Einstein (I think it was him) said the universe is like walking into an enormous library with books from the floor to the ceiling and we’ve only read a few pages from one of them. We only know about 5% of the matter in the universe — planets, stars, comets — and the rest is dark matter, dark energy that the scientists have no idea what it is. To me, that’s incredibly fascinating. If only people turned their attention to understanding the world instead of destroying it.
Yes, the unknown is indeed a fascinating mystery. When NASA ordered the space probe Voyager 1 to turn towards the Earth and take our picture from the furthest viewpoint from which the Earth was ever photographed, all that could be seen from the near empty image was a little blue dot, us, with nothing but emptiness anywhere.
Even more interesting is the knowledge that it is travelling at the fastest speed humans have ever produced by a craft as it travels through space at 38,000 mph. Even at that speed, if it was aimed at the nearest star to our sun, it would take about 75,000 years to get there…
At the moment , as it’s flight time approaches 50 years, we are now invisible to its cameras… The little Blue Dot is gone from sight, and it still has another 74,950 years to go before getting to The nearest star…
The nearest…. And there are more stars that can fill our telescope than there are grains of sand on planet Earth..
the famous "Pale blue dot" picture from Voyager 1 really put things into perspective. That tiny blue marble, surrounded by the vast expanses of space in the cosmos contained all of us, our hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions, loves, regrets/losses.
If only people would finally put Einstein, the fraudster to the trashbin where he belongs. Heisenberg has successfully confuted this boaster, but (alas?); Heisenberg was no member of that special club of "chosen" ones, you know. For that reason, everyone knows that forger, and only few know the decent and diligent German scientist.
Amusing and incisive as always, Caitlyn, but, when you write "Our best scientists have produced no answers to any of life’s most significant questions, having to content themselves with a humble shrug over the most basic inquiries like why anything exists, what matter is, and what is the nature of consciousness..." ...and... "...The greatest minds of the last two hundred years were baby monkeys poking at a supercomputer and yelping at the beeps...", I am obliged to demure that surely you are speaking about the greatest minds of the Eurocentric universe?
.
Elsewhere on the planet, communities of people with a profounder view of the purpose of human existence have spent the last 200 years (as well as the 2,000 years before that) addressing such questions as... "...what matter is, and what is the nature of consciousness..." ... with a depth of understanding and accomplishment that far outshadows the manic activity of the... "...baby monkeys poking at a supercomputer and yelping at the beeps".
.
.... Just saying, is all. Peacem vobiscum, Caitlyn.
In one sense, John – when you say that "what we do know is that we know next to nothing" – I find that I cannot disagree with you. Before I retired, some years ago, from teaching classes on science, philosophy, and religion to college students, I tried to instill in my students an understanding that the three most powerful words in the universe are also the three words that American students, in particular, are most afraid to utter. Those three words are: "I don't know".
.
It is funny, by the way, that when you ask "What for example, is the universe?", you add "I’m all ears….". Oddly enough, that is more or less how I have, on occasion, described, to my students, the manner in which the ancient sages of pre-Classical India – the Rishis – attempted to comprehend the universe. I liked to say, in fact, that they placed their ears next to the edge of the universe, and they listened to the vibration that it made, and the sound that they heard was the sound of the Vedas; what became the great classical texts of the Hindu tradition.
.
As it happens, however, the Vedas were not accepted as canonical by everyone. 2500 years ago, they were rejected, as such, by a young prince from the Sakya clan in Northern India (modern day Nepal) called Siddhartha, who cut his hair and exchanged the palace for a life as a contemplative in the forest, finding his own path. And, in contradistinction to the views expressed below by Stan Sylvester and Silvanna Briand below, he rejected also the idea that the universe is the work product of an especially industrious all-powerful supreme being – an Ishvara, or creator deity.
.
The gentleman in question is, of course, better known to history as Shakyamuni Buddha, the Sage of the Sakyas. If you would be at all interested in understanding the detailed differences between the Western view and the Buddhist view in how the questions that, initially Caitlyn, and now, you yourself, have raised are answered by these two traditions – "What is time, space, matter, or life itself"? – more competent people than myself have provided some very excellent discourse on this subject.
