**Originally this was intended and confirmed to be a publication. The publishers backed out for whatever reason(s), (not sure they even read it) alleging their published blogs weren’t priority since they do actual books and journals (not certain: I only spoke with a middle man) and as far as I know, that is the case with my blog-publication attempt, and any other contingent attempt from anyone else, so now it’s a blog post on my personal blog**
Considering this is a book review I should begin by being candid, that I typically do not read novels. However, to qualify, it is the case that I have read more fiction (myth, story, parable, allegory, etc.) in Theology/Theological Studies and Philosophy than I have ever read (and more in the former)—and that’s not nearly the majority of what I regularly read in these fields. Yet, I understand fiction/myth’s function or usefulness, much better than I once did, and psychiatrist/psychologist/philosopher-mystic, Carl Jung is one of the first people to help me understand the value of fiction alongside of the help with other theologians (Harvey Cox, David Tracy, Delores Williams, James Cone, to name a few).
In this regard, I must say that Eric Reitan’s So Eden Sank To Grief (SESTG) is a profound work of art with clever and meaningful parallels to our reality, encasing serious philosophical and theological implications for humanity to ruminate on—and likely for a long time after its reading. From that aspect alone, I highly recommend his SESTG. And although I have no expertise in the realm of novels, I could also see this having appeal for those fans of fiction, (considering it is an novel, perhaps this is the more intended audience) and indubitably for those with philosophical and theological interests. I may even propose (as an onlooker not knowing the author’s full intentions) that SESTG is a book meant for, and welcoming, a wider audience the invitation to wrestle with deeper matters in life (philosophical or theological), and Reitan introduces the reader to a plethora of these issues.
Reitan will not take you into depth on all of the philosophical/theological topics that he touches on in his novel, but he does attain more depth with certain topics vs. others. Some of the Philosophical/Theological themes that he touches on—in my reading—in this book are:
-Mysticism/Mystical Experience
-The Creation Myth (Garden of Eden found in multiple religions)
-Theology
-Resistance and Love (Nonviolence vs. Violence)
-Existentialism
-Feminism/Womanist Thought
-Tribalism/Racism
-The Hobbesian State of Nature
-Ethics
-The meaning of language and historical written texts
-An Elusive God (and Incomprehensibility)
-Universalism in Life after Death
-Climate Change/Global Warming
-Predatory Capitalism/Predatory Economics
In this blog and book review, while I have an extensive list mentioned above, I’ll be attempting to highlight only some of the philosophical or theological themes mentioned here. With that said, it is my plan to unsettle perhaps(?), and attempt to scratch the surface on some of these philosophical (or theological) conversations surrounding some of Reitan’s SESTG topics—but at the same time, I hope it encourages you to purchase and pick up his book.
Myth and Story of the Garden of Eden:
Eric Reitan creates a beautiful, deliberate,…yet, not exact parallel to the Garden of Eden, but one that certainly resembles it in his So Eden Sank To Grief (SESTG). Without going through and telling you everything about the novel, because I want you to read it, let’s start out at a common interpretation of the creation myth.
We’ve all heard the Judeo-Christian (Islamic, Gnostic, etc.) Garden of Eden story—well if you haven’t heard all of them, if you’ve lived in the U.S., it is likely the case that you couldn’t escape the fundamentalist Judaic or Christian story (commonly still taught all over the U.S., but absolutely found in the ‘Bible Belt’). [Hell, I live in what is often nationally considered one of the most “liberal” states in the U.S., and I regularly run into this fundamentalist interpretation among Jews and Christians.] And unfortunately, many of us were taught about it or exposed to it, in a very fundamentalistic and literal way, and disturbingly, in a manner intended to compete with (and blindly push to the side and/or triumph over!) evidence found in the natural world. Fundamentalists often take a literal and cultural interpretation of the Garden of Eden which inevitably is an interpretation that has not only been proven ahistorical (disclaimer: by ahistorical I mean, not that it isn’t found within the evolving historical Christian tradition—it is. Rather, by ahistorical I mean, it has a contemporary-cultural interpretation/understanding anachronistically imposed on the text, and because of that, the text is taken in a different and erroneous direction than the biblical/theological scholarship suggests it ought to be taken), but has also proven philosophically and scientifically problematic as well. Nevertheless, I do not wish to spend too much time here, since Catholic and Protestant Theologians, including many other specific branches of Christianity (and not to mention other religions) have long recognized the creation story as a myth and/or containing mythical elements, while (particularly with Christianity) acknowledging it as “borrowed” from Canaanite (or “pagan” as some scholars have labeled it) religions. This is really not contestable—or let me put it a different way—I have not seen any credible theologian contest this idea. I am aware of certain theologians that do contest it, but they have an agenda to preserve the fundamentalist notion of biblical inerrancy (which the Catholic Church clerics dealt with over a hundred years ago), and regarding those who push the fundamentalist (literalism) creation narrative, I don’t find them credible, or honest scholars, or historians—which makes me extremely weary of them as Theologians.
