Part 10: Mary Shelley, Prophet Of Naturalism?
Finding ethical underpinnings in Greek Myth and classic literature
Read also earlier posts »Intro: About Naturalism »Part 1: A New Faith, Born Of Lockdown »Part 2: The Need For Naturalism »Part 3: The Equivalence Of God And Nature »Part 4: The Special Role Of Science In Naturalism »Part 5: Right And Wrong Technology »Part 6: Smartphones And Covid Vaccines »Part 7: Irredeemable Tech »Part 8: Naturalism And The Tower Of Babel »Part 9: Naturalism, Eden, And The Fall
In Parts 8 and 9, I discussed Biblical underpinning for an ethics that moderates technological over-reach. I considered the stories of Eden and Babel. Now, I’ll look for similar underpinnings in Greek tradition and in classic English literature.
First let’s look at the story of Pandora’s Box in Greek mythology. The story begins when Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to humans, which Zeus is angry about. Zeus is intent on revenge, which comes in the form of a beautiful but impulsive woman, Pandora, given to Prometheus’s brother. Zeus later has a beautiful box delivered to that same household, with a warning not to open it. Pandora, predictably, opens the box, and evil spirits escape into the world. These spirits are essentially different types of pain and disaster: sickness, death, toil, famine, etc. This suffering is basically Zeus’s payback for humans gaining the use of fire.
Historians have already noted the similarities between the Eden story and the Pandora story: the disobedience that initiates godly anger, the impulsive woman, and the suffering that occurs as a result of disobedience. It’s possible, even, that the two stories share a common older lineage.
I’d like to point out a couple features of Pandora that relate to Naturalism and technological over-reach. First, in older versions of the Pandora story, there is no box, but instead a sort of traditional roundish storage jar. That makes the shape of it a bit similar to, say, a fruit, like the famous fruit of Eden. The moral of the Pandora myth is that impulsive disturbance of the wholeness of the jar is what brought on the calamities. If the jar had been left intact, humanity would have remained in a carefree state. This is similar to the wholeness of the fruit in the Eden story: the problems happened after that wholeness was ruined through eating it. In Naturalism, the basic moral of these stories is the same: when humanity disturbs the whole of special things, then it can only expect bad natural consequences.
The Pandora story also specifically relates to technology because of the stolen fire. Control of fire is certainly one of the biggest technological leaps made in human prehistory, and in the Greek myth, people’s use of fire results in the unleashing of suffering as Zeus’s revenge. This implies that there are negative events associated with leaps in tech. It’s interesting that the first tech of the Bible (sewn fig-leaf clothing) also appears in conjunction with the calamities that befall Adam and Eve.
Another Greek myth comes to mind regarding tech over-reach, that of Icarus and Daedalus. The father, Daedalus, is a famous inventor. He designs wings of wax and feather that allow humans to fly with their arms. He test-flies the wings along with his son Icarus. Even though the father warns the son not to fly close to the sun, the son does so, and thereby loses his feathers because the sun melts the wax that affixes them. Icarus then crashes fatally into the sea. Some ancient Greek versions of this story identify the mishap as a punishment by the sun god Helios because Icarus was trying to raise himself higher than the sun.
The Icarus story has a lot of parallels to the Tower of Babel story. For example, high altitude is a symbol for high status in both stories, and seeking that altitude results in bad consequences. However, one interesting element is very different: in the Icarus story, the punishment is individual rather than applied to all humankind. The older Daedalus is wise enough to completely avoid angering Helios. This implies a hope for humanity, and for technology as well, especially since Daedalus was the actual inventor of the wings. From a Naturalist perspective, the value of this story is that it encourages caution in order not to incur the wrath of nature when new tech is employed. It cautions against being overly eager to apply technology in a risky manner. The story stresses that some impressive technology can be fine if used in moderation.