.
In particular, I can recommend a book I am half way through myself at the present time (it being my current bedtime reading), and which was published over a quarter of a century ago (in 1998) "The Monk and the Philosopher", which is the record of a conversation between the père et fils – with the eminent French philosopher, Jean Francois Revel, speaking for the Western tradition, and the son, Matthieu Ricard, speaking for the view of the Buddhist tradition.
.
The main point of my response to Caitlyn's article, though, is not so much that I am propounding the "rightness" of one view against the "wrongness" of another. I am simply pointing out that, although her article is certainly an excellent and valid critique of the Western cultural outlook – and the endless harm that has stemmed from a limited myopic view of the universe – nevertheless her own article is vulnerable to falling into the same myopia by implicitly contending that all that the world knows is what has been propounded by the Western tradition over the last several hundred years (which is something she expressly states as her framing within the article). Fair enough?
Shaun, Many thanks for your comment. I was thinking the same thoughts when reading Caitlin today. But I was reluctant and not as fluent as you to comment on Siddhartha Gautama's Dharma. It is frustrating when the world view here is mostly Eurocentric.
Glad that you mention "The Monk and the Philosopher". I am sure you are aware of the Rohisatta Sutra where in answer to a question about the cosmos the Buddha replies that " .... in this fathom long body is the universe".
People should be free to believe what they want to believe... Especially given no one really knows why there is existence at all, or how self-aware consciousness could have somehow emerged from inert material.
However, if your belief leads you to justify mass murdering human beings, whether secular or spiritual - that's where we need to draw a moral redline. Fuck Israel. Fuck Ukrainian Nazis.
I fear this monkey stands far too preoccupied with grand strategy and far too distracted by environment reminiscent of an insane asylum to be moved by such. But you’re right. We should try to relax as we can.
Well, in an asylum, they’re there under the pretext of wellness and treatment. While here, we also labor under false pretenses, but the appearance of care isn’t even there. Won’t be long till we have open slave markets again.
"And it is also true that we don’t really have any idea where humanity’s adventure is headed."
We don't know where we're going--but that doesn't mean we don't work like hell to try and steer ourselves in a good direction and take everyone along for the ride. We're all in this together.
Rothschilds-Epstein Class. The Rothschilds Bankster clan and the Royal Families (incestuous sociopaths) in Europe are the cancer that needs to be excused.
NOTHING will change until the Monkey-brains who can still see & feel the beauty in the world, decide to JOIN TOGETHER and stop obeying these Monsters.
King Charles is a PEDOE PAL and Brits still bow to a Royal Family of Monsters. Why?
Trumpers think he's on a Mission From God- to start WW3 for Mizz Izzy EPSTEIN... and they think that is a GOOD thing? Why?
Every Evil boils down to a Buck or a Boner. I'm tired of watching The Rothschilds-Epstein Class comfortably expose Their Evil and everyone is shocked and then do NOTHING. No arrests, no demands, no General Strikes, just a collective, "Oh well. Rich men just get to do anything they want and we do NOTHING. Oh well."
That's why I have My garden, and try to be in it everyday.
One of our birdhouses was just home to a Bluebird family of 4 chicks! Mom & Pop were very proud & busy! Man, a bluebird when the sun hits it just right, is a beautiful thing.
This is all so poetic, so graceful, so embracing, so reassuring, so well stated. I too have sought such succor, often turning to the great philosophers discussing the good life, the life well lived, and what the Classics and great literature have to say on the human condition.
I am also one who seeks concision, economy of word and message, which can sometimes come from unexpected sources. Take this, for example:
"You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough." - Mae West
All brains gather intelligence; to lesser or greater extents, some brains acquire a state of mind. How and where they find the means to do so is the question raised by poets and philosophers, doctors of divinity and medicine who have been fooling around with it for the past five thousand years and leave the mystery intact. It’s been a long time since Adam ate of the apple, but about the metaphysical composition of the human mind, all we can say for certain is that something unknown is doing we don’t know what.
