreciate” the qualities and operations of another person, as they have done in their previous lives, but they actually share those qualities and operations--those thoughts and sensations, feelings and emotions, actions and exertions, all the rest of the consciousness of that person who enjoys these concrete attributes and performs these operations--and thus actually share both of these as well! (Talk about “getting to know you”!) And all four—well, or three--live happily ever after.
Now, as it happens, the same scientist—a remarkable one, as we gather—has also developed a method of recording brainwaves of human persons of the more distant past, reflected back to earth in minuscule, but “readable,” quantities, from heavenly bodies. Of course, these signals are inextricably intermingled, so that, until now, the scientist has refrained from downloading any of them into new brains: she would have “mingled selves,” as she says, on her hands. But now, thanks to the fortunate accident in the lab, she sees that there is no disadvantage—on the contrary!--in simply using the codes of the selves of any of the celestial reflections, intermingled though they are, in convenient quantity, to reconstitute these numerous (willing) selves in the brain of a, now, collective person! Daily, several new, complex persons report to her office, rich with some of the being and experience of each of the many persons they have been once upon a time.
And the universe proceeds apace, at the hands of loving persons such as these—by now, as it happens, very numerous over the face of the earth and its satellites.
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27. Death both (1) is and (2) is not the annihilation of the human subject . . .
. . . inasmuch as (1) it comports the collectivization in the substance of God of (and thus the abolition of the individuation of) that human subject, (2) except in its ultimate subjectivity, the ultimate subject of its awareness, its “ego.”
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Death is (2) not the annihilation of the person, especially in the sense that it is not the annihilation of the individual ego, which becomes one of the subjects of a corporate persona (throughout C2+n), and secondarily in the sense that it is not an annihilation of the individual persona or self qua integral element of the corporate persona or self.
28. The leap to C3 may be preceded by limited planetary catastrophe, such as the "small nuclear war" postulated by way of example by Dom Hélder Câmara.
Any critical evolutionary threshold, marked as it is by a critical mass at a saturation point, is typically marked by catastrophe for all of the members of the evolving species but one, which is spared for (in constructural terms) “purposes" of the survival of that species in a new, superior complexification. One hopes that, in view of the autonomous character (with its (free will) of our immimemt evolutkionary leap, such catastrophe could be "bypassed," or at any rate attenuated, so that it would not be marked by catastrophe for most of the members of our evolving species (C2) . . .
30. The entropy death ("heat death") of the universe can be averted.
The mechanics of such rescue would consist of the deliberate conversion of some of the matter of the universe into energy and the application of that energy to the work of halting . . . containing, or reversing the expansion (or other cause of the heat death) of the universe or of the conscious part(s) thereof. The rate of conscientization of matter is accelerating at a rate doubtless more than adequate to overtake the rate of universal entropy. See no. 5, above. If the universe is expanding at escape velocity, conscious matter will have to engineer an exception for itself, for example by converting some (any) matter into energy, and “retro-firing.”
An afterlife beginning at the moment of death, or, more exactly, continued from the moment of death.
For the unconscious or nonexistent subject, Einsteinian (relative) time is (objective) “instantaneity.” Atqui, the dead are nonexistent. That is, they are nothing: nothing in their graves, nothing elsewhere. They are no more anything after they have existed than they were before they existed (Dalai Lama).
34. The dialogue between Judaism and Christianity ought to proceed on a common basis of expectation of the coming of the Messiah (in C3).
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36. In ethics, in C2+n, the norm of utility ("the greatest good of the greatest number" of sentient beings) of an act or rule could no longer conceivably be at odds with the intrinsic value (in terms of rights theory, Kantian duty, etc.) of that act or rule.
As a kind of paradigmatic example, let us take a potential moral conundrum in the field of genetic engineering. . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
37. Again for metaethics: Consciousness as the Ultimate Nonmoral Good
That good may well be precisely consciousness.
It has been attributed to World War II journalist and correspondent Ernie Pyle
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Human gestation recapitulates evolution. Thus:
Inasmuch as personhood corresponds adequately to cerebral activity (cf. no. 3, above, parag. “My core self. . . .), brain development will correspond to or constitute the development of my personhood. But fetal neurological activity does not support C2 (except, “virtually,” from the third week of the sixth month of pregnancy . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Toward a Convergence of Cosmology and Metaphysics
Thus, concrete metaphysics and cosmology as yet tend toward convergence completely, and only, in the human person at C2. Here cosmology and metaphysics completely identify materially.) As the course of evolution continues, through consciousness in higher exponents, evolution continues to represent the full (and only--to the extent that matter evolves quantitatively) convergence of concrete cosmology and metaphysics. And now the sciences themselves enjoy perfect mutual correspondences, not only in the material identity of their proper object, but in perfect mutual correspondences formally (without alteration or confusion, in any respect and to any degree, of the formality of either).
