The Garden of Eden
stories about our own nature
I was raised in Christian mythologies as a young girl. Later, when my father, at that time a minister, left the church, our family, too, abandoned the stories that accompanied Christianity, without explanation. Aged nine, I was left to puzzle it out for myself. I asked my father why we didn’t go to church anymore-a place where I had watched my father tell stories, sometimes describing us, his children, as examples to illustrate a point. I watched as everyone was told about our childhood ways of celebration, and stories about God, and Jesus (who I found to be a much friendlier figure than God). My father’s reply to me was that he was disappointed in the people who attended church. They were there for social reasons, not to really listen, he said. For a little while, after my father stopped giving sermons, my mother and I attended services. Before long, after a few Sundays that pattern dissolved as well, and I did not find a home for my spiritual yearnings until I was a teen and discovered the Quaker meeting. Too young to drive myself, I was only able to go to a couple of meetings, but the ones I attended had a profound impact on me. That is a story for another time.
In France, where our family lived during one of my father’s sabbaticals from his teaching work as a philosopher, I remember exploring the Louvre. This was before the crowds. I meandered through room upon room of paintings depicting Christian stories. I was dismayed by the image of a man being tortured to death as the central theme, but I was intrigued by the images of two naked people being evicted from nature. In that story, man was removed from the garden of eden because of his curiosity and hunger for knowledge. There were various sub plots I came to understand, one of them being that it was the woman who lured the man to eat from the tree of knowledge, (and for this I gave her great credit). Even as a child I thought that curiosity, and desire for knowledge was a good thing, and so this story was yet another Christian story that didn’t sit well with me.
In my adolescence, the story reverberated again. It reverberated because of shame. In my budding self-consciousness I felt that something about me was very wrong, and, to my mind, I held the secret of all badness within me. I acted this feeling out by smoking cigarettes. Inhale, a punishment, exhale, my involuntary poisoning of the world. Inhale, the badness of the world. Exhale, the badness of myself upon the world. That we humans suffered eviction from the garden of eden rang true. I was sure that there was something in human nature, as was occasioned in myself, a self-conscious teen, that ruins everything. When I grew up, I was able to challenge the story that I had about myself. I recognized that I am a freedom, and, as such, not bound to story.
In many ways, our current narrative about climate change echos this story. Aren’t we all a little ashamed? Or maybe a lot ashamed? Doesn’t it seem true that we, and our ever expanding population; our infinite desires, aren’t we the cancer in the garden of eden?
And yet, are we so different than Nature of which we, too, are a part? Nature is violent. Every creature wants to live, and in doing so eats other creatures. Even the plants want to live, and may send signals to each other as they are nibbled, or emit minor poisons to protect themselves. In that sense anyway, the peaceable kingdom doesn’t exist. Sometimes we humans we are ashamed of eating, or killing in order to eat. The primitive may say a prayer of gratitude to the deer he hunts. Many people have a sense of fault about eating, and a sense of shame about fat. Animals seem to know no shame in the thrill of the hunt. My cat joyfully captures hapless rodents when she gets the chance, and I have only detected pride in her expression.
What interests me is the effect that our narratives have on our response to the dangers of climate change. Are we passive sinners who can do nothing to remedy the situation we have created? Is the destruction of nature inevitable as the byproduct of our terrible, selfish nature? Are we caught up in a tidal wave of unmitigated urges-unable to cooperate with each other, or modify our humungous egoistic desires despite what we see is happening?
Stories, or narratives, are both something that we have and something that we are. Catching sight of the ways in which we are our narratives is the beginning of challenging that narrative. In light of this, my question is What is the impact of our stories of helplessness, and how do they effect our ability to do something about climate change?
There is a new story emerging. It is the story of AI. I don’t pretend to understand much about it, but I can hear the story. We need to be saved by something much greater than ourselves. So we have invented an intelligence that will compound on its own knowledge like some rapid investment scheme. For some, this being, or beings that we have invented will be our salvation. An intelligence un warped by self-interest that can be programed to solve our problems; scarcity, inequity, the warming planet. For others, AI is a demon we have created. Although I do not understand the notion that something artificial can have will, I hear a story of an intelligence that may destroy us, even though we are its source.
I don’t know any of the answers here, but I do know that there are consequence to believing a story. A rape victim sometimes believes she is ruined. That story informs her experience and can shape her life. A freed and even transformed convict is rarely given a chance by a society that judges him based on the earlier story of his life. We tell stories about diseases. Some think that repressed anger plays a role in cancer. Sometimes my clients have suggested to me that they are being punished when they get a disease. It is as if we live at both a very primitive strata of consciousness and simultaneously as rational beings. In fact, we do. When there is a story that you believe, a story that you are, it becomes impossible to see outside of its terms. Facts are dissolved by attitude; vision shapes policy and policy shapes lives.
In contrast, what happens if you believe you are a freedom? That you are not bound by mind forms; that stories do not capture you in their webs? What would it be to be free of story; stories about the source of evil, the nature of humanity, or pre-destiny? How does the assignation of fault influence medicine, war, and climate change?
Beware the story. Identify the narratives you believe, be they personal or cultural, and ask if they are true. Freedom is on the other side of story.
Namaste
thank you Domenica!