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Forbidden Fruit and Human Guilt
During President Obama's recent trip to Alaska, he made clear the critical need to fight back against global warming and resultant climate change. In speaking about what is under way in the polar region at the top of the world, he used the term "human activity." Mr. Obama is concerned about how industrial overreach is on the point of taking advantage of the melting icecap and, unchecked, will inevitably make things worse.
Russia has experienced some tough going in its efforts to extract oil and gas from the Arctic and has shuttered its operations there for now. Vladimir Putin is at present diverted, on one hand, by his perverse intent to enable Bashar al-Assad in his murderous ways, and, on the other, to make life miserable for his Ukraine neighbors. Be assured, though, that the wily Russian in the end will not let the Arctic bonanza slip away.
In the rich possibilities of fishing, mining, oil drilling and strategic military occupation, insatiable human greed has heard a siren song. Knowing only too well the methods we have devised to take from Earth its natural resources, it should not surprise anyone that big money is drawn by the delicious fruit hanging from the tree in the middle of a new Garden of Eden.
In that Genesis story -- one of the most telling in the entire realm of mythology -- one can see, should one want to see, how and why the Arctic may be pillaged, its ecosystem destroyed and its pristine waters polluted.
The myth of Adam and Eve is a continuation of a tale set down as early as 900 BCE. It begins with a revision of what may be an ancient Babylonian legend of origins, which features not so much the product of the later six-day all's-well-that-ends-well creation narrative, but rather on the assembling of the first man and woman who are placed in lush and verdant surroundings, there to become one flesh -- a clear reference to copulation.
They were to mind their own business and just enjoy each other and what had been given them. They could have anything they wanted EXCEPT the fruit of the tree in the midst of Eden -- the consumption of which fruit would make them knowledgeable and therefore knowledge-driven beings -- often unable to contain and discipline their use of knowledge.
(Note: The story is not anti-knowledge. It is about the hubris knowledge can enable, as in the famous attempt of Icarus to fly to the sun on waxen wings.)
The couple eats of the fruit, and the first thing they notice is that they are naked and ashamed -- perhaps not so much of their nudity but of their stupid, stupid mistake. The price they pay is eviction from the paradise they have sullied. Childbirth, which will result from becoming one flesh, will be burdensome for her. Supporting her and their kids will require him to labor without respite.
What the writer doesn't tell us is how human labor over time would become a manic attempt to employ knowledge in the re-creation of the paradisiacal life of the fabled garden.
Pursuit of that end has been going on for millennia, and ever more so since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution almost 200 years ago. To realize the ends of that revolution, hundreds of thousands of human souls were crowded into fetid factories and forced to work under inhuman conditions for a pittance. A new race of titans had with haughty tread marched into a new Eden to reap what they had not sown.
All that fueled what Karl Marx hoped would be another kind of revolution in which capitalism would have its comeuppance as workers gained control of the means of production, thereby creating what we might call today a new and more secure middle class. Lenin took the idea off the cliff with him and created Soviet communism about the tragic failures of which we know so well.
As if to thumb its collective nose at Marx & Co., capitalism -- especially its modern American version -- has pressed on to the point that, aided and abetted by ideological conservatives, it has managed to decimate unions while income disparity has grown to enormous proportions with no end in sight.
Now that pollution of the waters and the atmosphere has resulted, among other things, in the thawing of the polar icecap, capitalism is poised to take immoral advantage of those new open waters -- the liquid version of the forbidden fruit. And if the big money is successful in its Arctic commerce, the result will be worse than Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden. It will change for this age and ages to come the world human hands did not make.
As Homo sapiens reaches for that apple yet again, consumes it and looks for more, a reckoning cannot be too far in the future -- but farther on enough that those alive today likely will not be present to pay for their sins. But their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be. And will pay.
One hates to think that judgment for the sins of the fathers will be visited upon those of succeeding generations, as the Bible suggests. But such seems to be the case.
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Copyright 2015 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
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Readers Write
Re essay of 9/11/15 Conscience
Rt. Rev'd R. Stewart Wood, Hanover, Vermont:
Well said. I'm reminded of the line from a song from South Pacific, "they've got to be taught ...," which identifies so many of our opinions and prejudices coming out of an environment in when they are nurtured by being rehearsed over and over again. Thanks, too, for reminding us that the county clerk in Kentucky is a victim of the same pre-judgment she exhibited with regard to those gay and lesbian couples seeking a marriage license.
