What does Being want?

‘Pressing on’ risks venturing into the mystical. Well. It didn’t do Blake much harm, nor the repentant Wittgenstein.

I was listening to Richard Dawkins the other day, on the Sam Harris podcast. He was talking about the ‘gene’s eye view’ of man – and we have grown accustomed to this way of speaking. From a gene’s perspective we are merely hosts – survival machines. But it is understood that when we talk of what a gene ‘wants’ we don’t intend that expression literally. It is merely a manner of speaking.

But that is not strictly true. A gene does not ‘want’ in the sense that a human wants – but systems as a whole can want, just in different ways: we talk of what the stock-market ‘wants’, or what a nest of ants ‘wants’. Who is to say these are not ‘wants’ of a different kind?

Where do you draw the line, between things that can want and those that cannot? How can a thing that wants come from a thing that does not?

So if we are to accept this way of speaking – what a gene ‘wants’ etc. – then we should ask the bigger questions. After all, as a human is a tool of a gene, a gene is a tool of Being.

I use Being in the Heideggerian sense; specifically the ‘sending’ of history – the direction of things if you like.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics holds that entropy is maximised – things fall apart. It’s interesting then that things are headed in the opposite direction; all around you, matter is organising itself – organising itself as genes, which organise themselves as humans, which organise themselves as culture, which organises itself technologically. In fact a precarious ladder of organised Being is being built. Towards what? Where does that ladder lead?

The classical thermodynamic response allows for local fluctuations; overall the view is that the universe is headed for heat death. But I believe this will not be before all the matter has organised itself. But organised itself as what? To what end?

For matter to organise itself to this point has been painfully slow – primordial soup, crawling fish – for our part, we behaved like monkies for the first 50-odd thousand years of our existence. Only culture allowed us to develop exponentially. But sadly, whilst our culture develops, we remain the same old apes.

Not for much longer. Being has a new vehicle. Soon we will be obsolete: technology is the ability for matter to reorganise itself directly, exponentially. You and I cannot imagine ourselves to have wings and instantly have wings – but that is the Promethean ability we will bestow on technology. Ten thousand years of our history will pass in the blink of an eye. The organisation of matter will spread from our little blue-green planet like a virus. So – how will matter organise itself? What is Being doing? What is it that History is working towards?

Some philosophers have noted that destiny has a certain script – Heidegger describes it as a ‘sending’ – and our awareness of this like tuning into a radio station. But I suppose that, in the final analysis, asking what Being wants is akin to the old theological question about knowing the mind of God. I can look backwards and see that there is a design to it, but I cannot see where that design is headed.