A Wet Rock in Space

A Wet Rock in Space

Samuel Bird

Hurtling through space not in relation to a fixed point but relative to bodies similar to it, we careen through space on a wet rock. Despite many other galaxies with their solar systems, suns, and planets, our planet is special. Complex biochemical reactions culminated in life. These life forms then in turn became more complex as they sought to fit into the environment of that wet rock hurdling through space. They became more complex until at last it led to a lifeform that both was and was cognitively aware that it was. This life form had a will to live that was weeded out by the fact it got this far. This will, sought values to perpetuate the being. The wet rock could supply some of those values, but not all of them. This led to scarcity and effort around that scarcity. Additionally, this being that knew it existed, was now able to look around and wonder what the world was. With nothing but more mysteries from the sights it sensed, it wondered what it was. With no answers once again, it wondered what this world was as a mystery and its self as an enigma, related. Many saw this awareness they possessed in the world around them. They found evidence to substantiate it to themselves, but outside of its truth value, it was able to give them a meaning that undergirded all the sheer and brutal chance and contingency that made them. Their assumptions of the world having an ungirding reason, led them to seek to know it more. They learned more and more until at last, they found themselves becoming self-aware, faster than their own minds and hearts could keep up with. They then found those ideas of the world around them being aware as well, to be foolish. These beings that knew they were, now found themselves with no direction to go but forward. They studied and compiled their learnings. As their theories collided, they ignored this fact and instead found themselves desperately hoping to find something to hold on to. In a last-ditch effort, they tried to make the most paramount idea, the system that they related to each other by, their people and culture became their new ideas to keep them going. The awareness found in social entities was worse than within a being, and as such failed to be something helpful. In my age, we run up against a wall with no answers. Each part of the mysteries and curiosities that drove them on, found them losing any sense of value in the world. Love was a series of chemicals. Reason was found to uphold ideas that were whatever we wanted it to. Beauty was nothing more than a reminder of what our organism craves. Just when the world needed them most, the philosophers who were trained in this awareness, left people to fend for themselves. These poor creatures now curse the awareness that makes them unique. They have lost the myths that tied them to the world around them. There began to even be a breakdown in the one thing that kept these beings safe and sane all along; the pure company of those same other beings. Each of these claims about the world is epistemically contingent and I would not be surprised if at least a few fall apart within my lifetime. However, the perception of these facts is a fact to these beings. I find these creatures endearing and even adorable. I see their plight, and think that if any cause in the universe deserves attention, it is theirs. I want to address the three ways I see to best respond to this. Even in my failure to do so, I desire to try. 

Thinking takes tremendous amounts of resources and effort. Accruing information to think about is all the more difficult. While formal institutions continue on, I find the average person less interested in intellectually engaging with the world. This is in a time of powerful accessibility to what has already been accrued. I see people doing what they can to be less self-aware. Cursing what makes them extraordinary, they numb themselves with base experiences and use chemical compounds to not have to experience existence in all its abrasiveness. While it was always difficult to engage with the world, there used to be a given assumption that the engagement would lead to something better. This purpose drove our kind on, but as we found that the rainbow’s edge moved with every step, we quit moving. Science in its current iteration as I write this, makes no claims to truth, but rather says that it can bring about our desires. As it can’t check those desires, we engineer a world and a people who are increasingly unhealthy. The last of this awareness is being as aware as we need to be to not be more aware later. We create mediums of entertainment to distract us from the world around us and pleasures that don’t leave us hungry for answers. In this, we have found that pleasure could only offer so much. I posit that the response to this will eventually be, and will be if seek to not curse our awareness, that we make wisdom and knowledge something of merit for its own sake and not what it affords us. Rather than the utility of an invention, we would find the fact that we are epistemologically engaging with the world a good in itself. Our awareness would in turn still be a burden, but a burden we bear with honor as we bear it well. 

