Like Heisenberg, and like Einstein, Anders seemed to think that the problem of evil was the bomb. And like Heidegger he also insisted that the evolution of that same problem had to do with what, unlike Heidegger, he had seen from the start as the problem of humanity itself as standing reserve in Heidegger’s terms, a resource that however would need, desperately need, improving. This Anders called the shame of being born. This is the shame of a navel. For the mark of creation, as a creation at the hand of god, which is the perfected dream of modernity, is that we as human beings do not merely manage to be the ones who, as Nietzsche’s madman tells us, have “killed” God. Much more than merely murdering God we want to take his place. But that’s the kicker. The problem for us is that we are born and not made. Above all, we are born, this is the Heideggerian point, as we are born, thrown as we are thrown and we are not designed in accord, this is the anti-Cartesian impetus, with our preferences as we might have specified them (had anyone asked). Anders’ most dissonant insight is that the whole of our problem with modernity begins and ends with our awful shame at having been born.

¶ 7:29 AM