Ramble of rambles

I’m tired of all the conflict. I’m tired of negativity. I’m even tired of all questions, except one: What is the universe? That question, of course, could be phrased as several questions. One of the most irksome to me is: Is there such a thing as nothing? Is there no space between somethings? This surely seems possible to me if we allow that everything is built of one base element which we’d have to accept was irreducible. But then, what if there really is just one element – one particle that gives the appearance of differentiating itself into many different things and energies, simply by contorting here and there? Might it not shape-shift – infinitesimal near-nothing to expanding universe (maybe with no “big bang” explosion)?

We are faced with many paradoxes: Human concept of existence must disintegrate at every turn. Large can never be largest. Small can never be smallest. Time can never be quickest or slowest, or ever begin or ever end. Another paradox is that human genius can know a lot yet know nothing. We only react by determinism (that seems like freedom), and we only react to perception – to one’s self. That’s not knowledge, though it seems so (another paradox).

I think these are natural sights and intuitions that everyone should have if they tried. But that would mean the human best understanding, alpha to omega, must totally miss the boat on the nature of the universe. We can’t grasp it, will never understand it. Fortunately, as Woody Allen said, we can still get a good steak there.

I dislike walking around so ignorant. Adding insult to injury, there are brief moments when I feel trapped in the universe: nowhere else to go! We are stuck in this box! That is obviously a psychological aberration, but a valid one. A valid aberration – a paradox. There is also the paradox of child and adult. A healthy, untraumatized child has a great sense of meaning – strong feeling, love, wonder, fascination. But he hasn’t been smacked by the stupid news of mortality, and is too limited to be resigned or deadened to routine: He is ignorant. The adult has this “wisdom,” but has mostly lost the child’s blind enthusiasm and meaning-as-feeling: He is meaningless.

I have felt sorry for trees and animals. They are so alive, yet so jailed: by being planted still, by their instinct and a non- or minimally conceptual mind. I think we people are luckier to be able to suffer meaninglessness and ask unanswerable questions.

Do I want to live forever? Probably, but in a tolerable way. That would be to have a long lifetime then sleep a long, long sleep, a few hundred millennia. Then awaken. But . . . would that actually be a refreshing absence? Or would the monotony of living pick up right where it left off, with all that hiatus unnoticed? We may get to find out, if after our death and countless eons, all our atoms chance together again. We are back! How would that be?

A good day for me is when life seems as meaningful as a piece of fine classical music – a certain Percy Grainger or Chopin or Rachmaninoff, or Arcangelo Corelli or some others. All: the ultimate meaning, all illusion.