Motley questiony stuff

I.

I can’t see any way out of the assumption that the universe’s original stamp was to be composed of a countless number of unknowable specks. There was never a One, but only the Many. A “big bang” could not have produced uniform rudimentary objects: It could only have released what first existed. There’s no other sensible way to conceive the puzzle. Does an artist paint a green field then say he invented blue and yellow? Does a wrecking ball destroy a wall and create the matter of it? No – it releases smaller parts or objects that already exist. There had to be the elements before there was their carrier.

But that seems nonsensical, too. God or no god, why would the incredible All have originated with a most tedious plethora of spots that would later combine in all the kaleidoscopic ways?

Of course, this unanswerable question is just one of a team of unanswerables. Isn’t it a huge conceit that we judge “small” or “fundamental” by the standard of our own eyes? A superstring could be gigantic next to its tinier constituents. And one of those pieces might be galaxy-size, relative to its own innards. It also seems pompous to suggest that there is something so small that the next step is nothingness. What if there’s an infinite regress in “somethings”?

I’m not good at imagining that a Consciousness is behind it all. Consciousness is very dethroned and deflated in my book. We have an illusion of deepness or abstractness or character or emotional meaning because of our nerves, chemistry, our brain, and it changes with the quantumy gyrations inside us. We are just part of the infinite cogwheels. But contemplating the fact of existence, I sometimes think there is some primary element or urge of Necessity that forced nothing to become something. Necessity was the cosmic force, or even principle, that predated time, energy, space. It would, we could say, be “composed” of the truth that there cannot be “nothing.” So the moment there was nothing, Necessity jerked it inside-out. That doesn’t sound glamorous, but it may be the only theory I can believe in.

II.

If some “collective unconscious” of cultural pressure, infecting age to age, had never happened, would human beings feel a need to create the unnecessary? Expressed another way, would it be more true of healthy human nature to be a happy shepherd who does the same daily tasks from youth to grave, or to be a person urged by love or itch to write stories, design buildings, make art? I myself have a felt need to write, but in my case it’s neurotic. I can’t tell as a general principle. What does make sense to me is an inner magnetism to discovery: Even many a depressed person could wonder what is out there, or below us, or inside things, and have some interest in knowing. But other kinds of creativity? To me it seems both absurd and necessary: I don’t respect that shepherd. I want him to look through a telescope or be stirred to write songs. But I don’t know why.

III.

A troubled client text-messaged me recently. Baseline suicidal, she still goes to join the world and will soon be training for a “pedestrian exotic” career that will take her far from her home and her relations. She asked me: “What else can I do besides meditate when I’m faced with stress?” This was smart-phoning, and probably not created with the same kind of depth that face-to-face answers or therapy would make. I wrote:

Silent inner focus (breathing). No-mind – get out of the world for a little time. That keeps you from feeling that it owns you. You are ultimately in charge of the world. “It is good,” you might say, as ultimately it is true.

Hours later, she wrote: “How is it done?”

Well, it’s something that is in my personal arsenal of possibilities – feeling that the world has no established meanings that I must accept and give in to; no urge to action that I would avoid at my peril. Other people have reclaimed that fact of ultimate autonomy and freedom. By, for example, not watching tv news or reading newspapers for weeks or months, and feeling that they now completely own their life. I highly recommend trying to go to that place. It is a valid fact. It is, though, true that anxiety can make you feel you are a helpless shred in the world and must be or do things it or people require. But that is false.

Is this only my own idea, or experience, or is it legitimate psychology? My young client is anxiously attached to her mother, to some debts, to a peremptory push of “responsibility” given her by her culture. I don’t know if these “specialties” grew from that original, felt cosmic indentured bond to the world that I’ve had to corner and disarm during some anxious times. That inarticulate sense (like Betty Friedan’s “problem that has no name”) surely comes from childhood, where the world owned us, where we were not autonomous. Though I believe, from my “pessimistic” perspective, that most people did not actually grow to their adult self but adopted it, this act of jumping off the globe’s ride should still be one adult gift they give themselves, maybe a necessary one.

*        *        *

So, three kinds of necessity that have nothing to do with each other. Or do they?