We’re all gonna die
Just when you’re starting to get your head and courage wrapped around the Economic Winter Of Our Discontent and end of Western civilization as we know it, along comes the news that
An asteroid which may be as big as a ten-storey building has passed close by the Earth, astronomers say. The gap was just 72,000 km (44,750 miles); a fifth of the distance between our planet and the Moon. It is in the same size range as a rock which exploded over Siberia in 1908 with the force of 1,000 atomic bombs.
I took a little time today, just for fun, to imagine what the world response would be if 1000 atomic bombs suddenly went off over New York. Or Beijing. Or Moscow. I’m not sure that there’s really any meaningful contingency plan for what would happen next (besides the almost-certain Cheney/Biden deathmatch over who gets to use the undisclosed location).
Our existence on this planet is absurd. Asteroid near-misses are just another poke in the eye to Benevolent Universe/Creator theories. I told Janece that I guarantee that right about the time a massive asteroid exploded over one of our major cities, you could find some devout (and unlucky) churchgoer feeling grateful for God having helped them find their car keys. And then, blammo! Enter the random big-ass space rock. And that’s just the Churchies. Never mind the New Age folks getting up from their lotus positions, feeling at one with the universe and idly wondering where that big shadow came from all of the sudden.
We meat creatures run around on the surface of this rocky, vegetation-and-water-covered ball creating and feeling, in all sincerity, the most wonderful and intricate and meaningful frameworks for the universe and our place in it – none of which have any bearing on whether a 10-story space rock randomly annihilates Boston. Or the myriad viruses that quietly and patiently mutate, waiting for their chance to tear through millions of human hosts in a destructive pandemic on a mindless quest for their own day in the sun. Or [insert your random natural destruction of choice here].
Life on this ball isn’t kind to our animal existence, which – it can be argued – is our only real experiential takeaway in this life. You can’t really end-run around the meat. It can be ignored, contextualized, rationalized, or embraced – it makes no difference. It’s the elephant in the room when the talk turns to the spiritual. It’s the faulty telegraph through which we claim to receive Divine missives. At the end of the day, it’s the meat, not the Grand Unified Theory of Spiritual Oneness, that closes up shop on the mental exertions in order to get its teeth brushed and be fed bread and eggs.
And consider lobotomies. When the meat and the soul tangle, it’s the soul that seems to come out on the losing end. If that’s the case, then how much soul is left after the meat gets smashed with a space rock?
Apologies for the philosophy 101 stuff. I’m not adept at it, and it’s been a long day. I’m just feeling like anyone that can’t acknowledge, right at the outset, that reality might be as grubby and literal and exposed as it first appears hasn’t looked through a telescope lately.
I guess that really depends how much stock we put into our meat, doesn’t it? Put it this way… if you are truly immortal… if you are truly a soul… if you are truly at base indestructible… how much does certain annihilation of the meat component of you matter? What exactly is the “meat” component of you? You change out every component of your body every seven years. You swap energetic particles with every other part of your environment every moment. So what exactly is this precious meat component you want to protect… or annihilate (depending on your mood)?
You see solidity, which is really only an illusion put together by your limited sensory organs. If you can point to something that can truly be destroyed then perhaps we all should just sleep until death finds us. At least that way we wouldn’t have to think about it so much. However, if you think that energy can neither be created nor destroyed and if you discover that your “mind” is not “contained between the top of head and the soles of boots,” (Whitman) you may see that what you are really afraid of is change itself.
Much of our fear is generated from a need to hold things in a static and, indeed, fragile and nonsensical framework, when the nature of the Universe is change, constant change. Our resistance to what is generates the fear.
Seen from a different perspective, the seeming fragility of it all simply adds to its beauty. I would also wonder exactly how fragile it truly is. How fragile is your mind… your consciousness? Where does your “mind” live and can that be destroyed? As far as the experiential takeaway from life… is there really one?
I don’t know, bro… keep exploring.
Comment by Matt — 3/5/2009 @ 6:14 am
Well, thank you for not including Western states or cities in your depiction; I need that *distance* and blind eye mentality to help get my meat through the day. I think of our fragile meat reality every time I see roadkill… nature and high speed vehicles are indifferent to life forms.
Reminds me of the man about to face the lions in the Roman arena… he prays, earnestly, ‘dear Lord, let this lion be a Christian lion…’ and meanwhile in the lion’s den, the earnest cat is offering grace, ‘heavenly Father, for what we are about to receive, may we be truly grateful.’
Have a nice day Paul!
Comment by Natalie — 3/5/2009 @ 7:35 am
Count me wicked, but I found this hilarious! And I equally loved Natalie’s reaction!
Comment by maria — 3/5/2009 @ 10:44 am
All the more reason to live on all levels of one’s life.
Any other response I offer could be construed as just my theory, my creation with which I attempt to compensate for my fears. This response would also be an attitude that begs the question of its own lack of evidence.
Personally, I went in search of proof for an overlife. Though I only found indications, those indications were stunning and myriad. Furthermore, if many scientists and those who point to science were honest, I personally think they are as definitive as any other scientific evidence.
In the end, we simply have our own experience, nothing else — even what we are convinced, but can’t logically be certain, of as being the truth. I regard my brain as awesome in construction and function, but it is not necessarily the definer nor even the necessary location of my entire being. How did we come to think it is? I like to think of it as the operations center for my body, as adapted for the functions of a certain level.
Equating personal invulnerability of any kind with the existence of God is in my view a logical error. So is the assumption that God must be worshipped. I prefer the word “experienced”, but I don’t expect everyone to acknowledge my experience as the experience of God, which is just another word, just another concept.
Comment by Stephen — 3/5/2009 @ 2:02 pm