Concordians,

There was some talk on Friday of the “brief” existence of the human species relative to the presumed duration our planet and/or the universe. It seems that the purpose of such talk is, at best, to instill some standard of humility in claims made about the human, its purpose, and its relation to other beings, or at worst, to act as a one-stop argument for the insignificance of humanity. Here we see the same sort of disparaging language that Andrew identified (with respect to the view of humans on a micro-scientific level): “We are just one species out of many before us and many to come”, “We have only been here for mere moment”, etcetera. Quality versus quantity concerns aside, I came across a passage in a book I am reading that argues that such a perspective (disparagement of the human with respect to the infinitude of time), while ostensibly anti-humanist, actually sneaks in some dogmatic anthropocentrism. I wanted to share it here:

“…images of time as an endless flow that underlines the insignificance of the human and its paltry concerns turn out to be antihumanist veneers upon a subjectivist account of time which, far from breaking the dogmas of humanism, reinforces a deeply conservative form of humanism. This is a humanism inflicted by a deep-seated transcendental blind spot that not only uncritically posits the local and contingent characteristics of egocentric human experience as the characteristics of reality, but also deems this very anthropomorphic reality–whether under the rubric of preindividual singularities or ceaseless becoming–to be the horizon for overcoming human exceptionalism.”

Intelligence and Spirit, Reza Negarestani (p. 237)]

The idea above is not revolutionary; indeed, it is just another form of the “check your biases” demand that that we find in everything from statistical analyses to Orient op-eds. Only here, we’re talking about a seriously entrenched bias of the human phenomenological experience: our conception of time. “Checking” this bias probably won’t help us counteract human exceptionalism with respect to other animal species, but it might be necessary when considering higher or imagined forms of intelligence, or (more relevant to our theme) in understanding ourselves.

In sum, I thought the passage above was a nice reminder that the apparent “outside” view of the human blip in the vast expanse of time is, in important ways, not an outside view–which is something to keep in mind as we consider the self at both the individual and species level.

– PEO

P.S. This is not to say that the picture of the human blip is worthless. I love thinking about time and space in their (potential) infinitude, and I think the picture remains sublime even if we question it.