I Think I’ll Create Man:
A Cautionary Tale
Elul 5773
By Irwin Kaplan
“I think I’ll create Man,” He said, “and I’ll distinguish him from the other beasts by adding the ability to think, not just to react; to see beyond his limitations and to have a measure of control over his own destiny.” There
were other planets, other experiments, but this combination of attributes was unique to the planet Earth.
It seemed like a good idea, but recognizing that this was a prototype, He created a comfortable environment and established some simple tests to validate the experiment, so that modifications could be made before going into full-scale production. It didn’t take long to discover that the ability to think didn’t necessarily bring with it enlightened self-interest. The first test was temptation and failure resulted in punishment, banishing Adam and Eve from their idyllic setting. That would seem to be enough incentive for a thinking being to become aware of the consequences of his actions and to act in accordance with his self-interest.
So with that out of the way, He decided to go into full-scale production by creating a system for production that appealed to the many aspects of self interest. First, He built the mechanism right into His creation, so that it wasn’t necessary to build manufacturing plants to generate copies, thereby making the production process one of reproduction. Second, He made the process simple and egalitarian, so one did not need an advanced degree to participate. Third, He made it fun, serving the animal need for immediate gratification. Then, He made it as a response to Man’s awareness of his own mortality (an awareness that came with the ability to think), so that there was continuity that created the illusion of immortality. This was necessary, because thinking, a process designed to have no limits, needed to have a way of dealing with open-ended issues that could not conclusively be resolved with facts. So beyond the factual, there needed to be a way of harnessing the runaway potential of thinking. Lastly, progeny was an integral part of survival, both as a contributor to the maintenance of life and as the caretaker of old age.
But the juxtaposition of the concept of mortality, which was retained as a component of this particular experiment, with the ability to see beyond one’s limitations resulted in a nagging insecurity, and insecurity precipitated individual and collective actions that defied reason. Since punishment had proved to be ineffective as a universal deterrent, He introduced Faith as the antidote to insecurity, to convey a sense of comfort to tame the mind. As demonstrated with Abraham and many who followed, Faith could work, but, in the world of the thinking Man that He had created, Faith would also not be uniformly effective. As constructed, the experiment was pretty straightforward, but it was becoming apparent that thinking can be its own enemy, because it was influenced by feelings and feelings didn’t necessarily respond to reason. And full scale reproduction brought with it the full range of the bell curve of human behavior. So, taking advantage of both the animal instinct and the ability to think, He decided to integrate reason with consequences and in a dramatic display, issued the Ten Commandments, which would not appear to have been necessary in a world of thinking people who had the capacity to look after their own self-interest.
Looking back, it is amazing to see how access to the same information can result in so many different conclusions. Insecurity became the dominant force among individuals and their collective societies, rising to the level of world events. Individual fears of hunger, of deprivation, of destruction, of inferiority, of anonymity, of subjugation, of these and others all bound together by the fear of death were reflected in the collective culture and reason became the slave of emotion, not its master. Faith, the very force that was to bring people together and confer inner peace, did succeed in bringing people together, but for both peace and for destruction, pitting civilizations against one another, aided by reason to manipulate and control, as well as to create weaponry to reinforce civilizations’ barriers. The consolidation of wealth and power, which created the illusion of mastery over one’s ultimate destiny, became dominant motivations, again with reason as its slave, to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and to ignore the accelerated depletion of the very resources needed for survival in a vain effort to overcome insecurity.
At one end of the bell curve, there were a relatively few individuals who represented some of the best minds in medicine, religion, technology, philosophy, the arts and sciences, who worked patiently and diligently to make contributions toward a better world, in the hope that these contributions would produce more durable results than could be achieved through destruction.
The forces that dominated the course of history, however, were generated by the determination of a relatively few individuals at the other end of the bell curve, who also drew on some of the best minds in medicine, religion, technology, philosophy, the arts and sciences, employing power, force and reason to support their futile pursuit of immortality.
But preying on fear had always proved more effective than appealing to reason and insecurity doesn’t have the patience for long term solutions, so the violent and powerful minority continued to be the dominant force in dictating the course of world events, taking actions intended to protect the future that only sacrificed the future for the present. None seemed to be deterred by the predictable and inevitable pattern of power rising to the top, only to be replaced. Technology, not wisdom, was the legacy of each generation.
After the experience of thousands of years of small triumphs and large defeats, He concluded that the experiment had failed, so, early into the Twenty-First Century, He mobilized the forces of insecurity, employing the weapons of mass destruction that reason had created, and destroyed the Planet Earth, leaving it uninhabited and uninhabitable, as He had done with other planets where the experiments had failed.
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