Sit down sometime, and watch a child playing. Assuming the child’s innate creativity hasn’t been burnt out of it by the drugs and television prescribed by our modern seers, you’ll notice something interesting. The child’s imaginary world is very different than the one he actually lives in. In the imaginary world, animals talk, kings and queens live in high castles, cars and trucks move at his command, and, of course, dinosaurs rule the Earth. Adults do this too, though perhaps not so consciously. We, too old for playing with plastic dinosaurs (or so we think), enter the imaginary worlds of others: we are riding through an unspoiled and expansive Old West desert; we are normal-seeming citizens with great hidden powers; we are lone survivors struggling heroically against a dangerous and visceral world; we are kissing in the rain; we are Jack’s burning rage against the system. Why are the Harry Potter books so popular among adults if not to let us think that just on the other side of a mundane normalcy is a world full of magic, strange creatures, and life-and-death battles? What are our design mock-ups and finance reports, after all, when compared to the War with Evil?
On a more practical level, those imaginary worlds also cause us to make changes in the real world. The imaginations of an ordinary mind, of a bigger paycheck or a new romance, might lead us to apply for a job or talk to a woman. The imaginations of a great mind can and do change the world. But with that power of imagination comes a near-universal inability to accept the world we actually have. It can’t have always been this way, we think; even if the grass isn’t greener in our neighbor’s yard, surely it was in his grandfather’s. America, say the old, was better off sixty years ago when people still had morals and young people respected their elders. America, say the young, was better off six hundred years ago, when white people were still stuck in Europe and the Native American lived at one with nature, likely spontaneously bursting into song when confronted with fluffy woodland creatures.
And at the dawn of time, Eden. Perfection, or so the Christians tell us. Man without sin, without want, at peace and innocent. In that garden there was only one rule: to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve, being somewhat naive (not outright rebellious like her predecessor), believed Satan’s claim that the knowledge would make her like God, and ate. Adam, being a good husband, did what his wife told him and ate likewise and, rather than becoming gods, the couple was cast out of Eden and cursed to mortality and the working of the ground.
Compare this to another creation myth: that of Prometheus and Pandora. In the Greek version, Prometheus gives humanity the gift of fire. Their eyes follow the smoke from the ground up toward the stars, and they become separate from the animals; they are mortal, but possess the fire of the gods. Zeus punishes Prometheus for his gift, and to punish the humans, he sends them Pandora: a woman, like Eve, who touches something she shouldn’t and thus brings evil, pain, and torment to the entire future of the human race. At the beginning of both of these myths, humanity exists in a state of innocence. Like the animals, they lack knowledge, and thus can only act according to their nature; the only sin they can commit is to seek to become like gods.
In Eden, humans are immortal within the garden; in the Greek myths, humans are eternally cyclical, as there can be no names, stories, or remembrance of death. But then the humans reach out and take something forbidden: the knowledge of the gods. With that knowledge, they become self-aware, symbolized in the Greek myth by looking at the stars, and in the Eden myth by the realization of nakedness. To be like the gods, though, is not free. In both cases, knowledge grants to humans the ability to choose, a free will that can knowingly take a good path or an evil one. This awareness of self, perhaps brought on in actual history by the development of language, gave humans a concept of evil and good, and the awareness through experience that one day they would surely die. 
With knowledge came the potential for evil. Sin enters into the Christian’s world, Pandora opens her box, and (lament the storytellers), man is doomed to a life of work, a struggle towards an impossible perfection, and responsibility for his actions. An angel is set at the gates of Eden, and Prometheus is chained to a rock for the rest of eternity.
The Greek empire and its accompanying mythos are now long since gone, but the concept of Eden and the fall of man is still very present in the western world. We yearn for lost perfection, for peace, for security, for the assurance that we will never die. We are like infants newly born, bawling for the comfort of the womb. But let us ask ourselves: is the fire of the gods worth the evils of Pandora’s box? It is interesting to note that the name “Pandora” in the Greek means “all-giving”, and that the forbidden fruit contained the knowledge of good as well as of evil. Prometheus and Eden are not stories of the birth of evil; they are stories of the birth of self-awareness and the responsibility that comes with it. We cry out for Eden because we can’t see past the blisters on our hands and the gravestones at the end of our lives. Like little children with bruised knees, we run to the divine, crying for safety, for perfection, for a world where everything will be all right, where daddy will take care of everything.
