Andrew MacLaren-Scott's Blog, page 64
August 12, 2015
August 10, 2015
August 9, 2015
The Life and Times of Don QuiScottie de l'Écosse: 1 - Puzzled
I became extremely puzzled rather early on in life, at about the age of two, for I learned of kings and princes and noblemen and felt there must have been some mistake in placing me among the plebian masses instead of in some fine palace where I clearly belonged. Only very recently have I finally realised why I was set down among such a lowly crowd. What clever creator might have ordained such an act of genius, as to place my nobility where it could best learn, and serve and teach? For me to live and walk amongst the dull deluded folk, while being myself so free of self-delusion? Clearly, if there is such a god then she must be almost as noble and wise as myself.
But my formative years were spent forever feeling that I had been wrongly placed, although gradually learning to nobly cope with this great error and do the best I could to live alongside other people's clear inadequacies.
There were many further puzzles awaiting me, but I will jump nimbly over them all, for a while, to arrive at the evening when I found myself in a tavern and rather burdened by the effect of imbibing too much of what it had to offer. I ended up gazing at a mirror so full of jumbled faces that it looked like a foaming sea, and focusing on the one pair of eyes whose head contained the thoughts I knew, because inside that head was me. But then I began thinking... drunkenly... are they all me? In the reflected images it was very easy to imagine my thoughts in any head, or in all of them. This was the first inkling perhaps, of the thought that we are all just parts of one and the same great conscious sea. And so the concept of self identity began to puzzle me, until I had another drink. The puzzles soon evaporated after that, for a while.
But puzzles, many puzzles, all is puzzles. The where did we come from, why are we here, what are we really and what is really going on puzzles that fill my noble head while all around is vanity, vanity, all is vanity (as I recall that someone long ago did say), to which I would add: inanity, inanity, all is inanity. It is all very puzzling indeed. But one puzzle, my first puzzle, was resolved when I realised I must surely be something much greater that a mere Earthly nobleman, and had clearly been placed among you for a purpose that now becomes more evident to me each day. And so poor people of Earth, let us begin with an appraisal of your situation.
Frankly my dears, you are lost.
You are creatures composed of interacting particles of matter, yet, none of you knows what matter is, and when you analyse it in depth its seeming solidity vanishes into a world of mysterious quantum forces and fields. You are awed by convincing tales of all the matter of the universe emerging from a cataclysm you call the big bang, but at the point of the big bang your descriptions fail, become meaningless, and return you to a state of incomprehension in face of the 'where did we come from' question. You present stories of the origins of life that are, in truth, sketchy and untested possibilities. You don't know how, or even where in the universe, life began. Your brains are considered to sustain the thoughts that let you ponder these things, and you have uncovered wondrous mechanisms that let nerve cells communicate, but you know essentially nothing about what 'thinking' really is, or how consciousness can arise from mere matter. You live out your lives in the belief that you have freewill and responsibility, yet nowhere in your physics, chemistry or biology can you find any mechanism that would actually allow you to be truly free. But, you can communicate wirelessly, walk on the moon, fly round the world and cure or prevent so many diseases; and what you have discovered about what’s going on is admittedly fascinating, and useful, but it still leaves you with no clue about the meaning of it all, really. So here you all are, as I walk among you, all stumbling around in a vast multi-dimensional puzzle and trying to make some sense of it.
Admit it, dear people, you are lost. You need help.
[The previous part of this tale can be found by clicking this link]
But my formative years were spent forever feeling that I had been wrongly placed, although gradually learning to nobly cope with this great error and do the best I could to live alongside other people's clear inadequacies.
There were many further puzzles awaiting me, but I will jump nimbly over them all, for a while, to arrive at the evening when I found myself in a tavern and rather burdened by the effect of imbibing too much of what it had to offer. I ended up gazing at a mirror so full of jumbled faces that it looked like a foaming sea, and focusing on the one pair of eyes whose head contained the thoughts I knew, because inside that head was me. But then I began thinking... drunkenly... are they all me? In the reflected images it was very easy to imagine my thoughts in any head, or in all of them. This was the first inkling perhaps, of the thought that we are all just parts of one and the same great conscious sea. And so the concept of self identity began to puzzle me, until I had another drink. The puzzles soon evaporated after that, for a while.
But puzzles, many puzzles, all is puzzles. The where did we come from, why are we here, what are we really and what is really going on puzzles that fill my noble head while all around is vanity, vanity, all is vanity (as I recall that someone long ago did say), to which I would add: inanity, inanity, all is inanity. It is all very puzzling indeed. But one puzzle, my first puzzle, was resolved when I realised I must surely be something much greater that a mere Earthly nobleman, and had clearly been placed among you for a purpose that now becomes more evident to me each day. And so poor people of Earth, let us begin with an appraisal of your situation.
