Flowers for Civilization

I've taken to reading a serious work like Endgame, while simultaneously devouring a work of fiction like Flowers for Algernon. It lessens the shock of realization and revelation. In fact in this case I would argue that it complements Endgame quite nicely.

Endgame is about the problem of civilization, a recent theme of these digital pages, demonstrating its effect on me. Its compelling argument is that industrial civilization is a landslide that (certain?) humans have started. It is on a collision course with the valley below, or more clearly the entire planet. This landslide annihilates species, rips into the earth, pollutes the air and the cooks the planet and (certain?) humans assume that these actions are natural and normal. No species would ever destroy their landbase or the physical source of their being. We (all of us?) are something different. Superspecies doesn't quite cover it.

An interesting question, that I'm still wrestling with, is if this means that civilization must depart this earth (tall order) or if it can be reformed from withing (equally tall order)? Is civilization by its nature violent, abusive and exploitative? Does industrial civilization even fit within the natural rules that govern all life on earth?

Flowers for Algernon seems to me to mirror the story of civilization. It is the story of one man named Charlie's rapid development from a developmentally delayed person to a super genius and then his ultimate fall back to a simple mind. Preceding him is a super intelligent mouse named Algernon. According to Charlie: "He was the first of all the animals to stay smart so long and he said that Algernon is so smart he has to solve a problem with a lock that changes every time he goes in to eat so he has to lern something new to get his food."

Both undergo magical surgery to enable their genius. It seems to me that humanity is following this very same trajectory. We currently see our civilization as the peak of human history. As Charlie basks in the glow of his intelligence, he is told: "Just that you've come a long way kind of fast. You've got a superb mind now, intelligence that can't really be calculated, more knowledge absorbed by now than most people pick up in a long lifetime. But you you're lopsided. You know things. You see things. But you haven't developed understanding, or--I have to use the word--tolerance." Truer words were never spoken.

But as Charlie records and our civilization is starting to realize: "I may not have all the time I thought I had . . ."

Unfortunately the fall that we are now contemplating will be much more painful than anything that came before. And like Charlie, we can see the fall coming but unlike Charlie we are not powerless to act, though it might seem that way. Technology will not be the answer as technology has gotten us into this mess. Simplicity seems to me to be the answer, becoming smaller. This is not a stepping back from greatness as one might see with a cursory view of Charlie's fall, but the realization that we are not living in harmony with the earth. Simplicity does not mean living in caves it just means we have to follow the rules of creation.

Using his super intelligence, Charlie analyzes his situation and surmises that: "Artificially-induced intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase." Our rise too has been rapid, two centuries at best, though it started much earlier. Our fall, already sliding down that mountainside with the force of gravity, will surely be as fast if not faster. Olympus was never within our reach.

However unlike Charlie we have choices. Ecocide and humanity have rarely gone hand in hand until recently. Many peoples have obeyed the rules of creation and we could learn from them. They are still here as guides though civilization desperately attempts to embrace them with genocidal arms holding cola bottles and oil pipelines.

If we fail to reform or revolt or act in some way, we will truly become the cancer that afflicts our affluent lives. The malignant cancer that mindlessly swallows up life. Listen to the prophetic words of one of Charlie's dreams: "Upward, moving, like a leaf in an upcurrent of warm air. Speeding, the atoms of my body hurtling away from each other. I grow lighter, less dense, and larger . . . larger . . . exploding outward into the sun. I am an expanding universe swimming upward in a silent sea. Small at first, encompassing with my body, the room, the building, the city, the country, until I know that if I look down I will see my shadow blotting out the earth."