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Paradise Lost - The Common Aspiration For Freedom
Throughout history and across the world, from ancient shamanic religions to Islam
, humanity is described as having long ago fallen from a higher, more pure state of being. Our hopeful return to paradise, to a paradisiacal state of liberation from worldly suffering, which mythology says existed before the historical process began (e.g. in the Garden of Eden), has always been the primary impetus for humanity's pilgrimage through history. In the name of drawing nearer to a state of salvation, it seems that humankind has built up, defended, and then rejected an endless procession of ideas, societies, governments, philosophies, and religious movements. Our understanding of what form salvation might take has been in a constant state of refinement, more often, if not always, evolving at cross purposes to itself, creating time after time situations in which systems in violent competition, such as science and religion, seemingly antithetical to each other, actually sought the same goal-a goal everywhere and always reducible to this complex idea of human salvation. Systems as divergent as Taoism and Marxism, National Socialism and Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Liberalism and Conservativism, Environmentalism and Consumerism, have all claimed to possess a set of concepts that would in some sense "free" their adherents from needless suffering. The whole human experience, therefore, individual and collective, whether from one religious or a-religious perspective or another, can in every case be thought of as the pursuit of that which ultimately frees.
Our pilgrimage through history has never been a waste of time, however, in spite of what may seem to have been heavy setbacks along the way; although human progress may seem erratic at times, nevertheless each successive age has expanded our individual and collective understanding of the nature of our circumstances. For example, Monotheism, as it developed in the West, freed ancient humans from the nearly complete domination of consciousness by the vitalistic animism seen everywhere in Nature; the coming of Jesus in turn freed believers from the fear of a wrathful and paternalistic god. Similarly, the modern era offered freedom from the dogmatic orthodoxy of late medieval Christianity. It is often argued that each of these events in history, rather than advancing humans along the path toward salvation, had the opposite effect instead, and each new step down the path of history has led ever deeper into time and away from paradise. However, viewed more objectively, the historical process can be seen rather as the expansion of cross-cultural contacts between different peoples and the sharing of a continuously evolving and growing pool of new ideas, information, and myths. In our age, the Internet serves to accelerate this process at a mind-boggling pace. This body of inherited and shared information represents our collective understanding of the nature of the human species' conscious journey through time. Each new epoch, each new religion or philosophy, therefore, however much it may appear to erode the search for salvation in its own right, as an addition to the racial and cultural collectivity of conscious information, represents advance, not recoil.
Although our entire lives are caught up in the pursuit of salvation, we clearly do not share a collective understanding of what this liberation might be-if we did, then we would all be Muslims, Christians, National Socialists, Capitalists, Republicans, Democrats, or whatever. But we are unique, not uniform. The search for salvation is nevertheless reflected on all levels within our species and is intensely present in each of us as individuals, no matter how different our approach. Whether religious or a-religious, each of us pursues those ideas that seem, subject to our own uniqueness of course, to be most adept at leading us toward salvation. This desire for salvation is written in the hearts of each and every one us, from American consumer to Taliban extremist. No matter how different we may think we are, we all seek the same thing.
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