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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 14 - Page 2 |
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As an expression of Christian teaching the meaning of this is reasonably clear. But how can we look at it in terms of modern thought? Does it not relate to the evolutionary difference between humans and other animals? This difference, which shows up as a change in kind between animal and even primate behaviour and that of humankind at its best, was identified by the great Russian psychologist, Vygotsky. He pointed out that an evolutionary step occurs in individual humans, and gave it a Marxist explanation that the individual ‘phylogenetic’ evolution – the evolution of individual humans through changes in their genes -- ends at this point, to be replaced by what they called ‘social’ evolution. There is some truth in this, even if it was twisted to fit doctrine. Although a crucial change does occur at this point, and although human civilisation is a direct product of the unique factor that enters the evolutionary mix at this point, political expediency has allowed the production of a theory more simplistic than the facts warrant. But what are these facts? Firstly, humans in their education acquire what we call information. It is clear that this information influences the way we live; it organises our activity and shapes our lives. And we now live in the so-called ‘information age’. The flood of information in our lives is far greater than even a few years ago, and it has not yet reached a maximum, but is still rising fast. So much is obvious. What is the importance of this information? What does it add to the ‘natural man’? Consider a few facts. For example, why are certain aboriginals unable to ‘read’ photographs or maps without first being shown what they signify? On the one hand, ‘representational images’ only acquire meaning when we connect them to our experience of events. Words too are only understood to the degree that we can link them to experience. Even experiences that reveal our inability to experience certain things convey important meaning. On the other hand, experiences gain greater meaning to us when we are able to link them to concepts that are significant in our lives. In all human beings, all this which occurs in what we today call the intellectual part of our mind works on and through borrowed conceptions. It is no more than an ‘information machine’, processing encoded data, most of it verbal, and most of it borrowed. With modern man, born of a rationalist era, this borrowing of encoded ideas has become a flood.
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