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elfsI'm a practicing Stoic of the Modern school, although my meditative style is much more heavily invested in Buddhist traditions and I have more than a little attraction to the Secular Buddhist movement. Recently I've been reading Robert Wright's Why Buddhism Is True, and one thing he wrote that I really liked is an anology between the Buddhist notion of Mara and natural selection.
There's a ridiculous strain of thought in the less-educated corners of Christianity that somehow scientists worship Darwin. Evangelist Lee Summrall, who's widely published and widely read in Christian bookstores, is a typical example of the breed, so it's not just random internet wackos. But Wright's got a point: if scientists were to think of evolution as a conscious and creative force, they would have to conclude that is a nasty, capricious, and fairly horrific conscious force. Everything from the bit about the whole red in tooth and claw to the more subtle horrors of fungi that eat brains from the inside out. If we were to attribute motives to natural selection, would we happily accept cancer, Alzheimer's, muscular dystrophy? Would we cheerfully embrace death itself at all?
And even more subtly, what we know about the human condition points to a pretty terrible outcome: our brains are constructed to deceive us, our emotions are hard-wired to be continually restless and unhappy, always in search of the safety and security of the tribe on the left, and the power and prestige of pulling ahead of the pack on the right.
Wright says that Buddhism is a toolkit for getting a grip on these impulses, for gaining insight into them and getting at least a little more control over them, for extending our free will just a little bit further than the few seconds every day where we actually exercise our will, and not just our habits and instincts. Because one way or another, the human condition is hard, and we need better tools for managing it.
There's a ridiculous strain of thought in the less-educated corners of Christianity that somehow scientists worship Darwin. Evangelist Lee Summrall, who's widely published and widely read in Christian bookstores, is a typical example of the breed, so it's not just random internet wackos. But Wright's got a point: if scientists were to think of evolution as a conscious and creative force, they would have to conclude that is a nasty, capricious, and fairly horrific conscious force. Everything from the bit about the whole red in tooth and claw to the more subtle horrors of fungi that eat brains from the inside out. If we were to attribute motives to natural selection, would we happily accept cancer, Alzheimer's, muscular dystrophy? Would we cheerfully embrace death itself at all?
And even more subtly, what we know about the human condition points to a pretty terrible outcome: our brains are constructed to deceive us, our emotions are hard-wired to be continually restless and unhappy, always in search of the safety and security of the tribe on the left, and the power and prestige of pulling ahead of the pack on the right.
Wright says that Buddhism is a toolkit for getting a grip on these impulses, for gaining insight into them and getting at least a little more control over them, for extending our free will just a little bit further than the few seconds every day where we actually exercise our will, and not just our habits and instincts. Because one way or another, the human condition is hard, and we need better tools for managing it.