Thanks to the phenomenon of evolution—by chance until now, “against all odds” (were that a scientific concept!)—and through the operation of the human will henceforward, cosmology and metaphysics are ever, “asymptotically,” approaching formal identity, each coming to be a science of all, “massive” and conscientizing, matter.
[Item 2] My new article in the current issue of The Catholic World
The Catholic World
November-December 2007 Volume 241 Number 1443
Evolution and Afterlife
Robert R. Barr, S.T.D.
Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote about evolution in terms of “congestion and complexification,” and taught that the earliest congestion and complexification of the universe, right from the moment of the "Big Bang," ought to be called evolution in the proper sense of the word.
Nanoseconds after the "Big Bang," some of the energy released by that singularity, the energy constituting the universe in its earliest stages, condensed into matter, in the form of what we call subatomic particles. Then these microparticles congested and complexified for fifteen billion years until all evolution so far had taken place, up to our own, reflexively conscious, species, inclusive.
Our human species alone "knows that it knows" and has reflexive consciousness, "consciousness of consciousness" or what Teilhard called "consciousness squared." The human brain is the organ by which an entity is "conscious that it is conscious" and is distinctive from other living organisms.
Upcoming Leap
Now matter is ripe for another leap. The trajectory of evolution can and will now proceed apace if the first "particles" of matter to be endowed with intelligence and free will, would have it that way and could presently make the leap to "consciousness cubed" We could interpenetrate one another, and thus generate a collective, corporate consciousness or person.
How is this so? Primarily through technology and altruism, it would be consciously intended by us, and "engineered." Any evolving species retains its essential qualities; consider the skeleton of subhuman members of the animal kingdom. Intelligence and free will are our most essential components and attributes. Therefore, in the upcoming evolutionary leap, they must abide. In God's providence, and transcendent First Causality, we shall be creating our own afterlife.
It would be desirable and indeed, it would be a "consummately blissful state, from which we could not fall back" (Teilhard). Altruism would now be the essential quality of our every thought and action as well as being the pinnacle of self-love. After all, I now am my neighbor! No more hatred, wars, genocides. Only uninhibited creativity. Essentially what we call "heaven"! (In many languages, the word for "heaven" means simply "sky.")
Nietzsche's Truth Amended
Nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche despised the moral philosophy of English ethicians, Jeremy Bentham and the Mills, father and son, John and John Stuart, who taught that "man's" highest good must be "happiness," since happiness is for what all men seek and strive. Thus. the morality of your act is to be measured simply by the net happiness (your own and/or others') secured by your act, as balanced against any unhappiness that may result from the same.
"Man does not seek happiness," Nietzsche growled, "only the Englishman does!" What persons actually desire, according to Nietzsche, is power . Consider an examination of Nietzsche's thesis.
The greatest power, of course, will be power over persons . Hitler misinterpreted Nietzsche to the effect that, for Nietzsche, power is oppressive, totalitarian power, and took the philosopher as a guru of his own. The greatest power is power over persons . But the greatest power over persons will be possession of persons. However, the most complete possession of persons is altruism!
Paradoxically, living and teaching as he did in the final century before the advent of contemporary psychology, Nietzsche probably could not have discerned this. Altruism is love of another person for the sake of that other person, and not for one's own sake.
What is the deep thrust of this unselfish love-this self-abandoning love? The desire for identity with this object, this person loved.
There, then, would be the ultimate power-the ultimate good, we think, according to Nietzsche's own thesis: selfless identification with the other
person.
This is what occurs, to an extent, in the phenomenon of altruism. Thus, altruism is consummate love. "Love is intentional identification with the other." ("In- tent -ional," etymologically, means "by tending, by thrust"-here, of the mind and the will).
Evolution is Love
Altruism begins, then, as an intentional identity among persons and it culminates in an ontological identity among them. In the phenomenon of a collective consciousness, persons are
identified with one another. Self-love (now perfectly selfless) and altruism become one and the same. The trajectory of evolution "extrapolates" straight for a collective consciousness.
Humanity now stands on the brink of the qualitative evolutionary leap. Communication among persons is at the speed of light: 186,000 miles per second, radio, television, "the web.", supersonic transportation. Presently, we must act. How? Via our electro-encephalic waves, "caught" by our so rapidly advancing technology, and via altruism. we must become "intentionally" one.