Yet, in light of another non-fundamentalist interpretation, I do think Eric Reitan’s philosophical take on the Garden of Eden in his novel is not only interesting, but worth reading and dwelling on for that matter. In Reitan’s SESTG, similar to our biological existences here on Earth, just as we are birthed from the umbilical cords attaching us to our mothers (and historically so, through lifetimes and evolutionary pains and pleasures, backward eventually from organisms deriving the soils of the Earth), so are the characters in the spaceship—whom are overseen by, or inhering in the pervasion of Aliens—also birthed from umbilical cords tethered to the ground in an earth-like-simulating-spacecraft. Or, in some of the main characters, Caleb and Sally’s words, they find themselves birthed in,“‘a giant glass tube floating in space? Like a huge spaceship?’ ‘But a greenhouse. A massive, endless greenhouse.’ [or perhaps better] ‘A greenhouse spaceship?’” (Reitan, So Eden Sank To Grief, 9)
Of course, as anyone can, I can make an assertion here on my blog not knowing the author’s intended true interpretation(s). Yet, I interpret the novel in the following way: the spaceship is a figurative parallel, a metaphor for Earth (our world), also a floating landmass (their greenhouse-spaceship world) similarly suspended in the void of space. And in it, Caleb and Sally (Reitan’s main characters) find themselves lovers, living in somewhat of a paradise, like the Garden of Eden, following their meet up where a passionate love ignites in such a way (if I may *add* to the story), as Rumi’s pop-culture quote states, where one who has offered love, ought to, “only to someone who has the valor and daring to cut pieces of their soul off with a knife then weave them into a blanket to protect you.” [Granted, this quote used here makes the dynamic of ‘falling in love,’ sound more predetermined and conscientious about where love actually leads]. Yet, they find each other in a time of need, with love, intimacy, compassion, friendship, and in the care of one another, and at the end of their paradise, Reitan writes,
Each day Caleb senses its fragility. He can almost feel the end creeping closer, the scent of shattering. Still, they play at being Adam and Eve. On the morning of the fifth day Sally whispers in his ear. “Isn’t the Garden of Eden supposed to be a place without sin?” “Depends on what you mean.” She laughs. “We’ve been sinning a lot.” “Is it sin?” She lets out a small, contented sigh. “Isn’t it?” [Caleb] “I think… I think the Garden of Eden is supposed to be a place without shame.” […] On the sixth day […] they wander far, further north in the forest than they’ve gone before, until they find a dead rabbit nailed to a tree. The nails look like real iron nails. The rabbit looks as if it’s been crucified: flayed and tortured before it died. (Reitan, So Eden Sank to Grief, 43)
To step out of the story for a second, and entertain the applicable metaphorical parallel, (beyond the obvious metaphor of innocence nonsensically-tortured and crucified to a tree found in Judeo-Christianity), one way of interpreting this part of the story, is that this seems to be the coming of age when human beings find themselves coming into contact with the problems permeating the world pre-existing, when persons/agents have freshly come into conscientious-awareness of them. Reitan’s creation myth and paradise here, reminds me of the mythic and social elements that Philosopher/Theologian Thomas Rausch also discusses over the creation myth in his Systematic Theology: A Roman Catholic Approach. Rausch writes:
There is no doctrine of original sin in the Bible. The Genesis creation accounts are concerned with the goodness of God’s creation. The first story, from the Priestly editor repeats over and over, “and God saw how good it was,” like a liturgical refrain. The second [Creation] story, from the Jahwist editor (Gen. 2-3) portrays the man and the woman living an idyllic existence in the Garden of Eden naked and without shame. The “myth of the Fall” in Genesis 3 (remembering that myth means a story from a prescientific culture meant to teach some lesson or truth) is an effort to explain how evil comes into the good world shaped by the creator. (Rausch, 139-140)
Now, having read this, continuing this stream of thought, I will continue giving an analysis of Rausch’s modern take of the Fall of humankind, which I think helps further extract plausible themes present in our exploration of Reitan’s SESTG:
In a contemporary sense or understanding, concerning the original sin metaphor, sin is viewed as “[…] a social concept […]” and “[…] the social nature of sin itself […]” is conceptually what ‘original sin’ is historically thought to be, opposed to a common interpretation of the ‘human being corrupted to its core’ or in other words, completely “defiled.” (Rausch, Systematic Theology, 143) (e.g. I’m sure you’ve all heard the traditional fundamentalist take, “Humans are wicked, evil, defiled by their/our very nature.” Essentially there is nothing good about us (or if there is, there is an extremely pessimistic theological anthropology at play). However, another way of talking about it: essentially, we are all interconnected and affected by sin, and freedom plays its significant role in it. Roger Haight (another Catholic Christian Theologian) describes sin as a pre-existing “[social] structure prior to the exercise of our freedom and one that is actualized by freedom.” (Rausch, 149) On the other hand, Ecumenical Theologian Stephen Duffy likens sin to a more Freudian “[…] unconscious libidinal energies and drives, [however] acknowledges that insights from the social sciences predominate; we are shaped by the greed, pride, inertia, and divisions plaguing human history, making us both ‘responsible agents but also tragic victims.’” (144) Nevertheless, Rausch highlights that ‘sin’ manifests as a social affair while acknowledging likewise, that, “the human race emerges from an evolutionary history based on the survival of the fittest, and we have inherited more than traces of the egoism that marks our biological past, with its primary instinct for struggle and survival.” (144) On top of this, perhaps more so for Rausch, sin is pre-existing in the world already in place prior to our being birthed in it. And how it is preexisting, is multilayered: we find ourselves (after birth) in the care of our domestic families that have their social priming; we find ourselves amidst/in particular cultural praxis (i.e. habits, views, rituals) that has its role of priming; we have our larger epistemic situatedness amidst the societal collective—with its affect on our psyche/soul. And of course, as Rausch notes, our social priming, our social situatedness is not always good. Rausch capitalizes on this fact with a bit more specificity stating it is the case that, “Our societies institutionalize social and economic inequalities that are profoundly damaging to others.” (144)
To circle back to SESTG, regarding the world that Caleb and Sally sense “shattering,” I think this (above) is the pre-existing world of shame, which is part of what I think Eric Reitan is getting at when Caleb and Sally’s paradise wanes, upon their becoming/obtaining of conscientious-awareness of the evils around them (i.e. the rabbit tortured and nailed to the tree symbolically created to resemble a particular murdering of innocence in the history of Judeo-Christianity).
