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coming of age
I used to be a Christian, Lutheran to be specific, ELCA (Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America) to be even more specific.
It’s not that I denounce Christianity now, but it is more so just
the fact that I no longer wish to associate myself with organized
groups of individuals that are, by definition, separated from each
other.
As humans, we have a tendency to try and fit everything into a box,
or sphere,
or triangular prism…
Whichever shape you prefer. We like things to be organized,
definable from some sort of objective disposition. We call this the
Scientific Method. The Scientific Method basically allows us to
make assumptions and then “prove” them by being right more times
than not.
What’s funny about the Scientific Method is that it is based in
deductive reasoning; making sense out of things through
deconstructing them to their core elements. And what’s funny about
that is that Plato is the one who developed deductive reasoning.
And what’s funny about that is that Plato also wrote Allegory of the
Cave, which has been a cornerstone to my experience as a human
being, and I will tell you why:
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he describes a scene where there
are people in a cave, who are shackled by the neck and legs so they
can hardly move at all. There is a fire behind them, and people are
behind the fire carrying “artifacts” back and forth, casting a
shadow which is all the people shackled to the ground can see.
Plato, through the character of Socrates, gives many scenarios from
here, but the one that has stuck with me is this:
One “prisoner” is let go, is allowed to go out of the cave. He is
frightened, but makes it outside still. When he returns and tells
his fellow “prisoners” about what he had seen, they simply do not
believe him. He is taken a fool, and all that he had learned is
disregarded because the others, the majority, had not seen it, and
therefore do not believe him.1
1 Plato. The Allegory of the Cave. Brea, CA: P & L Publication, 2010. Print.
In my high school, the science class “Earth Science” was “only for
stupid kids”. They had to take Earth Science before they could move
on to the more “prestigious” sciences; Biology, Chemistry and
Physics.
I don’t remember the equation for angular velocity, but I bet the
kids that took Earth Science remember how planets are made.
As “scientific” or “religious” or “spiritual” or “whatever” beings,
we still use this sort of deductive reasoning in our daily lives in
one way or another.
We still categorize people by race, gender, religion, location,
sexual preferences, lifestyle choices, “diets” (which I recently
found out derives from Latin as “a way of life”, but here, I’ll use
it to mean what our society has deemed it, “the type of food we
choose to eat on a daily basis”), the type of beer one likes to
drink, one’s transportation choices, political standpoints, whether
someone owns an android, iPhone, or a “non” smartphone,
“and so on” as Kurt Vonnegut says.
We categorize people by whether their beliefs align with ours or
not.
We categorize people by whether they see the same artifacts in the
cave we do or not.
We categorize people by whether they see what we see, or not.
*****************
I do not remember much from when I was younger, and by younger I
mean like 6 years ago and back. But I do remember watching the moon
in the car, and I probably remember this because I still do it.
When you drive in a car, and the moon is out
(and I suppose this happens with the Sun as well but it’s too
hard to look at the Sun
[I also enjoy that the Sun often gets to get capitalized,
but the moon often does not]),
it follows you. So when I would drive, or more so be driven around,
I would follow the moon following me. I would look at its many
scars and try to see the face in the moon,
and I hardly ever did.
But what I did see was a magnificent rock, or at least I’ve been
told it’s a rock.
And this rock and I would travel down the road together, whether it
was waxing or waning, bright or hardly visible, huge and red, or
tiny and blue, we never failed to travel side by side. And while we
did, all I could help but think is, “Where did you come from?”
When I was little, I used to think I would be an astronomer.
I thought space was probably the coolest thing that ever existed and
I had charts of the solar system and the constellations lining the
walls of my room to prove it.
Alas, it was just a fad in the many things I thought I loved or
thought I would become as a child. But even still, “Space”,
capital S-p-a-c-e,
has never ceased to, quite simply, blow my mind. How could it not?
How could you deny the absolute amazement that looking up at the sky
provides you at night?
Even in the cave-like nature of the Chicago sky, I knew that the
miniscule pin-pricks of light I could see were actually ginormous,
flaming balls of gas somewhere I will never go.
Some people think that the “sky” is a manufactured mechanism the
United States government came up with, but that is one of few
conspiracies I find hard to believe.
I do believe that the sky is a sky and not a “sky”,
but, at some point, I must realize that not everyone is going to see
things the way I do.
But that’s what great about Space… or the sky. Everyone can see it.
No matter where you are, who you are, what you are, if you have
working eyeball mechanisms, you have the ability to see something
everyone else does. Maybe not the same section or the same type of
sky, but we all have it.
So if you will allow me, let me provide you with a short
science/history lesson.
*****************
In space, there are bits (which we would probably call giant pieces)
of rocks and frozen ice floating everywhere. When gases exploded
out of a newly formed star, swirling around it, the gases pull these
floating rocks and frozen ice together so quickly and with such
intensity, that they melded together, becoming a planet.
Shortly after the formation of our planet, our moon was born. But
no one knows exactly how. Our lovely friends at NASA say that a
planetesimal (a forming planet) approximately the size of Mars was
traveling in an orbit that crossed paths with Earth and that the
impact of these two balls of rock, metal and ice, crashing into one
another was at least 100 times the force of the meteorite that is
said to have whipped dinosaurs from the face of our planet. When
this planetesimal side-swiped Earth, it caused chunks of the Earth’s
crust and mantle to break off. The heat that erupted from the
impact melted these chunks together, and formed our moon. 2
2 SSERVI. "NASA Scientist Jen Heldmann Describes How the Earth’s Moon Was Formed." Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute. SSERVI, n.d. Web. 16 June 2014. <http://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/nasa-scientist-jen-heldmann-describes-how-the-earths-moon-was-formed/>.
The moon may seem like a foreign rock revolving around us, with us,
but it was actually once a part of us. A part of us that was ripped
away billions of years ago, yet has never left us.
*****************
Whether you believe the sky was manufactured by the government or
that Christ died on the cross for your sins or that Buddha attained
enlightenment from meditating under a Bodhi tree or that technology
is ruining our youth or that your house was built on top of a sink
hole and it is going to collapse into the earth at any time, can you
really tell me you don’t think that this story of the moon’s
creation does not make you feel so miniscule and fragile and amazing
and powerful and beautiful all at the same time?
I like to think it made Plato feel that way.
A giant rock crashed into another giant rock and this udder
destruction created this other giant rock that become the giant rock
you’re from’s life partner? Became something that our giant rock
couldn’t function without?
A giant rock that you would die, or simply just not exist, if it
didn’t?
Maybe it’s just me, but this puts it all in perspective.
I don’t give a fuck what town your from or what color your skin is
or what kind of beer you like to drink (okay, I might make fun of
you if you drink Natty Light), we came from the same thing
whether you or I like it or not.
And all the destruction we are constantly being thrown into and
colliding with is going to keep creating a beautiful mystery that we
will never fully understand.
I’m not perfect.
I’m not always right.
I will always contradict myself.
And so will you.
But sometimes I feel like we are all tied to the floor of a cave.
And not a "giant, government manufactured sky” cave,
It’s much more complicated than that.
But I think when I saw the moon tonight
And saw it implode and reassemble itself again
A grain of moondust fell into my eye
Disembodied starlight.
And suddenly I think we are all much closer now.
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