The cosmic perspective
Yesterday's HAP 101 discussion is still on my mind, in particular the interestingly-diagnostic reactions of people to that Alan Watts video and its Sagan-like wisdom that "Billions of years ago you were a Big Bang." (Carl's version: "We're starstuff, pondering the stars.") Point is, we're still bangin'... We are the universe, the cosmic "process" turned back on itself in wonder, pondering its destiny and (some of us) dreaming of something marvelous waiting to happen.
Interestingly diagnostic, I say, because some of us thrill to that cosmic perspective while others wrinkle their faces and complain that it somehow shrinks or demeans us to acknowledge our continuity with all those stars and the spaces between them, and all the bugs beneath our feet and the microbes beneath our skin, etc.
Continues at
Up@dawn 2.0
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding between what you're saying and what some (mostly James) was trying to point out on Thursday. It wasn't that the thought shrinks or demeans US, as people. It was that thinking about only being a continuous with the stars tends to shrink or demean our continuity with the bugs beneath our feet and microbes beneath our skin, to use your terminology :P
ReplyDeleteThe other point attempted was that with this focus on the stars, we may miss out on what we can do here-and-now as we're so fixated on the whole of the universe. To depict this, there's a pretty famous painting of Plato pointing upwards and Aristotle pointing downwards.
I don't think that anyone was complaining about the continuity, only that if we take it only in one aspect, we may forget about the REST of the continuity downwards instead of upwards.
Right, continuity has to go bottom up, from atoms to cosmos etc., and not leave out anything in between. Head in the stars, feet on the ground, and so on.
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