Also, in line with Duffy’s interpretation of the evolutionary energies, the ‘Freudian and unconscious libidinal energies and drives,’ it seems to me that there is a place for this as well. In Reitan’s SESTG, there enters a particular character (in a particular context of story relevance) named “Sean” who grew up in the rural areas of the U.S. Sean talks about easily taking the lives of countless animals with brute and physical force, as if their pain, and the cold-blooded killing of creatures (and creatures in the theological context ‘made by the Creator’ or undergirded/guided in some form or fashion via evolution) meant nothing—and fortunately of unfortunately, that may or may not extend to human beings. Unfortunately, you’ll have to find out by reading the book. ;) Another character who fits this description, is male character named David—albeit David is a bit more sophisticated and calculated with his brutish-libidinal evolutionary energies. (At least this is my interpretation, there may be others when you read Reitan’s novel).
**Lastly, one part I have not really spoken on concerning the theme of this section, is the “forbidden fruit” element of the Creation myth, which I had the privilege of hearing Eric Reitan discuss in a live book-reading, captures the aspect of the story when Caleb and Sally take a bite out of their curiosity by exploring/entering into the unknown: (i.e. the forbidden underground tunnels). But we will come back to this later.**
Hobbesian State of Nature:
It seems to me, where we left off is a natural segway into another philosophical theme found in Eric Reitan’s SESTG. When we reflect on our modern analysis of the Garden of Eden and original sin, I can’t help but see the compatible nature of the underlying evolutionary energies that if not recognized, and cultivated with care, (in beneficial direction), brutish and barbaric things can, and will, take place as depicted in Eric Reitan’s SESTG. This isn’t to be in opposition or contradiction to Rausch earlier, that the corruption overpowers the good as is common in the fundamentalist (and evangelical) view. It is possible to hold the two tensions juxtaposed in the human condition, like the Protestant Martin Luther did, and like Duffy did to some degree, though he [Rausch] gave more emphasis to evils being in the pre-existing social structures. However, our hyperfocus on this aspect of humanity and the human condition serves purposeful for a particular thought experiment.
Thus, in that kind of world, (a world where people act on their evolutionary propensities, their selfish interests, etc.), what then? To put things into perspective let’s use Conservative Jonah Goldberg’s analysis (not at all because I think Jonah Goldberg is right in his end trajectory for this text—but his analysis immediately here is fairly accurate; it brings Hobbes into the equation, and he fittingly talks about ‘aliens’). [Tangential Qualification: as a philosopher, theologian, truth-seeker, and intellectual, I read people on both sides of the political spectrum if they have something reasonable and relevant to say; if they are right about something, then, they are right. I will not take that away because they are ‘conservative,’ as is common in our polarized socio-political sphere—often it’s actually vice versa, the other way around]. Nevertheless Goldberg mentions a philosopher named, Thomas Hobbes to begin with. At the beginning of a chapter called “The State: A Myth Agreed Upon,” he writes,
How did we get from the world of the hunter-gatherers [a world of tribalistic chaos, violence, and animalistic behavior] to the state? A host of thinkers talk of something called “the social contract as the beginning of modern society. These theories date back to antiquity, but their glory days come around the time of the Enlightenment, when […] Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, […] and others put forth one version or another of the same basic idea: Men in a state of nature agree to sacrifice some personal freedoms in exchange for security. There are important differences, however between different notions of the social contract. For example, Hobbes’s social contract gave license to an all-powerful state—the Leviathan—to protect humanity from life in a state of nature, which he described as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” (Goldberg, Suicide of the West, 69)
And yet, as it relates Eric Reitan’s novel, Caleb and Sally find out that the world (and later, if you read his novel, society perhaps?) in which they find themselves, after their short-lived Garden of Eden, the state of things: their reality, life itself, begins to look like the most brutish, violent, and primordial manifestations of humanity, and it is a ghastly and ugly picture. The following is an excellent passage to exemplify the description where a preacher-character named Nathan comes into the picture, and offers us an analysis of people looking for a sense of direction upon their waking into consciousness amidst the ‘spaceship-greenhouse’.
“People straggled in. David showed them around. Gave a little speech. You can imagine it. If you join us here, you agree to be part of a civilized town. Work for your keep. Don’t steal what others have worked for. Don’t hurt others except in self-defense. Everyone who wandered in agreed to those rules. I can’t say I would have done much different if I’d been the one to do it.” […] “So he’s okay?”
But Nathan scoffs. “Better than Hobbes’ State of Nature, I suppose.”
“State of nature?” Sally asks.
“Better than a war of all against all.”
“Lord of the Flies,” Sally mutters, offering Caleb a significant look.
“Better than chaos. Everyone knows it, and David knows we know it.
That’s the problem.”
“What does that mean?” Sally asks.
Linda snorts. “It means he’s a schmuck.”
Nathan laughs, a sound that rumbles in the walls. “I was going to say something about exploiting our fears, but schmuck works pretty well.” He sighs. “David’s made himself the shop keeper in town. Sounds innocuous enough until you realize he’s taken control of all the village supplies. And the rest of us are supposed to work, earn tokens, and use them to buy what we need.”
