"I mean the same. What spiritual love has man today? What friendliness
toward other men? What regard for Nature? Man fears. Man hates. And as
to Nature--he is the hostile parasite on the whole of it, and calls
himself its conqueror. Let him conquer his ego--and then--if he should
prove to be--in some almost unimaginable era of clean passion--capable
of as wide a variety of ways of loving as he is capable of simulating
and extending the other faculties of other species--he will have to
build his aesthetics around that. Love takes two people. If neither is
injured, made less, turned hateful, rendered afraid--if the purposes
of instinct, become aware and consciously directed, are not finally
frustrated--no specific behavior will offend this dim-seen Nature.
Shameless awareness lies far nearer to a way for mankind to grow loving
than any so-called love of a Jesus which requires a man to think he
is impure, vile, inevitably born a sinner, inferior physically to all
other living things in Eden's Garden--and this, so he may publicly
proclaim himself and secretly imagine himself to be their 'spiritual'
superior. Isn't that clear?"
"Sometimes I follow you--sometimes not."
"Look at it this way. You say you've chucked out heaven and hell--or
hell, anyhow--you modern religionists. I say, you cannot do so. I
say--if your God is a god of what you consider pure goodness--you
have to have a devil to balance Him. I say that all the saints and
holy men and all the simple, human people who have managed, by one
religion or another, to get some sense of the integration of their
instincts, have done it because the religions did give them a semantic
for instinct--a heaven-hell formulation of their nonverbal impulses--a
yang-and-yin for Christianity, so to speak--or a Jehovah-Satan for
Taoism. Take that away--and you take away all opportunity for the
religious--the instinctual--experience. You produce a bunch of gassy
bounders who--since hellishness is everywhere but since they've
discarded hell--confuse the goodness of the species with goods, good
health, prosperity, long life--things that may be possible devils for
the species. They lose sight of the inwardness of the nongood and see
evil as a material fact, entirely. Modern devil-seekers--men like
Sheen, like Niebuhr--are closer to the mechanics of human nature than
these idiot modern congregations that throw out Satan and his kingdom
and as a result are condemned to evil behavior because they have made
themselves blind to evil's source. Closer--but still not very damn
close."
"What, then, is your criterion of good and evil?"
"I could give you dozens. I give you a sample. When you consider what
you are doing, or what any man does, or any group of men--ask yourself
whether that particular deed will benefit or injure the chances of
future generations to evolve toward increased consciousness."
"Great heavens, man--most _preachers_ wouldn't be able to decide a
question like that! Let alone plain folks!"
"Sure. Did I say that preachers--let alone plain folks--or any handful
of contemporary men--knew what they were doing? Or why? Or what anybody
else was doing? They don't know. So they go on by instinct--the
statistical sweep of impulses that lop off nations as readily as the
wind lops trees. I said we _could_ know. I said we weren't trying.
Instinct is the immortal property--the urge in behalf of the future.
Ants are doing what they can for ants, bees for bees, fish for
fish--without much individual hesitation. But not men for men. Men
today are trying either to get themselves into heaven, or to make a
mint, or just to get by, as individuals. The future, to most men, means
their own here--or their reward in heaven. To instinct, the future
means the future of awareness, and men are but its most conspicuous
exponents here and now. If we began to plan life for our progeny--what
a world!"
I was getting sick of the guy. Sick, rather, of myself--my endless
efforts to put a simple idea in some form that would perfuse skulls
hardened against it--sometimes even by what they imagined to be
open-mindedness. "Look. You believe, don't you, that you could sit down
and write out a mode of behavior satisfactory for man to the end of
time?"
"I could take a crack at it," he said.
"Well--I don't. I believe that future men should be left free to make
up their minds without consulting any bulls and fiats from me. I get
some sense of orientation, a _raison d'être_, from giving thought to
the rights of the species now and to come. Not saving adult souls for
present bliss--or spiritual cradle-snatching, either--but forwarding
the whole, rolling business of biology on this sin-drenched planet, is
the fun--for me."
"You are totally pessimistic about the present scene, apparently."
I looked out the window. It was getting on toward sunset. "Excepting
for a few physical technologies--are we so different from our human
predecessors? Crueler, it may be. And weaker physically, perhaps.
Otherwise--not any different. And has there ever been a time in
our past history when optimism for even one era or one society was
warranted? History says not--the record. It is hardly an encouraging
fact."
"No hope, then? No fringe of lining on the cloud--?"
"I didn't say that. The record has at least--continued. I hardly expect
mankind to be blotted out. I just don't have a very high opinion of
man's present works in relation to what he really is, desperately
needs, and someday could be. There are compensations. I give you one.
We won't be missed."
He began putting on his dickey. It plastered itself against his sodden
undershirt. He ran his thick fingers around his collar.
"You're a hard person, Phil."
"I am a very gentle guy, Socker. The men of the earth are hard. They
have confused another instinct here--and think to be hard is estimable."
"Somehow, I believe you're all wrong."
"Of course. So much of what I think is the opposite of what you do. And
then--I believe a lot that Jesus said. While you don't believe any of
it at all."