Looking at a computer is tough. So long as we are transfixed by the images we see, it is good. But the minute something objectionable appears on screen, the electricity starts interfering with our sanity.
Electricity is the one feature that distinguishes us almost unrecognizably from the ages preceding us. The zip and thrash of lightning has been harnessed, and we have manipulated it to transmit information. That is a feat, to be sure. The more astounding thing, though, is that it works.
Somehow, when the universe was made – or, as it was making itself – it left room for the proper tandem functioning of microchips and, by jove, electricity. Put another way, it has always been possible for computers to work, but now they do. Something has changed. Looking into the mind of man might shed some light on the reason.
Do we think something new has gotten into the mind of man? Well where did it come from?
The conventional wisdom says that we learned from our predecessors and built new knowledge on preexisting information. But what if it was a new force? What if mankind was being struck by something new right now? Perhaps we have a different way of relating to ourselves than we did before.
Let's take a look at that.
Let's name some things that are different now than the past. Yoga, nutrition, exercise -- there is more emphasis on the body, the health of the body. Music, too. Music is new. We are walking around with it attached to our bodies now; it does not solely exist in concert halls.
Let's go to the beginning. We must say: there is a force that we are not responsible for. The universe is a given. We came from it; we did not make it.
More and more, life seems to be becoming a patchwork. It is attributable to the proliferation of images, which is attributable to electricity. The only thing we have to guard against the images is our bodies. We seldom think of that, but we are bodies first. That is the one thing about ourselves that we cannot entirely account for. We seem quite clearly to be the originators of our mind's activity (though no doubt we experience exceptions from time to time), but our bodies -- there's something we can't story. We just got them. We can trim and make improvements on them, but as a rock only flies when somebody throws it, we can only adjust our body to our liking because we have it.
It is customary now to break down into a philosophical discussion about why we are here and just what is our gosh darn purpose -- but I would like to eschew that one for a more elementary remark: we are here.
It is not nearly as obvious as you think. That we are here. This doesn't have to be here. The universe doesn't have to be here. But it is. When the diligent mind examines this fact, it compares our "hereness" against nothingness. When it returns, it is jolted into the present. Go ahead, imagine. No images, no feelings, no magic, no bodies, nothing, void.
Now turn on the lights. Amazing. It's here. We exist. Hooray!! But now comes the trouble of living, which, I might guess, everyone has experienced, and we forget (or never have the privilege of knowing) the fundamental amazement of being here.
That is fine. I'm not here to endorse appreciating life, though the benefits should be self-evident. I am here to talk about the not-knowing. The fact that there are things that we do not know and that they are constantly hurtling themselves toward us in time. This language is not an accident: questions about the universe are not going away from us - they are coming toward us.