> Poet's Postscript: Philosophical Frankenstein
>
> Halloween would be a perfect time to be campy and silly,
> but somehow I got the bug to attempt to express
> something half-way serious.
>
> I suppose that I must get my silliness-versus-seriousness
> cycles in sync.
>
> I think that Frankenstein was more than just a monster story.
> It attempted to deal with a few philosophical issues.
>
> One of the messages that seemed to be implied -
> There are certain areas in which science and man are not
> "meant" to delve, because they are infringing on "God's"
> territory. I want to make clear that is most certainly not
> my belief.
>
> There was an excellent scene in one of the "Planet of the Apes"
> series, where the human showed a paper airplane to an
> ape-priest of the future. The ape-priest took the plane, wrinkled
> his nose, crumpled it up, and pitched it away, with a gesture of
> disgust, saying how preposterous it was to think that apes or men
> could ever fly.
>
> Reminds me very much of a businessman on the streets of
> Cleveland, when I was a college kid, trying to hand out a
> gay-rights political flyer. Crumpled it, threw it - same attitude,
> same sense of self-certainty: "What utter NONSENSE!".
>
> It is easy to imagine an alternative history, where the Wright Brothers
> would have been burned at the stake for daring to infringe on the
> territory of the harp-playing angels in the clouds. If the early aircraft
> had all failed in fiery crashes, the religious leaders could have laughed
> and mocked this "inevitable" outcome as divine punishment of man's
> hubris.
>
> It could have set aviation back by many centuries.
>
> The imagery that I put together, among other things, is more
> expressing just that restraint and good sense are needed, and
> currently are sadly lacking.
>
> I can picture how capitalism could kill itself, where the money-obsessed
> Carl Icahns, the Jack Abramoff sleazeballs, the power-hungry,
> wheeler-dealer politicians, the profit-motivated pharmaceuticals,
> all intersect with the gobblety-gook technical worlds of the Robert Gallos
> and Beatrice Hahns, and manage to kill millions, without even needing
> any terrorist plots. Just one really bad vaccine, drug, food product, etc,
> would do the job, with the best of intentions. Or maybe, with good
> intentions to make big profits on hot stocks.
>
> The problem isn't science, though. It the corruption of science by the
> corporate and political systems.
>
> There isn't anything that we are "meant" to do or not do. The Universe
> doesn't really mean anything by our being here at all. We are quite free.
> We just have to be prudent about the possible consequences.
>
> The Frankstein story seemed to be conveying an anti-science, religious notion
> of this type, yet it also seemed to be conveying another heretical idea that
> challenged religious dogma.
>
> The story seemed to imply that the monster had a valid defense, to be
> able to say, "I did not create myself."
>
> There are would-be philosophers who claim, "Oh, but we *do* create ourselves.
> We define who and what we are, by our 'free will' choices"
>
> I think that the monster is correct. The would-be philosophers manage to think
> that they are making sense only because they think in terms of fuzzy-logic
> and are not defining their own terminology clearly.
>
> They think in magical terms, where the decision-making process consists
> of a little angel on one shoulder, and a little devil on the other. Which one
> you decide to listen to depends on whether you decide have more of
> the little angel or little devil in you. If you have the little angel, you will
> be rewarded with lovely harps in the clouds, otherwise the world has
> earned the right to chant "Bad! Bad!" and pitch you into burning sulfur
> for all eternity.
>
> Not exactly thinking like a neurologist, a brain scientist, in terms of
> neural connections, receptors, molecular interactions, organic chemistry.
>
> You could ask the philosophers, "At what point in the firing of neurons,
> does the magic come in, and the angels are able to violate the laws
> of physics?"
>
> Their view is essentially supernaturalistic. Some of them would deny it;
> some of them would embrace it as a virtue.
>
> Illogic is a virtue only if it is the truth, which illogic rarely is.
> It is "faith" not science, that is the true hubris- people imagining that
> they are guided to correct beliefs because of their own superior virtue,
> being proud that they can maintain their beliefs in spite of all rational
> evidence to the contrary.
>
> Even without getting into a discussion of neural connections, there
> is a philosophical "Problem of Evil": did "God" create evil, or is
> there a creative force in the universe that is independent of "God"?
> Is there evil "ex nihilo", created out of nothingness, independent of
> God's bringing the rest of creation from nothingness?
>
> If we had "free choice", they why would anyone choose "evil", only
> to bring destruction upon themselves, as well as everyone else?
> If choice is motivated by "character", then it is still controlled by
> something and not really "free". To say that we are free to choose
> a better character for ourselves would only create a circularity.
> We don't choose a better character, because we are already of
> too poor a character.
>
> We didn't choose that original character, though- we are thrust
> into this world, having not the slightest idea what is going on,
> never asking for the privilege. We cannot create a pebble, much less
> a planet. We did not create our own bones, or eyes, or brain tissue,
> or choose our parents. If some of us are only so much human garbage
> to be burned in an incinerator, then God must have created garbage,
> which does not speak well of his competence.
>
> This is not a profound question, it is a ridiculous one. It is puzzling
> only if you try to cling to a perspective of religious clap-trap.
>
> Even religiously oriented individuals sometimes will admit that they
> do not have answers for these questions. Other times, they will
> do a shoe-shuffle and tap-dance faster than a Republican in a
> men's room toilet stall, but they only dance around the questions and
> never do find a convincing answer.
>
> I would not mind people seeking comfort in religious superstition,
> if it did not become a mask and a crutch for their irrational, petty
> hatreds.
>
> I write about Frankenstein partly because I feel in that role,
> to be waving poetical, nuclear holocaust under your nose, as the
> envisioned monster-threat that you make for yourselves by
> your own attitudes.
>
> If you treat an entire segment of society like they are some
> kind of monsters, threats to civil order, gross-out jokes,
> dangers to children, a blight that should not exist - then you should
> not complain if some of them start to menace you like Frankenstein.
>
> There is an ironic parity among monster charges. Frankstein
> thinks that *you* are the real monster.
>
> A genocide advocate can give a "friend of the court" brief
> to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the media doesn't even report
> it. A leader of the one of most prominent "family" groups
> talks like crackpot, callings gays "forces of Satan", and yet he
> gets courted like perfectly respectable leader.
>
> Little things, big things, monstrous things, over and over,
> most of it happening off the radar screen of an indifferent public.
>
> You would not have a legitimate complaint about all
> the monsters that might come to kill you. Sometimes, they
> are only the monsters that you willfully made.
>
> Frankstein does have one note of almost-forgiveness for the
> human race, even though he can and will destroy it, if it refuses to
> acknowledge that it needs to change.
>
> He doesn't really blame you. You did not create yourselves,
> either. You are the kinds of hopeless bastards that you are,
> because you are the products of a dog-eat-dog evolution
> in an uncaring and random world. Many of you are too primitive
> even to accept your own evolution, because then you might have
> to confront a world-view that has an uncaring universe at the
> heart of it.
>
> Pity the poor human race, it has nothing if it does not have
> its delusions to sustain it.
>
> The fault is not in yourselves. It really is in the stars-
> the swirling, coalescing gases that form into planets and bump
> into each other haphazardly, wiping out entire species for nothing
> more than an exercise in the laws of gravity.
>
> Frankenstein sort of forgives you. He might have to kill you,
> if you don't get the message, but he almost forgives you, anyway.