Enough childishness. Bruised knees and blisters are part of growth. Sooner or later we have to dry our tears, grit our teeth, and shoulder the responsibility we have been given. And, as we sweat out our Earthly toil, we may begin to realize the gifts we have been given. There is no value in accomplishment without struggle, no value in possession without sacrifice, no value in love without loss, and no value in good without evil. Our metaphorical exile from Eden was no more a curse than the a young bird’s first push from its nest. We have wept for far too long. It’s time to grow up.
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While we do need to grow up and to move past fairy tales, we are still to be adults as children which is radically different from children as children. We are not to be childish and immature, but so mature that we may be as children. This is not regression to a prior state, but the evolution forward to a state that exceeds even our primordial Eden.
With the birth of consciousness comes the birth of problems, but only through these problems are we able to be conscious of the mode of our existence and have the possibility to be “shepherds of being.” The infantile urge you’re talking about is always inappropriate: it sees irresponsible, pre-pubescent license. What should be sought is maturity both individually and universally. We are to tend to the world given us and break from an anthropomorphic Daddy-God.
This makes me wonder if myths have a pedagogical role: teaching in order to cease teaching, training in order to produce autonomous and self-sufficient adults.
Childishness has to end, but being as children means that we are no longer children — the sort of rebirth Christ speaks of, which is a radical revision of ourselves to see the world as it really is, or at least as close as we can see it as it really is. The pinnacle of maturity and self-control seems to show us saints: paradigms of virtue and yet with a childlike disposition (wonder, interest, creativity, etc.).
If childishness should be over, what should be next? And what does it look like in relation to the world around us? What of a non-mythical world religion? What of the environment?
to this i can only quote chesterton’s orthodoxy (and also include a recommendation for his everlasting man, which pretty much shreds some of the assumptions of this article):
“All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.”
Micah,
I believe Tim’s understanding of Eden (as well as my own) is one of individual experience and the awakening of consciousness — specifically the eating of the Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil).
What Tim is advancing here is maturity, with which I’m sure Chesterton would take issue with and call heresy. Chesterton does advance a naïveté that clashes very much with what Tim is saying.
Before consciousness (or the subsequent concept of history) mankind was immortal, undying, and perfect. Before written language, only two generations were required to deify an ancestor. Repetition and cyclical (liturgical) time remains part of our lives, even the most secular — as I say in my essay “The Image of the Phoenix” (I would appreciate both of your comments on it, too).
The Fall, about which Chesterton writes in Orthodoxy is a story like many fairy tales in that there is an arbitrary command which is invariably violated. What Chesterton fails to notice is that it is very often because of this violation and the subsequent suffering that the fairy tale returns to a fairy tale ending — but a conscious fairy tale ending after a process of maturation.
The funny thing is Chesterton’s defense of repetition and eternal return here contrasted with his Nietzschean hatred of the circle and “Eastern” elements, which is nothing but ignorant generalizations. Chesterton, like Nietzsche, was a good hater.
i think tim’s understanding of maturity is what chesterton would take issue with and call “heresy” (a term which does not have quite the same religious connotations–i think chesterton uses it for a word that demonstrates an offense against things as they are, against the wonder of the world). for chesterton, maturity is not cynicism, which is what it seems tim is perilously close to saying.
i do not think that this is, by the way, a defense of chesterton’s hated circle. he is simply saying that we often become cynical about things because it’s the same thing every day, the gradual wearing down of life makes us think we’re moving toward death. thus we read that in the repetition of the stars. chesterton’s point is that we do not know, though. God could create each flower brand new every time simply because he loves to, and that flower is a thing of glory, not because he is dead or unoriginal.
