Imagine you're floating in a void. A completely empty, endless, featureless void. There's nothing to see or hear, nothing to hold on to, nowhere to travel to, there's no aims or dangers, no past or future, there's absolutely no sensory input whatsoever.
Pretty soon, I guarantee you, you'll start to hallucinate. Its the ultimate nightmare we simply can't deal with.
You might imagine a floor, because somewhere has to be up. You might imagine a hand rail or an escalator or some other object to manipulate to move around. You'll eventually dream up other characters to talk to, to love and hate. Entire stories will begin to take shape in your mind. You'll make up memories, myths and mysteries. All because, in the words of T.S. Eliot, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality".
Do you disagree? Do you think loneliness wouldn't eventually send you mad?
But what loneliness? Isn't the Earth teeming with billions of creative, interesting people? Aren't there numerous natural wonders on and above our planet? Surely we're pre-occupied enough to have no need for imaginary friends? Perhaps that's dead wrong. Sure we're distracted, but at the highest levels of thought, in the deepest depths of our imagination (cue: creepy 2001 music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWnmCu3U09w ) we sense we're floating in a moral void.
Beyond the soap operas, COD games and reality TV shows. Beyond even sayings of the Lord's Prayer and admiring Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork we can see that morally nothing is inherently solid. Nothing is fundamentally set in stone and it appears that no meaning is inherent in our existence. We don't see 'It is bad to kill others' or 'individual self-interest is inherently good' written in the stars. The answer to the ultimate question, what is the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything would seem to be 'nothing, so whatever you damn well please'.
So should we feel free to take a blank slate and set our imaginations to work? Are we forced to judge philosophy and create our religions based merely on style because substance is impossible? Is there any alternative?
Lets go back to the original analogy. Maybe reality isn't completely featureless. In fact, there's a lot of cool stuff out there. Do you know what a magnetar is, or understand how dark energy works? No, neither do I, maybe we could devote some of our time to finding out?
Lets re-examine the 'void'. There would seem to be some inherent things written out there for us to discover. The speed of light, absolute zero temperature, general relativity and gravity seem to be set in stone. Maybe reality isn't featureless, but rather its the next worse thing, we fear its 'understandable'. You know how you eventually get bored with things? The universe would seem to be like that. If a void is completely featureless except its coloured purple, then once you understand that, the level of interest it holds goes straight back to it being a complete void. We hunger for another mystery, something we don't yet understand. We go mad without it.
So sure, it seems that science will eventually reach a dead end. Once we master physics, biology, chemistry, psychology and every other field of science covering the physical world. We'll become gods of the universe, understanding how every aspect of it works, and then it will truly become a void. Utterly devoid of mystery, what the hell do we do then?
This is the nightmare ending that philosophers have forseen. This quote here, that I heard ages ago but didn't really understand at the time sums that conclusion up-
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." - Robert Jastrow
In a way this is amazing foresight. It sums up the idea that we should reject rigorous scientific thought in favor of coming up with our own self-comforting faith. But in the end I have to disagree. I don't think those theologians have scaled the peak at all, they've merely foreseen what it will look like. They're like a kid who's gotten a new PC game and reasons, 'why should I bother playing? Once I have, I'll have nothing to do anyway.'
Yeah kid, but you still play the game.
Pretty soon, I guarantee you, you'll start to hallucinate. Its the ultimate nightmare we simply can't deal with.
You might imagine a floor, because somewhere has to be up. You might imagine a hand rail or an escalator or some other object to manipulate to move around. You'll eventually dream up other characters to talk to, to love and hate. Entire stories will begin to take shape in your mind. You'll make up memories, myths and mysteries. All because, in the words of T.S. Eliot, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality".
Do you disagree? Do you think loneliness wouldn't eventually send you mad?
But what loneliness? Isn't the Earth teeming with billions of creative, interesting people? Aren't there numerous natural wonders on and above our planet? Surely we're pre-occupied enough to have no need for imaginary friends? Perhaps that's dead wrong. Sure we're distracted, but at the highest levels of thought, in the deepest depths of our imagination (cue: creepy 2001 music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWnmCu3U09w ) we sense we're floating in a moral void.
Beyond the soap operas, COD games and reality TV shows. Beyond even sayings of the Lord's Prayer and admiring Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork we can see that morally nothing is inherently solid. Nothing is fundamentally set in stone and it appears that no meaning is inherent in our existence. We don't see 'It is bad to kill others' or 'individual self-interest is inherently good' written in the stars. The answer to the ultimate question, what is the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything would seem to be 'nothing, so whatever you damn well please'.
So should we feel free to take a blank slate and set our imaginations to work? Are we forced to judge philosophy and create our religions based merely on style because substance is impossible? Is there any alternative?
Lets go back to the original analogy. Maybe reality isn't completely featureless. In fact, there's a lot of cool stuff out there. Do you know what a magnetar is, or understand how dark energy works? No, neither do I, maybe we could devote some of our time to finding out?
Lets re-examine the 'void'. There would seem to be some inherent things written out there for us to discover. The speed of light, absolute zero temperature, general relativity and gravity seem to be set in stone. Maybe reality isn't featureless, but rather its the next worse thing, we fear its 'understandable'. You know how you eventually get bored with things? The universe would seem to be like that. If a void is completely featureless except its coloured purple, then once you understand that, the level of interest it holds goes straight back to it being a complete void. We hunger for another mystery, something we don't yet understand. We go mad without it.
So sure, it seems that science will eventually reach a dead end. Once we master physics, biology, chemistry, psychology and every other field of science covering the physical world. We'll become gods of the universe, understanding how every aspect of it works, and then it will truly become a void. Utterly devoid of mystery, what the hell do we do then?
This is the nightmare ending that philosophers have forseen. This quote here, that I heard ages ago but didn't really understand at the time sums that conclusion up-
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." - Robert Jastrow
In a way this is amazing foresight. It sums up the idea that we should reject rigorous scientific thought in favor of coming up with our own self-comforting faith. But in the end I have to disagree. I don't think those theologians have scaled the peak at all, they've merely foreseen what it will look like. They're like a kid who's gotten a new PC game and reasons, 'why should I bother playing? Once I have, I'll have nothing to do anyway.'
Yeah kid, but you still play the game.
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