Of Humanity and Monsters

If you start introducing the history of the Black Plague in the right announcer voice, it sounds like the trailer for a great post-apocalyptic flick. The difference between history and fiction in this case, however, is in the rebuilding. One of our movies would focus on struggle, weakness, and the worst of us. It would look at human goodness with a scarcity mentality, celebrating moral grayness at the end of the world.

But, the Humanists didn’t. They found their glory in the strength and beauty of humanity. These thinkers came through a tragedy where they had very little control or ability to save lives (and were essentially at the mercy of fleas) celebrating the greatness of man. This seems counter-intuitive, but I’m still working on my cynical tendencies. I could be wrong.

Whether I’m biased by a darker glass than others or not, I’m not the only one. If entertainment like The Walking Dead is a reflection of societal thoughts and fears, then we lost the Humanist mentality somewhere along the way. We’ve come to believe that we are not only the apex predator, but monster in the closet. Montaigne found nobility in humans that others referred to as savages, while we make movies like Arrival where we have to be saved from—and despite—ourselves.

While we celebrate the printing press and the effect it had on inspiring generations, there’s a good chance that this straying from Humanist thought began with the printing press as well. The printing press showed us that we were hungry to understand the world, but it also gave us the belief that we could want to understand it. That we deserved it.

That need turned into the telegram that gave us news of the American civil war and the sinking of the Titanic. It gave us the radio that filled us with reports of a war-torn Europe. Then it gave us the film that showed us the holocaust and the atom bomb. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t take us very long to go from criticizing the Catholic church for burning Bibles to wondering how we can control information in our day and age.

So, after seeing in graphic detail just what kind of evil humanity is capable of, do we get to say “What a piece of work is man!” with sincerity or sarcasm? Can we still look on the human form with joy? Or with only with trepidation?

I think we have to create a personal answer to that. And mine, with all of the value, experience, and cynicism that it holds, agrees with the humanists. Just with a word of caution. What a piece of work is man! And how important it is to guide that incredible power along moral lines.

Image credit to pixaby.com

More Curiosity than Capacity

Michel de Montaigne said in his anthropological account Of Cannibals, “I fear me our eyes be greater than our bellies, that we have more curiosity than capacity. We embrace all, but we fasten nothing but wind.” I believe that this speaks to a tremendous failing of the Renaissance voyages of discovery. Being confronted with dozens of new and diverse cultures from which to learn, Renaissance explorers chose instead to invalidate the experiences of other by holding their own aloft.

No doubt motivated by the newfound philosophy of humanism, which allowed for the glorification of the individual, those claiming to seek understanding in reality sought only a confirmation of their superiority. Montaigne speaks to this quite directly in his essay, a dramatic break from the trend seen in the essays of Sir Walter Raleigh and even the fictional account Utopia by Thomas More. Rather than claiming that these “savages” needed anything from him, Montaigne instead purports that his countrymen had much to learn from these people that he describes as “noble”, “generous” and “untainted”.

Humanism, as understood by Montaigne, is not the glorification of some individuals over others. It is seeing purpose and beauty in all things, even and especially those that differ from our own understanding. In this aspect, this period experienced a tremendous failure. The great scholars of the time had their sights so firmly focused on the past in attempt to recapture its grandeur that they failed to see the tremendous opportunities for learning that were in from of them. They sought to learn, to mark on maps, to collect accounts of strange peoples and things without any interest in understanding a different world view. Embracing all, but fastening on nothing but wind.