Going along with Spinoza’s take on the Adam (and Eve) story, it seems that the point of the story may be that humans can either do things as a child (out of fear of evil, or desire for reward) or as an adult (out of love of “God,” or reality, or what is) and that Adam, being the first human, and thus like an infant, ignorant of many things, including the magnitude, significance, and implications of the choice before him, like a child, saw what he wanted and took it, to his peril, of course, but he did not know that. And so, the story illustrates to us the path of human nature, or development, from child to adult.
The point being that humans must go through the phase of childhood to get to the phase of adulthood—it is a process, a journey, a path, that one cannot escape, but must go through.
We must go through the phase, but the adult phase is the phase of human happiness.
In this way, even the Judeo-Christian creation story can be seen as an allegory for my child/adult idea. We, as the descendents of Adam, are doomed to the fate of desiring like children. But, we can outgrow that childhood. It’s just that people don’t know this, and things like Christianity make it worse because they just look at everyone as doomed without seeing that this childish, selfish desire stage is just that—a stage, not the be-all-end-all of human existence.
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From my personal notes, 6/14/00
