For the last few weeks I have been watching the original Cosmos PBS series with Carl Sagan, as well as many of his interviews.
Sagan is an advocate for science in two ways--first, an advocate of the public understanding of scientific principles, but secondly for a sort of world order that many scientists seem to promote as ideal. He has no trouble being an advocate of a scientific political agenda, which he supports both through his influence in the scientific community, as a celebrity, and in his many books and television programs such as this one.
What would the world of the scientists be like? What Utopia do men like Sagan envision as they attempt to shepherd mankind to it?
One imagines a rather restrictive, some may even argue fascist, world in some ways. But also one of great prosperity and humanism.
Men would no longer go about trying to dominate one another through wars, through economy, through ideology, through social hierarchy, or otherwise. They would be of one culture--the planetary culture of Earth. Of one nation-the planet Earth. One government--the World government.
Humans would live in a classless society, a single nation at peace everywhere. People of all shapes and sizes, man or woman, fit and thin, athletic to physically disabled, no physical difference would have any significance, because it was no longer of any relevance. Man would be not a body, but a collection of many organs whose full duty was to service the mind.
And since mankind was no longer involved in any of those activities--having outgrown them, considering them an embarrassing barbarism of youth, before the enlightened era had fully manifested itself--what, then, did mankind do?
Well, of course--science. There each man would sit, clad in identical sky-blue turtlenecks, carefully monitoring and measuring the condition of the earth. Its temperature, the thickness of its ozone layer, and its over all condition. A nurse monitoring the vital signs of an inert patient. Protecting it from meteorites and gamma ray bursts using funding for ever-more advanced technology.
Society would be, at this stage, a perfectly rational and organized machine. Monitored constantly and continually refined for maximum efficiency. And with wealth and resources distributed to each according to his fullest desire, with plenty and abundance for all, due to the advances in the technologies which feed a very high quality of life, the world over.
And so men would have nothing left to do but to pursue knowledge.A world of scholars, engineers and Laputian measure-ers. Turning their attention to curing the last few ailments of mankind, and forever probing the cosmos for new information to discover. There would be, of course, a place in society for the passions, but these were to be satisfied by high art--sophisticated art, the cerebral and the conceptual. And, of course, all such media would be subject to approval by the state as beneficial to society and its emotional well-being. Nothing too course, or too vulgar as to reawaken man's more base desires. Such things were to be regarded as a threat, and such artists were chastised both by the state and by its citizens alike. There would be also an over-representation of the societal importance of Bach, incidentally.
There would be of course, many who argued that man had the right to live in a free society, and that we must not be too totalitarian in the name of rationality, equity, and peace. So, such allowances would be provided. There would be a place in the World Society for these notions as well.
For example, there would be, officially, a free market. Men would be free to design whatever new devices their wildest imaginations could devise. However, all products were subject to strict evaluation. Nothing that was deemed detrimental to the well-being of the Earth or human society would be allowed to be produced. By the well-being of the Earth, it would be understood that this meant that it does not in any way affect the Earth's flora and fauna, or affect its overall climate, or disrupt in any way the perfectly maintained balance of the planet. The well-being of human society might include forbidding the stimulus of too much of the negative human impulses of physical or verbal violence, social or sexual domination, and selfishness or intolerance. And obviously, the largest industry of all, formerly of war, would now be the production of scientific technologies.
So it was that, like the philosophers once dreamt of a world ruled by Philosopher-kings, so too the scientists dream of a World Republic of Scientist-kings. As Sagan himself often stated, it is perhaps man's eternal fate to put himself at the center of every universe he imagines.
This Utopia, this World Republic of Scientist-kings, would march on and on, gaining ever more knowledge and with it power over the natural world…the solar system…the cosmos. Growing ever more enlightened and sophisticated. Stretching to the edges of the galaxy. And along the way, perhaps finding other creatures, themselves as peaceful, enlightened, and dedicated to science as our Earthly Scientist-kings. And we would then, sooner or later, join with them to exchange knowledge and technology, and ultimately further assimilate all of life into the now Universal Society. A Universal Life. One universe becoming ever more conscious of itself. The Universal Life becoming a guardian and master of the entire universe.
In effect, mankind, perhaps along with the intelligent beings of other worlds, becoming the very God that mankind had imagined in the beginning. Omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving. A God created out of man, and brought forth through the powers of man--that is, science.
It is at once a terrifyingly surreal, but also inspiring thought.
Mash up of many interviews and parts of Cosmos:
https://youtu.be/MrZ4197C1I0
Cosmos (1980):
https://youtu.be/T6C9taivF40
No comments:
Post a Comment