Is the world as a whole, properly understood, even worse than North Korea?
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHumans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. At the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. Their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. In the twentieth century, the utopias of Right and Left served the same function. Today, when politics is unconvincing even as entertainment, science has taken on the role of mankind\u2019s deliverer.\u201d \u00a0 (John Nicholas Gray, British political philosopher)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Professor Gray believes human volition and morality to be illusions.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, in that light, one wonders why \u2014 beyond the fact, of course, that he had no choice\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0to do so \u2014 Dr. Gray bothered to write a book seeking to convince us that we have no free will and that moral values are illusory.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
What does it mean, if we\u2019re really locked in the iron grip of necessity, for him to \u201cpersuade\u201d us? \u00a0Does he think it would be \u201cgood\u201d if we were persuaded? Why? \u00a0How?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And from what would science \u201cdeliver\u201d us? \u00a0Is he serious? \u00a0How can science, a human creation, \u201cdeliver\u201d us from an amoral world? \u00a0And in what would that \u201cdeliverance\u201d consist? \u00a0Can science make us free? \u00a0Can it create good and evil? \u00a0I doubt that Gray intends this, but I suppose that science can deliver us from nihilism, amorality, and determinism by vaporizing us. \u00a0Thank Nothing for nukes!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Gray writes of humans as \u201cthey,\u201d is he unconsciously seeking to exempt himself? \u00a0Does he believe that his\u00a0own\u00a0<\/em>consciousness is an illusion? \u00a0Does it make any sense to believe that one\u2019s own consciousness is illusory? \u00a0How would one entertain such a delusion without being conscious? \u00a0Does he imagine himself to be \u201cright\u201d?<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
So many questions!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t had much time for such questions today. \u00a0We visited Masada (where a garrison of Jewish zealots made its futile last stand against a Roman legion in the first century AD), Qumran (where the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls lived), Qasr al-Yahud (the traditional baptismal site of Jesus, right across the Jordan River from the Jordanian baptismal site called al-Maghtas, which is more likely to be authentic), and the traditional Mount of Temptations in Jericho. \u00a0We also spent time on the western shore of the Dead Sea, where most of our number went for a \u201cswim\u201d \u2014 or, really, for a \u201cfloat.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Posted from Jericho, Palestine<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cHumans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. At the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. Their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. In the twentieth century, the utopias of Right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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