Wondering
About Our Place
To be, or not to be, — that is the
question: —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; —
To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death, —
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; —
To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death, —
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 3, scene 1, 19–28,
circa.1600
Bolero
by Ravel. An der schönen blauen Donau by Strauss. Rhapsody
in Blue by Gershwin. Yesterday I listened to these three pieces
of music, among the most beautiful and thrilling that I know of.
Each has its own peculiar emotional impact, quite different from each
other and yet all calling to me in ways that I am quite sure I could
never put words to. I would give anything to know exactly what they
have done to my brain and nervous system, which neurons they fire in
which sequence, which neurotransmitters – serotonin? dopamine? –
they released or absorbed in exactly the right structures and cells
of my limbic system and cerebral cortex. There any many other
wondrous pieces, from Beethoven to Mozart, to Benny Goodman, the
Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and more which provoke the same questions.
There
is more. Today I spent several hours driving along River Road in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The road curvingly parallels the
Delaware river in many places, in others the old Delaware Canal. It
is carved out of the ancient rock which lines the river, and after
several days of rainfall there are numerous small and medium rivulets
and waterfalls cascading from the rocks, onto the road surface, and
then across it to join the river and its way to the sea. Even
without these added splendors, there are the carved, ancient rocks
themselves, the trees and other wild flora of May, and the occasional
animal, although I did not see any deer, or wild turkey, or any of
the other wild animals that inhabit the woodlands on this particular
day.
I
know – I know as a scientist and as a rational human being – that
what I have experienced these last two days would not be possible
without millions of years of Darwinian evolution sculpting senses and
a nervous system and brain to allow me to experience them. If I were
but a rock, I would know none of them. Even if I were a cockroach,
perhaps even a fairly evolved organism such a mouse … but because I
am human – a sentient being – I experience all of it; all of what
gives my life so much of its meaning.
And
yet I am missing something.
It
is a conundrum that has been known for centuries. One that
philosophers have spun and spiraled in their minds to resolve, one
that scientists in the relevant fields have grappled with to this
day. Some think they have solved it. Yet I beg to differ. Some
very straightforward thought experiments show how perplexing it is,
how much it defies simple solutions. Theists and other religious
pundits think that they solved it long ago, but I believe they are
just as deluded. It is the problem of the soul.
What’s
this? A scientist speaking of the soul?
Soul
is perhaps a bad term. It conjures up the supernatural and the
religious, and that, above all, is precisely what we are trying to
avoid here too, as in all the previous chapters of this book. Better
words are sentience and consciousness. Sentience is somewhat the
better of these two because consciousness can refer to the mind and
its workings, and what we want to grab hold of is that, however our
bodies and minds work, there is an indisputable “we” inside,
somewhere, that experiences those workings. This we has a more or
less continuous existence, minus deep sleep and any periods of
anesthesia or coma we might have had, going back to as far as …
well, as far as we have memories of being.
We
must concede an undeniable connection to mind and body, for, as I
have been emphasizing, without these things there is nothing to
experience, and sentience, the experiencer, must have something to
experience if it is to exist. At the same time, however, as strong
as this connection is, its strength does not reach to identity. Or
at least I believe I have good reason for thinking it does not.
Naturally, this only deepens the mystery; how can mind / body and
sentience be at the same time the same thing and yet two separate
things? The answer is that it cannot, yet we struggle mightily to
resolve this seeming contradiction.
Don’t
think there really are contradictory aspects to it? A few thought
experiments should illustrate them nicely. Here’s one: imagine we
have a machine, a lá science fiction, into which you step into one
booth and out pops in a different booth, by some magical technology
we shall in all probability never have, an atom-by-atom exact
duplicate of yourself. This, of course, is the basic idea behind
matter / energy beaming devices in Star Trek, and though I
heartily doubt it will ever be accomplished, it seems at least
possible in theory.