All four traditional stories I’ve analyzed so far—Babel, Eden, Pandora, and Icarus—have classically been interpreted as cautionary lessons against lack of respect for a higher power. The new Naturalist interpretation that I offer is that such transgressions toward the higher powers can be interpreted as simply inevitable descriptions of human behavior. How could you expect Pandora not to open the jar, or Eve not to bite the fruit? How could you expect the capable people of Babel not to try to build such a tower, or a brash youth such as Icarus not to fly high? It is in the character of humans to make these mistakes, but it is also humanity’s role to grow beyond these errors and become more respectful not only to the sacred status of nature, symbolized by the heights of Babel and Icarus, but also to the essence of nature, symbolized by the wholeness of the Eden fruit and Pandora’s jar before they were touched. When we are not respectful of nature, then we will suffer consequences.
Now I’d like to look at a few other cautionary tales, but this time from much more recent literature.
The 18th-century book Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift, contains a chapter on the magnetically suspended aerial island of Laputa, inhabited by a highly technological society which wreaks havoc on the lower-class less-technological people living on the earth below. The tech capabilities of the Laputans also cause dysfunction to themselves: the overly intellectual inhabitants become cross-eyed and habitually lost in thought, to their detriment. This chapter of Gulliver is certainly a comic satire, but is notable as an early literary criticism of the harms of tech over-reach. It employs, similar to the Icarus or Babel stories, the idea of attaining an improper height and status. The Laputans have taken the technology of magnets to a harmful extreme, just as the people of Babel did with their fired-brick technology. Although there is no final wrath against Laputa in Swift’s book, it gives ample opportunity for the reader to imagine a dramatic future mishap. If you consider the dysfunctionality and distractedness of the Laputans, the account almost seems like a comic slice-of-life in Babel during God’s curse, when communication was disrupted. There are many parallels with Babel, but one unique contribution in Gulliver is the idea that social inequality caused by the unequal use of technology can be a potential harm.
In Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein, there is a very clear warning against technological over-reach. Dr. Frankenstein fashions what he intends to be an ideal body from “inanimate” parts and imbues it with life using his own electro-chemical process. The creature ends up being extremely ugly—rather than ideal—but is certainly alive with a human-like mind. The rest of the story demonstrates first the innate sensitivity and intelligence of the creature, but later its corruption as a result of the loneliness of not being accepted by society. Dr. Frankenstein, feeling responsible, aims at destroying the creature, and finally dies pursuing it. The fate of the creature is left somewhat open, although it vows suicide near the end.
It’s interesting that Shelley’s subtitle for Frankenstein was A Modern Prometheus. This harkens to the fact that Prometheus, in Greek legend, was instrumental in the creation of humankind. It also harkens to the introduction of fire by Prometheus, which seems similar to the spark which Dr. Frankenstein employs. Electricity and chemistry were cutting-edge tech during Shelley’s era.
Shelley’s story, which has obviously resonated in popular culture around the world for more than two centuries already, has strong parallels to all four ancient stories I’ve looked at already. It resembles Babel and Icarus because of Dr. Frankenstein’s high ambitions to have Godlike status, in this case the power of creating life. It resembles Eden and Pandora because natural wholeness has been disturbed: Dr. Frankenstein constructs the creature from separate parts. A new ethic apparent in Frankenstein is that human bodies are a sacred whole. If we disturb or tinker with their unique natural essence, we do so at our peril.
The book Frankenstein is a near-perfect 19th-century encapsulization of traditional wisdom. In addition, it anticipates later technological developments: not only organ transplantation, but also genetic engineering and such current tech as artificial intelligence. It raises important questions about such tech. For example, will the products of artificial intelligence be truly sentient and intelligent? Shelley’s answer is yes. Will the products function well in human society? Shelley’s answer here is no. I think we are only beginning to see the wisdom of Shelley play out with artificial intelligence projects such as Google’s LaMDA as well as proposals for transhumanism.
One more classic book that I’d like to mention is The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells, written in the late 19th century. In this story, a scientist secretly pursues gruesome biological experiments on a lonely island, combining parts of people and animals to make hybrid “humanized” beasts. The beasts initially have human faculties but over time adopt animal behavior. The project predictably comes to a violent and tragic end. The symbolism in Moreau is very similar to that of Frankenstein. However, Wells adds the concept of artificial animal combinations, which strongly anticipates modern genetic engineering. It’s very interesting that the beasts in Wells’ book revert to an animal state. This implies a re-assertion of nature after an imbalance has been imposed by humans. Wells’ symbolic contribution here is that nature gradually overcomes transgressions that people commit against it, though people will still suffer as a consequence. Perhaps we are seeing the likes of this already in recent years. For example, the designer coronavirus, once released, gradually mutates into something less virulent, and more in keeping with standard respiratory viruses.
