Sunday 17 August 2008

PROMETHEAN MAN - A Post In Which Superwoman Explains How The Gods Are Robbed Of Their Fire...




"Men have always tried to be better and grander than they are. Their Promethean endeavours to become supermen, ...or to 'be God', ... though laudable in their intentions regarding the desire ...(even to escape mortality), fail, I think, because of a lack of balance and self-awareness of humanity's place in the universe..."

That, my dear Jonathan, is an involved and intricate way of expressing a simple point.

The practical fact is that today we have a turning point in scientific
evolution. A revolution of man’s view of himself and of his function in the universe which is perpetual self-overcoming. Raised to the highest possible level one might elevate this function by using mythic ideas and images, even by stimulating the gloomy optimism of the Son of Man which, as one of the few unbroken threads in the tissue of Christian philosophical thinking over the past two thousand years has borne and shed its finest fruits, to yield fresh fruit with a new dispensation of Man: The Promethean Man in which scientific and ontological understanding are combined to deliver the world from the world.

There is no mysticism in this!

Nor is this to say that science should proceed as much by faith as by
reason, or that it should reject reason for intuition, but from the point of
view of our present state of knowledge it is no longer possible to deny that,
within certain well-understood limits, science itself is subject to the same
uncertainty relations as is its peculiar power to render life into logic and yet
retain its mystery.

At such moments we are apt to solve the riddle of creation.

Then, of course, there is the question of scale. For such evidence as
there is in quantum electrodynamics by no means disposes of the necessity to
believe that - according to Freddy Hoyle -
“astronomers will eventually
discover that much of what they currently believe concerning the behaviour and
formation of galaxies, has to be modified to take account of intelligent
control.”

But, that apart, the important thing to remember is that the future
belongs to the scientist and his all-powerful need for knowledge. Science alone
can lead the world out of its difficulty. No other institution can. Science
holds the key to the greatest age of faith in the history of the world, even if
we cannot define it. For the problem is basically a psychological one and
involves a spiritual recrudescence and enhancement of human values.

This consideration lies at the heart of everything.

Indeed, the Promethean assault upon the Riddle of Creation, both
absolutely and relativistically, is not simply a technological feat, but a
psychological revolution. It is an attempt, is it not, to rediscover something
profound and deep-rooted in the human psyche; an expression, I believe, of both
a penetrating utopian recognition and a desperate search for a new identity on
the part of the men and women who are plainly in need of a more transcending and
persuasive experience than the outdated religious mysticism to which they can no
longer relate. For the chief importance of a new psychological dimension lies
precisely in the fact that ultimately it gives redemptive power to that
irrepressible desire for intellectual scope and spiritual activity which has
always been, as it remains today, a fundamental part of human evolution.

Dreamy


10 comments:

Jonathan said...

Yes, well verbosity is an issue always. I have oft been a cultpit, tis true. But if there is a stark choice to be made between between verbosity and not expressing the nuances and detail of what one means, I will always choose the former.

I do not seek to be a spin doctor or a distorting simplifier of what is complex.

'the gloomy optimism of the Son of Man'.

Interesting. I reckon Jesus would go along with that. Though I hope he's a bit less gloomy these days.

'To deliver the world from the world'.

I like it. We indeed are our own gaolers. We are Zeus to ourselves. I have no problem with the notion of Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus, since he's not the true God. My truck is with the idea that man should want to steal fire from the real God, that's all. As I see it, the real God is not holding back valuable stuff from us. Rather some kind of imposter force is masquerading as God and blocking him from us, preventing the access of his love. Or something like that. Anyway, hence my love of the concept of the 'shadow' and the 'veils' (of maya indeed one could say) and my adoration of this particular Pink Floyd lyric:

'The Sun is in view but the sun is eclipsed by the Moon.'

'the future belongs to the scientist and his all-powerful need for knowledge. Science alone can lead the world out of its difficulty.'

I suppose I want to ask what we mean by 'scientist'. If we mean by this someone who wants to understand, on his own terms, the life and universe that he interacts with, and not have to accept stuff about wot-not that he can't understand, then I have no problem with that. But if that is what we mean, then don't we mean something broader than that which our current usage of the word suggests?

