How You Look at Problems Determines How You Solve (or don’t) Them

My wife and I have had diametrically opposed views of how the world works for most of our 50+ years together. She is a fairly spiritual person. I’m not only not spiritual, but I dislike all forms of magical belief. For a lot of years, she was a traditional Christian followed by the Pagan/Gaia thing followed by something all her own now. I’ve been atheist my whole life, at least since I was a kid. For her, it is a motivational issue, I think. For me, it is a practical thing.

For example, we were talking about the global warming issue this morning. We somehow got into the whole “we’re killing the planet” conversation, which I do not believe is likely. Sure, if we managed to fiddle around with black holes and create one that gets out of hand (Can a black hole be “in hand?”) we might figure out how to destroy the planet. But if all we manage to do is raise the planet’s average temperature a few degrees the planet will survive just fine. Or we fire off all all 89,012 trillion tons from our 14,175 nuclear weapons, 92% of which belong to the USA and Russia, we might vaporize the atmosphere. The planet will still have a molten core and the ability to attract ice asteroids and other resources to rebuild its atmosphere. The planet will survive until something damages the core or, in about 5 billion years, the sun burns through its current supply of fuel and that calls it quits for our solar system. I think the key point in the global warming discussion should be not that we’re trying to “save the planet,” but that we’re trying to save our species. Now, I’m not a big fan of humans and absolutely believe that at least 90% of everything humans do is shit, but if humans want a target to shoot for it’s our own survival not the planet’s survival.

If you look at this cutaway of the planet’s construction, it’s pretty obvious how little effect our fucking around will have on the life of the planet itself. We can certainly screw up that thin layer we live in, but the planet is totally unaware of our existence; let alone the universe.

My wife believes the planet is a living thing with some, or a lot, of sentience and intent. I don’t. I think the planet is just what we see it being: a rock filled with molten rock and minerals that lucked into a few ice asteroid hits providing the planet with water and an atmosphere; which has been burned off a few times by other asteroid hits and volcanic activity in the last few billion years. Likewise, my wife still clings to the idea that humans have something like an everlasting soul. I don’t. I think we’re just one of millions of life forms on this planet and in the universe that live and die and are as inconsequential as every other life form here or there. We’re as self-destructive as army ants and about as mindful of our environment and our place in it as that most destructive insect. No soul, barely sentient.

We’re both aware that our opinions on life and the universe are just that; opinions. Neither one of us is committed to the “rightness” of those opinions. So, the argument comes in whether one opinion is more useful than the other.

My kick against spiritualism comes from practical application. I think we’d be better served if we treat the planet like our life support system; like a spaceship that needs maintenance and careful resource management. If we get careless with either maintenance or resource management, we all die. If we let things go long enough, we won’t have the resources to recover and we’ll all die as a result.

The problem with spiritualism is that humans naturally take the easy, magical way out. While English political theorist Algernon Sidney wrote the words, "God helps those who help themselves", there is nothing like that in the dogma of any religion I know of. In fact, the reverse psychology appears to be more common and that allows people to pray to their deity to "fix" their messes instead of doing the work themselves. That is true to the point that when firefighters put out a forest fire, house fire, or whatever else is burning, religious people will regularly "thank God" for doing the work that they saw done right in front of their faces by other human beings. I don't know how stupid people can get, but that is damn close to impossibly stupid.

So, our argument is about which philosophy is most likely to cause humans to behave in a way that might extend our species’ lifespan and, ideally, the other species that share this planet with us. I don’t think any form of spiritualism will ever be helpful. My wife and, most likely, you will disagree, but I don’t think it will matter because we’re not a smart enough species to care either way.