However, a paramount altruism effects an ontological identification of subject and object, as in creaturely divinization.
Creaturely Divinization
Every "Father" (great theologian) of the Greek Church taught a literal, ontological (metaphysical) "divinization": the transition by which a human being becomes God. They ascribed this astounding gift of God to us by virtue of God's omnipotence and all-goodness, by which God bestows on creatures every possible good, every good short of internal contradiction (such as a "square circle" would be an internal, "intrinsic" contradiction). They attributed the causality of this phenomenon to the supreme miracle of the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ ("God became the human being in order that the human being might become God-Saint Irenaeus of Lyon). Thus, they regarded the Incarnation, which condition they regarded as both the model and the "efficient cause" of our divinization.
Now, it is an important teaching (a "theologoumenon") of the Eastern Church that has been ignored and suppressed alternately in the the West), may be summarizes in the following way.
Eschatologically, that is, "after the end of the ages, "in heaven," God deprives the human person of all of one's being except the Jungian ego, the "raw subject of awareness" as modified by life experiences, and replaces it with the substance of God. Now the creature knows, wills, and acts, with the knowing, willing, and acting of God, all of which are God's substance.
Temporally, that is, in the present life, God endows the human being with free will. Now the creature wills and acts as God, even in the present life. After all, it is contrary to the very definition of our being to work primarily not for its own good but for the good of another. However, this is exactly what we do, to the extent of our tiny, finite capacities, in an act of altruism! Therefore, at that moment, and to that extent, we must be working as God.
Some Implications for Consideration
Eternal retribution
In our view, the moral good and the moral evil that you will have performed in your life will secure its eternal own retribution in the afterlife. It will not be by reward or punishment but by simple cause and effect.
In the afterlife, owing to our collective consciousness, we all share with all of our fellow human beings the "memory" of what anyone has experienced in the present life. Thus, our deliberate, intentional deeds are vividly present to us and to everyone else—and by virtue of our quantum-enhanced “memory,” not only vividly, but virtually (or even actually?)!
God's annihilation of evil
How is the existence of evil, moral or "natural" (such as a deadly earthquake) to be reconciled with God's perfect goodness, knowledge, and power?
Surely this reconciliation is to be effected through the "process
theology" of God's being or rather, of God's becoming. God is "evolving" along with ourselves. This is the only way objectively to account for the existence of evil.
At the risk of over-simplification, consider as an example of process theology, the interpretation by Carl Jung, Freud's famous collaborator, of the Book of Job in the Old Testament.
According to Jung, after Job has successfully completed his trial, through his abiding faithfulness to God in spite of all the evils that the devil has inflicted upon him (with God's permission), the fact is not lost on God that, while Job has been moral, he, God, has not been (in permitting the devil to impose such evil on Job). Now God realizes that, in order to be moral, as Job has been, a being must be a created being, such as a human being. Thus, it is impossible for God ever to have been moral up until now. This is why there is such a thing as evil in the universe. Paradoxically, God is imperfect in successive time.
God "corrects" this circumstance, according to Jung, by becoming a created being indeed, a human being by becoming Jesus of Nazareth in the Incarnation. With the evil of creation thus accounted for, how can we posit God's annihilation of all evil by virtue of the divine omniscience, omnipotence, and all-goodness? By withdrawing from the negative reality of evil the divine First Causality of its occasions.
Einstein has shown that our occasional apprehension of time as instantaneous, for instance under a general anesthetic, is objectively justified. In such an instance, time seems instantaneous to the patient, and, Einstein has shown, indeed it is, by virtue of the relativity of time. For example, the surgical team may insist that the operation last for four hours whereas the patient's perception is the instantaneity of the operation. Time is relative to the observer.
In the divine, timeless eternity, God annihilates all evil, physical and moral, by withdrawing from it the divine First Causality of its occasions, as the latter have existed during the successive time of the existence of temporal creation,. God will not thereby annihilate the good that may come as a result of evil, since that good, once produced, has its own, positive, reality, independently of the evil that has produced it.
Conclusion: An Everlasting Moment of Gladness
Our individual being, our "self" consists of a pattern of neurological impulses . These are not the impulses themselves, or even the nerve cells that produce them, as these are transitory, whereas the "self" endures of the billions of electrochemical (neurological) impulses constantly being produced by our millions of nerve cells, in the brain, and throughout the rest of the body, wherever there is sensation or motor capacity. A prime component of this pattern is our abiding memory .
