A Sketch of Progress

One hears so often these days, and this is nothing new: There is no truth. In our world, we have vanquished or somehow lost the Truth; we have no more God, no more tradition, no more family; our values rest solely in the profane. Science alone do we triumph. Science, before all things, is something true; it has, after all, directed the course and emergence of progress so far. This, however, is nonsense. Science is the negative to our ideal Truth: Science will never reveal a system of morals, nor penetrate into a reality not already somewhat determined by the limited perceptions of a human. Indeed, science is only reproduction, ever and again of the same stuff as the soil from which it was grown.

Let me give you a simple, if clarifying, example: We suppose we have progressed out from dark times in part on account of plumbing. We suppose that the possibility of bringing, at our every beck and call, an almost limitless quantity of water into the house is evidence enough of science’s success at Truth. But what do we truly know apart from what we have learned to control? Listen carefully: what more do we know about the water but better how to manipulate it? Have we seen into its being in-itself? Are we now aware of its moral significance? Have we even considered those who do not have clean water, or no pipes at all? And these great scientific achievements, from where do they come? They come but from those who would control; from those who have built entire empires of control. Science affords no clearer an image of the world, but only more precise ways to be human, and so far humans have sought mostly to control one another and the world. No wonder then, plumbing.

We have cause for alarum. If we continue to let science only reproduce our baser human behaviors, not only will we leave much wholly unexplored, we will be acting positively against the Truth; if all we know of water is how to control it, then we really know very little, and if all we learn is how to do it better, then we’re teaching ourselves lies.

One may counter: But indeed we know more of water than merely how to control it! We know after all its chemical formula, how it bonds together and all that! Yes, but it would be naïve to believe that this knowledge is based upon or has any purpose other than control. And so with the rest of science. Why, then, do we love it so much? Because it is true? It is not true. To believe so would be to confuse the truth of something with our ever greater faculty for its control. Water will ever remain obscure to us if we continue to treat it as a means and not as an end itself. And not only water! I'm talking cell phones and running shoes and band-pins too! We've got to see beyond the merely >>for me<<, and start looking at the >>for themselves<<. Moreover, we gotta act fast! As it stands now, we're losing control of science. And therefore we must immediately stop all science, or eventually it will become us, take us over, and rule us unrelentingly.