In The Narratives of our lives, I had written about how, thanks to the advances of civilisation, many institutional narratives like religion, nation, culture etc have assumed increasing levels of importance in our lives, and how these (and our personal) narratives are probably our way of ensuring a sense of belonging. ‘The Age of Spiritual Machines‘, criticism on the concept of singularity notwithstanding, has convinced me on the cold, sanitised nature of evolution, so these days, I try to see what evolution’s play is, in these narratives.
Thanks to a wine-induced pop philosophy conversation, I got thinking about theism and atheism. The epiphany (for me) was that they are just two sides of the same coin, and the currency was hope. Simply put, the foundation of the theist’s hope is God, and that of the atheist’s is the ability to determine his own future. ‘Our beliefs create the world we live in’, but across belief systems, hope is a critical ingredient for man’s survival. I realised that as long as we are the dominant species, hope has to hang around, or vice versa. By virtue of providing a common imaginary friend to a sufficiently high mass, religion not only addresses our need to belong, it also gives us hope. What each of us hope for is a very subjective thing, but collectively, it makes religion a really dominant narrative in many lives. When I thought about it, I recognised an even bigger force – money.
Only the thoroughly uncivilised would fail to see the value of money. Please note, the people who reject it as the dominant currency in their lives have seen the value but have also understood the price involved and have chosen to not pay. But the rest of us see it as a currency of hope. More money will help us buy/do/not do something. It is an insurance against the unpredictable events that lie in store. Which probably explains “The only thing stronger than fear is hope.” The narrative of religion now divides more than it brings together. From what I see around, that is the future of money as well.
So what really does evolution want, and what does it hope to gain by creating multiple narratives of division within a species? I really can’t think of an answer, except that probably it has no end in mind. Maybe it just wants a continuum, and everything else, including the future of humanity is just an insignificant detail.
P.S. I also don’t know how, with those terrible traffic snarls, that junction near our home is called Hope Farm!
P.P.S. The blog celebrates a dozen years of existence on this day. 🙂
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