In the limitless time of the future course of the life of our universe, our personal, individual patterns must be repeated, by virtue simply of probability ("law of averages") and the limitless duration of time. They can also be repeated by virtue of the unimaginably improved capacities of science, using as a "code" our brain waves, which, like any waves, expand without dying out, and are trapped in the universe, reflected from one celestial body to another.
Thus we live on-engulfed in the divinizing substance of God, in perfect love and joy. Adapting the words of St. Paul, then: "Glory to him who can do more-no, far more-than we can ask-no, even imagine."
Robert R. Barr holds a doctorate in theology from the Institut Catholique de Paris (Catholic university of Paris), along with post-graduate degrees in philosophy and theology from Saint Louis University. He has taught at Fordham University and the University of Connecticut.
©2007 The Catholic World. Published by Paulist Press. All rights reserved.
No materials from this online journal are to be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Is the above post... serious?
Robert Barr, I suggest you check out Mr Bransford's FAQs or agency's website. I also suggest you up your ms from 37k words. Submitting your query via blog comment is...
well.
Anyway, just wanted to comment that I'm in the "said" camp as well, although I do occasionally use other words.
It irritated me in a writing paper at university when our lecturer did a similar thing, with said and non-said examples, and asked which we preferred. I preferred the "said" version, but apparently he was trying to convince us the other route! He said it was much more interesting that way. I think it just reads as a much clunkier text.
I tend to be in Mary Paddock's camp - I often use gestures to illustrate how they're talking, if it's a scene that can be safely slowed down.
Here's how I like attributions:
70% 'said' and 'asked'
5% 'said' with an adverb. (The adverb is usually 'sarcastically' because there's some times when a comment could be taken straight or sarcastically.)
20% stage directions or no attribution.
5% non-said, non-asked attributions. I'm picky about which ones I use, though--only whispered, shouted, replied, and continued are allowed.
These are ballpark figures, but I think those percentages would work because you can throw in the occasional, judicial 'sadism' when necessary without fearing the wrath of the Gods of Literary Judgment.
Wow. I'm glad I'm not an agent today. I like my inbox to have just a few emails in it, all from people I already know, and none of them more than a few hundred words. Unless my sister is going to tell me why she HAS to break up with her boyfriend, and my mom is upset, because she never even met him...you get the point. Things that are interesting.
can that long-ass submission comment be deleted? Seriously, I had to scroll for almost two minutes to get to real comments again.
jenna-
I would, except that I feel it's a fairly educational look into an agent's inbox. More like a cautionary tale, but educational all the same.
Oh hey. 2 years later and people are still leaving comments for this post. It's like what Stephen King said in his book On Writing. Writing is actually telepathy. You transcend time and space, you weave an image and people you've never seen will see it. Nathan, you should be proud of yourself. You're a telepath!
So, anyway. I used to hate using 'said' all the time. I felt it repetitive. I went creative with all the substitutes.
Then I started reading books on writing, and all of them encourage the 'A' Camp. 'Said' is used to identify who the speaker is. Use the dialogue itself to convey your tone, your message. Show, don't tell. Also, use actions to create breaks in the dialogue so it doesn't feel like ethereal beings are conversing, but not in every line that it stalls the flow of the dialogue.
That being said, the books also state that rules are meant to be broken, if you know them in the first place.
Now, I either don't use ["..." (Character) said] at all, or I use [said]. And when needed, I use something like [whispered]. And I find that my storytelling has improved, partly because of this.
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I say, Mary is a telepath as well. I almost got a cardio laughing at her interpretation of Nathan's Top Gun snippet as an X-Men conversation.
Iceman doesn't use a shield, by the way. Not usually. He builds an ice wall to fend off attacks. But this move gets nullified with characters like Pyro.
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Quoted from John B:
Throw me in the said shed, too, for the most part, but, obviously, sometimes you don't need even said at all and sometimes you need more.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Vinnie asked.
but maybe this doesn't convey the correct tone for this specific statement, so sometimes...
"What the hell are you doing here," Vinnie whispered.
maybe even...
"What the hell are you doing here?" Vinnie whispered loudly.
because a loud whisper is a distinct type of whisper, a silly one, but distinct...
so probably not...
"What the hell are you doing here?" Vinnie whispered quietly.
because this is a standard issue whisper.
Methinks, instead of all that, why not this:
"What the hell are you doing here?" Vinnie hissed.
People would register the act 'hissing' as a loud whisper, probably with an angry and/or surprised note, and it also conveys the mood.
In Strunk and White, as well as in other books, the authors always say that every word counts. Choose the ones that best convey your message.
That being said, I now follow the 'said' camp, but not strictly. I love breaking rules, after all.
