The Nomadic Alternative – Page 15

Ignores the fact that the accession of symbolic thought asserted intellectual or rational control of the manufactory process. The hand is ultimately subservient to the intelligent idea.

A corollary of this argument proposes that a rise in spiritual awareness and ethical beliefs progresses step by step with technical advance. In his Ghost in the Machine Arthur Koestler suggested that an “exponential curve” could be plotted to measure the “progress of social morality” alongside technical achievements and population growth.

Slow during the flat prehistoric miles; then it will oscillate with inconclusive ups and downs through what we call civilized history, but shortly after the exponential curve gets airborne, the ‘ethical curve’ shows a pronounced downward trend marked by two world wars, the genocidal enterprises of several dictators, and new methods of terror combined with indoctrination, which can hold whole continents in their grip.

In this scheme ethics take off, soar, then crash because of a ‘unique murderous delusional streak’ which has been with us all along. Not, I think, very plausible.

The famous thesis of Père Teilhard de Chardin is not dissimilar. The progress of mental evolution takes over where physical evolution leaves off. As men interact with each other, a global awareness of moral values gradually wells up from savage darkness to converge on a mysterious Omega Point – the Noosphere of Conquering Thought – when every living man will simultaneously agree on a definition of the ‘moral’. Mercifully, this megalopolis of morally-activated automata is less likely to be realised with each day that passes. The Noosphere may also be interpreted as an oblique forecast of a total nuclear holocaust in that everyone will be aware of it at once.

Since ‘human nature’ surfaced in so bewildering a variety of forms, and since interpretations of it could be juggled about to