The Ninth Street Center Ninth Street Center Journal

What to Think of the World and Feel About It
by Olaf Stapledon

Our modern knowledge has made nonsense of many old beliefs and aims, which were perhaps helpful once, but now are a hindrance to the life of mankind. In the old view, the most important thing for anyone to do was to "save his soul." By living according to a certain set of rules, said to be God's law, he was to earn an everlasting life of joy in heaven after his death. Life here on earth was not supposed to matter at all ex- cept as a preparation for that other life. But now we are begin- ning to feel that the desire to live for ever as a little self is, after all, not a very alive kind of desire; in fact, it is not what a man ought to desire. While we are children, the thought of dying, of ceasing to be, of being snuffed out like a flame, is rather frightening. But later, if we grow up in a healthy way, it becomes no more alarming than the thought of going to sleep. To-day we are beginning to think of a human being less as something precious in itself, like a jewel to be stored up for ever, and more as a musical instrument which has a part to play in the music of the world, or even as an actual tune or chord or single note in the music. It is foolish to want one note of the music to last for ever.

Modern thought is impressed by the bigness of things — by the distances of the stars, the huge length of their lives, and even of our planet's past. Man, it seems, is a tiny thing, and has only just begun. He grew out of an animal, which grew out of simpler animals. And all has grown out of the stuff of a star. So men are not something utterly different from the rest of things. Man is all of a piece with his world. His nature is just a rather complicated bit of the world's nature.

There are two ways of facing all this. One is the way of disgust and despair. We may feel that, if man is nothing more than a tiny microbe living for a moment on a world that is less than a sand-grain among the stars, then nothing really matters. We may give up caring about man and his gradual awakening into more alive ways of living. We may settle down to seeking easy pleasure for ourselves and escaping pain.

But there is another way of facing modern knowledge. We may accept it gladly, as good news, as a gospel. We may rejoice to find that we are all of a piece with the great world. We may look at the world with a new respect, a new love, a new hope. We may begin seriously to make the best of it, and of ourselves, and of the human race. We may outgrow the old cramped hopes that were good enough for the blind past, such as the hope of a pleasant life in heaven. Instead, we may learn to desire above all things to make mankind into something very beautiful and happy. And, remembering that man is all of a piece with the rest of the universe, we may feel that this effort of his is really in some way an effort of the universe itself to wake. And if man should, after all, fail, we may still hope that somewhere else this great awakening may occur.

Those who believe the new knowledge, yet cannot outgrow the old hopes, must indeed feel disgust and despair. There are still many in this sad plight. They cannot see any good in anything. They sigh over the impossible old hopes, and laugh bitterly at the new hope which they cannot either believe or desire.

But things are changing. The new hope is growing. At present our thought is very confused, and our hearts do not easily accept even what we are forced to believe. But both our knowledge and our world, and also our own desires about our world, are changing very fast. Those who are children to- day may help to make a world more different from ours than ours is from the world of the ancient Egyptians. They may do easily things that seem to us impossible. They may one and all constantly desire things that are too difficult for us to desire except in our most alive moments. They may see clearly what is really desirable, and actually desire it. They may get control of their world and their own nature, and know how to use their power wisely.

Meanwhile, those who are children to-day are growing up in a very strange world indeed. It is all strains and crackings and crumblings. It is in the act of changing into something very different, which may be better or worse. Human nature is not yet half made. It is mostly ape nature, with a few gleams of the nature which we hope man will some day have. Formerly man's apishness did not matter so much, but now he is gaining dangerous powers, and may destroy himself. He is like a monkey that has learnt how to strike matches, and may set the house on fire. To-day all depends on the young, on their preparing to take charge of the world which their elders have so shockingly muddled, on their sweeping away bad old customs and ideals and working out better ones, on their accepting whole-heartedly the new supreme loyalty, the loyalty to the slowly awakening spirit that is man.

[from "An Outline for Boys and Girls and Their Parents", 1932, edited by Naomi Mitchison]

— reprinted from The Ninth Street Center Journal 7, Winter 1987