Robots are from Mars, humans are from Earth
"It is only insofar as we renounce the world as its lovers that we can conquer it as its technicians. But this division in the soul is fatal to what is best in man...The power conferred by science as a technique is only obtainable by something analogous to the worship of Satan, that is to say, by the renunciation of love...The scientific society in its pure form...is incompatible with the pursuit of truth, with love, with art, with spontaneous delight, with every ideal that men have hitherto cherished."
Bertrand Russell
"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."Albert Einstein
When I was an undergrad, I was in way over my head. I was a jock, admitted to the university by virtue of my ability to chase a yellow rubber ball around a swimming pool. I had no idea how to take notes, study for exams or organize my classes. To me, the university was a foreign land; I had no map, no phrase book and no guide.
I sat in the back row of my lecture classes, incapacitated by my ignorance and the sheer incomprehensibility of what I was hearing. The language sounded like English, but I couldn’t understand a word of it. I managed to bluff my way through exams by sheer force of memory, but in spite of my efforts, I remained lost in the woods.
As the semesters passed, I became increasingly distressed, especially with one curious reference I heard almost every day. Inexplicably, a lot of my professors seemed to be fascinated with some guy from Mars. And it wasn’t just astronomy class either. Almost every professor made reference to this mysterious, cosmic individual. Biology, physiology, social science, geology, it didn’t matter–everyone was talking about the Martian. Each professor would introduce a challenging subject, address it from a couple of perspectives and then inevitably, tell us what the Man from Mars would think about it.
This confused me to no end. I knew where Mars was, more or less, and I could even imagine myself standing on that distant planet, looking back at the earth and taking a long view of its biology and the behavior of its inhabitants. But still, I had no idea why the Man from Mars was so important. Why did so many of my professors refer to him and defer to him? And why did they never refer or defer to a mythical "Man from earth" Or a "Woman from earth" for that matter? Clearly, something fishy was going on.
Well it took me a couple of decades to sort it all out, but I finally came up with a theory of why the Man from Mars was held in such great esteem. The problem began back in the Renaissance, when natural philosophers, now known as scientists, first began to appreciate the human capacity for self-delusion. A string of realizations and discoveries was wreaking havoc with our common perceptions: It looks like the sun goes around the earth, but it doesn’t. It feels like our conscious minds are in charge of our lives and our bodies, but they aren’t. It appears that we are fundamentally different from all the other animals around us, but we aren’t. Copernicus, Freud and Darwin exposed our faulty reasoning and showed us just how mistaken our perceptions can be.
And that was just the beginning. In the 20th century, we discovered the power of the placebo effect, the psychosocial influences of groupthink and the almost limitless ways we can trick ourselves through social pressure, desire and misplaced attention. We began to realize that human beings have an enormous capacity for self-deception and outright delusion. Consequently, it’s easy for our inquiries to go astray.
So, to protect ourselves from illusion and error, we conjured up the Man from Mars, a symbol of remote objectivity, a philosophical antidote to self-delusion. My professors believed that, if we could simply adopt this remote and objective view, we would see the world as it truly is. Thus, by the time I arrived at the university, the Man from Mars was the real big man on campus.
Martian culture
Of course, the Man from Mars isn’t really a man at all, or a woman, or even a whole animal for that matter. He’s just a disembodied, abstracted eyeball, a point of view floating in space. No flesh to distract him. No hormones or neuropeptides to sway his judgment or bias his view. He’s objective, rational, and completely without emotion. He has no feelings, no opinions and no prejudices.
Naturally, this dispassionate perspective reveals itself in Martian behavior, if we can call it that. You see, nobody plays on Mars. Nobody dances, celebrates or moves their bodies. Nobody does art. Nobody takes recess or goes on vacation. Nobody plays music. Nobody makes love or writes poetry. All the Martians do is observe, gather data, organize their references and write journal articles. It’s all very sterile. It’s all very dead. And it isn't even close to being healthy.
non-participation
I am not the first to make such observations about the Man from Mars and his abstracted point of view. In his landmark 1981 book, The Reenchantment of the World, historian Morris Berman described two basic styles of knowing: participating and non-participating consciousness. The difference between these two strategies is simple: While the Man from Earth holds an integrated view of the world, the Man from Mars intentionally casts himself as an alien. The Man from Earth lives inside his experience; the Man from Mars steps outside, way outside.
