Something Wrong with this Picture?
Now I may be biased, but at this point it seems to me that we are presented with an almost nightmarish scenario. Instead of a garden of Eden, we seem to have every imaginable world existing in every possible contortion, each one copied at least a million times over. The sheer quantities have run rampant. Something is wrong with this picture.
Where is the Federation when we need it? If the creative impulse is not to run amok, then there ought to be sources of restraint. One might hope that there is an overriding moral force of some kind, or at least some kind of quality control in the creative process that would respect the rights of the creatures vis a vis the creators. But I think there is even a more basic flaw in this thought process.
The whole concept of separate existence is a product of the Newtonian, Cartesian mind set. The most natural state of affairs was supposed to be that of individual atoms swerving in the limitless void of space. General relativity and quantum mechanics have, admittedly, only made a very small dent in the Newtonian worldview. But the rigidity of this mind set is equaled only by its fragility.
This is why I believe that the issue of reductionism is crucial to any new worldview. Anti-reductionism is anti-atomism. Inasmuch as anything is physically irreducible, to that same extent the sanctity or absoluteness of space is violated. It is the overriding idiom of modernism that we are somehow lost in space. At the same time that we revel in our splendid isolation, we also tremble at the fear of falling into the absolute oblivion of the void.
Now with the postmodern rediscovery of the mind, consciousness, and other seemingly unanalyzable, irreducible entities we are being forced back to accept the Cartesian duality of mind and matter, or more accurately we should say mind and space. But is not this logical dichotomy the basis of all the incoherence of modernism? Any new worldview will have to nip this incoherence in the bud. Now I realize that there is a whole gallery full of philosophers who have been trained from early on to jeer at the merest mention of immaterialism. That is hardly conducive to reasoning.
5/19/02