Thursday, February 5, 2009

I DON'T KNOW WHAT MY OCCUPATION IS! BUT I AGREE WITH LES BELDO:

Poetically stated, humans are halfway between atoms and stars – the number of atoms in a human body roughly equals the number of humans it would take to equal the mass of the average star. Our species evolved, and we ourselves developed, in a medium-sized world. It was there that we learned how to think. We are understandably baffled by things that happen on a very large (cosmological) or very small (quantum) scale, and only mathematics gives us clues as to what goes on in those domains. Similarly, our world is entirely populated by finite objects, most of which have a clear beginning and end. Thus, we can’t get our heads around something that goes on and on forever in time or space (except for our own lives, which we can’t comprehend as finite because being alive is all we’ve ever known). And although accepting the relativity of meaning leaves us with no one defining purpose, no grand Aristotelian Good toward which we can strive, it does equip us with the ability to construct local paradigms and find meaning within them. That may not sound lofty or magnificent, but it gives us the greatest of gifts: the ability to scratch out a meaningful existence here, with each other, somewhere between atoms and stars.

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