Parallel Readings - Christopher Lasch Vs. Richard Dawkins
A Dialogue on Self-Actualization in the Form of a Shitpost
Recently I’ve been contemplating some short form content in the form of “parallel readings”, excerpts from writers from authors in very different traditions that nonetheless echo the same themes. I hope this is the first of many to come.
Christopher Lasch, The Minimal Self, 1984
Nature sets limits to human freedom, but it does not define freedom; nor does it, by itself, offer us a home. Our home is the earth, which includes a marvelously salubrious natural environment but also includes the durable world of human objects and associations. The crowning indictment of industrial civilization is not merely that it has ravaged nature but that it has undermined confidence in the continuity and permanence of the man-made world by surrounding us with disposable goods and with fantastic images of commodities. Confusion about the distinction between practice and technique is closely bound up with confusion about man's relation to nature. Human beings are part of an intricately interconnected evolutionary chain, but self-consciousness-the capacity to see the self from a point of view outside the self-distinguishes humanity from other forms of life and leads both to a sense of power over nature and to a sense of alienation from nature. Dependent on nature yet capable of transcending it, humanity wavers between transcendent pride and a humiliating sense of weakness and dependency. It seeks to dissolve this tension either by making itself altogether self-sufficient or by dreaming of a symbiotic reunion with the primordial source of life. The first path leads to the attempt to impose human will on nature through technology and to achieve an absolute independence from nature; the second, to a complete surrender of the will. If men were moved solely by impulse and self-interest, they would be content, like other animals, simply to survive. Nature knows no will-to-power, only a will-to-live. With man, needs become desires; even the acquisitive enterprise has a spiritual dimension, which makes men want more than they need. This is why it is useless to urge men to renounce material pleasures in favor of a more spiritual existence. It is precisely the spiritual side of human experience that makes men want more than is good for them. It is equally useless to urge men to be governed, in the interest of their survival as a species, strictly by their biological needs.
Richard Dawkins, Twitter, 2013