Well,
what would you expect? Would you still be you? I expect all of you
would agree that you would be. But how about this other “person”
(I put this in quotes for a specific reason), stepping forth from the
other booth? Would you be him / her as well? The answer to this
question would seem to have to be an unqualified no, if only
for the reason that there are no neural or any other connections
between the two brains, which we are quite certain is absolutely
necessary for you to experience being two bodies / brains at the same
time. On the other hand, if you aren’t both you, then clearly you
are the original you and the duplicate, although it would have all
your memories, thoughts, and feelings, and be utterly convinced it
was the real you, is just as clearly someone else. All this
assumes, of course, that they are anyone at all and not a
non-sentient simulacrum of you – which can only be true if making
at atom-by-atom-duplicate of you is still missing something,
something that we have no conception of as of yet. Either way, it
isn’t the real you, however identical from a known science point of
view it is.
Let
me illustrate the problem a different way. I often read by those
working in the fields of neurology, psychology, philosophy, and all
the ways these fields can be conjoined (neuropsychology, cognitive
science, etc.), that sentience is a consequence of brain action, an
emergent phenomenon or epiphenomenon, one deriving from brain
structure from the macroscopic to the microscopic, from the whole
down to neurons and axons and dendrites and neurotransmitters and
synapses and, well, and the laws of physics and chemistry as we know
them. But there is something wrong with this picture, something, I
think, that is actually quite obvious. It is that the Me (hereafter
capitalized) that experiences being me does so now in a brain that is
different from the brain it experienced being me yesterday, and even
more different from the brain it experienced being me a year ago, and
ten years ago, twenty, forty, fifty years … all the way back as far
as I can remember being sentient.
All
I know is this: Richard Dawkins’ statement in his preface to his
most inspirational book The Blind Watchmaker, that “Our
existence once presented the greatest of mysteries, but it is a
mystery no longer because it has been solved,” is both true and
false. It is true in the sense that Darwinian evolution, combined
with the laws of physics and chemistry in this universe, neatly
explains why at this moment some six point seven billion of us humans
are running around on the surface of this planet, trying to survive
and more, toward what consequences we are both uncertain and afraid
of. But it is false in the sense of explaining why we billions
experience ourselves doing so – assuming all of us do. Yes, yes,
our highly complex and massive brains are part of the solution to
this part of the mystery, but – well, is it enough?
* * *
This
book being largely composed of scientific ideas and arguments, I wish
like anything that I could present some for this most defiant of all
mysteries. Alas, I find that after half a century’s worth of
reading, exploring, thinking, and probing I cannot. Which leaves me
in the position of wishing it would go away, so that it might not
torment me, but it refuses to do that either. It is not, mind you,
that I am afraid of dying and there being nothing left of either me
or Me at all, perplexing and somewhat despairing I find that prospect
to be; no, it is a true intellectual riddle, one that has defied all
attempts not merely to solve it but even to adequately frame it. At
least the reason for this can be stated in a straightforward way.
The scientific method is an objective approach to reality, combining
observation with hypothesis formation and testing, using both
reductionism and holism when appropriate, in the never ending quest
to determine just what is out there, all around us, to the ends of
the universe. And it is a noble and even, dare I use the word, holy
endeavor. But how and in what ways can this method be applied to the
subjective reality of experience? How can it explain Me, or You, or
any of Us? The answer I keep coming up with is that it cannot,
cannot explain Me, You, or any of Us, solely because these are not
objective phenomenon “out there” for us to explore and dissect.
We can and should dissect and explore brains, and how they work, yes.
But in the end, no matter how much we discover doing so I fear we
will still not have solved the problem.
The
conundrum is very real, and very serious, because we know of no
method but science that can reliably reveal truths about reality to
us. Mysticism and religion have no chance, in fact don’t even
pretend to have a chance however many pseudo-arguments their
proponents hurl at us. Yet science and reason can’t will or
doubletalk the issue away, either, however.
* * *
Still,
I have invited you to read a chapter about this subject, and merely
repeating how dumbfounded I am about it is going to wear thin very
quickly. So I must make some attempt(s), some approach(es), that
have a plausible chance of leading us somewhere toward understanding.
And
yet, I must proceed carefully. For example, certain writers, notably
Roger Penrose (The Emperor’s New Mind) have suggested that
sentience emerges from some of the properties of quantum mechanics.
