On Not Needing to be Omnipotent

04/11/2013 16:56

Mary Midgley

This question about the meaning of being human is really hard for us today. In fact, confusion about it is surely what lands so many of us in climate-change denial, deaf to the alarm-bells that keep ringing in the world around us. The problem of human status paralyzes us. It produces cognitive dissonance. We find it harder and harder to believe in the solution to it that our whole culture has accepted till lately—namely, that we are simply the earth’s rulers. Yet both of the two world-views prevailing today—the Christian one and the evolutionary one—still agree in giving us that same answer. [Read more] ...