The Eternal Dying of Gray

Phi-The-Sci: Equilateral Musings

I have several very good friends that I have accumulated throughout my medical training. We have kept up a lively group text for many years. Our topics range from family updates, stupid jokes, and very serious topics (including religious topics). Recently, we had a text exchange about human sexuality. I have two LGBTQ+ children for whom I love very much and for whom I am rather protective. Some of my friends are very “black and white” about human sexuality. They aren’t bad people as they care for many patients who are LGBTQ+ in their medical practice without judgement. Some of these friends, however, are very black and white when it comes to being LGBTQ+ and morality. For example, they may state that being gay is wrong but that we should still love LGBTQ+ people if we are Christian.

As you might imagine, such statements from some of my friends drive me a bit crazy. However, these friends are very decent people. They come from various religious backgrounds. Some are not religious. Some of them do medical charity work. Some of them do charity work outside of medicine. Often, they do not understand the spectrum of human sexuality that has existed for thousands and thousands of years.

As I have become older, I have become convinced that it is part of the curse of our species to be strictly black and white when it comes to thinking. There are potential evolutionary benefits to such binary thinking. The “curse” is the failure to overcome the evolutionary pressure to think in the black and white.

If you are a Paleolithic person who is sitting in a cave and who hears a growling noise outside, you then have a black and white choice. You can stay in the cave and be protected. OR you can go outside the cave and potentially be eaten. Your genes to pass on to future generations instead become a meal.

I am going to suppose that there were very few ancient Homo individuals who thought, “This sound is interesting, I am just going to take a look. It might be better for me and for my clan to know what is out there.” In other words, individuals who think in terms of gray might have had a rough time surviving early on in our species existence.

The color, gray

We no longer live in caves. We no longer worry about being eaten by lions. Our genetic predisposition for us (well, probably for most of us) is to think in black and white still persists in a modern world filled with tons of gray.

For example, human jaws have both canines/incisors and molars. Our teeth provide evolutionary evidence that there was pressure for us to become omnivores. Yet, some people choose to be vegetarians. Other people tend to like diets high in meat and fat. Both diets can be associated with long-term health risks. So, here we are with an unusual dentition that does not point in one specific way in regards to how we should absolutely eat. We may choose to eat a certain way. We may choose to consider aspects of animal cruelty when we choose what we eat at a restaurant. Also, what if plants have sensation (very unclear) and we eat them? The answer is so gray, but we mostly choose to be black or white.

Dental Clinics of North America (2007)

Most people seem to be either pro-life or pro-choice. We can say that abortion is never an option despite conditions such as anencephaly or other genetic conditions associated with fetal demise. We can make a 22-week premature infant remain alive in a newborn ICU with the associated incredibly high health care costs and long-term potential neurologic disease. We can demand that everyone should be pro-life during infancy yet provide minimal federal funding (at least in the United States) when a young child needs food, including free lunch programs at school. The answer is so gray, but we mostly choose to be black or white.

Many of us in the United States state we are Christian. However, we seem to not follow the lesson of the Good Samaritan when it comes loving the poor, the migrant, the intellectually disabled, or the people who are LGBTQ+. We Americans often state that we now live in a Christian country with an annual military budget of over 800 billion dollars (13% of the federal budget) which is possibly larger than the next combined nine largest military budgets elsewhere in the world. In contrast, our country spends about 7 billion dollars annually for the national Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). We spend more money on the military than we spend on nutrition for at-risk children. I do not understand why so many of my fellow citizens insist that we are a “Christian” nation. Again, the answer is so gray, but we mostly choose to be black or white.

Perhaps our human understanding of reality is constantly based in the gray through time. However, this gray is eternally destroyed over and over again through into black and white binary thinking. Perhaps, and further still, we will always destroy the gray through time for as long as we exist as a species.

Our human experience here extends into other ideas such as the difficulty in combining general relativity with quantum mechanics; the difficulty in understanding if some aspects of evolution are directional ; the difficulty in reconciling free will versus determinism in the human condition; in considering God versus no God.

I think our species could benefit from considering the gray in all walks of life — material or metaphysical. We may need to break away from our evolutionary history when it comes to loving our neighbor. If not, then when?

Odds and Ends:

1. The podcast, Homebrewed Christianity, has a recent episode titled “Why Religion Went Obsolete.” In some ways, it touches on some of the above issues.

2. I am listening to the audiobook titled “After Jesus, Before Christianity.” It is a great book. The section on the fluidity of sexuality among early Christians that was later squashed seems to emphasize how H. sapiens as a species continue to destroy gray ideas.

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