#9 Not Anti-Human, Just Pro-Truth

Living Honestly in Two Worlds

We tell ourselves stories to preserve our dignity.
At various points in history, it was language, then consciousness, then moral sense, and now perhaps “epistemic reasoning” — each offered as proof of our special place in the universe.

But from the perspective of science, none of these distinctions hold. And that can be hard to live with.

For years, I’ve wrestled with what feels like a private heresy: the suspicion that all our supposed uniqueness — our intelligence, our awareness, our sense of right and wrong — might not be exceptions at all, but just evolved behaviors in a world indifferent to meaning. It’s not that I’m against humanity. But I am for truth. And the truth is: science does not see us as central.


The Illusion of Dignity

Science, by design, eliminates teleology. It doesn’t admit purpose — not for cells, not for stars, and not for us. It sees causes, not meanings.

So when a biologist explains how organisms adapt, or a neuroscientist reduces thought to electrochemical exchange, it’s not because they’re cynical — it’s because they are following nature’s logic. There is no scientific reason to believe that human consciousness is metaphysically privileged. It is amazing, yes — but also fragile, local, and entirely contingent.

This undermines the frameworks we build around human dignity. If we’re not special by virtue of soul, reason, or free will, then what are we?

The temptation is to resist this conclusion. To say: “Yes, but we know that we know. We reason. We assign value. Surely that matters.”

But that is still a plea for exception.


Two Worlds

I’ve come to see that I live in two worlds:

  1. The world of science, in which humans are biochemical events — transient phenomena shaped by information flow, genetics, and evolutionary drift.
  2. The world of people, in which love, meaning, morality, and beauty are real — not because they’re objective, but because they shape how we live.

These worlds are not reconcilable. But they are both true — in different ways.

In the human world, I don’t challenge our dignity. I don’t walk around telling people they’re just bags of self-replicating code. That would be inhumane. We feel what we feel. We suffer. We love. We create. In this world, truth is often measured by usefulness — by what helps us endure.

In the scientific world, I set that aside. I try to see what’s really there — not what flatters us. This is not cynicism. It’s clarity. It’s refusing to import human-centered values into a universe that does not need them.


Pro-Truth

Sometimes I fear this makes me anti-human. But it doesn’t. I value our stories, our art, our ethics — all of it. I just don’t pretend they’re written into the fabric of the cosmos.

I don’t seek to replace the human world with the scientific one. I seek only to not lie to myself when I move between them.

We are not the meaning of the universe.
But we are the place where some of it gets written down.

That’s enough for me.


This article resonates with themes explored in The Metropolis Organism — a video series examining cities as literal biological systems, where human beings function not as masters, but as necessary organelles in a living urban body.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The City as an Organism

Image
  THE CITY IS AN ORGANISM A Manifesto by Frank Vitale A city is a living organism. This is not metaphor. It is biology reframed. It is not a view from inside the human mind. It is a view from outside it — from the perspective of science, where there are no subjects, only systems. From this vantage, cities emerge as living systems — not designed, but evolved. Not symbolic, but structural. They metabolize. They circulate. They replicate. They adapt. Their cells are not brick or steel — but flows. Energy, information, waste, intention. Their organs: transport, governance, communication, trade. Their capillaries: conduits, cables, pipes. Their metabolism: electric, algorithmic, continuous. And humans? Humans are necessary, but unremarkable, organelles — functional, interchangeable, increasingly automated. We are not the city’s authors. We are its substrate. We have never governed it. We are and have always been part of its structure, symbiotic participants in a lineage older than our ...
Read more
Image
  #5 Beneath the Skin: A Humbling View of Human Control What if our sense of agency is just a flicker atop a biochemical ocean? We live under the illusion that we are in control — of our lives, our bodies, even our civilization. But pause for a moment and ask: what truly keeps us alive? It is not our intellect. It is not our willpower. It is what goes on beneath our skin. Each second, millions of molecular interactions quietly coordinate to keep us breathing, digesting, healing, thinking. These processes don’t wait for our permission. We don’t direct them. Most of us barely understand them. And even with the full machinery of modern civilization — its labs, technologies, and medical systems — we are only beginning to scratch the surface of how our own metabolism works. If we ask what governs this invisible activity, we arrive at DNA: a vast archive of instructions refined over billions of years. DNA doesn’t consult us. It doesn’t explain itself. Yet it builds and sustains us from w...
Read more
Image
  #3 The Metropolis Organism Symbiosis and Blindness: The Evolution of the Metropolis Organism By Frank Vitale, MAW, MFA, BSc We inhabit a world shaped by two irreconcilable perspectives. From within the human mind, civilization appears as our achievement. We design it, build it, govern it, extend it. It carries the imprint of meaning, intention, and purpose. It belongs to us. But from the vantage point of science—the external observer outside human subjectivity—civilization emerges differently. It is not ours. It is a living structure, growing symbiotically around and through us, indifferent to our meanings and desires. We are its components, not its architects. This human perspective—the belief that civilization belongs to us—blinds us to what is truly happening. We do not build the city. The city grows through us. Like mitochondria absorbed into early cells, we are subsumed by a larger metabolic process. Our technologies, infrastructures, and even our choices are woven into an e...
Read more