mind of the universe

It came to me in the early morning hours as I lie there trying to decide whether to go back to sleep or to get up, that it was an enormous human conceit not to believe in god* or at least not to believe in the existence of a mind/an intelligence greater than our own encompassing the universe. Moreover, that it is a western human conceit to believe that foraging humans like the Mbuti (pygmies) are wrong when they believe in the Forest as a living entity with mind/consciousness to whom they give thanks and offer prayer. 

We rational, scientific, folks of industrial societies don’t actually know why we ourselves have a mind (as opposed to just a brain), so how can we discount the idea that other organized systems (bees, dolphins, forests, planets, universes) composed of organic and inorganic materials just as we are, could not also produce minds and thought. 

Since we aren’t particularly good at understanding other human beings, why should we expect to understand the working of the mind of the universe/god? 
___________
*this is not to imply that any particular human conception of god is necessarily correct.

Color view of M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy), with M32 (a satellite galaxy) shown to the lower left. Credit and copyright: Terry Hancock. https://www.universetoday.com/33986/messier-32/

long LOST love

Other than to say that last night's final chapter of LOST has left me with a sense of quiet, peace and satisfaction (Namaste to you too), I'm not quite ready to blog about the final episode yet. I want to dwell in that place of peace and light for a while longer.

However, I did spend a short while this morning reading the blog posts and commentary articles of folks who had similar reactions to the ending of our favorite series. Among the comments on those other blogs and articles I did find one type of posting that I found disturbing.

Several folks commenting, who were unhappy about the way the series ended, complained about being tricked into investing their energy for six years into something that was not "real." These commenters appeared to think that having any portion of what they had viewed for the past six years take place after the characters had died negated the realness of the conflicts the characters faced and the emotions the show stirred in those of us who loved it.

Leaving totally aside for the present issues of 1) when the characters died (at the very beginning or as they appeared to, through out the show and some even after the death of Jack at the very end), or 2) whether or not one believes in purgatory, the guff or even heaven, the aliveness or deadness of the characters has no relationship to how real the issues and conflicts are, and how real the ideas they got us to think about.

So I am left wondering, what makes things "real" to the people who complained about the ending invalidating the reality of the show? How odd to think that one could readily and happily invest energy in a show about time travel and disappearing islands, mythical research projects of the 1970's, smoke monsters, and pockets of electromagnetism great enough to grab airliners out of the sky, and yet the loss of corporeal status is the one thing that makes everything unreal.

Are we humans nothing more than physical beings? I say not. We are spirit, we are hopes and dreams, we are ideas; the "I" or "self" that each of us is encompasses the physical body and physical experience, but transcends it to be so much more (a key idea of one of my sociological idols,George Herbert Mead).

Some believe that such self can also transcend the death of the physical body. But you don't have to believe that to recognize that what makes us human goes far beyond mere matters of physical survival of individual corporeal beings. As humans we create families, communities, societies, nations, cultures, that last far beyond one frail human life-time.

One Single Impression -- Chaos

a pattern exists
invisible to humans
who see only chaos.


©sgreerpitt
January 17, 2010

For other poems on this theme see One Single Impression.

One Single Impression -- Thinking

Seeking to know
the unknowable,
express the ineffable,
we mark divisions
(head and heart),
draw boundaries
(mind and soul),
posit oppositions
(thinking/feeling),
struggling to bottle
experience in the container
of language.

©sgreerpitt
Sunday July 12, 2009

One of the core principles of anthropology and sociology is that language is the primary interface between the human being and reality; that in order to know something, to think about something, we have to be able to capture it with words.

One of my favorite books in graduate school was Structures of the Life Worldby sociologists Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann (Volume I, 1973), a work in phenomenology which painstakingly examines the process by which humans use language to label, process and socially construct reality. Anthropologists/linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf went so far as to suggest that peoples that spoke different languages inhabited different realities -- an idea is called the "linguistic relativity hypothesis." [An aside: a wonderful novel that makes this hypothesis a key plot point is Juniper Time by Kate Wilhelm (1979)].

Twenty seven years of experience since graduate school supports the truth of these assertions about the necessity of language for thinking. But, and this is a big "but," there is a whole world of experience that goes beyond the grasp of "thinking" that cannot be encapsulated in language. The meditative techniques of Buddhism and other disciplines aim for that experience out side of thinking.

Beyond that there is the experience of being in the world. We may not be able to communicate this experience that transcends language, but it is there, we know it in our souls.

Painting "container" by sgreerpitt July 2009, using Corel Painter.