Is all of human existence trending towards a more complex, more advanced society, or are we dead set on decaying? We seem to defy entropy, but are we really masking our descent into chaos with new, ever-increasingly intricate coats of paint? Perhaps it is just my recent read of Emerson's Nature, but I am struck blind with how bright our lies have become. Emerson (and before him, Plato) believed that language was man's translation of the essence of nature into some thin, factitious contrivance, and that we must get back to that natural essence or we cannot claim to know anything. I agree with Emerson, but not in the way that is immediately apparent.
We have a grasp of biology, physics, medicine, anthropology, and so many more things that, as we are loath to admit, seem to not have a fundament (oh that word and its uses). The more we know about the Earth, the more we are surprised--the more we know about space, the more we are surprised. I hazard to say that in all of the human record, there is less that we actually claim to know (for the moment) than all information we were damned certain were facts at the time. There is just a flat disc, there is just this one sphere, the heavens revolve around us, we are the only solar system, and it keeps continuing. What is beyond this multiverse? Are there multiverses of multiverses? Manifold, entangled, writhing strings of multiverses tied up like some bundle in a sea of other bundles? That we claim, as a race, to know anything for certain is ridiculous. Death, taxes, and now- uncertainty.
I'm sure I am not the first one to think this theory. If anything, the self-contained paradox of the field of meta-epistemology has ensured, if anything, a half-assed attempt to say something along those lines without making us sound like the apish children we are. We still wage useless war, we still have xenophobia and prejudices deeply rooted into our cultures. Sure, some of us have sought to rise above that pettiness, but that we feel that way puts a prejudice between the "enlightened" and the rest. I don't mean to exclude myself in all this business; in no way do I presume to be up an ivory tower.
Still, all of our attempts to know things can't be discarded or we would just wallow in nihilism or hedonism; either way we'd be getting screwed. It's those outlying people--those who were driven by good (or even evil) intentions who pushed the envelope--that have truly made "progress." I feel depressed when I think that somewhere on this planet, at any given moment, someone somewhere is being punished for thinking outside that proverbial and cliched box. There is an infathomable distance between knowledge and wisdom; fact and truth. Or is there a difference at all. An educated man knows exactly how his heart will stop beating, a self-taught man simply knows that it will.
Seamus Heany is perhaps the most deft at these sorts of disparities. He, I think, sees everything in a long view, and I know it doesn't make him feel any better, because how could it? When we know everything we aim at knowing, will that satisfy what parts of us remain empty? Will we remain as Heany's fisherman, the dawn-sniffing revenant? I long for my proper haunt--well out, beyond.
'Now, you’re supposed to be
An educated man,’
I hear him say. ‘Puzzle me
The right answer to that one.’
No comments:
Post a Comment