The pleasure mentioned prior, has been the sink of much human effort. We see the fallacious qualities of an idea as it is pushed to its extremes. This is how reductio ad absurdum operates. While utilitarianism didn’t take root in every sphere, I find its hedonic calculus permeating interpersonal relationships and people’s personal lives. To be fair, as a moral system, it values the pleasure of others, and the person considering the idea is not included in the equation, but there is a mix with egoism that results in both a focus on pleasure and that pleasure being toward the person making the choice. This system would have more merit if it considered the qualities that Mills added to his calculus, but no one is bright enough to run those numbers when a moment asks them for direction. As self-denial died, in its stead is this craving to fill the empty pit God and family once occupied, by various methods of self-soothing. Ancient traditions were aware of this as they found that in response to people looking toward their inevitable deaths, they would “eat, drink, and be merry.” I do agree that the impermanence of life and its impending closure necessitates value derision from life for us. However, I find that not only does pleasure not fill this need, but the search for it leaves a people and a given person hollow and the future all the darker. In my time, previous generations responded to what they saw as the death of God by having copious sexual exploits, spending all synthetic and natural resources, and doing whatever they could get value from others. This leaves young people in my time with shattered social trust, a depletion of resources, and even a deficit of value. I have walked down city streets that were made in the hope of creating the fruition of the human will, as it was filled with living corpses that took toxins to kill off their spirit, and slowly their bodies. The thing that causes the most pain is often the very thing we use to cope with general pain. For this reason, societies often double down on certain values as the result of those values is tearing them apart. The remedy is often the thing that society hates. In my age, it is magnanimity. For all the advances and the boom in population, other than a few rulers and artists, my time has remarkably few great people. Little thought is done outside of the normal parameters and everyone that was original and capable, used that power to harm other people. If great people found their way into the streets to speak new ideas and showcase those ideas with their character, our great envy and personal bitterness would make us ignore them and possibly silence them. If it is not a conducive time for noticeable greatness, then your own personal greatness will have to do. Your will to forgo pleasure for higher values, sacrifice for higher means, and labor when it feels painful, will not be noticeable to many. However, you will find value in your creation of it and even if it is too late and the world collapses around you, I can think of no greater honor than being the last example of the human spirit, fighting for value as it falls apart. 

Up until now, I have found myself focusing on my society too much, and not as much on the experience of finding oneself on this little rock. How then can we respond to the facts and the great fact of our being plunged into existence? A response I often see is to see it as absurd. There is no center of the universe and plans for its creation, so it is seen as some random and silly fact. I appreciate the humor this adds and I am differentiating this from Camus’s absurdism. I think that we get we do not get to choose what facts we find. However, we get to pick how we find them. This awareness we harbor or perhaps are, is rare. Out of all the matter in the universe, such a small amount possesses this trait, that we may as well round to zero. Rocks don’t know they are rocks. Stars don’t have the ability to experience and know they are. This wet rock, can’t comprehend that it is. While we are limited in what we are and can do, we still are something that can be aware that it can do something. When I sought to curse and wish away this ability in me, I was reminded that the time would come when I wouldn’t be able to know that I was anymore. It was rare that anything ever could. This punctuation to the sentence of life gave its predicate a rich meaning. At the very least, I am grateful I am aware. More than just being happy for the task before us, I build meaning on the very fact that I am not a rock. For, a rock doesn’t know that it is. All the confusion, pain, and agony that come from this experience allows me ecstasy, wonder, and knowledge. Even without each of which, the suffering is something unto myself. If the rest of my life was the most bitter of pain, this pain as my only option becomes the best one. 

When I was younger, I came back home after many months working on cattle ranches. While I was gone, my mother purchased an organ you operated by pumping your feet. She was going to turn it into a desk as it was broken. Because it was one hundred and fifty years old, I wanted to see if I could fix it first. I spent hours taking it apart, dusting it out, and placing things in such a way I could make a sound come out. I then sat in front of it as she was amazed. I pumped my feet and began to play. A quiet and strange sound came out. There were little nobs above the keyboard. One by one, I pulled each “stop,” as they are called, out and began to play. The sound grew until it became full, rich, and beautiful. I am asking you to pull your stops. I am asking you to not dumb down the painful pursuit of knowledge but to run through its wilderness. I am asking you to not give into pleasure, but seek greatness. I am asking you to not find your awareness pathetic, but to see it as the only access to find anything of any value. I seek whatever I can for this being dashing through space. These three things seem like a good answer for today. One day, you and I will die. We will quit being aware as this same wet rock in space continues flying around the universe. When that day comes, I hope we can say that didn’t live in a quiet and weak tone, but allowed the full sound of our notes to ring out. This wet rock will forget us, but if it could think, we would be seen as unforgettable.