one march post, or, it's raining again.

At points in my life I've felt like I've said everything I ever needed to say.  Nothing is worse for a writer than forcing out ideas or phrases that seem to be contrived or regurgitations of things one has heard or, abysmally, said.

  

This is a block.

I'm going to, at least directly, leave society alone on this one.

Instead, I will discuss our potential (possible) status as divine creatures.

I have been reminded in recent days that science is the devil.  As much as I find this idea ridiculous, and thus appealing, I have a hard time offering it any sort of treatment.  I'll do it anyway.

Way before there were scientists, there were mathematicians, attempting to put a universal abstract logical language to the workings of the physical world.  This toil was largely without a rigorous method of practical testing and derived more credibility from the intuitive and internal sense it made rather than what it could accomplish.  It was lifting theoretical loads, not actual ones. (this reminds me of the South Park episode where the boys create a homoerotic video featuring Butters and earn 10 million theoretical dollars for the people of Canada.)

Of course, this is not strictly true.  Geometry has been essential to construction for centuries and thus achieved practical relevance.  Clearly (?) the Egyptians used mathematics to do what they did in terms of building monuments of living death for their human gods.  I point to the late 18th and early 19th century in Western Europe as a time where math led to discoveries about the elements that make up our environment and to mechanical achievements that set off an industrial revolution which is finally catching up with us in terms of consequences.

If I don't try to get back on topic now, I never will.

Our understanding of the universe is pitiful.  We can explain and name the details of the things that are currently happening but we can't answer any fundamental questions.  In terms of knowing the history of an action, we can only scrape the most recent surface.  Origins elude us.  Deductive reasoning is an achievement that we give great respect to because so rarely do we accomplish it in a grand or meaningful way.  

I can think of one time, one individual who did it well, and his piece of reasoning provides the most powerful challenge to our conceit that we are divine and special and above all else earthly and natural.

Charles Darwin provided a completely reasonable explanation for how human beings could have come about, starting from a simple life form, after a whole lot of time.  This is why many have cursed his name and many others have praised it.  He spent his last years with his family breeding pigeons and isolating himself from the scientific community.  It must have taken some kind of guts to release his theory knowing what it would do to all who read it.

Are our genes really the most significant part of us, or even, more significant than us as whole organisms or a society of organisms?  Are they the entirety of what drives us to do the things that we do?  

The question that has been posed strongly in the past is: does the end justify the means?  I think a better way to phrase that question is, are the means required to achieve an end more significant than the end?  It has been postulated that the journey is more significant than either its origin or its final destination.  This is appealing to me and might pose an answer to my new question.

Last night, I saw a concert at an art installation exploring the war in Iraq.  It was, I would say, a rock band consisting of a drummer, a cello player, and a guitar player/vocalist who was a young Iraqi woman.  She was beautiful, as were her words, which were inspired by Persian poetry of all stripes.  This poetry was rooted in the earth - the most visceral experiences of being alive.  Intoxication:  both on drugs and on love for others.  A celebration of the phenomenon of waking up every day and celebrating the rhythms that are instilled in our perceptions.  The constant rising and setting of the sun.  The beating of the heart.  Finally the transiency of each of us and the possibility that we are not finished when our current consciousness closes.  Love as a binding force that is more mysterious than any other and whose implications will be understood only after we understand all that our five senses detect.

A friend of mine from the past nicknamed me "Mr. Science" because of my constant preoccupation with facts and logic and my skepticism, or even contempt, for things apparently inexplicable or imperceptible at the time.  This contempt and skepticism no longer seems to me appropriate.

Non-human animals can communicate.  But it seems as though their communications are all related to the collection of food, warnings of predators, or mating.  I suppose this is a way of sharing perceptions and consciousness but I think it is different and less complex than our own.  We ask each other questions, not related to these immediate and important concerns, but purely for the purpose of sharing experiences.  I think there is a desire to connect that is entirely divorced from the compulsion to mate or survive.  This is close to godliness.

I can't think anymore.  I have worn myself out.  However, I feel that I have achieved my continual goal of digging deeper into our shared experience and forcing myself to think about things that make me uncomfortable.  

To ensure that I post again soon, in an attempt to justify my claim, I put forward the idea that the most important innovation human beings have ever achieved is the question.