Brian writes: "I think our moral and religious evolution, which moves with aching slowness and by sudden starts, has long since been outstripped by our technical development; and the effect of this huge and ever-increasing gap is not only dangerous (which I don't mind much), but ugly and ignoble (which I do)."
Right, but don't you think the "technical development" you refer to is itself a "sudden start" in historical perspective, the last 3 or 4 hundred years?
Thanks, EA. I meant more the unpredictable irruption in history of a single part of a single life, as in the case of Luther's 'posting'. But I would certainly agree that the technical growth has been exponential, and further, inexorable and asymptotic by the look of it (although I hate to think of <u>that</u> axis). More than this, it's shown astonishing growth in its capability to domesticate and nourish itself on discontent, especially with itself. But it's leaving the religious evolution so far behind now, I think, that the latter has, as it were, disappeared and come back as a sort of technical holograph, whether it be Chris' "psychology", new-age religiosity, sales up on the Passion, whatever.[/b]
And it puts a certain kind of evolutionary pressure on the moral/spiritual essence that would not otherwise be there. When you think of it, it's pretty amazing we haven't blown ourselves up yet, having possessed nuclear power for 50+ years. So, maybe there's hope for us. I in any case like the idea that it's an evolutionary process & that the one-sidedly technical development of modern science has a specific function within this process, like a risky bet. Not ignoble in that regard.[/quote]
I think we have blown ourselves up, we just missed it. The joke's on us; all that gene-pool worrying about our bodies, when what distinguishes them from plant-life was left in little charred bits outside the movieplex.
You'll have to help me see the nobility in that "risky bet". All I've seen of high-risk gamblers--of that sort--is a pretty pathetic sight.
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