Embracing the Machine

I think I have arrived now at where I was headed all along.  I am not referring to a place, or a time, or a state of affairs.  I am referring to how we should feel about places and times and states of affairs.  What we should feel is misery.

Adam didn’t have to worry about places and times and states of affairs.  He could just be.  Places are about where one must go, and the distance to any destination is unavoidably to be reckoned on a scale of desirability.  So also with time.  We can entertain ourselves in looking forward to things (as we can entertain ourselves in looking toward desired horizons), but we cannot change the fact that we are devaluing thereby the here and now.  We are setting the stage for misery.

The matter of states of affairs is even more acute.  Adam found out something about himself when he ate of the forbidden fruit.  I emphasize Adam because he had greater depth and breadth of experience than Eve at this point, and it was from that extent of experience that Adam could draw the full measure of misery that was his lot.  He ate of the tree, and for the first time he was confronted directly with a state of affairs that was his own doing—and a first change in the state of affairs would make Adam or anyone aware of the whole dynamic to begin with.

Adam ate of the tree and came into possession of the knowledge of good and evil.  He was afraid of God, because he understood his own nakedness as an affront to the good order of God’s creation.  Yet Adam had sinned—if sin he did by being naked—out of ignorance.  Adam had no cause to be afraid of God, unless—unless—Adam became aware not of his transgression in being naked, but of his own sinful nature.  Adam had thrust God away—in desiring companionship in other form than communion with God—and the knowledge of good and evil had brought Adam’s nature to his own attention.

This was the first change of a state of affairs that would have disturbed Adam.  He had been threatened with death (what was “death”?), yet death would have meant nothing to Adam other than perhaps the negative experiences of illness or injury.  Adam existed in the garden, and he would still have existed after death.   But the change in the state of affairs between himself and his creator—that would have been undeniable.  That would be (indeed it was) the experience of “death.”

It is often said that God was merciful in relenting on Adam’s death penalty, and that what Adam suffered instead was a metaphorical “death of the soul.”  This is silly, because it is unnecessary massaging of the scenario.  Adam exchanged one body for another (the immortal one for the mortal one), but we might likewise say that in physical death we exchange one body for another.  We can call our physical demise “death” if we want (it’s as good a name as any).  If, however, we are to use the concept of “death” (with all its negative connotations) in any meaningful way, then the process of our experience must be an experience of loss.

Adam experienced “death” in a certain way (and we might ascribe mercy to God in not having been more severe toward Adam), but the point is that Adam experienced "death" in the only way that he reasonably could.  Adam experienced the death of moving to a state of affairs of alienation from God.  That is the story of what Adam had to lose, and he lost it.

From that point on Adam knew what it was like to experience moral condemnation.  His every moment after eating the fruit and still being naked would have been a moment of sin—even as he hurried to cover himself—because sinfulness had become the pervasive and persistent state of affairs.  Now nakedness was sinful indeed.  Indeed, every conception that existed in the mind of Adam was tinged with sin.  Which brings us back to the notions of time and place and states of affairs.  In our condition, all such things—even things so elemental as dimensions—are occasions of sin and misery.

It is of no value to deny the misery that attends the Machine of our existence.  We must embrace that misery and turn it to the refinement of our moral selves.  We must reckon that the only true joy we can create is the joy we bring to others, and that the only true joy we can experience we owe to the selfless ministrations of others.