“From him,” Linda says.
“And fighting him,” Sally says, “would be worse than putting up with it.”
“At least in the short run,” Linda says. (Reitan, So Eden Sank to Grief, 81-82)
Not only does this specifically and explicitly bring up the Hobbesian State of Nature concern, this renders or mimics some sort of mythic state, or ‘social contract’ or at least norms operated by, or accepted on some level, by a several party basis. And it is depicted, at least here, where an elite rules (David and his goons) who distribute goods and supplies.
A Deeper Analysis of the Hobbesian State of Nature:
Theology and traditional moral philosophy aside for a moment, Thomas Hobbes was a British philosopher of the 17th century who argued that “[…] morality should be understood as the solution to a practical problem that arises for self-interested human beings.” (Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 84). Rachels continues this Hobbesian way of thinking, “We all want to live as well as possible; but in order to flourish, we need a peaceful cooperative social order. And we cannot have one without rules. Those rules are the moral rules; morality consists of the precepts we need to follow in order to get the benefits of social living. That—not God, inherent purposes, or altruism—is the key to understanding ethics.” (84) Even if we do not agree with this, and instead, we think some sort of purpose exists within nature, and/or even if we think there is a Divine source overseeing or/[x]or (<--exclusive or) inhering existence, there are certainly times where it doesn’t feel like it. And there are certainly times when purpose-driven existence appears absurd, as is the case in Reitan’s SESTG; in other words, in these moments, it seems either outcome (purpose or no purpose) is equally plausible. So what does Hobbes do? Rachels writes,
Hobbes begins by asking what it would be like if there were no way to enforce social rules. Suppose there were no government institutions—no laws, no police, and no courts. In this situation, each of us would be free to do as we pleased. Hobbes called this “the state of nature.” What would it be like? Hobbes thought it would be dreadful. In the state of nature, he says,
there would be no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. (85)
As Thomas Hobbes describes things, the state of nature depicts us human beings, and human nature at our/at its worst. Rachels categorizes some basic bullet points to take away from Hobbes’ argument concerning our human nature at this state, in its most brute form, consisting of our most brutish selves:
- There is equality of need. Each of us needs some basic things in order to survive—food, clothing, shelter, and so on. Although we differ in some needs (diabetics need insulin, others don’t), we are all essentially alike.
- There is scarcity. We do not live in the Garden of Eden, where milk flows in streams and every tree hangs heavy with fruit. The world is a hard, inhospitable place, where the things we need do not come in abundance. We have to work hard to produce them, and even then they may be in short supply.
- There is the essential equality of human power. Who will get the scarce goods? No one can simply take what she wants. Even though some people are smarter and tougher than others, even the strongest can be brought down when those who are less strong act together.
- Finally, there is limited altruism. If we cannot prevail by our own strength, what hope do we have? Can we rely on the goodwill of others? We cannot. Even if people are not wholly selfish, they care most about themselves, and we cannot assume that they will step aside when their interests conflict with ours. (85)
In a stable and cooperative society, we can produce more essential goods and distribute them in a rational way. But establishing such a society is not easy. People must agree on rules to govern their interactions. They must agree, for example, not to harm one another and not to break their promises. Hobbes calls such an agreement “the social contract.” As a society, we follow certain rules, and we have ways to enforce them. Some of those ways involve the law—if you assault someone, the police may arrest you. Other ways involve “the court of public opinion”—if you get a reputation for lying, then people may turn their backs on you. All of these rules, taken together, form the social contract. (86)
Essentially, it is because of the society, because of the social contract that we can live morally and safely according to Hobbes. Rachels continuing Hobbes, “It is only within the context of the social contract that we can become beneficent beings, because the contract creates the conditions under which we can afford to care about others. […] [I]n society, altruism becomes possible. By releasing us from ‘the continual fear of violent death,’ the social contract frees us to take the heed of others. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) went so far as to say that we become different kinds of creatures when we enter civilized relations with others. In The Social Contract (1762), he writes,
The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man…. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses… does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations… His faculties are so stimulated and developed,… his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it forever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. (86-87)
There is obviously a lot of optimism in the new society, and with good reason. But perhaps you aren’t totally convinced in the mythical state of nature. Perhaps we might think Hobbes is looking backward and imposing too many capitalistic components of his day into his modern thought experiment? Or perhaps, for example, concerning his mythic state of nature, one might object by saying, has this really been observed? Can we absolutely say with certainty, that this is how humans act in their rudimentary states? Or a little bit more developed, perhaps there are some fundamental assumptions about humanity that are being made, about the human condition, that cannot be taken for granted? I’m deliberately leaving this open-ended, for the purpose of this blog. But there are answers. Philosophy is not just about speculation and no answers contrary to popular belief.
However, on the other hand, speaking from our modern day, considering I wasn’t able to observe human nature from the beginning of time (beyond our retelling of it: history, which is full of less-civilized humans killing each other all over the globe) having a starting point of existence within Capitalist America I can say that there is absolutely something notable in moral standing within the less developed, vs. the more developed of our society, and there are a certain clustering of human beings that exhibit more or less of this, but more on this to come in my section (and particularly my linked paper on capitalism).
So Eden Sank To Grief: Hobbesian State of Nature, Capitalism?, and Aliens as a Metaphor for God?
