From “The Scratching Post”:Helplessness

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, January 31, 2016. Republished here by permission of the author.]

Helplessness is the defining condition of all life. It is especially so for human beings. We anticipate aging and death; we understand the concept of fate. Women know what it means to be born into a culture that denigrates their sex. People of color know what it means to live among racists. The poor know that their lives will be a battle with hunger, squalor, and shame. We all can be brought low or perish because of the corrupt games of the powerful or the capriciousness of warmongers. And, of course, disease and natural catastrophes can destroy our innocent lives.
    We cry out for a defense against our helplessness, desperate for protection and some form of consolation. Is it any wonder then that we have invented religion? We have given ourselves not only a Protector and Punisher, but a conviction that death is not final. Unfortunately, there are many versions of this fiction, and the differences often provoke violence. It’s a great irony that this historical defense against helplessness only accentuates it.
    Over the millennia, though, we’ve made other inroads against helplessness. We invented farming, which made starvation less likely. We invented medicine, which gave us better health and palliatives, and improved the odds against an early death. We invented the scientific method, which helped us to understand the physical world and realize that the unequal treatment of races and sexes is cruel and ignorant. We invented democracy, a political experiment that tries to avoid investing power in tyrants and oligarchs. We invented diplomacy so that nations can cooperate and coexist peacefully.
    It occurs to me that the virtues of knowledge, resourcefulness, and cooperation offer a more plausible defense against helplessness than the pillars of the Christian religion: faith, hope, and charity. Knowledge is the opposite of faith. With knowledge, you can anchor your convictions in bedrock. Faith, on the other hand, is not only ignorance, but proud ignorance. Its roots are weak. Now and again, if you’re capable of honest reflection, insidious doubt creeps in, and then momentary despair, until your ego defenses rally.
    Resourcefulness is the opposite of hope. It’s active engagement with a problem, in which you use knowledge and reason to find a solution. Hope, on the other hand, is passive. You give the burden of finding a solution to God, very likely through prayer. And having done so, is there a genuine expectation that your prayer will be answered? So many aren’t, and so you wait for the realization that God, for unknowable reasons, will not smile on you.
    As 1 Corinthians says, charity is the greatest of the three Christian virtues. Cooperation is not the opposite of charity; it’s a tangential concept. Cooperation, to be effective, means walking in another person’s shoes, if only briefly. The word for this act is empathy, and empathy is at the heart of all charity. I think of cooperation as a broader idea than charity.

These contrasts bring a movie to mind – The Martian. On the surface, it seems to be no more than a high-tech suspense story, but I think of it as a modern-day parable. It skillfully dramatizes the virtues of knowledge, resourcefulness, and cooperation. A team of astronauts assumes that one of their party has died in a Martian dust storm. They reluctantly leave the planet, and then we learn their colleague has survived. He lives by his wits, but without a continual source of food, his days are numbered. How to rescue him? He struggles with helplessness, as do NASA and his Earth-bound comrades. As this ordeal plays out, not once do any of the characters call on God for help. It’s all knowledge, resourcefulness, and cooperation (extraordinary teamwork and an assist from the Chinese). In the climactic rescue attempt, we see scenes of people all over the globe waiting for news, in agonizing moments of empathy. The attempt succeeds, everyone rejoices, and the audience learns a lesson about values. Or so I hope.
    In the 21st century, we have new reasons to feel helpless. A warming climate threatens to make the planet uninhabitable. There are no adequate restraints on the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Biological and robotic innovations could sweep away governments and economies, and redefine our species. We have only one chance to beat back these nightmares – a widespread, fundamental shift in our values.

Copyright © 2016, 2021 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.