HUMANS
IN THE WORLD: INTRODUCTION
TO RADICAL PERSPECTIVISM
HUMANS
IN THE WORLD: INTRODUCTION
TO RADICAL PERSPECTIVISM
Other Chapters:
Alexander Makedon
Chicago State University
Copyright © 1992
TYPES OF HUMAN Posted Jan. 28, 2001
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The world is no-thing without becoming its possibilities. How the world becomes in-fact its possibilities depends partly on humans' understanding at the time of "becoming." Humans sometimes think that they don't know when their actions will help effect one possibility over another. They may decide to do "nothing" to change the world. They may decide to play with their possibility as a passive human-world. Although capable of recognizing the world's possibilities, they may allow it to continue as world-human with themselves as no more than speculative observers. Like a player in a game who observes his own defeat with apathy even while he knows how to avoid it, so is an inactive human observing the world's possibilities unfold before his eyes without involvement (even while he knows how to change it).
An "inactive" human doesn't really do absolutely "nothing." She does something simply by thinking about it. Humans are inescapably thinkers, or, to paraphrase Descartes, they "exist because they think." An inactive human may do more thinking than someone more physically active. For example, she may reinterpret the world more actively in her imagination. In that sense she is more "active" in effecting the thinking which is the world's as world-human, than someone who is very active in effecting only her own set of atomic first assumptions.
Finally, there is the type of inactive human who is inactive both as interpreter human-world, and reinterpretable world-human: she neither interprets the world on the basis of universal first assumptions, nor does anything to herself or the world to effect change. This last type may be inactive not because she lacks the education, or is incapable to act, but simply because she chooses not to act. As such, she chooses to play world-without-human not out of ignorance, but as a result of a conscious effort to deny herself in the world. For example, she may force herself to live as if she were not human: she may refuse to do some of the things which are usually associated with being human, such as, think, imagine, or interpret. Although she is aware of her abilities, she chooses to ignore them, or, more correctly, to play as if she can ignore them. For example, a minority child in a special education class for the "mentally handicapped" may choose not to study not because she can't, but as a reaction to a school system that holds negative images of her, or doesn't expect her to learn much.
Ironically, the inactive human-who-doesn't-want-to-be may prove to be human even as she tries to prove that she is not: the very fact that she chose not to be means that she is also capable of thinking about it, or else she couldn't choose it. This is especially true if she chose not to be human, as she couldn't possibly know what it means not to be human unless she also had an idea or set of first assumptions of what it means to be human. Consequently, her very denial is proof not only of her ability to role play, or even make herself disappear, but also of her ability to think, and therefore act as human.
As humans eliminate their possibilities as human-world, including their possibility of role-playing their disappearance, they eliminate themselves. This they can do through the elimination of those parts of the world which serve to sustain their possibilities (such as, the earth). Unless they exist elsewhere in the universe as a cosmic possibility, humans can also make themselves disappear from the cosmos through suicide, such as, through nuclear war. As humans eliminate themselves, they also eliminate the world's possibilities as world-human: without humans, the world doesn't have humans' imagination to reinterpret itself as only humans can.
There are two types of active human. There is the active-human-without-knowledge. This type of human actively seeks to change the world, but knows little about it to really change it. This doesn't mean that humans should be inactive to change the world, but that their activity, to paraphrase Plato, should not outweigh their wisdom. They may think they are changing the world every time they do something "different," when in fact their perception of "difference" is limited by their atomic, non-universal first assumptions at the time. What they do when they think they are changing the world may be no more than finding a new way to re-apply old assumptions (for example, the same underlying ideology). They don't know of any other first assumptions on the basis of which the world may be interpreted, and therefore their changing the world may be as much a "change" as only their first assumptions allow (which may be little, or none at all).
The active-human-without-knowledge knows very little about the world's many roles. He may not know how much more "world" there is than meets the eye, or else his role-play may have been an empty ritual of "moves" whose meaning he didn't comprehend. In purely quantitative terms, he may effect fewer changes than someone more knowledgeable who is trying half as hard to change the world. This is so because from the perspective of the world, it is only world-changes that count as "changing the world." Consequently, it is not how much one can do in the context of a single world-role that will finally cause the world to change, but whether he can leap outside his atomic first assumptions to embrace totally non-atomic or "unfamiliar" ones.
The second type of human is the active-human-seeking-wisdom. While the former type of human limits her changes to her own set of first assumptions, since she knows no other, the active-human-seeking-wisdom expands her interpretations to include universal first assumptions. As a result, the world is more likely to change as world as a result of the latter's casting it in a different light, than of the former's constantly re-organizing it to fit her own atomic set. It is not how much humans have decided to change the world that will, but whether as a basis for their actions they are using universal first assumptions.
By allowing humans to rise as human, the world has gambled with humans' unpredictable possibilities. By allowing humans their freedom to think, it has allowed them to evolve themselves, and with them, itself into a world-human that gives humans the key to understanding its future.
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