But, perhaps you aren’t convinced to any degree on this state of nature thing, and/or in terms of theology, this ‘libidinal energy’ or ‘evolutionary energy’ thing as sin sounds a little woo-woo. Let’s continue down this path a bit. But first, let’s introduce Eric Reitan’s Aliens.
All throughout Eric Reitan’s SESTG, there is a common figurative connection in Caleb and Sally’s new world, where the aliens are a parallel to the idea of God. The aliens are a metaphorical stand in for some unknowable other, whose presence can be felt at times, but also remains conspicuously hidden; something that transcends but paradoxically inheres with immanence. In this spaceship, there is a certain order to things, as if there appears to be some design, or guided design, but at times, also chaos that makes one question any notion of design.
Yet, amidst everything, there is, the figurative forbidden fruit, the unknown, forbidden, “underground” tunnels (I scare-quote “underground”—considering they are in a ‘floating greenhouse spaceship’). At a certain point in the book, Caleb and Sally find themselves exploring the “underground” tunnels but also in a conversation with the preacher-man character named Nathan exploring it with them. Reitan writes of Sally as she stares into the dark:
She traces it the trajectory of it in her mind, and comes away with an impression of stairs that corkscrew around the tunnel’s wall with no regard for up or down. If the pattern hold true, the stairs will end up hanging from the tunnel’s ceiling.
Caleb steps up behind her. He doesn’t touch her. As if he’s afraid to. “Is that where the aliens are?”
“It feels…empty. Are they even here? Do they even have bodies?“
“If they built this ship,” says Nathan, “then surely they do.”
“They built it for us,” she answers. “So maybe not.”
“How could they build a physical thing like this if they aren’t physical themselves?”
With Nathan she feels no need to rein back her scorn. “Seriously? Aren’t you the preacher man? Does God have a body?”
Nathan laughs. There is no embarrassment in it. He’s delighted. “Score one for the sprinter. [Sally was a track and field sprinter in her past on Earth] (Reitan, So Eden Sank To Grief, 87)
So certainly, it’s plausible that we see the Aliens fill-in for that incomprehensible Other-(/may-not-be-Other?) often in Reitan’s SESTG pointing to Its elusive nature. But to move back to our Garden of Eden shattering of paradise, and those ‘woo-woo evolutionary energies’, let’s take a look at what Goldberg has to say about his (coincidental but fitting) overseeing Alien watching primordial humanity evolve in human history outside of the novel:
Imagine you’re an alien assigned with keeping tabs on Homo sapiens over the last 250,000 years. Every 10,000 years you check in. In your notebook, you’d record something like this:
Visit 1: Semi-hairless, upright, nomadic apes foraging and fighting for food.
Visit 2: Semi-hairless, upright, bands of nomadic apes foraging and fighting for food. No change.
Visit 3: Semi-hairless, upright, bands of nomadic apes foraging and fighting for food. No change.
Except for a few interesting details bout their migrations and subsequent changes in diet, forms of rudimentary tools, and competition with Neanderthals, you’d write the same thing roughly twenty-three times over 230,000 years. On the twenty-fourth visit, you’d note some amazing changes. Basic agriculture and animal domestication have been discovered by many of the scattered human populations. Some are using metal for weapons and tools. Clay pottery has advanced considerably. Rudimentary mud and grass shelters dot some landscapes (introducing a new concept in human history: the home). But there are no roads, no stone buildings worthy of the label. Still, a pretty impressive advance in such a short period of time, a mere 10,000 years.
Eagerly returning 10,000 years later, our alien visitor’s ship would doubtless get spotted by NORAD. He might even get here in time to see Janet Jackson play the halftime show at the Super Bowl.
In other words, nearly all of humanity’s progress has taken place in the last 10,000 years. But this is misleading. […] Because for most of that 10,000 years, the bulk of humanity lived in squalor. Indeed, there are many who argue —plausibly—that the agricultural revolution made things worse for most of humanity. Our diet got less diverse, and, for the vast majority of us, our days were now defined by tedious, backbreaking labor.
The startling truth is that nearly all of human progress has taken place in the last three hundred years (and for many of the billions of non-Westerners lifted out of crushing poverty thanks to capitalism, it’s happened in the last thirty years).” (Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West, 6-7)
Of course, for Goldberg (which I think is an immensely poor argument), the way out of devolving back to our primordial forms of humanity that urge toward their barbaric fulfillment is a… (as the Alien sees it, guides it?)…divinized Capitalism (sort of) in which he calls “the Miracle.” (In objection to Goldberg as an anti-capitalist, I’d first respond by saying: “Ask the so-called ‘third world’ countries exploited by the first worlds, how “divine” it feels!”) But let’s say that you still doubt these Freudian/Jungian ‘libidinal energies’ mentioned by Duffy earlier. Let’s say that you doubt the evolutionary energies. (I don’t know why—but let’s say you do!) Goldberg basically says, that’s okay, this isn’t an observable phenomenon within the last three hundred years of human history. He writes,
Evolutionary change does not work on this short a time line. The needle barely moves over 10,000-year increments. In other words, everyone reading this […] carries the same basic programming of the humans who toiled in the wheat fields of Mesopotamia or carried spears through the forests of Africa, Germany, or Vietnam. And even if you account for the view that certain populations have distinct traits that have evolved in shorter periods of time than the last ten or twenty millennia, such differences would be trivial against the backdrop of the innate programming we acquired over the last 200,000 to 300,000 years, never mind the last five to six million.
For all intents and purposes, human nature holds constant as the world changes around us. This is a truth better comprehended form literature than from science. When we read about characters in the distant past or the distant future, what makes them recognizable to us is that they are still us: human beings with all of the normal joys, desires, and fears we all experience.