According to Berman, non-participating consciousness is "that state of mind in which one knows phenomena precisely in the act of distancing oneself from them." Knowledge of nature comes about, not by way of experience and contact via the body, but by separation. In other words, "Scientific consciousness is alienated consciousness: there is no ecstatic merger with nature, but rather total separation from it." This is the Prime Directive of modern academics and administration: Look all you like, but whatever you do, don’t touch.
the human norm
Of course, we would do well to remember that for Homo sapiens, participating consciousness is the historical norm, the status quo. For more than 99 percent of human history, human beings saw themselves as an integral part of the biosphere. Traditional cultures celebrated a merger with life. Human beings felt integrated with the natural world, a strand in the web, a member of the ecosystem. We were inside nature; our consciousness was participatory.
In the modern era, we have forced ourselves to become alienated observers of the universe. We have disconnected ourselves from our world in order to gain power and control. In the process, we have abandoned our bodies, our sensation and our flesh. We have disembodied ourselves. This, just as much as trans-fats, high-fructose corn syrup and video games, is the source of our modern physical malaise.
adults are from Mars, children are from earth
Our modern perspective is reflected in our approach to child rearing and our push for accelerated development. That is, it's OK for children to be Earthians with participatory consciousness, at least for a while. They can be impulsive, they can play, they can be subjective, passionate and emotional–for a couple of years. But then, as soon as possible, we expect them to leave the earth behind and become Martians. We expect them to stop playing and start being objective. Give up emotion, give up the body and get down to the grim business of being dispassionate. Get your brain into the scientific-journalistic-academic-corporate-industrial complex of referenced documentation, annual reports, journal articles and disembodied professionalism. Whatever you do, get off the earth as soon as possible, quit playing around and grow up. That's how we do it here.
public health
When it comes to matters of public health and today’s crisis of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and depression, many of us are turning to the Man from Mars for help. We expect that his objective, dispassionate viewpoint will make our bodies whole again. And so we produce an ever-expanding stream of research reports and studies, an avalanche of objective, dispassionate data on the breakdown of the modern human body. We hear it reported every day: Another journal of medicine, physiology or public health, written and edited by certified Martians, gives us one more redundant, data-centric account of our public health melt-down.
The problem is, it doesn’t work. It can’t work. How can we possibly use a disembodied perspective to diagnose and treat a disembodied public? How can getting out of your body be a solution to being out of your body? Our "solution" is actually a reflection of the problem itself. Martian editors and administrators might give us an occasional tidbit of interesting knowledge, but they will never give us the passion and participation we need. They are too busy being distant.
Obviously, the problem of the modern human body isn’t going to be solved by taking our attention to some distant planet. What we need are more Men from Earth and Women from Earth –people who participate with their bodies. People who get their flesh involved in the process. People who live with emotion, passion and opinions. People who participate in the experience of being a mortal animal. We need earth-bound primates who are expressive, artistic and impulsive. We need people given to body-based action, even if it’s not technically perfect or Martian-approved.
one foot on each planet
As you can surely tell, I am growing tired of the Martians and their soulless data mongering. I am tired of footnotes, spreadsheets, references, journals and the dead voices of reason. I think it obvious that our culture has gone too far in its Martian-worship.
But at the same time, I realize that there must be a yin and a yang to this discussion. That is, if we want to be completely functional and effective, we’ve got to be bilingual. We've got to do an apprenticeship on Mars and learn some basic Martian. Let's learn the scientific method, learn the power of objectivity, learn the virtues of distance. And then, once our apprenticeship is complete, let's give it up and get back to life.
Sure, make a visit to Mars and take in the view. But above all, whatever you do, don’t get stuck there. It’s a cold, hostile place that has nothing to offer our bodies. Earth is where this animal belongs. Take a trip to Mars for the education, but come back to earth for your health.