the thing that chesterton loves to point out is that the fairy tale is often true (though not in the way we might think), and that acknowledging it as such is the only way we can keep our humanity in proper check.
also, chesterton’s attack on the circle is really only an attack on the western understanding of eastern ideas, which as we both know is often complete bull (suburban buddhists come to mind). whether or not that is an actual reflection of what they really are, i would imagine not. though, from the little exposure i do have to eastern ideas (i should qualify pagan eastern ideas), the concept of the circle, of eternal return is a concept of mindlessness–the belief that under the repetition is not deadness, per se, but a being which is nothingness. i could be incorrect; my source is the most honest suburban buddhist i could find. his understanding of buddhism was that the most enlightened folks could simply meditate in a forest until they wasted away (and this would be a good thing!). that struck me as very anti-human and, to be honest, a lie straight from the pit of hell. as kohak says, being is so good. why would we (perhaps unwittingly) despise it?
on phoenix: i read the article again, and it’s interesting, if not a little scattered (but that’s OK). for being such a chesterton hater, you sure do sound like him sometimes
what i worry about in the obsession with beginnings and endings, with the sort of polarities you’re working with here, is that it becomes like doing math with infinity (you only get E on the calculator). yes, we are creatures with a meaningful connection to the eternal, but we cannot let those poles blind us to the startlingly particularity of the world, the beguiling nooks and crannies. and this is why i love that quote from chesterton. the God who is a borderline anarchist, in which the highest anarchy is his beauty (manifested both in order and the nooks/crannies of the world).
Micah, I think you can rest assured that Chesterton would view this as a heresy. To be clear: I don’t think there ever was a literal Eden, but if there had been, I think we’re better off cast out of it.
I’m approaching Eden from a myth-formation standpoint: what caused the myth historically, and what gives it a continued resonance in modern culture. As Stewart said, I think the endless cycles of life before humans became distinct from the animal kingdom (through language) actually refers to the everlasting life in the Eden myth, not some dead clockwork. It may be a dim species-memory–I don’t know.
I do know that the development of language would bring the “knowledge of good and evil” the Eden myth talks about, as well as both the “fire of the gods,” the evils of Pandora’s box, and the looking towards the stars of Greek mythology. It would also bring with it the knowledge of death–for the first time a human could look at another, older human and think to himself: that is a human, as I am a human. That human has died, so I must died.
Immortality in myth may be simply no more than lack of worry (fear in imagination) over death. With the consciousness of death comes the consciousness of good; both are necessary for our maturation as a species.
i don’t doubt chesterton would consider your essay “heresy,” though not because you do not take the eden story literally (nor consider it at all). what he would consider primarily heretical is the assumption that all myths are alike. i referred to the everlasting man because it’s in this book that he primarily attacks that idea and asserts that the christian myth, if you will, is completely unique among myths. it’s certainly an argument i’m sure you’ve heard before.
a couple things i’m unclear about otherwise. i’m not sure why you feel that the development of language is akin to the development of language from a mythological standpoint. nor am i sure how you’re defining “good” or “maturation.” and lastly, i have no clue why you could say that we are better outside eden. so, i guess until i understand those i’ll have to keep my mouth shut.
Right. I don’t think the Christian myth is unique, or even more useful than many other world myths in terms of understanding mankind’s past and future. In terms of language, I’m working from the premise that human self-awareness began with our development of language (see Walker Percy, among others), and thus our awareness of death (concept of mortality) as well as awareness and codification of good and evil (the forbidden fruit).
I mean maturation in the sense of taking responsibility for one’s actions, and of having to earn what is good rather than simply having it provided for us. A child is fed because it is helpless and not responsible for itself. An adult provides for him or herself.