He has apparently even identified structures in the brain, known as
neural microtubules, which he claims account for consciousness /
sentience in a quantum mechanical brain; part of his argument, as I
understand it, is that the human mind is able to solve problems in a
non-algorithmic way. While I do not claim to fully understand his
arguments, other writers, notably Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker,
have challenged Penrose, saying that in fact all the things the human
mind can do can be reduced to algorithms, albeit highly complex ones,
without any consideration of the physical hardware (brains,
computers, etc.) that these algorithms are executed in.
Personally,
I find both approaches inadequate. We really don’t have any good
reason to think that a sufficiently complex computer, one that can
fully emulate all the properties of a human brain, will actually be
sentient. On the other hand, the mysteriousness of much of quantum
mechanics shouldn’t seduce us into thinking it has anything to do
with the mysteriousness of our own awareness. That is an argument
that sounds powerful on first hearing, but is really quite feeble.
Lots of things in this universe are still mysteries, at least to some
extent, but that is no reason to assume that they are interrelated
simply because they are mysterious.
Of
course, this doesn’t prove that quantum processes don’t have
anything to do with sentience either, so I don’t want to grind my
heel into any such speculations. It’s just that there are so many
other mysteries as well. For example, why do so many of the natural
constants of nature happen to have the value they have – the
“fine-tuning” problem that vexes so many scientists? Why are
there four fundamental forces, and why do they have the relationships
they have? Why is the speed of light in a vacuum what it is? Why
does Planck’s constant have the value it has? And so on. Some
people, even scientists, note that all these, and other, constants,
have values that are absolutely necessary for intelligent beings like
us to exist, so perhaps there is some kind of higher intelligence or
will that has ordained them so. Other scientists shake their heads
at this kind of semi-mysticism and insist that, as we understand the
cosmos and the laws of physics better, we will see how they had no
choice to be what they are. Or perhaps there are many, many
universes – perhaps an infinite of universes – so some simply had
to turn out to have the right conditions; and of course we must be
living inside one of those universes, or we would not be here to ask
the questions and debate the answers.
* * *
My
own personal feeling – and personal feeling is exactly what it is –
suggests something else to me. A hundred years ago, at the beginning
of the twentieth century, there were certain phenomena that
stubbornly defied explanation by the then known existing laws of
nature. The structure of the atom, as I have already mentioned, is
probably the most famous. The conflict between Maxwell’s laws of
electrodynamics and Newton’s laws of motion were another. As was
the spectrum of blackbody radiation. The heat capacity of
multiatomic gasses, and the photoelectric effect were a third and a
fourth.
The
solutions to these vexing problems involved, not merely new theories
based on the existing laws of physics, but new paradigms, new ways of
thinking, which opened up a new universe of laws and theories and
hypotheses. These new paradigms were so challenging that many
scientists have had a hard time accepting them even to this day,
while those who do still sometimes puzzle and scratch their heads at
what they really mean. Quantum mechanics. Special and General
Relativity. Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and Quantum Chromodynamics
(QCD). The expanding universe and the notion of a beginning to
everything, the Big Bang (though this is being challenged today in
some quarters), and perhaps an end to all things, including time.
The idea that space and time, matter and energy, are related in ways
that you cannot treat them as separate phenomena. The use of
mathematical group theory to explain the plethora of mass-bearing and
force-bearing particles in nature, and the relationships between
those particles. The idea of inflation in the very early universe,
and how it might have led to many universes forming. And now of
strings and supersymmetry.
Standing
here, at the opening of the twenty-first century, I can envision a
similar revolution in paradigms arising to answer the questions I
address in this chapter. But as I said in chapter seven, looking at
it now, it is science fiction. Perhaps even fantasy. For example,
here’s one possibility: perhaps we will create a “super”
brain, one composed of electronics and neuronics, that we can all
interface with or even become part of. This brain might eventually
spread throughout the solar system and then beyond, perhaps to
ultimately fill the entire universe. Perhaps this is when humanity
learns its meaning and destiny, and all questions are answered. Even
those billions who have lived and died may be reincarnated into this
star-spanning mind, and not just humans but every other sentient race
that has lived and died, here and elsewhere in the universe.
