Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Theological Politics

For an avowed atheist, Arthur Clarke had a great deal to say about God, and not all of it negative. Childhood’s End is a tale of the theological roots of politics and how religious belief simultaneously stimulates and inhibits human society. Clarke’s view is subtle, complex, and appropriately ‘cosmic.’ As a commentary on the centrality of religion to human existence - for its opponents as well as its adherents - Childhood’s End is hard to beat.

If I read Clarke correctly, his view is that God is not the product of frightening illusion but of loving emotion. God is the idea we use to describe the wholly irrational but irresistibly compelling force of human affection. Fear is merely a derivative emotion brought about by the threat of loss of affection, not something positive, therefore, but an absence of love. The force of love is invisible, immaterial, unmeasurable, enacted everywhere and at all times; but it is, without any doubt, real. What Clarke does in Childhood’s End is provide a voice for such philosophical realism.

Love in all its forms - sexual, familial, communal, special, and inter-special - is only minimally an instinct, that is a motivation or drive. Rather it is a learned ability, a capacity which increases with experience and practice. Childhood’s End opens with conflict; moves to feelings of trust and friendship by one individual towards a powerful alien; and develops, under alien direction - which is effectively omniscient and omnipotent - into general peace and harmony among all of humanity. The capacity to love evolves over a century such that personal jealousy has disappeared, crime is almost unknown, involuntary or oppressive human toil has been eliminated, economic abundance and equality have been substantially achieved. In other words: paradise has arrived.*

Love is also a metaphysical condition. That is, it cannot be demonstrated to be beneficial, or even to be at all, except through a commitment to it. It is self-validating just as its antithesis, fear, is self-validating. Love and the world is loving; fear and the world is fearsome. The alien Overlords bring the whole of humanity to the metaphysical revelation of love through their tutelage and discipline. Only when love has been created as a reality can it be perceived and appreciated as a reality. This is a metaphysical paradox which is known to the Overlords, but must be demonstrated by human beings to themselves.

“But the stars are not for man,” the Overlord Supervisor proclaims. Human beings are not sufficiently competent in the skills of love to include anything outside their rather insignificant world. They may never be. They are therefore denied by the Overlords - in the name of love - the knowledge which would allow them to travel to distant worlds. This constraint is annoying and incomprehensible to many, mainly scientific types - not unlike the prohibition of eating from the Tree in the Garden. And the Supervisor could foresee the consequences, just as the book of Genesis had described - a loss of the Golden Age of innocence.

(view spoiler)[But it is not the scientists who are the first to rebel. The trouble starts among creative types - artists, actors, film producers, writers, musicians. They feel cheated because they have nothing to struggle against. Without an ‘other,’ they say that society has lost the ability to be creatively imaginative. So they club together in an isolated sub-culture to reverse the trend, as they see it, of people becoming “passive sponges” absorbing banal popular culture. Led by a Moses-like figure, the artistic inhabitants, appreciate the peace and ease of their world but still feel it is inadequate.

So according to Clarke’s story, the half-life of metaphysical appreciation is extremely limited. Love and its effects are easily taken for granted. We are a thankless species in our search for more, better, adventure or just something different. The skills of love can be lost within a generation. The absence of love spreads like a virus among a society’s children, creating a new species through a sort of Lamarckian mutation. The consequences are catastrophic: “It was the end of civilization, the end of all that men had striven for since the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future” (hide spoiler)]

Theology considers love as a gift which is received from elsewhere. It can’t be produced on demand, only received when made available. We have no right to it and it dissipates when it is presumed upon. More important, it can be taken away by whoever or wherever it came from. It can disappear instantly as both an emotion and a practice. Love is a mystery about which Homo Sapiens has no clues. Therefore, when love is lost, we are wont to deify and pray to it as well as for it. Hence the remark of one of the characters early on in Childhood’s End: “Basically, the conflict [between the Overlords and humankind] is a religious one, however much it may be disguised.”

So the reason for the Overlords refusal to enlighten humankind eventually is made clear “The road to the stars was a road that forked in two directions, and neither led to a goal that took any account of human hopes or fears.” There may be an Overmind which is superior to the Overlords and calls the shots in the universe; there may even be an intelligence, or many, which are superior to the Overmind. It matters not at all. Oblivion is inevitable. Love as we know it will likely be destroyed since it doesn’t really seem to conform to any cosmic purpose. This is a brutal religious truth and one we’d rather not deal with: There is no reward for love, except love itself. Recognition of this truth is the real end of childhood and marks an entry into grown-up thinking.

*There is substantial theological precedent for the idea of an evolving capacity for human beings to not only behave with each other, but also to behave, as it were, when confronted with divine revelation. The medieval Joachim of Floris, Nicholas of Cusa, and the modern Teilhard de Chardin are Christian examples. Jewish Kabbalists like Akiva, Luria, and Abulafia held similar views. Interestingly, it is the Mormons who hold this view most explicitly in their doctrine of the progressive divinization of humankind. Clarke is clearly tapping in to a long-held cultural tradition in this story. See here for more on the theology of sci-fi: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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