My mind, still trying to process the attitudes I
encounter online, turns to my friend Dr TransHuman who got into the newspapers
a few days ago because of her latest book – ‘Goth professor says, Stop breeding
to save the Earth’. While I come from a very different place ideologically, not
only do I think nobody deserves the death threats she got, but I also suspect
she has a bit of a point. There are a lot of human beings about, and we don’t
necessarily need lots more. Then again, yesterday I shared a table at the café opposite
the church with a lady who told me her large brood of five daughters reflected
a fear of loneliness that had dogged her for many years. Many of the people I
know have experiences of life which are more marginal than they realise; but
so, to a degree, are mine.
In a way, I live a life which is more similar to the way
most people once did. Swanvale Halt is not just the place I sleep; I spend the
great majority of my time in it and I know some hundreds of its people to some
extent: the congregation and their extended contacts, business owners and
workers, teachers, schoolchildren, and their families. They behave pleasantly
to me and I strive to do the same, and often I get some insight into their
habits, struggles and thoughts. They are very varied, apart from sharing the
same geographical location. This used to be quite close to common experience,
when people lived surrounded by a network of acquaintance, work and family, but
now it’s almost wildly off-centre. This is especially so if you’ve moved
halfway across the country, and perhaps changed countries, to come to London
and work there; but even if you haven’t, the stability of communities and the
opportunities for casual interactions of the kind that generate fellowship are
much weakened from the way they used to be. It’s my bizarre position as parson
which opens the possibility of something different, an older way of living, and
which allows me to move between different sub-groups within my community and
interact with them all. It is true that my relationships with most of these
people are, necessarily, relatively superficial. But they are not nothing, and
when interacting with the people I don’t know that well, I tend to extrapolate
from the experiences of those I do know something about, and to extend the love
and generosity I try to have for them.
Now, many people I know don’t have experiences which are anything
like this. If they are remote from family, geographically or emotionally (and
many are), they will perhaps interact with a relatively small group of
co-workers, and for the rest of the time move past a mass of anonymous souls
about whom they know nothing apart from fleeting impressions. They have no idea
who they are, where they have come from or where they are going, what stresses
they may be under or what they may be looking forward to. They are unknown.
If your life is like this, your main relationships will be
with friends (including partners) and pets. The latter in particular are very
likely to bias you against the anonymous human beings who rush past you in your
daily life. They will make no demands on you except very obvious physical ones,
and will never have any needs that you will struggle to meet. They will never
tell you you’re wrong, and never have a disagreement with you. You can project
anything you like onto them, and say anything to them; you can insult them or
coo over them, and they will react to you the same way; the basic nature of
their existence will never challenge you or your ideas. They are utterly
uncomplicated and that’s their appeal, though the idea leaves me a bit cold. I
am very sceptical about human beings’ ability to read animal thoughts and
emotions: most of the time (and I know I do this as I watch and occasionally
talk to the cats in my garden) we judge them according to models of human
behaviour that we then impute to them, barely recognising that that’s what
we’re doing. We underestimate how remote their mental lives are from ours.
Friends and lovers, of course, you select. You gravitate
towards people who share experiences and outlooks. They will almost universally
reflect back at you exactly the same reactions and understandings you have.
They will reinforce your impressions and back up your conclusions about the
world, and when they don’t – which is what we’re talking about here – it can be
very painful and you are more likely to dispose of them than to incorporate the
fact in your life, as you would to some degree have to if you lived in an
old-fashioned organic community and couldn’t escape them. You can maintain the
sense that your friends are distinct from the rest of humanity, because they
are like you and think the things that you think. You can place them in a
separate conceptual category. Of course everyone has some relationships which
are closer than others, but some don’t have much to give a broader perspective
on them.
So if people find themselves expressing anti-humanist ideas,
those ideas come from experience and probably pain, anger and disillusionment.
That doesn’t mean they can be dismissed as merely personal bias: ideas have a
life of their own and should be dealt with on their own rational terms. But
understanding where they come from is a counterbalance against the anger that
might bubble up in us when confronted with ideas that challenge us very deeply.
We have to work very hard to see through the opacity of our own experience to
understand those of others; we are not, sadly, the Son of Man, whose unfailing sight
had the clarity of the Spirit. And I’m not sure who has the more oddball life,
or whose is more representative of modernity – me, or my friends.
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