The future of humans? - A discussion through Acrylic Paints
Previous episode recap:
Artist Tian Mangzi (田芒子) -- Tian
Maxine and Agnes – MA
Episode 2: Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we?
MA: Can you explain this painting for us?
Tian: I’m depicting the three fundamental philosophical questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going? And what are we?
I was inspired by Paul Gauguin’s painting that reflected upon these three questions. I thought that creating art was rather sad because it could not answer these questions. Our knowledge is limited, and there simply isn’t enough information. Whenever we try to answer these questions, we run into a wall. For example, Qu Yuan’s “Heavenly Questions” (天问) was also an attempt to answer questions like these. As soon as human beings became conscious of themselves, they began asking these questions.
But I feel like simply asking these questions wasn’t enough. If we truly want to answer them, we have to begin with gathering and integrating all knowledge humanity has accumulated about the world. And that’s incredibly difficult - to gather knowledge from every field: cosmology, history, evolutionary biology, physics, chemistry, religion, ethics, and so on. Well, that is essentially what philosophy does. It is like the central nervous system that connects all forms of knowledge.
After accumulating more than 20 years’ worth of information, I realized that everything is interconnected. Once you lay things out along a timeline, you can see how everything emerges. That is shown in my work, starting with the Big Bang at the bottom right corner and spreading outwards to the left of the canvas.
Every thought you have, every moment of consciousness, is creating history.
This side represents the Big Bang, the starting point of life.
And this section shows the process of biological evolution. There’s a lot of information up here. From inorganic matter to organic matter, from elementary particles to atomic nuclei. Everything is connected through a logic and timeline.
MA: According to how I interpret your painting, the top left corner seems to be depicting your idea of “Universe exploration”. So in the end, do you think humans cannot continue surviving on Earth?
Tian: Earth is only the beginning, a starting point. In the future, the universe may become like the early ocean, where single-celled organisms existed everywhere. Humanity may eventually come to regard the universe as one interconnected whole, with life and activity existing everywhere.
MA: So you mean humans could exist everywhere?
Tian: Yes. Once the universe was born, it was no longer controlled. It is like God creating the world and then no longer intervening in it. I’m speculating, of course, based on the current pace of scientific and technological development.
Give humanity another two thousand years. Will humans still be living on Earth? It’s difficult to imagine. Instead, I think humanity will have to explore new habitats – perhaps the Moon, or somewhere else. The reason I have this feeling is that over the past century or two, humanity has been trying one thing consistently: looking up into space and launching rockets into it.
I believe there is a cosmic force pushing everything forward into the next future. There’s no real distinction between contingency and necessity…
Do you believe in the soul? Perhaps the soul exists as a force of consciousness – a kind of energy or power. We could call it a “cosmic creative force,” maybe in the future, where human consciousness becomes the energy that unfolds into all forms of matter.
AI will probably become part of that too.
MA: How?
Tian: Humans can’t go everywhere. So we can send robots and artificial intelligence instead. We could use them to explore the universe and transform the environment. And individual humans will become their managers.
MA: Wouldn’t that risk alienating people from themselves?
Tian: I don’t think so. At that point, human imagination will expand, creativity will increase, and our spiritual energy will become stronger.
You see, we are already far more advanced than primitive humans. If you were suddenly placed in a primitive society, wouldn’t you seem like a god to them?
MA: Ha-ha. But sometimes I don’t think we are necessarily wiser or more creative than, for example, the people of ancient Greece or Rome.
Tian: Well, human intellectual power is a form of shared knowledge. It is accumulative. Not every individual needs to discover a new law of nature; in fact, it can’t be done. Only by combining our collective wisdom can we break through our limitations.
MA: So you mean that as time goes on, humanity as a whole- its development, its energy- will continue to grow? Like a star?
Tian: Yes, like a star. A star generates enormous energy through nuclear processes. Here, the entire human collective is undergoing this kind of “fusion”. The power comes from collective intelligence.
Comments