Stated plainly, from the perspective of our genes, we weren’t meant to live like we do today, with wealth, rights, and freedom, and all their fruits. [O]ur natural condition isn’t merely poor, it’s tribal. (9-10)
Goldberg continues if it isn’t clear yet,
Human nature is real. […] It is fair to say that no reputable psychologist, neuroscientist, linguist (including [philosopher] Noam Chomsky), or economist disputes the fact that human beings come preloaded with a great deal of software. Indeed, the fashionable metaphor today is not software but “apps”—as in the applications we have on our smartphones. Different situations trigger different apps, and sometimes these apps can be in conflict.
All of the serious debates about nature versus nurture start with the premise that there is already a lot built into our nature. The only question is what we can add on top of nature or what apps we can override. (23)
Now, Rausch discussed earlier would acknowledge this, but as a Catholic Philosopher and Theologian, obviously he would not start from the framework of no God, which Hobbes’ argument starts with, as does Goldbergs (at least for him, in entertaining fashion). Also, with Rausch, this is existent in humanity, but it isn’t inherently overpowering the human goodness in itself. But, I think this is why Reitan brings up this issue, it is complicated, and he wants readers to wrestle with it.
Reitan’s Critique of Capitalism:
Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned before, a main argument of Goldberg is that Democratic Capitalism is the divinized “Miracle” that has allowed humankind to override these evolutionary energies. And if Hobbes’ (argument earlier) is correct at all, this may be in part true. But this doesn’t require that society be primarily Capitalistic. How long has Capitalism stayed “Democratic?” The very nature of the current U.S. capitalist economy is one that seeks profit over ethics with money-driven elections. Eric Reitan models this in his predatory capitalist society in SESTG—and if not money-driven elections, at least a monopoly-ruling, with some sort of capitalist, transactionary-exchange taking place. In Goldberg’s view, thousands of years before Capitalism, Monarchs, Kings, and Rulers reigned in a practical way.
To be sure, humans invented all sorts of theologies and ideologies, such as the divine right of kings, that rationalized these systems as something more noble (and some were better than others), but when put to the test, the interests of rulers always came first.
And yet, these systems endured for thousands of years. In fact, most humans live in societies where the old rules still largely apply.
Why? Because there is something about tyranny, monarchy, and authoritarianism that “works,” by which I mean there is something in our wiring that finds such system natural. (Goldberg, Suicide of the West, 9)
Goldberg argues that what makes Capitalism the miraculous solution (or an unnatural system that creates ‘the Miracle’—a miracle achieved via Capitalism) is that it is an unnatural process for humanity, and that it keeps the primordial evolutionary energies in check—but also Capitalism is also a good unnatural phenomenon to fight against our human propensities for tyranny and dictatorship (and Donald Trump is a prime example of this he uses in the book despite Goldberg being a conservative). And Goldberg provides a compelling argument to support this assertion. However, I will respond to this in a roundabout way as it relates to Capitalism, by providing a source at the end of this subsection. Thus, for now, let's continue on Reitan's implicit parallel.
Reitan has more and less explicit acknowledgements that Capitalism does provide some type of ‘order’ even if it is not the most ideal form of economic-government as it so often exploits, inhales, and zapps the life and energy of the lowest class—and especially so in monopoly-capitalistic societies. Remember our SESTG quote I shared earlier, I’ve shortened it for our application and readability:
People straggled in. David showed them around. Gave a little speech. You can imagine it. If you join us here, you agree to be part of a civilized town. Work for your keep. Don’t steal what others have worked for. Don’t hurt others except in self-defense. Everyone who wandered in agreed to those rules. […]
Nathan laughs, […] ‘I was going to say something about [David] exploiting our fears, but schmuck works pretty well.’ He sighs. “David’s made himself the shop keeper in town. Sounds innocuous enough until you realize he’s taken control of all the village supplies. And the rest of us are supposed to work, earn tokens, and use them to buy what we need.’
‘From him,’ Linda says. (81-82)
There is also a recurring theme in the book that exemplifies the hard work it takes in the nature of dire human affairs, and how it takes the depths of will to transcend the evolutionary energies, and to transcend the pre-existing social structures (and a lot of these social structures are embedded in the Capitalist system from Earth, or are lingering remnants into the new spaceship-greenhouse). A plausible example of this might be, where Reitan writes, “Sally is thinking about how far she’s willing to go to stay human.” (84) But also, what type of behavior she will have to engage in, in the face of near Hobbesian State of Nature, balancing survival in conjunction with her moral conscience. And naturally, this also applies to the real world outside of the elusive-Alien-controlled(?)/inhering(?)-greenhouse-spaceship even if we have some type of Capitalist “order.” Sally recollects this same energy pumping into her body in a memory where she was still on Earth: “And as Sally stands there staring into the dark space, she wonders if, in that moment on the track, she wouldn’t have stabbed Jake. If she’d been holding a knife, would she have stabbed him in the arm, or the side, wedging it into his ribs? Or slashed open his gut. She wonders how far her fury can take her.” (Reitan, 81)
An example such as this exemplifies how the energies such as this, circulate within Sally’s being, Hobbes is right that a social contract with norms and legalization aid in promoting good will, and Goldberg may be right about Capitalism keeping these energies at bay, but I argue that Capitalism is not “Divine” in any way shape or form, and that Goldberg is observing what is working, and misattributing it with and to, Capitalism. See my critiques with Capitalism here, although I leave Goldberg, but answer him indirectly, and I also leave SESTG when I discuss Cone's Ecumenical Black Liberation Theology Teamed with Marxist Thought as Moral Theology/Socio-Political Ethics.
