Deus Ex Machina for the World: In Search of Global Salvation

In an interview with Der Spiegel in 1966, German philosopher Martin Heidegger said regarding the world's problems, "Only a god can save us." Heidegger: "I think the only possibility of salvation left to us is to prepare readiness, through thinking and poetry, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god during the decline." As we witness the global economy being driven to the brink, one cannot help but desire a "deus ex machina" to manifest itself and correct our common plight.

A deus ex machina (or "god out of the machine") is a plot device introduced to resolve a grave, desperate, and dire entanglement of issues in a storyline. The phrase deus ex machina hearkens back to ancient Greek and Roman drama where a poet would introduce a god at the climax of a play in order to bring resolution to a perceivably unsolvable web of conflicts; a god would manifest himself out of the "machinery" of stage equipment in order to save the day. An example of a deus ex machina is the unexpected virus that wiped out the extraterrestrial invaders in H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds".

To say the least, if all the world is a stage, it appears that we are in need of a deus ex machina on a global scale. Nevertheless, the likelihood of a deus ex machina manifesting itself appears to be improbable. With world problems ranging from climate change, overpopulation, unemployment, energy crises, water crises, terrorism, and war, we could use a deus ex machina right about now. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman's column in the NY Times today highlighted the gravity of trying to find a cure to the globe's economic malaise.

Today's headline on the Drudge Report, "Now IMF Needs Bailout!", also highlights the precariousness of our global economic situation. On the topic of economics and the desire for a deus ex machina, former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers has been quoted as saying, "If a generous sovereign from Mars paid off Greek debt, the fundamentals of Europe in crisis would not be altered." Furthermore, president of China Investment Corp. Gao Xiqing has said, "We can't just go save someone. We're not saviors. We have to save ourselves." Any hope for a dramatic saving intervention would thus appear to be in vain.

Even so, one possible deus ex machina to resolve a great deal of the world's current crises may be in the form of a new invention that would radically change the way we live. Perhaps an inventor like Dean Kamen could cook something up to revolutionize the planet. I think it would be nice if someone could invent the portal gun from the game "Portal". Or perhaps a Zefram Cochrane could develop a warp drive and fly it into space while some extraterrestrial intelligence is watching thereby changing the course of human history and opening a new era of spacefaring for mankind. Perhaps scientists can find a new element or chemical process that would make light-speed travel possible.

But even in taking into account future inventions like a portal gun or a warp drive starship, one cannot help but feel that many of the world's problems go back to inherent flaws in human nature. For instance, let us suppose that human inventors were able to create a transportation device as used in Star Trek where we could "beam" a person or thing from one place to another. As nice as it would be to have transporter rooms for the morning commute or shipping products, far from solving issues related to human energy consumption, transportation, and shipping, I fear that a transportation device would only move the problems we already have and bring with it new problems. As such, perhaps it is unlikely that a revolutionary new invention would bring resolution to the world's current problems.

A second option less favorable to humanity would be the intervention of a negative deus ex machina. One might say such a negative deus ex machina would take the form of a "Malthusian catastrophe" in the form of a plague or pandemic. If we think back to Wells' "War of the Worlds", were a virus to wreak havoc upon the world's population, it is likely that our contemporary approaches to many of the planet's current geopolitical and socio-economic issues would have to be reworked and reframed. A pandemic would be bad news for most of us and would most likely result in mass casualties, but on the flip side, perhaps such a catastrophic event as that of a plague or pandemic would help humanity bring life and the world into perspective.

In the book "Introducing Wittgenstein" by John Heaton and Judy Groves, the authors write that from the perspective of Ludwig Wittgenstein, modern times are a dark age and "only a change in our way of life would heal the sickness of our age -- and this is only likely to happen when disaster confronts us". Where Nature may have a major catastrophe in store for the planet and where a major catastrophe could result in humanity coming together, such a calamity is unlikely to be a viable source of hope for us in our current plight. The last thing we need right now is a pandemic; pestilence would only further compound our current problems.

Given the dramatic effect of a negative deus ex machina, one has to wonder whether a Malthusian catastrophe would be lead to humanity's story being an inevitable tragedy. Where a virus may be desirable against extraterrestrial invaders, a virus wiping out a considerable portion of humanity is not desirable. Again, a deus ex machina in the form of a plague would not solve the world's problems, but rather would merely move and/or add to the world's problems.

There is a third option that I would like to address on this subject: a literal "god" coming out of the machine of reality. This could take the form of an artificial intelligence "God" (AI God) or extraterrestrials descending down to Earth from the heavens above.

Arthur C. Clarke once said that, "Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God -- but to create Him." Given growth in human technology and the move towards posthumanism, some may with hope look to the future of a posthuman god rising up to redeem humanity. The so-called Shermer's last law states that "Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God". In this light, one might suggest that humanity will evolve physically and mentally using technology to appear to have godlike abilities in comparison to contemporary humans. The idea of an AI God has been explored in Orion's Arm, a science fiction world-building project. In the Orion's Arm universe, "archailects" are AI Gods (derived from human intelligence) that exist in the universe. But again, given the limitations of human nature, it is difficult to see how human creations would ever be able to ultimately solve the planet's problems -- especially in our time period. And yet, God helps those who help themselves. Nevertheless, the hope that posthumanism will solve the world's problems centuries or millennia in the future does little for us today.