Perhaps the biggest open question in biology right now is how did complex (and precise) information within genetic DNA come about spontaneously, particularly during the Cambrian explosion in the early Paleozoic era. It has always been assumed, until more recently, that only undirected random mutations had the creative power to produce the needed information - and this has turned out to be now highly suspect.
Anche io Vin. Ma ha scritto in spagnolo. So I wrote Senor rather than Signore! Ho vissuto a Roma molti anni fa, per sempre nel mio cuore. Il mio italiano non e cosi buono ora, ho domenticato molto. 🙋♀️
Awe and wonder will sustain us as we move through this crazy time together. We're so lucky to be alive together in this incredible moment.
I love what you wrote, and feel . In nature however, is it normal to kill? Yet, we still find it beautiful and awesome..
For survival maybe sometimes. Thanks, John.
Lately your posts always be hitting me right in the feels!
Your outlook is so importantly "balanced" (I want a better word here).
I wish you could connect with Chris Hedges some time.
This is why I do have a garden.
Einstein (I think it was him) said the universe is like walking into an enormous library with books from the floor to the ceiling and we’ve only read a few pages from one of them. We only know about 5% of the matter in the universe — planets, stars, comets — and the rest is dark matter, dark energy that the scientists have no idea what it is. To me, that’s incredibly fascinating. If only people turned their attention to understanding the world instead of destroying it.
Yes, the unknown is indeed a fascinating mystery. When NASA ordered the space probe Voyager 1 to turn towards the Earth and take our picture from the furthest viewpoint from which the Earth was ever photographed, all that could be seen from the near empty image was a little blue dot, us, with nothing but emptiness anywhere.
Even more interesting is the knowledge that it is travelling at the fastest speed humans have ever produced by a craft as it travels through space at 38,000 mph. Even at that speed, if it was aimed at the nearest star to our sun, it would take about 75,000 years to get there…
At the moment , as it’s flight time approaches 50 years, we are now invisible to its cameras… The little Blue Dot is gone from sight, and it still has another 74,950 years to go before getting to The nearest star…
The nearest…. And there are more stars that can fill our telescope than there are grains of sand on planet Earth..
Ouch!
the famous "Pale blue dot" picture from Voyager 1 really put things into perspective. That tiny blue marble, surrounded by the vast expanses of space in the cosmos contained all of us, our hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions, loves, regrets/losses.
If only people would finally put Einstein, the fraudster to the trashbin where he belongs. Heisenberg has successfully confuted this boaster, but (alas?); Heisenberg was no member of that special club of "chosen" ones, you know. For that reason, everyone knows that forger, and only few know the decent and diligent German scientist.
So true !
“And is it any wonder the monkey’s confused.” Your mate Rodge Podge, Amused to Death 1991. ✊🏼😂🥂🕊️
.
Amusing and incisive as always, Caitlyn, but, when you write "Our best scientists have produced no answers to any of life’s most significant questions, having to content themselves with a humble shrug over the most basic inquiries like why anything exists, what matter is, and what is the nature of consciousness..." ...and... "...The greatest minds of the last two hundred years were baby monkeys poking at a supercomputer and yelping at the beeps...", I am obliged to demure that surely you are speaking about the greatest minds of the Eurocentric universe?
.
Elsewhere on the planet, communities of people with a profounder view of the purpose of human existence have spent the last 200 years (as well as the 2,000 years before that) addressing such questions as... "...what matter is, and what is the nature of consciousness..." ... with a depth of understanding and accomplishment that far outshadows the manic activity of the... "...baby monkeys poking at a supercomputer and yelping at the beeps".
.
.... Just saying, is all. Peacem vobiscum, Caitlyn.
.
Sean,
What we do know, is that we know next to nothing. What is time, space, matter, or life itself, except mysteries of the universe.
What for example, is the universe? What is time? I’m all ears….
.
In one sense, John – when you say that "what we do know is that we know next to nothing" – I find that I cannot disagree with you. Before I retired, some years ago, from teaching classes on science, philosophy, and religion to college students, I tried to instill in my students an understanding that the three most powerful words in the universe are also the three words that American students, in particular, are most afraid to utter. Those three words are: "I don't know".