And Nathan, I thank all the monkeys that yanked my cardboard-colored paper camera off my hands when I was in Primary School for leading me to your blog.
Oh. I thank you as well for writing this blog.
Y(>.<)Y
Cheers!
Fadz.
Oh. Sorry for the deleted comments.
I'm now so used to type -> read -> edit -> preview -> edit -> post -> edit -> read -> edit -> repost -> FUHGEDDABOUDIT!
A bad habit, I know. But at least I love editing and rewriting. That counts for something, doesn't it?
Rowling is firmly in camp B. Depends on the class of fiction . . . and how many books you want to sell I suppose ;-).
As a reader, I have to disagree with Camp A, and firmly say that Camp B is the better way to go. While it often is apparent, I find it excruciatingly annoying to see words repeated often. A perfect example: a friend recently recommended I read the book Graceling. She raved about the book, claiming an amazing plot is amazing, stellar character development, with the only downfall being some repetitive dialog. If I had finished the book, I'd probably agree. I really tried, but after counting over 100 instances of said by roughly chapter 5 (I can't recall now), I just couldn't finish the book. Readers aren't idiots (because idiots don't read). Readers don't need to reminded with repetitive instances of said. Leave repetition to marketing and advertising.
A! A! A!
But once in awhile if things are really heating up it's nice to use a word like "hissed" or my personal favorite "grated." Also a "whispered" every now and then; the reader can't always tell that.
The headings of all the comments here is _______ SAID!!!!
Has no one enumerated this thusfar?
My son is 9 and I'm interested to see that creative writing as taught according to the British national curriculum encourages the kids to use as many different words instead of said as possible...shouted, exclaimed, murmured, whispered the works, plus tons of adverbs and adventurous punctuation.
I'm not sure when they teach them to take it all out, but he's always getting homework where he has to replace all the 'saids' in dialogue with 'more interesting words'.
Anyway, I prefer 'said' or nothing at all, but I'm quite fond of adverbs. The occasional 'grimly' or 'morosely' is fine I think.
Oh, and I loved the God query. You should definitely represent him, Nathan - she said,sarcastically.
Points for Buttonman88,for giving a great proof of the invisibility of the word "said" (I never noticed them even when I was following the responses/multiple posts).
I feel people can get away with B as long as it's backed by great writing. And very few writers are/were in the level of greatness.
For now, I personally would be sticking with the A style.
Thanks for the very informative comments.
What about Stephenie Meyer? She's a prime example of someone who uses just about every expression except 'said' in her Twilight saga. I vote for Option A myself, but I just wonder why Option B works so well for others? <- rhetorical question btw.
I know I'm a little late to comment on this, but found it in a link on your latest post and just had to join in the discussion!
I prefer to use "said" (or any variation) when it's necessary to clarify who's speaking and there's no action or movement going on. Usually, if there's only two people speaking, I'll clarify who's talking first then alternate quotes assuming that the reader will know who's saying what. I'll add a bit of action from the person speaking to help paint the picture of the dialog and keep the reader certain of who's speaking. Using your example:
"You two really are cowboys," Iceman spat at him.
"What's your problem, Kazanski?"
"You're everyone's problem. That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous."
"That's right! Ice.... man." Maverick leaned close to Iceman, whispering for added effect. "I am dangerous."
...that's just me, though.
From a review of The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
The New York Times, March 11, 1990
…Aside from penning such panting prose, Mr. Ludlum has other peculiarities. For example, he hates the ''he said'' locution and avoids it as much as possible. Characters in ''The Bourne Ultimatum'' seldom ''say'' anything. Instead, they cry, interject, interrupt, muse, state, counter, conclude, mumble, whisper (Mr. Ludlum is great on whispers), intone, roar, exclaim, fume, explode, mutter. There is one especially unforgettable tautology: '' 'I repeat,' repeated Alex.''
The book may sell in the billions, but it's still junk.”
I prefer said, or body language, or nothing at all for the punchier passages of dialogue (I know, I know...all dialogue should be punchy.)
Cheers,
Sheryl
Four years later, people are still commenting on this.
My memory of this phenomenon is from reading Hardy Boys books. For some reason, Chet Morton - who is a little on the chubby side - always "chortles," rather than speaks. "You guys are so lame," Chet chortled. Cheezy and alliterative at the same time, it bothered me even at a young age.
By the way, kudos to Nathan for posting a topic that can still be commented on 2.5 years in. I wish I had that knack with my own blog...
Maybe I am in the unenlightened class of writers but here is another variation I would like add.
Character said, "Some space monkey."
As opposed to
"Some space monkey." Character said.
Right, wrong, less preferred?
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