I've mentioned previously how the arrival of benevolent extraterrestrials could prove to be a silver bullet for the world economy. Arthur C. Clarke explored this idea in the novel "Childhood's End". The arrival of benevolent extraterrestrials would indeed be quite a deus ex machina for the storyline of humanity on Earth.

On the topic of extraterrestrials arriving to save humanity, to the annoyance of my significant other, I have recently been toying around with the idea of Jesus Christ having been some form of extraterrestrial intervention. Were we to discover that Jesus was placed here by extraterrestrials, I think it would make sense of a lot of things. I think both believers and atheists would find a sense of solace in such a revelation; dare I say it, I think such an arrival would be enough to unite the world's religions. Like at the end of the novel "Lord of the Flies", perhaps the mere sight of a massive extraterrestrial vessel traveling across the firmament would lead the world's combatants to put down their weapons. To say the least, I find it a bit suspect that someone like Jesus has such a pre-eminent place in history in comparison to other figures like Baruch Spinoza, who (though having written perhaps the greatest philosophical text in the history of humanity) has for the most part been left to the history books. Or if we compare Jesus Christ to individuals like Moses or the Prophet Muhammad, who were both religious leaders and military leaders, why does Jesus take such precedence?

I mean, seriously, doesn't anyone else find it a bit strange and suspect that our yearly calendar is based on the life of a simple carpenter's son who lived in a backwoods region of the world 2000 years ago? I mean, even if you do not believe in God and/or do not believe that Jesus was the "son of God", you cannot discuss the history of humanity without mentioning the man from Galilee. (And he only preached for three years! To put it into perspective, that's almost as long as Pres. Obama has been president.) Even H.G. Wells said, "I am a historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history." Wells also said, "Christ is the most unique person of history. No man can write a history of the human race without giving first and foremost place to the penniless teacher of Nazareth."

I am still waiting for a credible theologian or religious cleric to explain to me why if God is omnipresent and exists everywhere Jesus nonetheless made it a point to ascend into the heavens -- and not only on a mystical or spiritual level. I mean, we're talking about a bright "cloud" descending and taking a person back up into the sky. Not only this, but an "angel" outside the "cloud" says that not only is Jesus going up to his home in heaven, but oh yeah, you're going to see him come back down to Earth the same way he went up. Where one can appreciate that ascension stories recur in mythological narratives, what really are the odds that such a story as Jesus' would survive intact after 2000 years? And think about it for a second -- if God is a spirit that exists everywhere in the universe, why was it necessary that Jesus ascended into the heavens where his "father" lived? Why was Jesus saying that he was the son of a father in heaven and that his kingdom was not of this world? Could it be that extraterrestrials had planted such a being in order to allow humanity to "grow up" and mature? What's really bizarre is that this prospect appears to sufficiently be in line with everything else in the Bible from Adam to Enoch to Abraham to Moses to Elijah to Ezekiel, et. al. There is this recurrent theme of physical beings coming down from the heavens in the name of God to influence the course of human civilization. Even with the angel Gabriel telling Mary about a virgin birth, it all begins to fit like some sort of cosmic jigsaw puzzle thereby raising the question, "What really is the moral of this story?"

It is enough to make one wonder if Jesus was merely the bearer of a philosophical and religious model of thinking that is akin to Spinoza's God, i.e. these extraterrestrials that our ancestors perceived as "sons of God" were really trying to teach us a conception of God akin to Spinoza's Deus. Perhaps the "gods" of our ancestors were merely emissaries attempting to relay their own conception of God to us. At the very least, given the time period, Jesus appeared to be centuries upon centuries ahead of his time; Jesus' message, to say the least, was and remains quite "alien" to the world.

Suffice to say, the story of Jesus and its ongoing implications are almost exactly what you would expect were a race of higher-evolved extraterrestrial beings to meddle with the affairs of humanity. That's sort of the humor behind the phenomenon. Take for instance the cargo cults in isolated island societies. The religious rituals of cargo cults are analogous to the religious rituals our society has. Heck, if extraterrestrials descended tomorrow for all the world to see and only stuck around for three days, I would venture to bet that we would be talking about it every day thereafter for the next 2000 years. People would be so excited; I wonder if that alone would be enough to cure the global malaise.

I should stop before I go too far as I can feel Occam's razor bearing down upon me. I do not want to go down too many rabbit trails on this topic (because we could go on for volumes), but I do want to say that with the prospect of global catastrophe on the horizon on sociological, geopolitical, and economic levels, it is difficult to see whether we could be in for a deus ex machina in our storyline. I think of the three options above of a new invention to revolutionize humanity, Malthusian catastrophe, and divine extraterrestrials, the third option is probably the most desirable and most favorable for us. Despite our grim outlook on the course of the world today, perhaps there is yet reason to have hope. Perhaps at that moment when it appears that all has been lost for the planet Earth, a deus ex machina will manifest itself. As Heidegger suggested, maybe only a god can save us now.

"There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among the nations perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken." (Luke 21:25-26)

• Those who believe a new invention may come that will change the world can go long on Orbital Sciences Corp. ORB, Lockheed Martin Corporation LMT, The Boeing Company BA, and Tesla Motors Inc TSLA.

• Those who believe that humanity may have to face a pandemic in the near future may want to take a look at Pfizer Inc. PFE and GlaxoSmithKline plc ADR GSK.

• Those who think things will turn around for the market psychologically can go long on SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF DIA and iShares Dow Jones US Index Fund IYY.

• Short everything in sight.