As to why we are better outside of Eden, it has to do with the “curse” of toil and pain. In my experience, there is no real lasting value in anything that is free. I have no interest in being fed and cared for, or in having my responsibilities lifted from me. Food tastes better after working for it, a mountain is all the more beautiful for the climb, and achievement is only as great as the struggle that leads to it.
i think you would find the everlasting man interesting, if only as an antidote to the idea that christianity is a similar myth to pagan myths. that’s an argument i just don’t buy. i think when one compares the heights of the middle ages to the heights of the greco-roman (or any pagan) empire, you see quite a distinctly different vision of what society is like under a christian narrative/myth/whatever. myth or no myth, you have to admit the difference in substance and effect. if you don’t, i think you’re just not paying close attention.
also, i’m not sure why one needs language to be self-aware. are animals not self-aware? certainly they are, though perhaps not to the extent that we are. i’m just not sure of the usefulness of this point–but i haven’t read percy on it, so i might be missing something. i do enjoy walker percy (there’s supposed to be a good documentary about him coming out on pbs soon, i think).
taking responsibility is certainly important, and i think that the story of adam and eve is a story about taking responsibility, if it is a story about anything. the eden story has adam as the chief cultivator of eden. the curse is not work; it is toil (the frustration of our labors). i agree that food/drink tastes better after labor, and i see no reason why adam could not enjoy this. moreover, the fundamental assertion of christianity is that all things come ultimately from God. the story of eden is (even if we consider it figurative) the embodiment of that truth. to say that is not to relegate humanity to the position of childishness, but only to recognize the true nature of our bounty (and to pay respect accordingly).
lastly, if there is no lasting value in anything that is free, you might as well just go and off yourself now and save the difficulty of disappointment that your life will lead anywhere, since your existence was a free gift from your parents.
Obviously the Christian myth is different from various pagan myths. I would just say that it doesn’t have greater value than some of them in understanding what we are as a species.
Self-awareness via language is too big a subject for this discussion–I was taking it as a hypothetical given, based on other research/reading I’ve done. If you’re interested, look up Percy’s “Lost in the Cosmos.” The connection here is that language is necessary for abstract thinking–for worrying, in this case, about death and morality. A dog will feel guilty if it does something it’s trained not to do, but it won’t bother with the ethics of whether or not it should eat steaks off the table. It’s just a matter of conditioning.
If you’re a Christian, I can see how you’d interpret Eden that way, and I suppose it makes sense within the Christian paradigm. I’m more interested in looking at the Eden story the same way as I look at the Prometheus story: in terms of understanding the human desires that rise out of our self-awareness. And, as I said, in the case of Eden I see more of a desire for carefree “innocence” than a desire for a different form of responsibility.
Maturity enters into the “free” argument. Of course your existence, and most of your childhood, is “free” (ie paid for by your parents). But, part of growing up is learning how to pay for yourself–living off of your parents when you’re thirty, for example, shows a lack of maturity, whereas doing so when you’re six is to be expected.
i think this is where we get to the heart of the difference: the real eden story cannot simply be a story that humans tell as a longing for lost innocence, out of a desire to return to some time when we were ignorant and did nothing, when we were in the womb-like comfort of God’s providence. certainly, some people do see it that way, but they’re not being true to the story (i.e., the story as it’s written in genesis). that is just not the story. now, it’s true many people (including christians) tell it is as such, but i think you confuse how some people tell the story with the story as it actually is within the christian tradition. so, this variation on adam and eve becomes a new myth in itself perhaps, but it is not the same as the story in genesis and should not be confused as such.
there are many other characterizations of the eden story that you make in this article that i take issue with, such as the way you’ve loaded the deck to favor your picture of christians (and pagans) as immature and weak-minded, driven to belief in far-fetched stories by a fear of being powerless or alone.
you also make an assumption that “maturity” is not believing in such stories, that one is foolish to do so. i guess this seems strange to me since the greatest minds of the last several thousand years have genuinely believed such stories. that isn’t an argument for belief, of course, but it certainly puts the question into perspective.