Knowledge is a noble goal but it comes in different forms. There is information, for example, but there is also wisdom, and then there is that manner of personal existential, somatic-emotional-psycho-spiritual illumination, if that's not a mouthful, which various esotericists speak of. What manner of knowledge do we refer to. Is only one type important? Are not all types within the purview of science? If so, will not this transform the nature of science?

Your last paragraph is tremendous!

Selena Dreamy said...

“We are Zeus to ourselves. I have no problem with the notion of Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus, since he's not the true God. My truck is with the idea that man should want to steal fire from the real God, that's all.”


Well, Jonathan, since the former is merely a parable to illustrate the latter, I put it to you that the idea of “stealing” from a real God is, undoubtedly, the necessary acknowledgement of an hubristic (if redemptive) truth.

Or in terms of another parable: why not think of science as peeling the onion in order to find its central core, and to realize that the layers don't hide the truth, but that they happen to be the truth.

As you put it so very succinctly: “We are Zeus to ourselves”.

percy stilton said...

Well I must admit I never believed that being educated could be so much fun.

Jonathan said...

I think I know what you mean....

To me a central division between and within types of spiritualities concerns the degree of intimacy that mankind imagines himself to have with his God.

In the Christian story the Gnostics and later Cathars (with others) and then after Luther any extreme individualist believer, felt that God was a closely wrought, umediated presence that empowered and illuminated them.

For whatever reason, this irks the more exoterically disposed, if I can put it like that, who tend to control the organs of secular power.

I suppose we can see being intimate with God as an act of theft and of hubris, if one likes; but I'd wager that would be an exoteric, institutionalised way of looking at things. A Zeusian way no less.

To me it is clear that Jesus draws man and God very near to one another. Whatever else can the incarnation itself mean?

Zeus on the other hand hates intimacy, (well, except with his sexual conquests). It dismantles his coercive power and authority, gets under his armour.

Jonathan said...

Btw Selena, Elberry has distorted a comment I left for you on his site, so sorry about that. I don't kow how many of my comments he has changed and not sure I want to but I wont be leaving any more comments there.

Selena Dreamy said...

I am not aware of any comments you left for me at Elberry's, nor - at this point - of any possible distortions, Jonathan.

I shall, however, try and look into that at a suitable moment. Meanwhile, please be assured that I value your comments and that, indeed, I read them very carefully.

Thank you, as ever, for taking the time to read and respond to mine...

Dreamy

percy stilton said...

Intelligence is a fine thing but without imagination & intuition it is sterile and impotent.What makes us all equal is the power to dream & death and as both of these require no intelligence only being is truth.
Now as far as being ignored goes, well that is just plain ignorance and arrogance. Thanks for the lesson Selena, I have learnt little I did not already know from listening to my own inner self but it is rather reassuring to find like minded beingseven if they are slightly ignorant & arrogant.

Selena Dreamy said...

Yet no analysis of this arrogance should be ignorant of the fact that - by its very being - it has elicited what must be, thus far, your finest and most valued contribution, Percy.

And I thank you for that.

percy stilton said...

I thought yesterdays contribution was pretty good too, but it was obviously way over your heads or you were too self obsessed to notice it.
Now how about a pic of your bosom clad in a cotton sports bra to put up on my blog? Call it intuition but I think it will help me pull in some more punters.

Jonathan said...

'Intelligence is a fine thing but without imagination & intuition it is sterile and impotent.What makes us all equal is the power to dream & death and as both of these require no intelligence only being is truth.'

I rather like this Percy. Though I wonder whether imaginationa and intuition can be guided and possess degrees of usefulness and applicability to shared, objective experience. A society can imagine as a whole or a solipsist can imagine in his cavern..there must be a difference.

I see being as reality more than as truth, since truth is a knowledge category to do with the process of understanding, whereas reality just is...? Yet if the unreflective life is not worth living (I dont say this but you get the point), there can then be a renewed case for there being something of more value than mere being, mere reality unprocessed, unperceived, unmeditated upon. A new case for a new knowledge yet one grounded in being as it is immediately understood.

Blimey....