Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Light, Dark, Life, Death, and Curiostiy.

There was a time, a time not so long ago, when I felt it possible to heal the world. I have come along, matured, enough now to know that this was naïve: a vanity I imposed on myself out of ignorance. I have since learned that there are people who cannot be reached through any means known to me, and emotions and thoughts in others that seem to be utterly beyond my comprehension. And, with difficulty, I am learning to accept this.

The dark moods: depression, anger, hate, remorse—these too, serve a purpose. It seems not just that our minds will experience them; it seems rather that our minds MUST experience them. The euphoria of joy can cause us to make naïve decisions. The murk of depression causes us to make conservative decisions, and perhaps not to make decisions at all. Balance exists in all of nature, and this balance likewise exists in the mind. There is much truth in the saying that without pain there can be no knowledge of joy.

As to the darker emotions, fear is one of them. And fear of death is one of the prevelent of all fears. Death has never been so much a fear with me as a thing to be avoided. I frequently joke that I never plan on dying. In my heart, I truly wish that this were possible. What grounds me, more than anything else, is simply the desire to see how "it" all turns out--simple curiosity. Humanity is currently living through what is probably the most pinnacle moments in our history. Life on earth, for the first time since it was born in the muck all of those billions of years ago, has found a way to control its own destiny. It would not matter to me if I were forced to watch the outcome of this era from a golden tower, from a bed or a wheel chair, or through the sealed windows of mental hospital. Curiosity as to humanity's fate drives me. What, ultimately, will we as a species become?

It is not in my nature to be able to take religion as a solace. I am, and fear I ever shall remain, a militant agnostic. Short of hard, incontrovertible evidence, I maintain that what happens to us after death, to our minds, our souls, the spirit of what we are, remains unknown and unknowable. Mykyl believes that the influence we have by our mere existence carries the sum total of what we are forward. I acknowledge how our current existence, the sum of what we are; can carry forward through the future of humanity. While our knowledge of the physics of such things is incomplete, I can acknowledge the possibility of it.

What I remain uncertain of is whether this sum total of influence results in a sense of spiritual consciousness. I may exist in the sense that all that I was imparts itself upon the universe in some way, but will I maintain a consciousness of this existence? Will I be self-aware? I currently see no mechanism within the realm of physics, or the broader rules of reality, that makes this possible. This means little, of course, for I know laughably little of the full rules of reality. I do not dismiss the possibility of this consciousness. But I remain somewhat confident that I am currently conscious. It is this that I rely upon, and it is this upon which I pin my hopes for satiating my curiosity for humanities future fate.

This is my fallback reason for living. Currently, I have many, many others. But in times of the bleakest darkness it is my hope that that this curiosity will keep me from taking my own life.

I wish light and love to all who read this, and may all experience true joy. But fear not if this joy fails us at times, and if at times all hope seems lost. It is simply the way of things. If any small part of you desires life, than find an excuse, any excuse, to live. For me, this excuse would be curiosity. I can say nothing of the outcome of you, the reader's, own life, and of that which you have suffered and still currently suffer. I can, however, guarantee that, if nothing else, the future of humanity promises to be quite interesting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ultimately, I think that the term "self-aware" is an oxymoron. I don't understand how true awareness of the universe could come about if one was walled away from it in a "self".

Mauro said...

There is a book I found around ten years ago : the physics of immortality

I can't say all of it made sense or was totally convincing, nevertheless it was a very fascinating reading ...

Given you questions, maybe it could interesting reading for you as well