The Dao of Humanity

"Even the most hurtful man is still perhaps, in respect to the conservation of the race, the most useful of all; for he conserves in himself, or by his effect on others, impulses without which mankind might long ago have languished or decayed. Hatred, delight in mischief, rapacity and ambition, and whatever else is called evil—belong to the marvellous economy of the conservation of the race... I no longer know, my dear fellow-man and neighbour, if thou canst at all live to the disadvantage of the race, and therefore, 'unreasonably' and 'badly'... Indulge thy best or thy worst desires, and above all, go to wreck!" — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

"Nature is not benevolent: with ruthless indifference she makes all things serve their purposes, like the straw dogs we use at sacrifices. The Sage is not benevolent: he utilises the people with the like inexorability." — Laozi, The Daodejing

Octavia Butler's "The Book of Martha" depicts a woman, Martha, tasked by God with making one wish to fix humanity. Butler's version of God explains to Martha: "You will help humankind to survive its greedy, murderous, wasteful adolescence. Help it to find less destructive, more peaceful, sustainable ways to live... They’re well on the way to destroying billions of themselves by greatly changing the ability of the earth to sustain them. That’s why they need help. That’s why you will help them."

The world presented in the story is therefore one where humanity, too ugly, brutal and flawed to survive, requires outside help. Specifically, the story implies that humanity's flaws need to be fixed, and need to be fixed by a sort of wise, knowing intervention—an intervention which will set things right, and restore a natural balance to the world.

Ideas of harmony and natural balance are extremely ancient. Most notably, they go all the way back to Chinese philosopher Laozi, who argued that all dualities exist as part of an eternal Dao, an eternal and primordial harmony. In pop culture, this concept is often talked about in a way which obscures its real depth: the opposites used as examples are order and chaos, light and darkness, softness and hardness. But Laozi also believes, perhaps controversially, that good and evil are also like this, each made possible only by the other. In other words, good cannot exist without evil.

This point is itself evidenced in Butler's story: there is somewhat of a contradiction in Martha's thinking, on the one hand, between her recognition that her suffering, poverty, and misfortune gives her a unique perspective on the world, and her desire to eliminate the very inequality that gave her that perspective. If the product of being middle class, well-fed, and comfortable has made most Americans complacent (or worse: greedy, murderous, and wasteful, as Butler's God charges), then surely raising everyone to that same middle-class standard would, rather than creating a Utopia, produce more people who are greedy, murderous, and wasteful.

Coming back to the Dao, what Laozi recognized was that humanity functioned like a larger organism: it is impossible for humanity to be all good, or all evil, or even mostly good or mostly evil. Each part of humanity plays some necessary and essential role in the preservation of our species: kindness and understanding, generally associated with goodness, help bring in and include others outside of our society. These impulses might be thought of as the "nervous system" of humanity, working to adapt to change. Dogmatism, suspicion, and rigidity, generally associated with evil, help to protect humanity from genuine threats—too much inclusion of too many people, like people with bad intentions or extreme personalities, and it is too much for society to bear. This might be thought of as the sort of "immune system" of humanity.

These different functions are analogous, I would argue, to the two major political ideologies in the United States, progressivism and conservatism. Progressivism wants to adapt society to new changes, and include people with new perspectives. Conservatism is suspicious of outside threats, and worried that too much change undermines stability. Too much of the former, and our society is overly soft, unprepared for threats, and undergoing destabilizing change. Too much of the latter, and our society becomes stagnant, rigid, and cruel. While each side regards the other as evil, and themselves as good, neither sees that the other side is necessary for their own existence. To put it more simply, a society needs to have its Martha Beses as well as its Ebeneezer Scrooges.

The question in the prompt asks for one thing which "would ensure that we all survive and thrive in the future." But, I would question whether it is possible for any society to ensure that all people thrive to the degree they want to. Take a real world example: over time, many Muslim immigrants came to the city of Hamtramck, Michigan. After a while, the new Muslim-majority city board banned LGBT flags from being displayed on public property, citing their religious beliefs.

A society is thus faced with a choice: should the Muslim inhabitants get what they want, which is no LGBT flags in public, or should the LGBT inhabitants get what they want, which is LGBT flags in public? One can't have both LGBT flags in public and no LGBT flags in public. In other words, to have a society which includes some people and their values necessarily means excluding other people and their values. For us to be able to say that some art is excellent, we must also be able to say that some art is bad. The act of hurting some artists feelings is implied in the act of praising art that is not theirs, just as to give either the Muslims or the LGBT community what they want is to deny it to the other. A society cannot include everything, and so it must make choices about the kinds of values it wants to include or exclude.

This leads me to my main point, which is that, if given a wish like Martha, I really would not change anything about humanity. I thought about saying, "we should work to recognize that each other's perspectives are necessary," or, "we should understand each other better," but, I think there is no way in which the two communities discussed above can truly ever understand each other, because their views are diametrically opposed. To even demand of them that they understand or empathize with one another, I think, is to show a kind of lack of understanding of what the debate means to each side.

What they can do, instead, is argue. And perhaps, in the course of arguing, one side wins; or perhaps something new is produced altogether, some position which goes beyond either side. The Greeks called this agon—contest, struggle, competition—and it fits nicely with the earlier discussed concept of the Dao. I can empathise with Martha's desire to want to give some wish which changes all of humanity, makes us better. But perhaps, what is left if we discard the fantasy of "fixing" humanity is something more subtle, delicate, and beautiful: a society in which people with different values and difference perspectives are left to resolve their differences.

Works Cited

• Butler, Octavia E. "The Book of Martha." Bloodchild and Other Stories, 2nd ed., Seven Stories Press, 2005. Excerpt available at Seven Stories Press.
• Laozi. The Daodejing (The Sayings of Lao Tzŭ). Translated by Lionel Giles, John Murray, 1905. Available at Wikisource.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza"). Translated by Thomas Common, T.N. Foulis, 1910. Available at Project Gutenberg.

Miro Mindmap

The conceptual mindmap tracking the tensions between Butler's narrative, brown's emergence, evolutionary biology, and institutional design: