LXVI
If I should cast off this tattered coat,
And go free into the mighty sky;
If I should find nothing there
But a vast blue,
Echoless, ignorant,--
What then?
from The Black Riders and Other Lines by Stephen Crane
“Oh man, these Gadaji trees are messy, but boy that was a storm and a half! The poor old girl looks like somebody has stripped her of her modesty and tossed her garments all about. Anyway, at least this one is a good distance from the house, and the branches will be good for the fire-place. Now where did I leave that wheel-barrow?
“Ooooh look at that! In among the rubbish there’s a blown down bird nest. I hope it was empty.
“Oh no, it wasn’t! Look at all those tiny little chicks, there’s three of them. What are they? They’re Willie–Wagtails. Come here you poor little critters. What on earth can I do with you?
“Hang on, I’ve got the babies, they’re all alive, and I’ve got the nest. Here, you guys rest in my pocket, I’ll go down the shed and make up a box for your nest. Hopefully mum or dad are still around and weren’t destroyed by that storm.
“A bit of this, a bit of that, it doesn’t have to last forever, does it? Hey, it looks like crap, but it’ll do the job. ‘Are you little guys right in there, don’t be scared? I’ll bet you are, but don’t worry it might just work out if mum or dad are still about.’
“WHOA yeah! Mum and dad are still about!!!!
“Hey guys I’m trying to help here, stop attacking me so much and this may happen a little easier. Gee you’re gutsy little fellas. Getting right to the edge of self-preservation, aren’t you?. You’re so close I reckon I could catch you. But you’re only thinking off the chicks. All right, all right, can’t you back off for a minute, you know you’re not helping me at all.
“Man, they are going off, I’ve never seen them so aggressive, I think they’d kill me, if they could, the angry little suckers. Actually, I have heard them like this before! I remember when that great big brown snake was sliding up the tree, they were going nuts just like this.
“‘Hey guys I’m not a brown snake. I’m not the enemy. Actually I’m your savior!’ There, in you go, everybody can relax now, the deed is done. Quiet at last. And I feel a warm fuzzy glow. Boy that could’ve been a whole lot simpler.
“Yet you’ve got to admire their tenacity, even if it was completely futile. A programmed response in the face of the unknown was a bravery bordering on tragedy. Ha, ha, maybe it’s Albert Camus and ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ for Willie-Wagtails.
“Hang on, hang on, I think there’s something significant in that. I mean there are two ways you can see this. On the one hand they were just being authentic Wagtails, taking an heroic stance in the face of a threat, even if it’s true nature was unknowable to them. That fits some kind of description very neatly. That’s what modern, materialist, biological science says that we all are. Neo-Darwinism says that we are evolved, biological systems that, whilst being indescribably complicated, are in reality no different to a Willie-Wagtail, or a brown snake. Our reactions might be complex, but they are just as pre-conditioned or pre-programmed as the rest of nature. There is no such thing as freedom or free-will, just evolved instinct in a universe of “Blind,Pitiless Indifference”, and that’s all we can expect. There is no such thing as “The Bigger Picture”, or “Meaning”, or “Purpose”.
“But on the other hand, as I watch those Willie-Wagtails completely misunderstand the situation, react heroically, but in complete futility, my innate intuition asks the question, is that all I am? Is that it? I mean I know there’s been many, many times have I fought pointless battles because of my limited perspective, you know, just like a Willie-Wagtail? Later reflection might supply you with that occasionally elusive “Bigger Picture”. I mean we all experience that at times, don’t we? There are nearly always different or alternative ways of viewing things that we may or may not be able to see at the time from our original limited perspective? But do we fight on just because that’s how we’ve been programmed to react? Is it just because of my emotions, and not because of what I think or believe rationally?
“Certainly that’s what the Willies do. They inhabit that blind, pitiless and indifferent cosmos where, were in not for my direct intervention on two recent occasions, they would have lost their chicks. But does that mean my more sophisticated stance makes the absurd any less absurd? Or does it all really boil down to the limits of my perceptions? Whoa, slow down, where is all this heading? I’m building a nest to rescue their chicks, and they’re trying to kill me. There may, or may not, be a broader view, who knows what’s the case in every situation. Shouldn’t I allow for the possibility?
“Wow, the more you think about it the bigger it gets. How much pain and misfortune have I got depressed about, whereas if I’d simply been patient and waited a bit I might have seen that my purest civilizing and keenest learning has come as a consequence of those same mistakes.
“That sounds really corny, but it’s true I’d reckon. How many broken hearts have I lived through, or how much hurt have I caused to others through my ignorance? How much of the daily grind is simply part of a bigger inter-connected whole?
“When I think I’m alone, or at least am swamped by feelings of loneliness, there still exists a chain of relational inter-reactions that I may not immediately see or feel in my sad predicament. But with just a little bit of perspective, or emotional detachment, I might be able to achieve some kind of enlightenment. How many times have I become a prisoner of my emotions and let my feelings box me into a corner where my only escape, as far as I’m concerned, is to come out swinging like a Willie-Wagtail?