Frankly my dears, you are lost.
You are creatures composed of interacting particles of matter, yet, none of you knows what matter is, and when you analyse it in depth its seeming solidity vanishes into a world of mysterious quantum forces and fields. You are awed by convincing tales of all the matter of the universe emerging from a cataclysm you call the big bang, but at the point of the big bang your descriptions fail, become meaningless, and return you to a state of incomprehension in face of the 'where did we come from' question. You present stories of the origins of life that are, in truth, sketchy and untested possibilities. You don't know how, or even where in the universe, life began. Your brains are considered to sustain the thoughts that let you ponder these things, and you have uncovered wondrous mechanisms that let nerve cells communicate, but you know essentially nothing about what 'thinking' really is, or how consciousness can arise from mere matter. You live out your lives in the belief that you have freewill and responsibility, yet nowhere in your physics, chemistry or biology can you find any mechanism that would actually allow you to be truly free. But, you can communicate wirelessly, walk on the moon, fly round the world and cure or prevent so many diseases; and what you have discovered about what’s going on is admittedly fascinating, and useful, but it still leaves you with no clue about the meaning of it all, really. So here you all are, as I walk among you, all stumbling around in a vast multi-dimensional puzzle and trying to make some sense of it.
Admit it, dear people, you are lost. You need help.
[The previous part of this tale can be found by clicking this link]
August 8, 2015
Genesis II
The female picked up the battered copy of the old and revered script, and read:
“In the beginning, if there was a beginning, we don’t know what there was. We don’t know if there was a time before the beginning, and if there was then the beginning would not have been the beginning. But there was a time without us, and without even the older ones, at what we do call: The Beginning. We don’t know if there were, or now are, creating or guiding beings or just one such being because, being unaware of this, we cannot know if they, or it, are, or were, there. We may call them gods, or god, and some do swear that they, or it, or she, or he, control the fates, but we don’t know. But in the beginning there were things that moved, with what the older ones called energy, heat, light, all powering vibrating things that we cannot see, or something. Things we do not understand that somehow come together to make the rocks and rivers and wind and rain that we think we do understand, partly. We know the words once used for all these things through the fragments of script left by the older ones - those people before the destruction. The people of the once tall towers and far wide roads. The people of the sunken ships and vast lands of rubble. The people of the remnant rusting metal machines. And the tales of the people before the destruction - perhaps their myths - tell us that all things are made of smaller things, with even smaller things within them. They called them atoms, molecules, ions, protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks… until they got deep down to using just symbols and numbers that we cannot understand. But the people before the destruction had many names for the many little things inside other little things that they said could combine to make the big things, and the living things like them, and us. And they did claim, those people now long gone, that things made of what they called matter, when all hot and mixed and left for long ages became stars and rocky worlds, all unassisted. And that somehow little bits formed, emerged, unassisted, that became able to encourage the formation of replicas of themselves, but imperfectly, in a replication that made errors. And the errors were most often bad, but just occasionally good, they claimed. And the things made by good errors were better at making replicas of themselves - better at making more of themselves - and so they did make more of themselves. But they still made errors while making more of themselves. And many ages passed, of things getting better at making more of themselves, but still making errors that created different things, and living things, all powered by the energy of sunlight dispersing through the stuff of the world and kicking some of it up into the temporary self-replicating defiance of decay called life. Energy dispersing inevitably through matter, again and again creating things that made more of themselves and diverged into different more complicated things, until, somehow, some things began to think. And the thinking things looked around and began to wonder about it all. And the thinking and still ever-replicating things began to make other non-replicating things out of the stuff that they found around them. And the thinking things multiplied, and built great citadels of high stone and travelled far and fast in ships of metal and wheeled vehicles powered by fire and soaring tubes with stiff wings carrying hot engines of smoke and flame. But the thinking things also fought. They fought, not to eat or survive as we may do, but the tales tell us they fought because they thought different things about how their lives should be lived. And the thinking and replicating things built many unthinking things to destroy each other, forever making bigger, better, bigger, better things to kill and blast to dust. Until the time of great destruction came, in a way we cannot truly comprehend from the fragments found when our own originators came down from the mountains into the wastelands that were left. And the sun still shines and the rains still rain, the wind still blows and the things that live, including us, make more of themselves, again, all powered by the dispersing energy of the sun and made from the materials of this spinning ball that is set alone in... somewhere. And while we make more of ourselves, our mechanisms of reproduction still make errors in their replication. Many errors, of twisted limbs and half-formed heads and mouths that cannot speak but sag, agape, then quickly die. And we see little sign of errors that make any of our youngsters better than ourselves, like the errors talked about in the tales left by the people before the destruction. But sometimes, rarely, the miracle of the errors that make things better does seem to return. And so we wait for the benefits of the errors. As we should wait, and as we should hope. So we continue. We carry on.”
