Why do critters, such as us, who have a history of evolution
that is millions of years long, who so plainly now are
what we had never been before, so attracted to absolutes?
Nothing is what it used to be! Certainly not we!
When, as our stories used to suggest, we could think
that the whole universe was perhaps only 6,000 years old,
it might have been possible to pretend that everything
was pretty much what it had always been. We know now
that modern humans have been around for a couple of hundred
thousand years, and modern human behavior is about
50,000 years old. That sounds like a long time, but
fifty thousand is scarcely a measurable fraction of the age
of the universe, which is something like 14,000,000,000 years.
Does 5/1,400,000 mean anything to you?
A lot happens in 6,000. years.
A lot more happens in 14,000,000,000 years.
It is safe to say that nothing is the same.
Even so, as creatures of endless change,
we pretend that some things are absolutely true.
Maybe it is because our time horizons are very short,
and the play in which we are actors is very long.
I wrote a short story, once, in which I pretended
that the carp in Lake Nokomis had worked their way
up the Mississippi River to settle, finally, in Minnesota.
That is about 1,200 miles. If the carp had 50,000 years
to travel up from New Orleans, that would be about
four inches a day. He could handle that by rolling over
once a day, although he might rather decide to nose
upstream about ten-twelve feet a month!
No point in being hasty! Lots of time!
Permanence is a delusion gained by ignoring time.
Permanent ideas are delusions, too, maintained
by pretending that we have neither a past nor a future.
Science knows that whatever it knows is provisional;
that someday we will know a little better. There are
no eternal truths in science, but there is a lot of curiosity,
a lot of serious thought, and a lot of testing of ideas
to discover what seems to work best, for now.
The carp have not always been in Lake Nokomis.
There was not always a Lake Nokomis, either,
nor have there always been human beings, or Republicans
or Democrats or a Constitution or Caucasians.
A little perspective might take us a long ways
toward each other; maybe by rolling over about once a day,
or nosing upstream a little each week.
that is millions of years long, who so plainly now are
what we had never been before, so attracted to absolutes?
Nothing is what it used to be! Certainly not we!
When, as our stories used to suggest, we could think
that the whole universe was perhaps only 6,000 years old,
it might have been possible to pretend that everything
was pretty much what it had always been. We know now
that modern humans have been around for a couple of hundred
thousand years, and modern human behavior is about
50,000 years old. That sounds like a long time, but
fifty thousand is scarcely a measurable fraction of the age
of the universe, which is something like 14,000,000,000 years.
Does 5/1,400,000 mean anything to you?
A lot happens in 6,000. years.
A lot more happens in 14,000,000,000 years.
It is safe to say that nothing is the same.
Even so, as creatures of endless change,
we pretend that some things are absolutely true.
Maybe it is because our time horizons are very short,
and the play in which we are actors is very long.
I wrote a short story, once, in which I pretended
that the carp in Lake Nokomis had worked their way
up the Mississippi River to settle, finally, in Minnesota.
That is about 1,200 miles. If the carp had 50,000 years
to travel up from New Orleans, that would be about
four inches a day. He could handle that by rolling over
once a day, although he might rather decide to nose
upstream about ten-twelve feet a month!
No point in being hasty! Lots of time!
Permanence is a delusion gained by ignoring time.
Permanent ideas are delusions, too, maintained
by pretending that we have neither a past nor a future.
Science knows that whatever it knows is provisional;
that someday we will know a little better. There are
no eternal truths in science, but there is a lot of curiosity,
a lot of serious thought, and a lot of testing of ideas
to discover what seems to work best, for now.
The carp have not always been in Lake Nokomis.
There was not always a Lake Nokomis, either,
nor have there always been human beings, or Republicans
or Democrats or a Constitution or Caucasians.
A little perspective might take us a long ways
toward each other; maybe by rolling over about once a day,
or nosing upstream a little each week.
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