Well, no. I personally am not a Christian, which frees me up to interpret the Eden myth in the ways I did above. I respect many Christians, and I imagine that for a Christian to value responsibility, self-awareness, etc. (as many Christians do) they would have to interpret it as you do. But personally, I find it more interesting as a creation myth to be compared with other global creation myths, as an indicator of human cultural evolution. So, I’m separating my interpretation (as a non-Christian looking at global history of myth) with genuine belief in these stories.
As to my views on Christians and pagans, go one step back: I think that most humans are (at least for much of their lives) immature and weak-minded, and are afraid of being powerless and alone: thus this desire to return to the womb, as I talk about above. It’s not only present in Christianity–the Worker’s Paradise of Communism (complete care by the state) is another atheistic and more recent example. Contribution exists in these paradise myths (as it does in Eden) but responsibility is in someone else’s hands (ie God, the state, fate, etc.). My point in the article is that we need to begin to grow up culturally as well as personally–to accept that perhaps, as adults, responsibility is more important than yearning after “lost” innocence.
what i’m saying is you can’t interpret it any way you want if it contradicts something that is actually part of the story. if you want to chop it up and say “i’m only addressing this part” (and this other part is somehow not “genuine” or something like that), then you have to argue it shouldn’t be there for some reason. without that justification, you’re violating the story itself for the sake of making a point.
i wonder if you realize that you’ve given yourself an extraordinary perch from which you can critique others, unassailable in its self-reinforcing logic. forgive me for going back to chesterton again, but i always seem to find him apt: “both the materialist and the madman have no doubts.” something more to chew on.
I guess I don’t see where my interpretation is contradicted in the Eden story. My interpretation is:
1. Mankind lives in innocence, peace, etc., without fear of death or knowledge of good and evil.
2. Mankind gains knowledge of good and evil, thus becoming mortal and doomed to responsibility (since, knowing good and evil, they had to be held responsible for what they knew was wrong).
The rest of it’s just my take on it from a historical and non-Christian point of view. And, like I said, I can see how a Christian would interpret it differently (because, if you’re Christian, you’re reading the story as a message from God, and not as a human-generated myth). I’m not sure where you’re getting this “self-reinforcing logic” business from, or my violations of the story.
my understanding of what you said before was that adam and eve bore no responsibility in the garden. i said they were, among other things, caretakers. the story does not enlighten us much beyond that, though i imagine they were not as ignorant/childish as you say because they are portrayed as conversing with God himself. certainly God’s not interested in sustaining a real relationship with two people incapable of having a meaningful relationship. yes, we have a relationship with two-year olds, but we do not want them to stay that way forever. and if they did, we would be very upset. what i’m saying is that the eden story doesn’t jive with your characterization of it as some sort of escapist fantasy. yes, there was no “toil” or death as we know it, but that does not mean adam/eve were like in an infantile state. i just don’t think that fits with the story (though it is admittedly sparse).
(as a side note about the interpretation of eden within the christian tradition: if you put it into the whole narrative of scripture, it is pretty clear that eden as it was created was not necessarily the “peak” state of mankind. i think this produces a further difficulty for your analysis, as it’s problematic to look at one single story out of its context.)
the chesterton quote is related to the perch from which you are critiquing. most people, according to your own statement, are immature and weak-minded. this strikes me not only as highly judgmental (and without merit), but also an unassailable place to which you return when challenged on the interpretation. where could somebody challenge your interpretation from within your perspective? that’s what i mean by it being self-reinforcing.
anyhow, i gotta hit the hay. good talking.
Right–like I said, you have to interpret the story differently if you believe that Adam and Eve were two real people (the same way you’d have to interpret the Pandora story differently if Pandora was a real person). That’s a deeper faith issue, on which we obviously disagree, so discussion on that point may be moot anyway.
Sorry about the “all people” statement–I think I might have been unclear. What I meant with that was just that I don’t think Christians and pagans are any more weak-minded than the rest of us (but that, being human, we’re all fairly immature, weak-minded, etc.). And yeah, I may be too cynical for my own good.
i don’t think it’s a matter of whether or not i interpret eden as literal or figurative (or even mythical). i’m saying the story itself does not lend itself to your interpretation.