“And what about the metaphysical? Oh no, whoa, that’s a box of snakes. Where is this going? Slow down brain. We seem to have this strange compulsion to anthropomorphize just about everything and make up gods. And then measure who or what he, she or it may be due to our tiny Willie-Wagtail perceptions. But what about the possibility of who knows what? For instance the protagonists of “String Theory” say they can prove it’s all true. This is all done apparently by some gigantic mathematical equation. Such levels of intellectual enquiry are truly awesome, very admirable, and way, way beyond my limits. But one of the problems they have is that the same maths requires that there be eleven dimensions instead of our puny little three and a half (time only goes one way). If that’s a potentiality that’s worth considering how can we be certain that there aren’t other dimensions or alternative realities right next door. And if something like God exists he or she might be something that is way more complex, totally different, and simply beyond our current limits of insight?
“It reminds me a bit of those old “Ptolemaic Epicycles” that came about because for centuries the people who looked at the heavens had to adjust their original descriptions of where the planets and stars should be in the sky, because they appeared to keep changing their orbits. As the observations got better and better, and more and more accurate, it required massive efforts to modify their original observations. This was because they were working on the false assumption that everything revolved around the Earth. This came down to everyone from the ancient Greeks, and nobody ever questioned it. Then along comes Copernicus, and he publishes De Revolutionibus. Suddenly all the anomalies fell into place. Next Galileo confirmed it all with his telescope, and it went on to become the accepted model. Well, at least after several centuries of ignorance and Wagtail logic by the church.
“Actually science itself is a good candidate for all this isn’t it. I mean they can’t agree why death happens, why sexual reproduction has replaced the far more efficient asexual reproduction, which still exists for some species. They speak with such authority but can’t even agree if free will actually exists or not, or just what being alive is, and how it came about. How did simple matter become alive matter? Once Crick and Watson back in the 1950’s demonstrated that “alive” cells were not simple blobs of protoplasm in the way Darwin and his contemparies assumed, but were actually mind-blowingly intricate combinations of DNA, RNA, and amino acids with absolutely massive volumes of information, they scream out the inevitable question, ‘How did such monumental complexity randomly self-assemble?’
“I once heard a scientist in a panel discussion say rather provocatively that ‘life’ is actually the opposite of entropy. Or it requires a reversal of the universal rule that things always degenerate to chaos. And oh boy, there hangs a tail. In his book ‘The Ascent of Man’ Jacob Bronowski takes the politically and scientifically correct line. He says towards the end that entropy can’t always apply because if it did evolutionary biology could never have happened. But my understanding is that science has never been able to disprove the fact that entropy always occurs. You could say that the evolution of complexity in things like consciousness, which clearly has happened, has done so in complete opposition to a fundamental law of physics. Natural selection might be the key but how does it occur in the face of so much opposition. That’s definitely not one for the Willy-Wagtails is it?
“Oh boy, this is wearing me out. I remember hearing Richard Dawkins declare that science understands about 95% of everything. That’s ironic because that’s the percentage of the universe that’s missing. Science is convinced that Dark Energy and Dark Matter is there, but has no idea what it actually is.
“I once heard Paul Davies say that God as the universal designer creating everything isn’t an answer to anything because the question then arises as to who created or designed God. But perhaps that’s not really a question to the mind that is free of wagtail limits. If God needs a creator then God’s creator needs a creator, and the creator of God’s creator needs a creator. I mean, it just goes on and on, and back and back. Can’t that on and on, or endless regress, possibly be an eternal source of all power?
“I mean what existed before the Big Bang? If it was nothing, how long did nothing exist, what is nothing, and what preceded it? It just goes back and back, and as far as I can see there isn’t an answer other than there is no way of knowing. And on the subject of the big bang, when have they ever conducted a controlled experiment where something has come from nothing as the theory suggests. Perhaps perpetuity simply creates its own regress and maybe the future might be similar. Bertrand Russell’s apocryphal anecdote from one of his lectures about ‘turtles all the way down’ may actually be a suitable metaphor. And perhaps agnosticism is a more intellectually honest stance than evangelical atheism.
“Whoa, this is wearing me out! It’s all like shooting an air rifle at Ayers Rock isn’t it, and I guess that’s the point. How many times have I been a know-all. How many times have I believed I’ve got it sorted, and it’s all so obvious. Why can’t everybody else see it? What a wanker! I mean, we all operate at some level of Wagtail Logic, don’t we? No matter what the circumstances there is always a bigger picture. And with perhaps just a little bit of emotional detachment and intellectual tolerance toward others the whole sorry show might lead to somewhere brighter.
“And on a person level when the vultures are circling and it feels like they’re tearing carrion from my decaying soul. I can tell them to get lost. I’m not ready to give up just yet. I’m waiting, waiting, and then waiting just like the Russian citizens did during the siege of Stalingrad. There is unquestionably more to this than I can see right now. There is always, always the possibility of something….. I guess that’s why we are different to Willie-Wagtails.”
Comentários