Last edited Mon Aug 5, 2013, 08:23 PM - Edit history (1)
What if human moral agency is a chimera, an illusion - a conveniently comforting myth whose purpose is to retain our motivation, to make us eager to pitch in on the enterprise of changing the planet, to make us believe that whatever "bad things" may be happening are somebody else's fault?
After all, if it's someone else's fault, then it's not my fault. That inner narrative gets us past the uncomfortable thought that maybe we're doing it(!). If it's no one's fault, then there is no more blame or shame, no more moral goad to action, no more need to do things that (inevitably, in the big picture, over the long haul) lead to more planetary destruction rather than less?
On the other hand, if part of it is our personal fault, how can we live with our guilt over helping to turn the knife in the bellies of a million other species? And if it's no one's fault, when who should we blame (and make no mistake, blame we must)?
The whole blame game is probably the result of a simple scale error. Just because human beings are involved at both scales, we make the mistake of thinking that the normative blame and shame that controls individual social interactions, also plays a role in the collective thermodynamic behavior of the species. It does not.
The best contribution that blame and shame have made is to smooth the social road from way back there to the inevitable tipping point just ahead - while at the same time making sure that everyone is climbing the energy gradient together, for maximum impact.
Personally, I've made peace with the fact that no one is to blame, that we're simply executing a structure-creating, energy-dissipating, entropy-generating program that is built into the nature of life at the same level as the knowledge of which way is down.
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