.
It is funny, by the way, that when you ask "What for example, is the universe?", you add "I’m all ears….". Oddly enough, that is more or less how I have, on occasion, described, to my students, the manner in which the ancient sages of pre-Classical India – the Rishis – attempted to comprehend the universe. I liked to say, in fact, that they placed their ears next to the edge of the universe, and they listened to the vibration that it made, and the sound that they heard was the sound of the Vedas; what became the great classical texts of the Hindu tradition.
.
As it happens, however, the Vedas were not accepted as canonical by everyone. 2500 years ago, they were rejected, as such, by a young prince from the Sakya clan in Northern India (modern day Nepal) called Siddhartha, who cut his hair and exchanged the palace for a life as a contemplative in the forest, finding his own path. And, in contradistinction to the views expressed below by Stan Sylvester and Silvanna Briand below, he rejected also the idea that the universe is the work product of an especially industrious all-powerful supreme being – an Ishvara, or creator deity.
.
The gentleman in question is, of course, better known to history as Shakyamuni Buddha, the Sage of the Sakyas. If you would be at all interested in understanding the detailed differences between the Western view and the Buddhist view in how the questions that, initially Caitlyn, and now, you yourself, have raised are answered by these two traditions – "What is time, space, matter, or life itself"? – more competent people than myself have provided some very excellent discourse on this subject.
.
In particular, I can recommend a book I am half way through myself at the present time (it being my current bedtime reading), and which was published over a quarter of a century ago (in 1998) "The Monk and the Philosopher", which is the record of a conversation between the père et fils – with the eminent French philosopher, Jean Francois Revel, speaking for the Western tradition, and the son, Matthieu Ricard, speaking for the view of the Buddhist tradition.
.
The main point of my response to Caitlyn's article, though, is not so much that I am propounding the "rightness" of one view against the "wrongness" of another. I am simply pointing out that, although her article is certainly an excellent and valid critique of the Western cultural outlook – and the endless harm that has stemmed from a limited myopic view of the universe – nevertheless her own article is vulnerable to falling into the same myopia by implicitly contending that all that the world knows is what has been propounded by the Western tradition over the last several hundred years (which is something she expressly states as her framing within the article). Fair enough?
.
Shaun, Many thanks for your comment. I was thinking the same thoughts when reading Caitlin today. But I was reluctant and not as fluent as you to comment on Siddhartha Gautama's Dharma. It is frustrating when the world view here is mostly Eurocentric.
Glad that you mention "The Monk and the Philosopher". I am sure you are aware of the Rohisatta Sutra where in answer to a question about the cosmos the Buddha replies that " .... in this fathom long body is the universe".
.
Thank you, Indu. I am not familiar with the sutra in question.
.
Psalm 19:1
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands."
All the best,
Stan in TN.
.
Stan, please see my answer to Stan Turcot above. Pacem. Sean.
.
And still, all of them have a deity to fill in the blanks....
People should be free to believe what they want to believe... Especially given no one really knows why there is existence at all, or how self-aware consciousness could have somehow emerged from inert material.
However, if your belief leads you to justify mass murdering human beings, whether secular or spiritual - that's where we need to draw a moral redline. Fuck Israel. Fuck Ukrainian Nazis.
.
Silvana, please see my answer to Stan Turcot above. Pacem. Sean.
.
It's always good to get regular reminders that we still live in a beautiful world and some time out of our day should be spent out there enjoying it.
Indeed. We need those reminders especially now
👍❤️....we are stardust...
I fear this monkey stands far too preoccupied with grand strategy and far too distracted by environment reminiscent of an insane asylum to be moved by such. But you’re right. We should try to relax as we can.
“Insane asylum”
You are being too generous.
Well, in an asylum, they’re there under the pretext of wellness and treatment. While here, we also labor under false pretenses, but the appearance of care isn’t even there. Won’t be long till we have open slave markets again.
"And it is also true that we don’t really have any idea where humanity’s adventure is headed."
We don't know where we're going--but that doesn't mean we don't work like hell to try and steer ourselves in a good direction and take everyone along for the ride. We're all in this together.