Sharon Ferguson, Ashtabula, Ohio:
It took me two readings of your essay "Conscience" to realize that you were saying that the woman county clerk in Kentucky was not the devil some have said she is. Your statement that "she just doesn't know enough" makes me feel sorry for her, not anger for her.
William K. McDonald, Fenton, Michigan:
This essay is pure Harry Cook: A little bit heavy, right on the mark, and a teaching moment for me
Lois Renkhe, Bethesda, Maryland:
That was a really good take on the Kentucky marriage license clerk. I would be no fan of hers. That's for sure. But you are so right that, while she may have what they call a conscience, it is not informed. I would go further to say that an uninformed conscience is not a conscience at all.
Blayney Colmore, Jacksonville, Vermont:
Having spent formative years in the segregated South of the 1940s, I really wonder if prejudice can ever be totally erased once it has lodged in our marrow. I am embarrassed and exasperated by the reality that the first thing I notice about a person of color, especially when that person is my peer, or someone who outranks me, is skin color. Because it was drummed into me in every imaginable way as a child that people of color, while perfectly decent, aren't as bright as light skinned people. I have lived in the Philippines and in Africa, so I know better, but the initial response remains. I have always admired Lawton Chiles who ran for re-election as governor of Florida on what for that time was a progressive civil rights platform. At one stop he was challenged by a man who said, "Governor, are you trying to tell us that you, a child of the South, aren't racially prejudiced?" "Oh no," Chiles responded, "I am shot full of prejudice of all sorts, but I try not to live my life by them." Eunice Rose, Southfield, Michigan:I loved your today's column as always. Have a beautiful, sweet, wonderful New Year!
Nicholas S. Molinari, Brick, New Jersey:
Thank you for your wonderful refresher about "conscience." I could empathize with everything you said. A particularly delicate issue for me as a boy had to do with "impure thoughts" and their eternal consequences. Made me wonder if the priests and nuns who obsessed over sexual matters ever had any impure thoughts of their own. In my youth, I thought they were as "pure" as angels. Now I know better, sadly. But your essay tore away that lingering notion of the good angel on your right shoulder and the bad angel on your left -- or is it vice-versa? -- always nagging away and instigating good or evil. Your comments are generally sympathetic to the wrong thinking and wrongdoing of ignorant people, like the now-glorified Confederate clerk. I find it considerably more difficult to tolerate such intolerance, thereby becoming I suppose what I abhor. I'll find more compassion in my heart for her if, after all her failed heterosexual marriages, she were to know, love and marry another woman. Thank you also for your responses to readers' comments, including my own. Your Summer People was so real, beautiful, powerful and ironic for me.
Dr. Don Nichols, Pikeville, Tennessee:
As a social psychologist, I have to remind folks that we are basically products of our social experiences and reinforcement. I used to challenge my college students by saying: "Everyone here could become a suicide-bomber." No one is born knowing whom to hate; grandmothers and significant others pass on the teachings over and over until they're believed. Our adopted children who survived the Rwandan genocide tell me that, although they were Christians, the teachings about Hutus (they are Tutsi) were so powerful that both stated they "could never marry a Hutu" even BEFORE they suffered the loss of half their relatives. As a kid growing up the South, I was taught similar things about Jews and African Americans by people who had never met either; I tell people: "Those folks were not stupid enough to live in our crummy little, mountain town." Thank God that we are given the ability to see beyond powerful teachings and reinforcement as we become more mature and thoughtful. Unfortunately, too many people in the world don't. Thanks for your thoughts.
Rabbi Larry Mahrer, Parrish, Florida:
Your remarks about my good friend, Rabbi Sherwin Wine, are so true! He was an excellent thinker, a positive force in Judaism, and so much fun to be with.
Rusty Hancock, Madison Heights, Michigan:
Isn't the reality more like that in Animal Farm, where the creatures were taught that although all animals were equal, some were more equal than others? That may be a bit twisted as it has been years since I read the book, but it also seems to be a popular political philosophy these days. Unfortunately.
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