And the female cast the old script aside as she had done many times before, and her thoughts turned again to the ever-present need to find some sustenance. She raised her gaze to the sky, and wished that there might be some god out there to offer her assistance. She then called out to this god, to any god, or to any thing, for any help that could be given. But she heard no reply. And the sun still shone, even as the rain began to fall.
“In the beginning, if there was a beginning, we don’t know what there was. We don’t know if there was a time before the beginning, and if there was then the beginning would not have been the beginning. But there was a time without us, and without even the older ones, at what we do call: The Beginning. We don’t know if there were, or now are, creating or guiding beings or just one such being because, being unaware of this, we cannot know if they, or it, are, or were, there. We may call them gods, or god, and some do swear that they, or it, or she, or he, control the fates, but we don’t know. But in the beginning there were things that moved, with what the older ones called energy, heat, light, all powering vibrating things that we cannot see, or something. Things we do not understand that somehow come together to make the rocks and rivers and wind and rain that we think we do understand, partly. We know the words once used for all these things through the fragments of script left by the older ones - those people before the destruction. The people of the once tall towers and far wide roads. The people of the sunken ships and vast lands of rubble. The people of the remnant rusting metal machines. And the tales of the people before the destruction - perhaps their myths - tell us that all things are made of smaller things, with even smaller things within them. They called them atoms, molecules, ions, protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks… until they got deep down to using just symbols and numbers that we cannot understand. But the people before the destruction had many names for the many little things inside other little things that they said could combine to make the big things, and the living things like them, and us. And they did claim, those people now long gone, that things made of what they called matter, when all hot and mixed and left for long ages became stars and rocky worlds, all unassisted. And that somehow little bits formed, emerged, unassisted, that became able to encourage the formation of replicas of themselves, but imperfectly, in a replication that made errors. And the errors were most often bad, but just occasionally good, they claimed. And the things made by good errors were better at making replicas of themselves - better at making more of themselves - and so they did make more of themselves. But they still made errors while making more of themselves. And many ages passed, of things getting better at making more of themselves, but still making errors that created different things, and living things, all powered by the energy of sunlight dispersing through the stuff of the world and kicking some of it up into the temporary self-replicating defiance of decay called life. Energy dispersing inevitably through matter, again and again creating things that made more of themselves and diverged into different more complicated things, until, somehow, some things began to think. And the thinking things looked around and began to wonder about it all. And the thinking and still ever-replicating things began to make other non-replicating things out of the stuff that they found around them. And the thinking things multiplied, and built great citadels of high stone and travelled far and fast in ships of metal and wheeled vehicles powered by fire and soaring tubes with stiff wings carrying hot engines of smoke and flame. But the thinking things also fought. They fought, not to eat or survive as we may do, but the tales tell us they fought because they thought different things about how their lives should be lived. And the thinking and replicating things built many unthinking things to destroy each other, forever making bigger, better, bigger, better things to kill and blast to dust. Until the time of great destruction came, in a way we cannot truly comprehend from the fragments found when our own originators came down from the mountains into the wastelands that were left. And the sun still shines and the rains still rain, the wind still blows and the things that live, including us, make more of themselves, again, all powered by the dispersing energy of the sun and made from the materials of this spinning ball that is set alone in... somewhere. And while we make more of ourselves, our mechanisms of reproduction still make errors in their replication. Many errors, of twisted limbs and half-formed heads and mouths that cannot speak but sag, agape, then quickly die. And we see little sign of errors that make any of our youngsters better than ourselves, like the errors talked about in the tales left by the people before the destruction. But sometimes, rarely, the miracle of the errors that make things better does seem to return. And so we wait for the benefits of the errors. As we should wait, and as we should hope. So we continue. We carry on.”
And the female cast the old script aside as she had done many times before, and her thoughts turned again to the ever-present need to find some sustenance. She raised her gaze to the sky, and wished that there might be some god out there to offer her assistance. She then called out to this god, to any god, or to any thing, for any help that could be given. But she heard no reply. And the sun still shone, even as the rain began to fall.
The Life and Times of Don QuiScottie de l'Écosse: Preamble
The Life and Times of Don QuiScottie de l'Écosse
, is a long and languorous tale, part written already, that may begin to appear here soon, if I can get my noble arse into gear and accompany my continuing crucial quests with the troublesome task of the telling… I am pondering it, as I gaze from my estate at the madness all around, with myself perhaps, nay plainly, the lone mind of sure sensibleness in a damn demented world. Do the poor pathetic people of this petty pointless place deserve the wisdom of my peerless pondering? I am indeed peerlessly pondering that possible possibility with my fine flag a-fluttering, and ready to begin... (perhaps).
