The Impulse to be Ubiquitous (Part 1)

Having just finished The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoevesky I am struck by the picture that the great Russian author paints. The paradise portrayed gives a vision of a perfect world dominated by love and unity. Inherent to this unity is a unity of humankind with the world itself. Here I am given pause because of how often I have come across this notion of unity with nature.

It seems to me that the idea of unity with nature is based on an assumption, namely that we are currently at odds with nature. This assumption fits neatly into an evangelical mindset within the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Genesis 2:17-19 reads, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground…” This edict presumably has an impact on the entire animal kingdom along with the precedent set immediately after the quote in which God strikes down an animal to clothe Adam and Eve. From then on the animal kingdom and the ground together are at odds with humanity.

The evolutionist seems to assume from the start that the universe is adversarial to life (yet, despite this assumes life to be the stronger force). I draw this assumption from the popularized evolutionary saying “the survival of the fittest.” It is assumed that life is hard and therefore only those strongest, most able to fight against nature, are those that achieve the triumph of surviving and passing on their genetics to the next generation.

Buddhist philosophy is the most direct, seemingly, to address the antagonism of the world to life in the first noble truth or Dukkha. It is from this that we must escape and against which we must struggle.

(Of course I leave out many points of view in this truncated summary of worldviews towards the issue but my assumption is that most readers of mine are either Christian or Atheists. Buddhism and eastern philosophy make their appearances chiefly because of the strong correlation to the topic.)

So, there seems to be dogma (or assumed truth’s) to describe or explain the underlying assumption of this idea of unity of mankind with the universe in three major worldviews I have addressed.