Want to Want
Where are we headed as a __________? This question is being asked over and over in almost every aspect of my life. “Where are we headed as a school?” “Where are we headed as a church?” “Where are we headed as a family?” “Where are we headed as a country?” By building a 13.5 billion year historical arc, Harai in Sapiens attempts to answer the question, “Where are we headed as a species?” I think this is an important discussion because, for me, one’s direction is everything. Unfortunately, Harai’s future for us is a bit like the movie Blade Runner (It is honestly, completely coincidental that I am listening to the Vangelis soundtrack of the film as I read this book…eerie). In the film, a washed-up cop is asked to arrest and “retire” cyborgs. It is a variation of what Sapiens describes as where we are headed.
After taking the reader through many causes and consequences of various revolutions (a great directional word by the way) like, the “cognitive” revolution, the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution that triggers the industrial, informational, and current biotechnological revolution, as a way to explain this “progress” of Sapiens, Harari closes by asking a great haunting question that doubles as a prophecy. His concluding question, “What do we want to want?” is the ultimate question for determining one’s personal and community direction. What we want to want determines where we are headed.
For Harari, the answer lies within our past, via revolution and delusion and imagination. His conclusion regarding the meaning of life and happiness is written on page 292, “So perhaps happiness is synchronizing one’s personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction.” It’s almost as if, up-to-this-point in human history we have been cyborgs already; our controlled by an intelligence, that is not our current and future understanding of “artificial,” but Harari is basically asserting that so far, everything we know and understand and believe is imaginary and some type of delusional dream. Actually given the tone of this book, nightmare! This difference here is, in a nightmare I can usually force myself to wake up. Harari paints a picture where instead of waking up, we are going to substitute, perhaps as an A-transubstantiate, one artificial project for another. I disagree.
For me, wanting what we want, finding meaning, and happiness rests with Jesus and his kingdom. Harari would probably call this another monotheistic myth, but the narrative I live under and try to faithfully share with others is that humans contain part of the image of God within them and besides our imaginations and our awesome cooperating skills, we have invisible parts to us. The Bible calls this our heart and sometimes soul or spirit.
The overarching story I live with and that gives my life direction is that this God became fully human and offers us a revolution he called repentance so that we could walk in the same direction as Him. Every space and every action that is consistent with Jesus is part of his kingdom. It is Jesus himself, who makes the way for anyone and everyone to enter into this revolutionized-kingdom life.
St. Ignatius of Loyola is helpful here. The narrative that Ignatius lived under consisted of more than spoken and written language as a result of some type of cognitive revolution. Our language is one that involves feelings, moods, intuitions, and senses. Cognitive yes, but also conative (our will) and affective (feelings and emotions). The traditional word for the power found in the affective part of us is usually called our heart. For Ignatius, feelings have spiritual meanings. And the meaning of life, according to Ignatius is to praise, reverence, and serve God. It is when we are free to praise, reverence and serve Jesus we find meaning and happiness.
This a result of grace . We need to receive the gift of grace to be able to break free from our disordered attachments. Ignatius called things that hold us back from praise, reverence, and service disordered attachments because they are things that our hearts are attached to that lead us away from Jesus and his kingdom. This is quite a different view of humanity than the one Harari describes.
Once we are on the path to this freedom, we can talk about what we want to want. Notice that I said on the path and not totally free. Again, it is about direction and where we are headed. Harari’s invitation to wrestle with that question is spooky and dismal. For Ignatius, it’s the opposite. It is a grace-filled process, ultimately leading to God and His will, and that is a wonderful thing to want to want.
About the Author
Aaron Peterson
I am a working priest which means that I am a husband(to Lisa), dad(to four wonderful children), senior pastor and church planter(The Hub Vineyard Church), and high school social studies teacher(Verdugo Hills High School LAUSD). I am currently working towards a DMIN in Leadership & Global Perspectives @George Fox Seminary.8 responses to “Want to Want”
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Aaron,
Great synthesis of this writing. So where are you _________? Has this book helped to bring any more clarity to where you are going and what you should take on the journey?
Thanks for asking Kevin. I thought I knew where I was headed until I had an appointment with Coach Curtis from the Advance. Now I am questioning many things. I’ve started a discernment process to help figure out where I am _______… Glad to be with you on the journey.
Aaron,
How would you classify the genre of Harari’s book? Is it history, anthropology, theology, fiction, humanist manifesto…?
Why?
Hi Marc. Maybe one of the points of reading this book is to show that these old genres don’t hold up too well in our new globalized world. It is a history but it is no less or more history than our Old Testament. What I mean by this is that Sapiens is a story. The OT is a bunch of stories.
I like your OT comparison.
Hi Aaron and Marc,
Aaron’s observation of Harari’s question about what do we want to want strikes me as another way of talking about ‘the good’ in ancient philosophy. ‘The good’ is the thing that ultimately orients our life like a compass. But, that sense of ‘the good’ doesn’t really come to us naked. Rather, it seems to always come embedded within a story or social imaginary by which we live and have our being.
I would propose that Harari’s narrative in Sapiens in broad outline represents the essential story of the new scientific and academic elite, especially in the West. It’s one that very much makes Jesus an important footnote in a story of which he is far from the center.
One of the things I’m wondering about is what strategy you might suggest for relating the Christian’s narrative to this narrative. What are the points of contact? Differences? For someone inhabiting Harari’s world, how might you make the Christian gospel coherent to him/her rather than yet another sapien delusion constructed in the past but no longer ‘true’ in light of what we now know (and know we don’t know) as a result of the scientific revolution?
Hi Loren. I pastor, teach, parent, and live in a Hararian world. I appreciate your questions. I think the first step is love. As Christians we know that Christ’s love casts out fear so the second step would be to delete fear. I am talking here about fearing other myths and being threatened by them. When we love without fear our God and our neighbor we don’t feel the need to react in a defensive manner and proof text our arguments. I have been focusing on Jeremiah 29 much of this year. It offers points of contact like the concept of exile. Jeremy Crossely spoke to this in London. Looking at the concept of exile in an expanded metaphor way, many people, Christian and pagan feel a huge sense of exile after our presidential election. Another Jeremiah 29 point of contact would be to work for the good of the city. Most people I know, regardless of their metanarrative, want things to improve.
I guess what I’m trying to say, it might be cliche, but pre or post scientific revolution, loving God and loving our neighbor is the perfect starting point in sharing the Christian gospel.
Aaron,
As I read this book, I thought about the Matrix. There’s a scene when Keanu is having a meal with the guys and they asked him how did he know what a steak tasted like or any fancy meal. The idea behind it is that we sometimes accept information based on the source or the first person who tells us. Hence, chicken could actually be called tuna or salmon. What’s my point? I have none except that the Matrix was a great movie about a theory of creation. Like this book, it was a great novel about another perspective on creation and nothing I needed to take seriously. From reading the blogs, I realize how I might be challenged critically by reviewers if I were to write a book.
Garfield