Mysticism in So Eden Sank to Grief:
Another important point is I think Eric Reitan’s role of mysticism in the fictitious world (but also a plausible figurative parallel to our actual world). Similar to ours, there is a world that appears plausibly real, but also one that is equally plausibly an illusion (at least in moments right?): a life that on the surface may or may not have a purpose as can be seen in the following passage as Reitan writes of his character Caleb, in a moment of longing,
On the twelfth day Caleb looks at the ribbed sky and longs for the wide blue heavens, for thunderstorms that roll in from the west, for that moment after the storm when the air is cool and smells of earthworms, and you run out along the driveway to the street to catch a clear view of the rainbow that arcs above the houses: a divine promise or an illusion or a bridge to the city of the gods.(49)
I think it is this sense of existential longing in a complicated world of unknowns, and of uncertainty, (and at times what appears to be absurdity exacerbating the uncertainty), or even when we have overextended ourselves, that makes us put aside our faculties whether that be reason, whether that be seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing, feeling, etc., to listen to an intuitive/instinctive internal direction. (Not to say that this intuitive/internal voice, so to speak, is turned off or separated from every-day-living, I’m simply getting at the fact that it often isn’t as “loud,” so to speak, as the other faculties). And we see this often visited in Eric Reitan’s SESTG. In this case, Sally (a biracial young woman) intuitively listens to her inner voice which gives insight to her mystical knowing/leaning/acting. But to preface where we come in, we enter the passage as Sally recollects her mother’s materialistic discussions about sex—and how essentially her biological/hereditarily inherited propensities for fertility were not only the main topic, but it was the extent of the conversation, Eric Reitan writes:
It surprised Sally, the first time her Mom said it, that this was the kind of sex-speech she chose to deliver. Nothing about God or virtue, just “your womb and ovaries are really, really good at what they do.”
But Sally’s suspicions run deeper than good timing and legendary Delacorte fertility [….]. This time, it’s pressing out. She even has a sense of when it happened, which moment during their weeks in paradise. It’s fixed in her memory: the tears forming in his eyes, the inexplicable tears and the words on his lips the I-love-you incantation she never heard from Jake or anyone else. It passed through her in oceanic waves, and she felt the press of other lives: her parents and grandparents, her children yet to come, and the lives around them, the ones that would soon enough close in and take their paradise away.
Humans aren’t meant to live in paradise for long. (57)
On the topic of mysticism by phenomenology or at least phenomenological description—opposed to explicit terminology mentioned; and by this I mean, there isn’t an in-depth scholarly analysis to what the characters are going through—or some of the characters at least/those who are open to it. It is the case that many of the characters have visions, and experiences, which are characteristic to mysticism, mystical theology, and/or mystical philosophy. Eric Reitan writes in one account:
The village is just coming into view ahead—just visible at the northern edge of the woods—when the visions seize them.
Caleb’s eyes go wide. Bill stumbles. The spaceship world shifts sideways before becoming lost. It’s as if she’s suspended in a void. Silence, darkness, a cold that has scent, like something ancient and long sealed. And then the darkness is broken by a sphere of red, red like lava. Even so, something remains of the continents and oceans, some contour to the magmatic glow that marks it has home.
Earth.
Silvery streaks descend and rise from the smoldering world like insects darting in and out for blood. The embers fade to dun. The Earth is still and dead. But then, as the sunlight spreads across the ruins of the world, the skin of the planet thins to translucence.
It has become a womb. She sees the fetal shape within: the tiny fingers and the toes, the limpid skin and the veins pulsing with blood and life.
When the vision changes again she thinks at first she’s waking up on the balcony. But what she sees is a child, a child rising from the dirt, blinking under the starlight before plucking itself free of its umbilical.
The child, a girl, begins to toddle into a world of light and flowers. She’s joined by other children, and the thing that comes to Sally’s mind as she watches them is the story of the Pied Piper. She tries to hear the whistling tune that leads the children on, but if it’s there it falls outside the limits of her hearing. Still the children follow it, this unheard call, out of the bright light and into darkness so complete she shouldn’t be able to see them at all. And yet they remain a vivid presence: children crawling and tripping and toddling through the dark.
They reach an opening, like an archway aglow with something that isn’t light. And now that she stands before it, Sally can almost hear what’s been drawing the children: not a sound, but even so a kind of call. It’s beautiful but disconnected from sound or sight or scent—as if she’s experiencing what lies ahead with some new sense, some sense no human knows. […] She stumbles back into her own flesh. Her awareness returns to her body sprawled in the dirt. (57-58)
Eric Reitan’s depiction of mystical visions and even the mystical elements of the characters, if not exact, comes strikingly close to a Carl-Jungian mystical possession. Jungian scholar, Murray Stein, writes, “A complex generally creates its effects within the domain of consciousness, but this is not always so. Sometimes the disturbances occur outside of the psyche altogether. Jung observed that a complex can affect objects and other people in the surrounding world. It can act as a poltergeist or a subtle influence on other people. Jung made another interesting observation about complexes. A person can sometimes block the effects of a stimulus and fend off the constellation of a complex[.]” (Stein, Jung’s Map of the Soul, 45)
But let’s continue a little further on the topic as it relates to God or some incomprehensible Other…..
