I'm thinking about something and, since we live in the day and age of the cloud, my few droplets of dilletantedness may coalesce therein: I post.

Having given up thinking, I've found that certain thoughts still persist. Perhaps lack of clarity is in itself a kind of clarity. Concentric circles vying for circumference mayhap. Eschewing ridiculous metaphor, the thought:

I'm involved with the idea of the dream. Its not dreaming per se. The act itself may be universal, but so is its ultimate expression. The expression of the dream, heretofore THE dream, being Eden or its likeness. You may substitute the words "heaven" or "utopia" or "nirvana" or any other such idealisms for the word "Eden," it is of no account.

I speak in terms of Christian metaphor, as it is that which I am most familiar.

If God is the Alpha and the Omega, should not his creation also promote the paradigm? Theologically speaking, humanity begins in paradise, loses paradise, returns to paradise through works or grace or whatever is popular at a given time. The beginning is paradise, the end is paradise. The beginning is God, the end is God. Alphas and omegas. Tetragrammatons. Et cetera.

Now THE dream of Eden, not being necessarily confined to the terribly limited vicissitudes of Biblical narrative, spread almost violently across cultures. Who now thinks that ultimate rewards are likened to Shaol? Few I'd imagine. Instead we are promised everlasting life and prosperity, with our kin and loved ones. No toil, no sweat, no pain, no death. Life without life, I suppose.

What concerns me mostly, however, is the inability of humanity to create said Eden. If the 20th century (and its lackluster successor) should have taught us anything, its that the possibilities afforded us through science are nigh endless. Indeed, it seems that anything is possible. You dream of nanotechnology; you make nanotechnology. You dream of the walking on the moon; you walk on the moon. You dream of electric sheep? You're an android.

Bad pun, sorry.

But utopia. Eden. THE multi-cultural, cross-paradigmatic dream. No, THAT is impossible. Humanity cannot live in perfect harmony with either themselves or their environments. Indeed, as the argument goes, it is against our fundamental nature to behave and achieve this, THE dream. Can't be done they say.

I'd like to know why.

I'd also like to know what happens to the dream if it is realized. Or, more to the point, I'd like to know what takes its place. Omega and Alpha being synonymous within the God figure, should not another Alpha spawn at the Omega horizon. To put it differently, does the dream die? Does man become God? Or does another dream take its place?

The breadth of that dream would be a paradigm shift of unknown quantity. Thousands of years of THE dream sloughed off instantaneously and replaced with something equally as unattainable. I can't even imagine what such a dream would be.

Can you?

Eden?

That mean only Christians get in?

One possible reading: Eden and the Fall, like God and the Devil, are essentially everyday experience extrapolated to its logical conclusion. There is good in life, therefore (so the thinking of all humans everywhere goes to some extent) there must be an ultimate good, an origin and a cause. Similarly, there is evil in life, so there must be an ultimate evil. And of course, wish fulfilment fantasies do the rest: of course we are bound for paradise and our enemies for the pit.

(Another, simpler, less mature: most scriptures were penned by men, who are cast out of the womb and hope by good works to return close to it)

By way of parallel, the postmodern cannot be located on a timeline, but is a state of being encountered now, but not uniformly distributed. Or the Kingdom of Heaven, in less literalist traditions, is something that may be entered here and now, rather than being placed far off in space and time. So the dream is realised now, but imperfectly, and that's as good as it ever gets... your posited arrival is eternally delayed.

But don't we demand the astounding from both heaven and hell... Eden, whatever. I always thought birds (the flying ones, not flightless ones) were in heaven and we ground creatures were in hell.

Anything that can flap it's arms and fly around can damned well find Eden.

And crap on your head on the way there.

Not having been as clear as I could have been, I'll try to restate the matter more forthrightly.

THE dream (cross-culturally) of paradise is generally lost to humanity, unattainable or only attainable through morbidity (in the literal sense). We cannot have this thing: this painless and joyous experience. Or, we can only have it in a state from which no flow of information is forthcoming (namely death). Always just beyond arms reach.

It should, I think, be rather clear that all things posited in the sundry versions of Eden (timelessness, immortality, peace, prosperity, happiness, love, ascension to the god-head etc.) are all things that are more or less attainable within our current scientific paradigm. My own immortality is only a few nanomachines away.

But even now at this cusp, the singularity that some few incredibly educated people theorize is eminent, the possibility of actualizing THE dream is impossible to us. Perhaps it is the sanctity of the religious: only God can make this paradise. Perhaps it is the idea of impracticality, driven deep into our minds: enemies of a score centuries could not lay down their arms and embrace. In any case, the question remains: is it impossible to make Eden on Earth in an actual sense?

The followup question, of course, is: What becomes the next impossible horizon? If somehow we overcome this idea that Eden is impossible, what unattainable goal can replace it to give humanity something to strive for?

A more perfect pina colada.

Is Iain M Banks' 'Culture' a form of paradise? It's a world in which scarcity has been vanquished, and when you think about it most conflicts arise from scarcity of one sort or another. So in terms of tech fixes, perhaps we're almost there. But then there'll always be human nature, and freedom... and that may well be the death knell... even those experiencing no material want may still make themselves and others unhappy. Most Heavens exist only after a radical culling of the vast majority of the populace, whether through cleansing fire or through cycles of rebirth. Is a Heaven/New Eden in which our behaviour is controlled still heavenly?

As I said earlier, these seem to me to be much more in the nature of ideals... states toward which we always strive, but never reach. And in fact perhaps the reaching would vitiate their value.

But anyway, I guess the point is that any solution needs to be (at least) two-pronged: tech can give us time and lack of scarcity, but what can give us peace, internally and externally?

Have you read HG Wells's Time Machine? Before he discovers the Morlocks, the hero has a theory about the future he is seeing which I found more interesting than the "truth". Humans have, through technology, transformed the Earth to the extent that not only is life now comfortable and perfect, but the very possibility of want and strife has been eliminated. The weather is never inclement, the only trees are trees that produce delicious and nutritious fruits, all aggression has been bred out of all the animals, and so on.

Without any difficulties to strive against, mankind loses interest in technology, literature, most of the fundamentals of civilization. They don't need anything, so they don't invent anything. But because the geniuses of the past have fixed it so that their paradise is self-sustaining, it doesn't matter that they don't. Their decadent lifestyle is not the end of them as it would be in any other age, because they aren't keeping nature in check, they've transformed nature completely to meet human needs.

Of course it later turns out that nature was indeed being held in check by enormous underground machinery, tended to by an underclass, but I thought the first idea was more interesting.

I don't think we're anywhere near that kind of Eden. I don't think it's actually possible, because of the complexity of weather, etc. But unless our technological Eden is self-sustaining like that, I think it can't last. Things that we take for granted always collapse.

quote:

Originally posted by Bravus:
But anyway, I guess the point is that any solution needs to be (at least) two-pronged: tech can give us time and lack of scarcity, but what can give us peace, internally and externally?

Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire touches on this. The protagonist, Mia, is a post-human and she experiences a seperation from the world around her, a feeling of being so completely different, so completely inhuman, that she has no peace until she completely seperates herself from the world and goes back to nature, walking the fields, away from the cities.
i think ideals are ultimately unattainable. there will always be something missing.
for instance, we all think and say that we'd love to just do "nothing", have no worries, etc.
but have you ever tried it? its incredibly boring and it makes you miserable.
i think the first Eden had a balance of rest and work. because otherwise it would've been miserable.