Following
this line of prognostication, maybe sentience is something like
another property of the universe, one which requires certain
conditions, such as those that occur in our brains, to manifest
itself. But if it is that, a property, then what kind of property is
it? It isn’t a force, or a kind of particle. Something interwoven
into the fabric of spacetime itself? But how? And in what way?
* * *
Sometimes
I wonder if the Buddhist concept of Maya and Enlightenment can help
us here. Maya is the illusion we all experience, that of being
separate beings, apart from each other and the rest of the universe,
struggling to find our way through life, and ultimately dying in this
illusion. The experience of Enlightenment is supposed to be one in
which all Maya drops away and you are fully aware of being one with
everyone and everything – an experience regarded as impossible to
capture in words or any other physical medium. Yes, I wonder if
Buddhism is on to something here. It would have to defy explanation
by language or any other form of normal communication. One would
have to either experience it, or have no idea what it is. That does
sound like it has a sporting chance of being right, or at least it
does to me.
But
if so, then this does imply that there are laws and properties of
reality that we do not, and perhaps can never, understand
intellectually, because they are not susceptible to scientific
analysis? That they work beneath, or above, the radar of our
intellects, however hard we try?
If
all this is true, however, then what should we do? What can we do?
What
we must do, I maintain yet again, is not give in to despair simply
because we don’t know the solution to the puzzle, and may never
know the solution to it. Also, remember that many mysteries have
resisted solution for centuries, only to finally be solved by an
application of new paradigms and ways of looking at things. Above
all, we must not give up, even if things appear hopeless. A hundred
years from now, we may find ourselves shaking our collective heads at
our current confusion. I am tempted, however, to call this question
– the question of sentience – the ultimate question, to which all
others are sublimated. I really do believe that if and when we solve
it, there will be a collective sigh of satisfaction greater than the
solution to any question that has proceeded it.
* * *
Somehow
or other, whether by luck or design or an intermingling of the two,
we find ourselves where and when we are. We inhabit a planet
orbiting a yellow dwarf star at the edge of a rather typical spiral
galaxy. The star is but one among billions in the galaxy it has
found itself in, and the galaxy may be one of trillions in a universe
many billions of years old and perhaps far, far older. In all that,
our individual lives occupy only a few decades of time, a century if
we are fortunate. There seems to be nothing particularly special
about this where and when we exist, except that is one of the few
places we could be in the universe, perhaps the only even, and
perhaps one of the few universes we could be in. Maybe the only one.
Moreover, we do not know what will happen, not merely to ourselves
as individuals, but to us as a species over the next few centuries.
We
have spent thousands of years beating our heads against an invincible
wall, wondering what the answer to all this is, and for all our
pounding still pretty much have no idea. Of course, the answer may
well be that “this is all there is”, that once our bodies cease
to function that is the end of both us and Us, and no beliefs,
religions, philosophies, or wishful thinking can change that. Sad
though that is in one respect, even if it is true I believe we should
be grateful, grateful for the opportunity to have existed at all and
had the opportunity to marvel at this universe we have manifested in.
It is even really not so sad either, when you think about it; after
all, in the billions or trillions or infinity of years before we
existed we suffered not one iota for not being, so certainly after we
are gone we will not suffer at all then either. It is only sad, to
me at least, in that We will cease to exist with so many wonderful
questions unanswered. That, I have to admit, is a bitter pill to
force down.
But
let us assume that this is not the case. Let us imagine that
sentience, while inactive without a brain to model the universe about
it, nonetheless still exists in some potential form. I use the word
potential with a very specific meaning. We speak of potential
energy, as when an object is raised to a certain height, or an
elastic material stretched, or as a chemical potential that can lead
to an energetic reaction. The energy does not exist in any active
form, yet it is still there, waiting to be manifested. Quite
possibly, sentience without a brain with which to experience some
kind of reality, can be held in an analogous potential form. What
would that mean? One possibility is the repeated incarnations of the
“soul” as claimed by many Eastern religions, although I am not
certain I can believe in that.
