Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.
It’s amazing the way things, apparently disconnected, hang together. I’ve moved up to another plateau, and now the streams of the various disciplines seem to be closer to each other as if they flow from a single source.
Strange how when I’m in the college cafeteria and hear the students arguing about history or politics or religion, it all seems so childish.
The same thing happened when I tried to discuss Chaucer with an American literature specialist, questioned an Orientalist about the Trobriand Islanders, and tried to focus on the problems of automation-caused unemployment with a social psychologist who specialized in public opinion polls on adolescent behavior. They would always find excuses to slip away, afraid to reveal the narrowness of their knowledge.
How different they seem to be now. And how foolish I was ever to have thought that professors were intellectual giants.
t was evil when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge. It was evil when they saw they was naked, and learned about lust and shame. And they was driven out of Paradise and the gates was closed to them. If not for that none of us would have to grow old and be sick and die.
There was nothing more to say, to her or to the rest of them. None of them would look into my eyes. I can still feel the hostility. Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding. Why?
How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes – how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence.
The only noble desire is for the end of desire. Few are brave enough to admit this.
[...]unnamed sense at the back of his mind that he lived inside a brain too small to understand or even witness the true beauty of the world, and so the only option left was to languish in the self-imposed illusion that objects and errands and little fears and little hopes were the full extent of being alive, else go mad.
seed to tree to kindling, baby to man to bones, a stream one could never step in twice—or step in once even; form replacing form, forever and never.
He looked to his arms and legs. They were not just limbs, but bounded manifolds of infinite cooperation; malleable, regenerating, unthanked and automatic.
What are the heavens? How far do they extend? If I travelled to the edge of the heavens and reached my hand beyond the boundary of space, what would I be reaching into?
"I have,” he whispered. “What do you have?” Johannes whispered back. “I have been. . .”
If I told you of a man who hunts through the refuse and rubbish every day selecting only matter he can eat, or breaks into homes raiding pantries, you would be no closer to understanding his motives until I mentioned the meaning of his quest. He is hungry. All the descriptions of his eye colour and his height do nothing to explain that.
What does it matter how the bread was made if it’s delicious? Anaximander said, Wouldn’t you like to know where the flour came from though? No, came the reply.
The difference between a hero and a fool is nothing more than the bias of the biographer
He looked deeper still and saw a billion, billion organic machines all working in unison to produce a degree of order that he only called hands.
Your old self is dead. There is no new self.
It seemed to him suddenly that self-hate was the result of a misguided attempt to please people one would never meet, and if one did meet such judgemental idiots, one would not respect them nor desire their respect in the first place.
It is the tools that build the wielders, not the other way around.
If a system of describing the world such as mathematics became sufficiently powerful, the mathematicians themselves would grow convinced there was nothing beyond its scope—not unlike a blind man discounting yellow because he could neither touch nor smell it.
Folk traded and philosophised, warred and surrendered, but the main game was as it always is with ageing civilisations: maintenance of the status quo. I was dangerously bored.
Once a child has tried chocolate, who could convince him fruit is better?
They seemed suddenly to yearn for something more substantial than trading and drink. They innovated, lamented, loved, and sang.
We started with trying to understand the mechanics of the heavens. We concluded with pleasure cruises and little plastic drinking straws.
An oppressive regime oppresses its people. Some of the people grow sufficiently pissed off. Said people form a revolutionary movement standing for all manner of noble qualities; liberation, love, etc. Sometimes they overthrow the regime and assume power themselves. And within just a few short years, those revolutionaries are suddenly executing and oppressing the people, just like their predecessors. The uniforms are new, but the blood flows all the same.
We don’t seem to dream of a better world much anymore. We were burned so many times by utopian thinking last century that even utopia is a dirty word now. But we must, must, must start dreaming again.
Many maintain that the best conjuring illusions are the ones we never discover the trick behind. They are remarkable, certainly. More incredible though are those illusions we discover the trick behind, and come to find the trick even more enchanting than the illusion itself. Such is the world.
There was once a small spring. The spring was so persistent that over many years it eroded the land about it such that the spring became a stream. It felt pride at this. The stream persisted and after many more years it became a river. In time the river became an ocean and stretched across the world from horizon to horizon. Witness me, the ocean said. I am mighty. I am eternal. The sun, who had been watching all this time said, Be careful, ocean. For though you reach across the world now, you still derive from a single spring. Ha! the ocean said. I am an ocean, what need have I for a spring! And the sun did blaze. And the spring did dwindle. And the land became a desert once again.
If I asked you in the midst of a tragedy, “Shall I end your suffering and make all well again?” you would answer, “Please do, I beg it.” If instead I asked you after the tragedy, “Are you glad you lived through it? Did you grow wiser from the experience?” you would answer, “Yes! Thank you for not stopping the thing prematurely.” Humans are not to be trusted.
The true horror of existence is not the certainty of death, nor the threat of hell, but the knowledge that we will likely go our entire lives as impossibly complex machines, walking about in an impossibly complex universe, and never truly discover what it was all for. I don’t know is brave. I’ll never know is heroic.
The ‘explanation behind all explanations’ my colleagues and I are searching for is hardly much different than our ancestors’ quest to know the mind of God. Sometimes it feels like the answer is imminently close. On those days, I drink. Sometimes it feels like the answer is impossibly distant. On those days, I drink.
There is nothing obvious about the picture of the world we have obtained using the scientific method. Molecules, quarks, atoms, billions of stars and galaxies, meat that knows it’s sentient—what is this madness? And, of course, one might ask: is the scientific model of reality not just another kind of magic, another absurd, fanciful delusion? The answer is: yes. However, it also happens to be the only delusion that doesn’t go away when one stops believing in it.
There is nothing worse than to remain sober around those who are drinking. Their euphoria intensifies, while you only grow quietly embarrassed for them. At some point during the evening they will intuit you are judging their follies and become self-conscious. They will despise you for depriving them of the bliss of drunken excess by virtue of your watching. The reaction is much the same from the gluttonous, rich, and powerful when one reminds them that the resources of the environment are not infinite. They might continue to plunder, but they will hate you for bringing conscience into their debauchery, for turning the light on during the orgy. Why, the house was burning down, but we were so enjoying the glow. . .
Many will claim they are wise. Do not believe them; the wise are quiet. Many will claim they know nothing. Do not believe them; how could they know that? If you must seek the advice of anyone, make it the drunk. He knows the game means nothing and wins it by not playing.
It is without question that we live inside a dream. I do not mean this world is illusory or submissive to one’s will. Rather, you will have noticed that when inside a dream, despite the contorted narrative, and the sudden return of friends long dead, and a crack in the sky—for as long as you are asleep, the logic holds. It is only upon waking that you realise there was no logic to the dream at all. The waking world is no different. Yes, we are familiar with the presentations of light and sound and time. Yes, we are aware that two objects cannot occupy the same space, that eleven is a prime number, and so on. But what is the logic beneath these presentations? What is so self-evident about light or sound or time? The answer is: nothing. The world is not comprehensible. It is only that we have been asleep so long its incomprehensibility has become familiar.
Science did not kill magic. Yes, we've had to dispense with spells and incantations. Yes, the universe is more apathetic than previously supposed. But in return for accepting these losses, we have gained a picture of the world so unfathomably beautiful and mysterious that if God truly existed, He Himself could not fathom it.