Time is an illusion?

I suppose what some people (Einstein, Spinoza) mean by that is that the human perspective, from which time is all too real, is limited. True enough, but who really wants to live timelessly?

It's fun to recall Douglas Adams' Ford Prefect: "time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so." I have no idea what that means, but if time were an illusion it would be literally un-recallable, and that would be sad.

deadlines

Stick a Babel Fish in your ear

"A final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God"-

I've got a secret

A colleague admitted, this afternoon, that he'd only recently learned of "The Secret." But he wanted urgently to know: What is it? Well, it's the "law of attraction":

Thoughts have physical power. Thinking about something is the way to get it. If you want to stay poor, keep obsessing about your poverty; if you want to be rich, imagine yourself rich.

I'm sure there's got to be more to it than that, but how much more? We'll see, in my Fall course "Happiness and the Secret of Life."

We'll explore other "secrets" too, on our way to deciding if there really are any secrets worth paying for. Candidates include DNA, natural selection, attention, compassion, selflessness, diversion, and low expectations.

But I'm still partial to "42" myself.

nihilism & happiness

“Nihilism stands at the door,” wrote Nietzsche.  “Whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?” 


So begin Sean Kelly's "Stone" reflections in the Times the other day. He doesn't explain exactly what Nietzsche meant by "God is dead," and this statement suggests that he hasn't spent much time in the heartland:

Today’s religious believers feel strong social pressure to admit that someone who doesn’t share their religious belief might nevertheless be living a life worthy of their admiration. 

I meet many who don't seem to feel the pressure at all.


But Kelly makes a fascinating connection in this essay to Herman Melville, whose message he translates as encouragement to

 find happiness and meaning... not in some universal religious account of the order of the universe that holds for everyone at all times, but rather in the local and small-scale commitments that animate a life well-lived.  The meaning that one finds in a life dedicated to “the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country,” these are genuine meanings.  They are, in other words, completely sufficient to hold off the threat of nihilism, the threat that life will dissolve into a sequence of meaningless events.  

Wish I'd had that interpretation of the whale-hunter's intent back when my undergrad profs had me reading Pierre and Moby Dick. (Douglas Adams' whale might have helped, too.)


"All writing is re-writing," and maybe the best reading is re-reading. Bear that in mind, students, as you prepare for next week's exams. 

without faith

Don't Panic

Douglas Adams was not exactly a rational optimist, but Melvyn Bragg's interview with him makes me happy and hopeful.

the miracle of evolution

I've been reading-- okay, listening to-- The Greatest Show on Earth, read by the author and his talented wife (the actress Lalla Ward). Whatever you may think of Richard Dawkins' aggressive brand of atheism, there's no denying his passionate commitment to the public understanding of evolution. The dog angle here is a nice touch, too.

What I think is that evolution makes it possible to live without old-time religion, but doesn't answer the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Not yet, anyway... but we do seem to be moving in that direction, understanding more of the complexity of life and its origins every day. For instance:

The probability is next to nil that highly complex molecules like RNA, DNA and proteins got created spontaneously through purely random or chance processes. However, the nearly-impossible became possible, i.e. the unlikely set of events became likely, through the mechanism of autocatalysis.

“The more we learn about the unbelievably complex, immensely varied, and yet simultaneously simple origin and development of life on earth, the more it looks like a miracle, and one that is still unfolding. The miracle of evolution.”

philosophy and mortality

Philosophy teaches us, among other things, how to die: that was today's main lesson, on the first day of Intro to Philosophy. (See Simon Critchley's Book of Dead Philosophers for palatably-told details.)

Douglas Adams' whale didn't learn that lesson, but of course he didn't really need to: his own demise was quick and unexpected. That's true enough for plenty of humans, too, but if we're being brutally honest with ourselves most of us will admit our natural mortality. Then, we must seek some form or other of accommodation to the unpleasant fact. Religion is the adaptation of choice for most people in this culture. Philosophy thus has a lot of catching up to do. Our work is cut out, stay tuned.

Dingo's kidneys

Really coulda used a Babel Fish at the retreat yesterday, I'd happily have told a few folks where to stick it. (Maybe this will be developed as a killer app for the iTouch, if it hasn't already. There is in fact a translator site at babelfish.altavista.com.) This "argument," btw, is not so different from the way "scholastics" used to think. Some actually still do. And then, of course, there's the design argument for the spaghetti monster.

A new signature

January seems like a good time to try out a new email signature. Nothing wrong with the old ones, they're just... old.

This worked especially well last month:

"Remember when old December's darkness is everywhere about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming down at the mouth of the Amazon, for instance, as freshly as in the first morning of creation." -William James

And this was a good signature for all seasons:

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." -Douglas Adams

But I think I'll begin the new year with this, wordy though it is:

"It is no accident that our kind of life finds itself on a planet whose temperature, rainfall and everything else are exactly right. If the planet were suitable for another kind of life, it is that other kind of life that would have evolved here. But we as individuals are still hugely blessed. Privileged, and not just privileged to enjoy our planet. More, we are granted the opportunity to understand why our eyes are open, and why they see what they do, in the short time before they close forever... Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?" -Richard Dawkins