Liberation through knowledge

Author: Fan Jingzhong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-01-01
Features: All living things are seeking a better world. Humans, animals, plants, and even single-celled organisms are always proactive. They are constantly trying to improve their situation or at least avoid its deterioration. Even during sleep, organisms actively maintain the state of sleep: the depth of sleep (otherwise shallow) is a state actively created by the organism, which maintains sleep (or keeps the organism alert). Every organism is eternally focused on the task of solving problems. These problems arise from its own evaluation of its condition and environment; they arise from the organism's attempt to improve its condition. A tentative solution often goes astray because it makes things worse. This is followed by further attempts at a solution—further trial-and-error activity. We can see that life (even at the level of single-celled organisms) has brought something entirely new, something unprecedented to the world: active attempts to solve problems; evaluation, values; trial-and-error. It can be argued that under the influence of Darwin's natural selection, active problem-solvers, seekers, and discoverers—discoverers of new worlds and new forms of life—have undergone significant development. Every organism also strives to stabilize its internal life condition, maintain its individuality—the activity biologists call "homeostasis"—yet this is also an internal excitement, an internal activity: an attempt to limit internal excitement, a feedback mechanism, a correction for errors. Homeostasis must be incomplete. It must limit itself. If it were completely successful, it would mean the death of the organism or at least the suspension of all its life functions. Activity, excitement, seeking are essential for life, for restless, incomplete existence; for the eternal seeking, hope, evaluation, discovery, improvement, for learning, for the creation of values. They are also essential for the eternal errors, for the creation of negative values. Darwinism teaches that organisms adapt to the environment through natural selection. It teaches that they are passive throughout this process. But in my view, it is far more important to emphasize that organisms, in the process of seeking a better world, discover, invent, and transform their environment. They build nests, dams, small hills, and mountains. But their most significant creation may be the alteration of the Earth's atmosphere, increasing its oxygen content, a change that resulted from the discovery of sunlight as a food source. The discovery of this inexhaustible food supply and countless ways to capture light created the plant kingdom; the discovery of plant-based food created the animal kingdom. We ourselves were created by the invention of unique human language. As Darwin said (in The Descent of Man, Part, Chapter III), the use and development of human language "affects the mind itself." Our language's statements can describe a state of affairs, which may be objectively true or false. Thus, the search for objective truth can begin, that is, the acquisition of human knowledge. The search for truth, especially in the natural sciences, is undoubtedly considered the best, greatest creation of life in its long pursuit of a better world. But have we not destroyed the environment with our natural sciences? The answer is: no! While we have made some major mistakes, all living things make mistakes. It is indeed impossible to foresee all the unintended consequences of our actions. Here, science is our greatest hope: its method is to correct errors. I do not want to end this preface without mentioning the successes in the search for a better world during my eighty-seven years of life, during which two meaningless world wars and evil dictatorships have emerged. Despite all this, despite so many failures, we live in a better and more just social order than any other period in recorded history (because they were more favorable to reform). Further improvements are imperative (though improvements that increase national power often lead to the opposite of what we seek). I would like to briefly mention two things we have improved. One important thing is that the terrible poverty that still existed during my childhood and youth has now disappeared. (Unfortunately, this is not the case in places like Calcutta.) Some may object to this view, saying that some people in our society are too wealthy. But if we have abundant resources—and goodwill—to fight against poverty and other avoidable suffering, why should this bother us? The second thing is our reform of the criminal justice system. Initially, we might have hoped that if punishments were reduced, crime would also decrease. When the results were not as expected, we still decided that, as individuals and collectively, we would rather tolerate the consequences of crime, corruption, murder, espionage, and terrorism than take the highly questionable step of trying to eradicate these things through violence, thus risking making the innocent victims of it. (Unfortunately, this is very difficult to completely avoid.) Critics accuse our society of corruption, though they may admit that corruption is sometimes punished (Watergate). Perhaps they are not aware of another situation. We like the order that even the most despicable criminals are guaranteed full legal protection, and if there is any doubt, they are not punished. We like this order rather than another order in which even the innocent are not protected by the law and are punished even when their innocence is undeniable (Sakharov). However, in making these decisions, we may have chosen other values as well. Perhaps we have unconsciously applied Socrates' excellent teaching: "The best thing is to suffer injustice rather than to commit it."