I
have difficulties with this, because in Eastern religions, the soul
can reincarnate as almost anything: another person, an animal, a
plant, or even a rock. Yet rocks and plants, and probably even most
animals, do not possess the capacity for sentience, as they lack a
sufficiently complex brain and nervous system. There are other
practical problems as well. Even if we reincarnate as human beings,
since the number of human beings on this planet has been
exponentially increasing over thousands of years, where are all the
new souls to come from to inhabit all these new bodies? There is a
disparity here that is hard to reconcile.
There
is another tack I would like to try. I am an aficionado of the
television series House, which, if you aren’t (fie on you!),
is about the brilliant but renegade and rather misanthropic Dr.
Gregory House and the characters and cases which spin around him in a
mythical teaching hospital between Princeton and Plainsboro, NJ. One
of the episodes involves Dr. House temporarily reviving a patient who
has been in a coma for ten years, for the purpose of extracting
family background in order to save the coma patient’s son’s life
(it ends with the coma patient committing suicide in order to donate
his heart to his dying son – now you know why I say fie on you if
you don’t watch it). Before I begin, I have to say I find the
premises of this episode highly dubious at the least: someone who
has been in a coma for ten years will have undergone so much muscle
atrophy and coordination loss that I doubt he could walk, let alone
drive a car to Atlantic City and basically act like someone who has
just woken from a short nap. But that is beside the point I want to
make.
No,
my question is: is the sentience that results from the coma
awakening, and spends his last day in a quest for the perfect hoagie
then ends by sacrificing his life for his son’s, the same sentience
that ended ten years earlier? An even better question might be, does
this question even make any sense? The re-awakened father would of
course insist that he his in every way conceivable the same person,
but how much does that utterly sincere insistence count for? And
what possible tests and / or measurements could we make to settle the
issue?
I
have to confess to something. This is not a mere academic issue to
me. I was once in a coma, from which I fortunately awoke
after several days. But does that make any difference? Like that
father in House, I absolutely insist that I am the same Me
that fell into that coma, but how can I, or anyone, really know? And
again I ask, does the question even make sense?
Maybe
it is an absurd question. Or, not so much absurd as worded
incorrectly. Perhaps what seems to happen to Us in those moments, or
days, or years, when we still exist but We do not is that time ceases
to exist for Us. Just like, according to Einstein’s Special and
General Theories of Relativity, time ceases to exist under certain
conditions – if we were to ride on a beam of light or (if I
understand what I have read correctly) fall into an infinitely deep
gravity well – time comes to a complete stop for Us whenever the
conditions needed to manifest Us ceases to exist. The question then
is, do those conditions exist only within our own brains, for if so,
then our current lives are the only ones We can ever manifest in?
* * *
I
suspect that I have frustrated and dissatisfied you, dear reader, for
I keep promising answers to this deepest of questions, but invariably
find myself only circling about and finding myself at my own
beginnings, my own head-shaking ignorance and failure of my own
imagination and curiosity to solve this most impenetrable of puzzles
Will
I give up then? No, first of all because I see no way of letting go
of my curiosity and wonder and imagination, without letting go of
what it means to be a living, sentient mind in a universe we still
have so much to explore within. If there are places and times I have
no concept of how to reach, then I am simply going to accept them for
the time being, and hope that at some point in the future my eyes
will start to open about them. Nor will I relinquish the scientific
approach to thinking about reality, for it has served us so well, and
has provided answers to what appeared to be impenetrable mysteries,
and so I cannot give up hope on it, certainly not at this time and
place in humanity’s evolution. Perhaps, of course, these things
will lead to my death with so many important questions unanswered,
and, yes, as I have admitted, that disturbs me. But, as I said, to
stop now and lay down all of the weapons and tools of the mind and
surrender to ignorance; that is something I cannot even conceive of
doing. I would certainly die of despair if I even so much as tried.
So we have come around and around, and it the end must still admit
that this greatest of mysteries has not yielded to science, at least
not yet. And yet, that is all right. Mysteries are the lifeblood of
science, and indeed of all our wonderings and imaginative escapades.
Maybe, like the character in the Monty Python sketch I mentioned
early in this book, we even need them, need these challenges to our
curiosity, as though they are part of what gives our lives meaning.
I know that they have given my life at least a healthy part of its
meaning.
* * *
"There is a theory which states
that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and
why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by
something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory
which states that this has already happened."
