Imagine There’s No Heaven
IMAGINE THERE’S NO HEAVEN
“The stars are not for Man.”
In Dante’s Inferno, there is a place wherein the virtuous pagans dwell. It is here that Virgil spends eternity. Here there are none of the gruesome punishments to be found in the lower circles of hell. But it is a dreary afterlife.
This place exists because the virtuous pagans do not deserve the punishments that are inflicted upon the vicious, yet they lived before Christ redeemed mankind, so they cannot enter heaven. It may seem unjust that they are condemned to hell at all. It’s not their fault they were born before Christ. But the fact remains: They were not redeemed and the unredeemed cannot enter heaven.
Is this not the fate of Man in Childhood’s End? To be banished from heaven due to bad timing?
The alien Overloads are an evolutionary dead end. Man is not. Nevertheless, the race of Man must die utterly. There will be no immortality, no paradise, no nirvana for Homo sapiens. Man’s progeny will gain heaven, but Man will die utterly.
And the Overmind: Is this the universe knowing itself? Is this the universe evolving? Consciousness and cosmos becoming one and the same thing?
Imagine there is a purpose in the universe and the human race is merely a means to that end: Homo sapiens meaning no more in the grand scheme of things than Homo neanderthalensis. All of our culture amounting to nothing. Science and art, the monuments of history, noble sacrifices – all so that the human race could be the genetic vehicle of a new and superior race.
The difference between the Overmind and God is that God is not indifferent to the fate of individuals. In contrast, the Overmind is loveless. Not loveless as hateful. But loveless as the absence of love or hate. Beyond love and hate. Thus ‘beyond good and evil.’ This is the God of “The Star.” And it is unbearable. It is crushing. The ‘benign indifference of the universe’ is not benevolent. It is neither benevolent nor malevolent. It is ‘beyond’ all that. It is indifferent and that is unbearable. The indifference of God is worse than the nonexistence of God.
Who could find solace in this fate? The Overlords could. But the Overlords are not human. It is no coincidence that their culture has no art. This is a fundamental trait of their species, a fundamental trait of an evolutionary dead end. But art, that product of the human imagination, is integral to the human condition. So is the suicidal despair of individuals suddenly bereft of meaning.
The genius of Clarke’s book culminates in the story of the Last Man. It is not redemption, but it is closure. After being condemned to oblivion, to at best a memory in the Overmind, it is at least satisfying to see the noble death of the Last Man, for in the end, that is all there is and all there can ever be – the noble death, the acceptance that consciousness is just some sort of “stage” in evolution: from nonconscious ape to conscious man to supraconscious whatever, consciousness being like a prehensile tail that drops away in time, obsolete.
The last Australopithecus did not know it was the last. It died never having known itself. It is the death of consciousness that is an existential horror. With the death of religion came the knowledge that individual death was oblivion. Immortality for the atheist is one’s legacy – the discoveries, the inventions, the art, the contributions one makes to future generations. But oblivion for the species! With only the consolation that we have been superseded! It is the second death. The death suffered by Dante’s virtuous pagans.
The Last Man witnesses the end of the Earth – the Earth as a lake of fire.
“... the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).
Childhood’s End is sublime and visionary. Clarke’s writing is beautiful. His story is subtle and masterfully told. But it is a terrible fate. An appalling fate. And after reading the tale of the Last Man, I can name the feeling this book inspires: nostalgia for the human race. It is bittersweet and humbling and deeply meaningful, but no less appalling for that.
“The stars are not for Man.”
Heaven is not for Man either.
Neither paradise nor nirvana.
Just oblivion.
Heaven is peace.
But oblivion is not peace.
Mere extinction is not peace.