Billions of Years in the Making

Having been rather depressed and stressed out lately, it is odd that I would actually be rather pleased to have woken up around four this morning and only dozed hear and there after. But I was stuck on a line of thought that rarely fails to excite and invigorate me - possibly why I managed little sleep. It is a thought that is so much more exciting to me than any of the religious and spiritual ideologies I explored over the years. It started small, in context to the relative scale of the whole - starting just before the dawn of modern man and moving backwards. Started in the context of what I am studying now and moving back to the beginning - or at least "a" beginning and then sling-shooting from there into the distant future.

Just considering the context of our human race, we are many, many thousands of years in the making - each and every one of us. We fought, we died - but some few of us lived, at some points the underdog of two legged mammals - our contemporaries often times far better adapted to the environment of a given time. They were too well adapted though and while many of our ancestors died in those harsh environments, when the environment changed again they were the one's left standing. We were the one's left standing, because through the eons, the genes of those ancestors are a part of who we are - right now - today.

I could move forward, but I think that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with what happened next. Through near extinction, to near extinction we evolved until we hit on a lush environment where we thrived and continued to adapt. Eventually we became very much like we are today. Having developed rudimentary language and culture, our brains became something very similar to the brains we have today - though there was considerable development as language evolved and culture evolved.

At some point I would love to write in considerably more detail about the terrible and wondrous story of human evolution, but for now we are going to go in the other direction - quite a distance through time and space, in the other direction. Because our story doesn't start there, where and when we stood up on two legs and walked. It doesn't start hundreds of millions of years earlier, when single celled organisms started to divide and evolve in that lush (for such organisms) primordial environment. It doesn't even start a few billion years before that, when this celestial body we call home was born of gravity and fire. These are mere historical footnotes in the chain of events that brought us to this time and place, where I am sitting here typing on an amazing device that totally blows those nifty digital watches out of the water.

Right now, I want to take us back further, because we are so very much older than less than a hand-count's billions of years. And it may well be that the molecules that make up our being are even older than the beginning at most of us consider it. But there is no question whatever, that every proton, neutron and electron that forms every atom that forms every molecule that forms every cell that forms us, has traveled billions of light years and billions of years to be here, today, making up every one of us. And because of the basic principle of matter, that matter can neither be created or destroyed, every bit of who we are is going to journey on, for billions of years and more when our neuropathways shut down and our last thoughts fade.

Whether the universe faces infinite expansion, or it will slowly draw in on itself until every bit of each of us, along with all other matter in the universe coalesces into an unbelievably dense bit of matter, reached critical mass and explodes - we will be there, every physical fragment that makes up our bodies, continuing on a grand adventure. Personally, I hope that the universe coalesces and explodes into a new universe. I love to think the fragments of everything and everybody that has existed or will exist in this vast, mindbogglingly huge universe will all be smashed together into a tiny ball of matter so dense that it's gravity is powerful enough to draw in and crush into itself, every bit of matter that exists in this universe.

The scale and scope the true story of human life and every other life in this universe, is enough to make a person weep at the inconceivable beauty of it. These remarkable minds we possess - minds that conceived of digital watches and computers the size of a trade paperback and so much more - they balk at even trying to comprehend the scale of our story - the story of everything around us. When you think about it, we, in this tiny fraction of time, on our tiny planet in a backwater galaxy - interstellar bumpkins really, we are truly remarkable creatures. Our existence - how we came into being, is at truly incredible story.

Not magically poofed into existence, not the result of some superbeing mucking about with our evolution - not even the result of some universal intelligence trying to experience physical substance...We, with our digital watches, computers, painfully slow space craft and sometimes wholly remarkable superstructures are the result of a far more amazing series of events. Following what the best evidence, best understanding we have of the universe around us, a story that defies imagination unfolds - so much greater than any magical explanation could ever be.

We truly are made of star stuff, the residue of an immeasurable (at least at the moment) explosion.* We, and every other sapient creature - every other life form - the placement of every bit of matter everywhere is there by chance. We just happened - through explosions and and a nearly infinite number of other chemical reactions. And here we are - quite likely others are as well, on other planets - in other galaxies and if certain theories of physicists hold out, in other universes as well.

If it is possible to consider this story, the story of us, without tears forming in your eyes, I would like to know how.**

*(bastardized in part, from a quote by Carl Sagan, Cosmos)
**(especially as I am finishing this up in the cafeteria at school)

Plato and the Ladder of Love

My intro philosophy class is entirely graded by in class essays. The following is peripherally related to the discussion about moral relativism, as it delves a little bit into the semantic argument that makes up most of the discussion that will come into part three. I am getting to that post - indeed, most of it is written, but I felt it necessary to interject a bit about the nature of reality and the tools with which we perceive and understand it. This essay, a discussion of Plato's ladder of love and beauty, ties into that - a nice segue into the post that will introduce part three.