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
"Now my own suspicion is that
the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we
can
suppose."
JBS Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286
As
I said at the beginning, a large part of this book is about what it
means to be human, with curiosity, wonder, and imagination being
fundamental parts of the answer. I also stressed the special
importance of imagination, supplemented by technology, along with the
warning that if we really wish to understand the universe we live in,
we must not limit ourselves to our sensory experiences and our
intuitions about them. We saw how important that became once we
started deviating from the norms of our existence, whether in space
or time. When we are dwelling in the world of the ultra-small or
large, slow or fast, the laws of physics deviate from common sense in
ways we would never have predicted. Phenomena such as the
uncertainty principle and the depths of geologic time, time dilation
and the bending of spacetime become increasingly important as we move
further and further away from the norms of our everyday existence.
We found that if we allowed those deviations to take us logically
wherever they went then, however strange our discoveries, they could
be integrated into the whole of understanding.
We
also came to understand that the paths we took were our personal
ones, each unique to us even if, ultimately, we all found ourselves
in the same place in the end, that end being still finding ourselves
facing the same ages old mysteries of our own existence. This is one
of the crucial paradoxes of the human condition, I believe; that we
all experience our lives as infinitely separated individuals, while
underneath we are all tied together by the same laws, the same
processes, the same foundations. It is as though each of us
perceives ourselves as alone in a tiny boat on the open ocean, winds
whipping and waves constantly washing water into the boat, forcing us
to bale with all our strength and persistence just to stay afloat,
while in fact, ironically, we are all collectively in one huge boat,
with each of us making our tiny contribution to keeping the boat
afloat and headed for – what land we are uncertain, but whatever it
is we shall all arrive there together, in the end.
In
the end, maybe this is our place in the scheme(s) of things. I am
not the first person to speculate that we may be nothing more than
reality’s attempt to comprehend itself. If so however, then we are
faced with another mystery, that of how reality can have intentions
or goals at all instead of being nothing more than the blind working
out of physical laws. A mystery which only becomes deeper if we
assume that intelligence, in some form, is itself part of that
reality.
I
stated at the outset of this book that I do not intend to give in to
nihilism or despair, and I will take the time to reaffirm this
promise again. Somehow we reasoning, questioning, imagining animals
have found ourselves in this universe, and that alone should provoke
our minds to keep trying to discover how and why. Indeed it is my
view that we are probably still closer to the beginning of our quest
than the end. I will also take the time to state my personal
gratitude that we are in the middle of it.
We
are born as, and grow up into, creatures of curiosity, wonderment,
imagination, and rational thought. I do not care what nation or
culture you were raised into, what you were taught, or what
experiences you have had. Merely by being human, you still have all
these traits within you, each one waiting to boil up to the surface
at any time. I know that I have been astonishingly fortunate in this
respect, in one sense more than most in this world, but at the same
time I can’t believe that I have been any more gifted in these
things than anyone else. I have just had the good fortune to have
these things nurtured and encouraged.
I
remember being a child with all these things within me, and nothing
gives me more pleasure than today, at fifty-three years of age, to
discover that same child just as strong. Though I have spent a
half-century’s worth of growing, experiencing, maturing; though I
have married, raised children, and known “The
heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”
including pain I thought I would never recover from or
survive; though I have stared into space and wondered what the point
of those pains were … that part of me has never been diminished or
defeated in any way.
And
so there is nothing more for me to do except present myself as an
inspiration, and as a hope. If you have any doubts, then go
somewhere where the lights and pollution of the city cannot find you.
Wait until the sun goes down, and then lie on the grass, staring
skywards at the stars. Stare, and remember that for each one you
see, there are trillions beyond your sight, beyond the sight of the
most powerful telescopes for that matter. Gaze at the fierce beacons
pouring their fires down upon you, and wonder. Though this universe
we live in is far vaster than our imaginations can even begin to
encompass, I believe you will know what I mean. Though we are but
the most mortal of beings, barely eking a century’s worth of
experience of the billions of years those beacons have shown, each of
us has still our own meaning, our own purpose, whether we know it or
not. I believe this will dispel all those doubts.