The Aliens as a Metaphor for God and Mysticism:
As Mysticism has been briefly mentioned, we come back mysticism as it relates to God. Without giving away the plot of the book, Caleb gives an intellectual analysis and plan on how to move forward in a pivotal point of conflict in Reitan’s novel. Reitan writes,
Caleb is staring between Linda and Nathan, his eyes alive with something new. “More than that,” he says. He starts to pace. “More than that. We need to find out who else had visions and what they saw. Sally and I… we didn’t see the exact same thing. I mean, what she saw, what I saw…” It’s as if mania has replaced his brooding silence. He looks as if so many ideas are rushing through his head that he can’t share them quickly enough. “Whoever made this ship—and I don’t think they built it, I think they grew it, even the buildings and the…the books, they grew it all! But anyway, it’s their way of talking to us. Those of us who are… who are receptive. But it’s like a puzzle. Maybe we’re not all receptive to the same things, or maybe we see a different piece of what they’re showing. We need to put the pieces together. Find everyone who’s had visions. It can’t just be Sally and me! Find out what others saw. Figure out what the aliens are saying.” Caleb reaches out and grabs Nathan’s shoulder. “This is more important than village politics, Nathan. It’s more important than what happens to me. It’s about why we’re here.” (95)
This is an important part here for the figurative Alien-to-God parallel, and an example of how mysticism plays a social role in it. Visions turn out to be communal, and cross-cultural just as mysticism scholars often classify them as criteria for mysticism. I will not further venture into mysticism for the purposes of this blog, but if you are interested in furthering your knowledge on it, I have written a few pieces on it here: a piece concerning Mysticism in the Parapsychological, a piece concerning Mysticism/mystical experience induced by hallucinogenic/ergogenic aid, and an example of Mysticism coming from a religious tradition, such as that of the Christian Mystics.
(If these aren’t accessible, eventually, these will be moved over to this blog site where they will be offered for free).
So Eden Sank To Grief written as a Revelatory Text:
This section title is a little deceiving: I don’t mean to suggest that the text itself is to be posited as the next Torah or Bible, or Vedas, etc. However, there are chapters in Eric Reitan’s fictitious novel, that are written as if they are an acquired letter taken from a historical time and put piecemeal into SESTG as to piece together a well examined revelatory text, of ordinary people providing human accounts of their own existential struggles and thoughts on, or about, God, the Divine, or that incomprehensible Other. There is a philosophical purpose behind this as well. Without knowing Reitan’s precise intentions, my best guess, is to anthropomorphize (in the historical context and practice of unwarranted deification of the) regular people, prophets, and such, who ought to be seen in a new light, in a fallible human light of contemporary relatableness—I think this is at least one philosophical purpose for Reitan—I’d suspect anyway. For example, Reitan has several chapters of SESTG titled as “From the Collected Letters of Malachi Jones, Prophet of Light” and each chapter says something a bit different. For example, Chapter Four’s selected accounts of Malachi Jones, has a note from the editor which states: “Note from the editor: Theological debates about Mollie are too familiar to repeat here. What is clear from the Prophet’s account is that she came to him in a dark moment, and led him to light.” (Reitan, 98) In this section, Malachi, (or the author through Malachi) seems to implicitly articulate the function of the collected letters and this certainly adds meaning to the story, but also to life. Without telling the plot of the story, Malachi appears to be writing to someone very dear that is missing or not present, someone that love, and the ineffable, is worth carrying on about, through written word. And to bring to a close this blog, I will leave you with this quote from SESTG. The character Malachi writes,
Now, it seems put, my only way to conjure you is through that recitation, reclaiming a forgotten face by invoking remembered words.
Is that why people invented language? To remember what would otherwise be lost?
If so, these words on this page are a part of that. (Reitan, 98)
Concluding Remarks:
There are many important philosophical or theological themes and elements that I didn’t even touch, and/or that could be further explored or expanded upon, and I certainly have not done justice to all of the areas by any means. However, my goal was to introduce readers to some of these philosophical and theological issues by first referencing So Eden Sank To Grief as a starting point, and then by supplementing it with outside material on some of these topics that flowed more naturally for me. The selection process of which elements I chose to write about was actually pretty arbitrary. Probably any one of these topics could be written about in book-length as it relates to SESTG, and I tackled many (1 or 2 topics in pretty great detail, and others just briefly skimming the surface) merely to give readers a taste. This isn’t to say that Reitan wasn’t capable of doing so—(no!), he’s much more capbable than I—it’s just this was a novel with specific intentions of being just that, a written story. However, the way he wrote it offers readers an introductory ability to really dive into a plethora of different issues if they wish. With that said, I think I’ve chewed on this enough in my brief highlights on some of the issues that stuck out to me after reading Reitan’s SESTG. I recommend reading his debut novel, and I welcome, and encourage other readers to challenge some of my interpretations and analyses of Reitan’s So Eden Sank To Grief. Thanks for reading.
Here is a link for purchasing Eric Reitan’s book, and I hope you will pick up a copy.
Works Cited:
Goldberg, Jonah. Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy, Forum Books, 2018.
Rachels, James, and Rachels, Stuart. The Elements of Moral Philosophy (9th edition), McGraw Hill Publishing, 2018.
Rausch, Thomas. Systematic Theology: A Roman Catholic Approach. Liturgical Press, 2016.
Reitan, Eric. So Eden Sank To Grief. Quoir Publishing, 2024.
Stein, Murray. Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction to Jungian Psychology. Open Court Publishing, [1998] 2016.
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