Martin is quoted on the Radford University website making the following statement:
"...What I know is that we have to do what’s right – not because we’re going to get something for it, but simply because it’s right. We have immense problems to deal with, but rapid transformations of human consciousness have happened in the past, and it’s very possible that we’re in the midst of one of those transformations now.""Human beings are complex creatures, and within that complexity we have higher capabilities such as love, kindness and generosity, and lower functions such as anger, hatred and greed. There’s no reason why we can’t create a civilization based on those higher ones. A better world is possible."
In response to the Professor's position, a pardigmatic example of the what Steven Pinker calls the "Blank Slate - Noble Savage" school of thought which dominastes leftwing po-mo thinking in academic circles, I sent him the following email a few days ago, after I first read the above column:
Dear Prof. Martin,I was very interested to learn in the informational essay posted on Radford's website about you that you believe humanity may be moving to a higher consciousness and that it is our duty to help that "transformation" succeed. You said that "we have higher capabilities such as love, kindness and generosity, and lower functions such as anger, hatred and greed."
In Darwinian terms, the division you make between higher and lower is very interesting in itself, and could make for lengthy exploration, but for the sake of our discussion here, let's say anger, hatred and greed are "lower" than love, kindness and generosity in human consciousness.
And now let us briefly explore the method necessary to "transform" humanity from the lower realm to the higher. How do we expunge hatred, anger and greed? Things start to get a little dicey here, because quite clearly no automated "expunge" program exists. So one must assume that you mean to lead by example on this problem, and by example show us what a consciousness free of hatred, anger and greed looks like.
Anger, of course, is a multifaceted beast, originally developed by evolution to provide protection from threat. Today it takes all sorts of forms, one of the most common of which among intellectuals is righteous indignation. Have you succeeded, dear, gentle Professor, in freeing yourself from righteous anger and indignation?
Well, let's see. If you make an obviously false comparison between Nazi Germany and the United States, and if you make the obviously false statement that the "victim state" of Afghanistan is a "living nightmare of human rights violations," clearly you have not yet expunged righteous anger from your consciousness, and in fact will use falsehoods to ratchet it up to another level and spread the anger around to others.
So even a consciousness like yours, one which is on the threshold of a breakthrough "transformation" in human consciousness, hits little bumps in the road now and again. Hmmm...this transformation of humanity thing is going to be a little tougher than we thought, eh, Professor?
Sincerely, etc.