The Fifth Science

by Exurb1a

A lifetime of almosts. Almost kissing Abigail Payne only to go back inside. Almost giving his father a piece of his mind just before the old man died. Almost pursuing his true dream of becoming a railway driver, only to go into academia instead out of a stupid sense of duty. Humans must be the only animals who build zoos for themselves.

Most humans were not malicious, only drastically misguided and desperate in their loneliness. They learned at some point that there was an eccentric core to their personality and that it was possible no one else shared their own brand of eccentricity.

For all the pompous forms in which writers and musicians have described it, love was surely that moment when the screens might come down in front of another human, if only for a moment, and freely give them a long, unfettered look into the true middle where the fear and anguish lives.

An intellectual values ideas above all else, and if he or she is lucky enough to stumble on what might be a genuinely new idea, that is not so dissimilar to a mountaineer striving to be the first to climb some treacherous peak.

“I don't think it's so impossible,” Berkhamsted said. “Spirits, I mean. I happen to think consciousness is a sort of pattern, a collection of relationships. If the brain can do it, why not something else too? Who knows what a spirit is? Perhaps just consciousness transferred onto some other medium.”

Their timeline, if you will, was magnificent, stretching several hundred thousand years ahead. It became impossible to follow the strictly human sequence of history as the species soon diverged in other, more mechanical, more esoteric directions. But humanity itself persisted throughout.

In all things, across all avenues, a choice must be made: whether to follow love, truth, or power. That choice will consume the chooser. If he follows only love then his wellbeing will be constantly at the mercy of another, though his highs will be sublime. If he follows truth then it will be a lonely journey, but potentially a noble one. If he should follow power though, not only will he come to know a desperate and revolting loneliness, but he will also never experience even a drop of satisfaction in anything.

Ageing is backwards. One begins in (sometimes) perfect health and with absolutely no idea what to use it for. The world is strange and its mechanisms are strange. Meaning is in short supply and distractions are everywhere.

I fear that on my last day, on my deathbed, that is when the meaning of things will enter the room and kiss my forehead and whisper into my ear what it was I should have done with my life, and how I should've conducted myself. Hell isn't a fire pit but a museum of regrets.

If philosophers gave clear answers then surely the whole field would've died out with the Greeks.

With the right ears even a lesser creature can hear the song. It is sung constantly, from the heart of each atom and star. The galaxies hum of shape and form in their essence. That is their secret. The particles whisper of the nature of proper interactions. That is their game. And during a storm, in the forest, on the right night, it is no secret that the leaves all sing of God.

Inaction is the primary refuge of those who prefer their own constructed realities to the beautiful chaos of the real world.

“People who spend all their time taking photos will just remember taking photos. Souvenirs only make you think of buying them, don’t they.”

One passage in particular caught his eye: All explanations are an attempt by humankind to divide itself from the world. An explanation without including the explainer is as a tree without the trunk. One is inseparable from the other. No system of knowledge can avoid this limitation. Numbers are not the true face of measure. Words are not the true description of things. The world is the explanation.

“They live for about four hundred days. They choose a queen. She doesn't have babies, but she can give orders. She orders them all about to pick things up and bring them back. They build a mound together and inside they fill it with the best sticks and pebbles they can find. And when it's perfect, when they've built the perfect home and everything's just right, do you know what they do?” “No.” “They die.” “What?” “All of them, they just die.” Ushko peered at the mound. “Why?” “I don't know. What should they do instead?” Invent the wheel, Ushko thought. Do mathematics. Write novels. Conquer space. “Isn't man a bit that way?” the girl said.

“All seeds contain the tree they will become. In that seed is the limit of its growth. No amount of water or nurture or love can grow a tree taller than the seed has allowed. If it is pushed to grow taller or wider than that, then it will die slowly. It will die of itself. Most things in the universe fade this way. If a tree is to survive then it must make itself content with its height and hide. It must hide its pride and limit its curiosity, lest it birth the end of everything.”

Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they’ll never sit in.

The core of heroism isn’t bravery, or even self-sacrifice. It is a commitment to what one knows to be the virtuous course of action, despite whatever the consequences may be.

Back when the carbon creatures had their presence in the galaxy, Kappa liked to listen to their communications. There was a phrase the carbon units often used, something to do with a certain meal being impossible to construct without cracking open the shells of the unborn offspring of chickens.

thought, I’m not evil enough to be a tyrant. Nor am I good enough to be a good man. I’ve failed superbly.

It’s funny, you don’t convince the living to behave in a proper way, you just wait for them to die and hope their children grow up a little kinder and wiser than their parents.