With all due respect to MLK, the moral arc of the universe does not bend towards justice.
It bends towards power.
Despair touches some people no matter what they do. Gaza. Lebanon. Sudan. We are very privileged to be able to choose.
Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia before...
Donbass (2014 till today) before...
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos before...
Korea before...
Japan (1940 till today) before...
Russia (1917 till today) before...
Cuba, Mexico, Latin America before...
The Natives of America before...
Germany (1618-1648, 1870, 1914-1918, 1919-1933, 1939-45 and ongoing till today) before...
And in every case, it was a special club of elitist satanic thugs who successfully made evil walk this earth...
Rothschilds-Epstein Class. The Rothschilds Bankster clan and the Royal Families (incestuous sociopaths) in Europe are the cancer that needs to be excused.
NOTHING will change until the Monkey-brains who can still see & feel the beauty in the world, decide to JOIN TOGETHER and stop obeying these Monsters.
King Charles is a PEDOE PAL and Brits still bow to a Royal Family of Monsters. Why?
Trumpers think he's on a Mission From God- to start WW3 for Mizz Izzy EPSTEIN... and they think that is a GOOD thing? Why?
Every Evil boils down to a Buck or a Boner. I'm tired of watching The Rothschilds-Epstein Class comfortably expose Their Evil and everyone is shocked and then do NOTHING. No arrests, no demands, no General Strikes, just a collective, "Oh well. Rich men just get to do anything they want and we do NOTHING. Oh well."
That's why I have My garden, and try to be in it everyday.
One of our birdhouses was just home to a Bluebird family of 4 chicks! Mom & Pop were very proud & busy! Man, a bluebird when the sun hits it just right, is a beautiful thing.
Peace.
😅 💪 "buck or a boner"! 🤣🤣
Right? It's pretty simple when you take away all the countries and laws and whatever whatevers... a Buck or a Boner.
😉
This is all so poetic, so graceful, so embracing, so reassuring, so well stated. I too have sought such succor, often turning to the great philosophers discussing the good life, the life well lived, and what the Classics and great literature have to say on the human condition.
I am also one who seeks concision, economy of word and message, which can sometimes come from unexpected sources. Take this, for example:
"You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough." - Mae West
God I love her!
One of the wisest comments I ever heard was from a monk . When asked a difficult question, he always answered:” I don’t know”.
i think sometimes, wisdom is being able to admit that one doesn't have all the answers, and that one can always gain new knowledge and perspective
And in our waking moments we can choose to signify the “sound and fury” or be “such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
Alas, I hope not "as tedious as a twice-told tale...."
I just celebrated my 64th birthday and this exquisite essay expresses everything about life just when I needed to read it. Thank you Caitlyn.😘
Happy Birthday! 🥂🌹
happy birthday dorothy!
All brains gather intelligence; to lesser or greater extents, some brains acquire a state of mind. How and where they find the means to do so is the question raised by poets and philosophers, doctors of divinity and medicine who have been fooling around with it for the past five thousand years and leave the mystery intact. It’s been a long time since Adam ate of the apple, but about the metaphysical composition of the human mind, all we can say for certain is that something unknown is doing we don’t know what.
- Lewis H Lapham
Perhaps the biggest open question in biology right now is how did complex (and precise) information within genetic DNA come about spontaneously, particularly during the Cambrian explosion in the early Paleozoic era. It has always been assumed, until more recently, that only undirected random mutations had the creative power to produce the needed information - and this has turned out to be now highly suspect.
Dove c’è amore, c’è vita
Sempre vero!
No comprende signoritas.
Senor Turcot
Where there is love, there’s life - jamenta’s
Always true - mine
Judy, "Signore", in Italiano. Sono felice di legere un conversazione in Italiano questa mattina.
Anche io Vin. Ma ha scritto in spagnolo. So I wrote Senor rather than Signore! Ho vissuto a Roma molti anni fa, per sempre nel mio cuore. Il mio italiano non e cosi buono ora, ho domenticato molto. 🙋♀️
Brava nondimeno.
Caitlin if you were a priest I’d join your church. Thanks for the uplift!!