We would like to
believe light will triumph over darkness and that eventually good will
prevail. Not by itself, not in any
abstract sense. Would that it were
always so. It takes more than good intentions.
It must have
been extremely difficult in the mid-19th century for Claude Bernard,
the founder of modern experimental medical science, to have realized he was
largely right in his views about the nature of living things, including people,
while surrounded by powerful men in theological and government positions who
denied that reality. They were
threatened by the idea the vital forces they believed residing in each person,
with which they were embued by God, often a very fearsome God, were in charge
of our actions, not actions of our brain, nerves, hormones and muscles. They were committed to ethereal worlds inaccessible to ordinary
people, denying the objective alternative reality Bernard presented to them. Persistence against such opposition has not
for the faint of heart, for representatives of church throughout Europe had a
long history, not only suppressing such knowledge, but literally destroying
those who professed it, from Copernicus to Darwin, the latter of whom the Vatican Council
would have recommended for excommunication had he been a member of the Roman
Church. That conflict continues
virulently even today in the US, much to the dismay of much of modern developed
countries.
 |
| Illustration from Attwood's Oryx and Crake |
The
current conflict between the materially powerful and the rest of Western society
is a continuation of that tradition dating to the trial and execution of
Socrates. Throughout the early the Dark
Ages, Central and Southern Europe was divided into areas controlled by
feudal lords. There was no urban life as such. There were many barbaric tribes
and loyalty was to one’s tribe, not to a country, as is still true in much of
the Middle East. They had no written literature, and runes were used for
monuments. They operated as
city-states, similar to that imagined by Margaret Atwood in Oryx and Crake. In Attwood’s world, powerful corporations
instead of Medieval War Lords ruled the city states. There was no concept of the long-term
consequences of unbridled greed, which has become a disturbingly familiar story
today. Political control by any means,
including unconstitutional means, is a vehicle to economic control.
In a
world run by greedy men and women seeking to garner control over others for
their own advantage, the reality of the actual consequences of unbridled
selfish human actions, always take second place. In
the 18th century, a series of letters were published in the London Public Advertiser under the assumed name
Junius, who it is believed was actually Sir Philip
Francis, an Irish-born British politician and pamphleteer.
The Letters of Junius were a
source of inspiration to many, including those in the American colonies. In his letter No. 35 dated Dec 19, 1769
Junius wrote, “When once a man is determined to believe, the very
absurdity of the doctrine confirms him in his faith.” He went on to write, “There
is a moment of difficulty and danger at which flattery and falsehood can no
longer deceive, and simplicity itself can no longer be misled.”
Perhaps we are reaching such a point today in the
United States of America. Just perhaps
we are coming to understand, as Wizlawa
Szymborska remarked, "All
the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its
primacy….."
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