I’m finished now with my exploration of a handful of well-known stories that underpin the new ethics of Naturalism. In fact, these stories demonstrate that Naturalism is really not new at all, but nascent in older traditions, all the way back to Eden and Pandora. I’ve done this to add credence to the notion that nature abhors not just a vacuum, but also a vacuum of ethics with regard to human over-reach. Human technology needs brakes attached. If they are wise, humans will adopt an ethical system to moderate technology with respect to nature. I’ve laid out a draft for such a system in the earlier Parts 6 and 7.
Naturalism as a religion strives to be relevant to modern problems, so the inclusion of modern stories such as Gulliver, Frankenstein, and Moreau is fitting. Not only do these stories mesh well with the ancient stories in terms of their core ethics, they are also rich with specific foresight that directly speaks to current events. It’s no accident, I suppose, that all three of these modern stories would be called science fiction (or “proto-science-fiction” in the case of Gulliver). Good science fiction of the modern era is comparable to the prophecies recorded in ancient eras. Although Mary Shelley would likely have never dreamed of being considered a prophet, perhaps it would be appropriate to call her the first prophet of Naturalism.
One question that a “doubter” of Naturalism might ask is whether all these similar cautionary stories—traditional and modern—have tragic outcomes not for reasons of inspired wisdom, but for reasons of either (1) dramatic entertainment, (2) a moralistic bent of the original writers, or else (3) a Western predilection for such moralism.
I would reply to these doubts by pointing out that all these stories have been extremely resonant in human culture, some of them for thousands of years already. Would they be so resonant and persistent if they had no deeper truth to them, if they were just “spiritual entertainment”? In other words, is the resonance they have precisely due to their spiritual truth? Like the question of the consciousness of God, the existence of “truthful resonance” is impossible to prove to a doubter, but it is possible—and very common—for people to feel it. Furthermore, I think it is possible even to find historical support for the the notion of over-reach and “natural punishment” afterward, which is the basic Naturalist interpretation of all these stories. For example, history is rife with expanding empires that quickly and tragically fall apart. “Punishment” for over-reach is really a sort of natural law, which affects not just humans and their societies, but also any living organism.
In answer to the doubts regarding moralism, I’d ask: what is the problem with including morality in stories? Morality, though differing to some extent from place to place, is key to well-functioning civilization anywhere, and by extension to well-functioning technological development. Perhaps the largest vulnerability in modern civilization is an almost complete lack of morality with regard to the use and development of technology. That’s exactly the problem that Naturalism addresses. Finding moral insight and support in classic stories is a great first-step to formulating the new, necessary ethics.
In answer to the doubts regarding Western bias, I’ll point out that Chinese Taoism has a concept that is parallel to Western concepts of Eden and the Fall. In Taoism, there is a notion of an older period in human history, before people lost their idyllic connection with “the Tao” (often translated as “the Way”). In fact, the concept of the Tao has striking similarities with the concept of God-as-nature in Naturalism, a topic which I hope to cover in another post some day. I suspect that there are other underpinnings for Naturalist ethics in Asian, African, and Native American traditions, but I will have to research those in the future.
Whether a person accepts the ethical meaningfulness of these stories is partly a matter of faith, but also partly a matter of fact. Some people see—and others are blind to—the harm in today’s society done by a variety of tech over-reaches: addictive smartphones, engineered pandemic viruses, toxic pollution, and injurious “medicines”, to name a few. To be a Naturalist is not to reject tech development in general, but simply to say that this development should be moderated—and in some cases prevented—so that it does not cause harm or undue risk.
In the next posts, I’ll imagine what a Naturalist church service might be like, and what a Naturalist lifestyle would be like.