Please keep in mind this was a response to the essay question provided about forty minutes before I finished writing it. For those who might be less familiar with me...I do not believe in editing... Not usually, anyways.

Plato's ladder of love describes the ascendance of one's love for beauty, starting with a narrow view of physical beauty, to a view of the beauty of everything physical, to the beauty of minds, the beauty of institutions and laws and on to the beauty of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Plato continues this progression to an absolute abstraction, that of the beauty of beauty itself, but that is where I diverge - which I will get to in a moment. First, let's explore the earlier stages just a little.

While the implication is that we are talking about the beauty of other people, I think this can easily be extrapolated to everything in the world around us and ultimately makes more sense if we do. Thus the first rung, the narrow focused perception of beauty - what Plato refers to as "a beautiful body," can be extended to things that the individual finds overtly and easily aesthetically pleasing. A very simplified notion of beauty that is sharply limited to the obvious. It is an immature perception that is uncomplicated by the perception that there is ultimately a subtle beauty to things that are less overtly attractive. It is the beauty of roses, clear skin and comely features, the ocean on a lightly cloudy, sunny day. It is the beauty of the very basic.

When one begins to perceive the hidden beauty of the world - beauty that is less overt and obvious, one has transcended that first rung and moved to the second. This is where they perceive the beauty that is hidden in decay, faces etched with the lines and wear of time, falling down barns or the infrastructure of electrical and plumbing in a home. It is the beauty of molds and chipped paint. It is what is not as obviously aesthetically pleasing, yet nonetheless is inundated with the beauty inherent to all matter.

Next, there is recognition of the "beauty of souls," as Plato puts it - or the beauty of the abstract. The less than obvious. It is not just the beauty of the mind, but the beauty of how the mind perceives the world and the universe around it. It is nothing less than transcending one's base nature and understanding the world and the universe as something more than that which we can touch and smell and interact with physically. It is ultimately this point, at which one begins to understand beauty as more than just something that the senses express to our minds. It is also here that we become truly empathetic - where we learn to love without conditions and wish to care for and help others, because they are there and need us.

Then we come to perceive the "beauty of institutions and laws," or our culture and traditions. It is here that one becomes aware not just that there are these institutions in which we engage, but that these institutions are something beautiful - a wonderful, enriching aspect of who and what we are. It is where one begins to seek to understand not just the what, of how one lives, but the why. And it is here that one can not only perceive the beauty of these institutions as they are, but as they could be. From there, changes can be fostered - though fostering those changes is only possible when one ascends to the next rung.

The "beauty of knowledge." It is here that one becomes aware of the beauty in knowing and understanding the world. Where rote learning turns into absorbing, extrapolating and applying knowledge to one's life and to the world around them. It is from here that people are able to change their world - both in small part, closer into themselves and in larger part, rippling outward and changing large swathes of their world. It is here too, that one can begin to grasp the abstractions that largely speak to our humanity - our sentience, for what they are - abstractions. And that leads directly up to the next rung..."The beauty of beauty."

As I said, this is where I diverge completely from Plato. Where he would have us believe that this is the penultimate and something that transcends human experience, I would argue that this is both the top and ultimately the actual bottom of the ladder. It is the point at which one begins to understand enough that they can begin anew, with a fresh perspective - driven by an understanding of the abstract. It is here that many people perceive the supernatural - gods and magic. It is here that we try to transcend the world and delve into something beyond human perception - it is here that we lay the seeds for disappointment. Because we use this abstraction that is language and most of us ultimately accept that as a human construct, like all human constructs, it is flawed, we too often make the mistake of assuming that there is something greater than our flawed human existence.

This is not to say it is certain there is not, merely that there is absolutely no reason to assume there is. When all of our tools are flawed, how can we couch the world in absolutes? When nothing is perfect - nothing is absolute, why assume that anything is? Why assume that simply because we cannot perceive it, it must therefore exist at all? It might. There may be gods and magic of wondrous beauty and grace. But it is equally probable that indeed there is not.

Bottom line, why assume that beauty itself, the fundamental of Plato's realm of the forms, is anything more than an abstraction? It does not exist within the realm of the physical. We cannot "see" geometry in the natural world - perfect geometric forms cannot even exist in our minds. I can take a piece of paper and draw a rough sketch of a piece of plywood I need to cut to fit a space that needs decking. It is not the right size, nor is it proportional. It is just the outline of what I am going to cut, with measurements written on the sides. I can then take those measurements and translate them to the plywood, cut the plywood and it will fit the space. At no point were true measurements taken, nor were even the imperfect measurements translated - nowhere - not even in my mind, did the actual, perfect shape and measurements ever exist. The drawing I used to guide me wasn't even close to what it actually represented. Yet what I cut out of the plywood works.

Could it not be that language and even Plato's realm of the forms, which I perceive to be language itself, not be just another imperfect tool - flawed, but correct enough that it works?