Before It Mattered, It Didn’t Matter

If current science is correct, since the beginning of time some tens of billions of years ago, stars have exploded, galaxies have slammed into each other, and comets and asteroids have rained down on planets turning their soil to blazing liquid and their oceans to vapor.

But, until matter developed the ability and impetus to scream “Oh shit!” [translation] – none of that mattered.

Our bodies are made of the same stuff that merrily roasts, freezes, collides, boils, melts, vaporizes, explodes, tumbles through the vacuum of space and spirals into the oblivion of black holes. So why does this stuff suddenly care?

Because of nerves – those long cells that wire the sensory organs to the brain. It’s the nervous system that has a problem with all the commotion in the Universe. Suddenly, all that banging about became dangerous. Suddenly pain became a consequence of exposure to the extreme. Suddenly conditions became important, and worry was invented.

It hurts when the body is injured. It hurts when it needs more food or water or air. It hurts when the opportunity to make more little bodies is thwarted. It even hurts when it thinks any of the above is going to happen.

So how do we vindicate this discrepancy between life’s fragility and the Universe’s hostility to life? I mean, think about it – here we are, these little blobs of gooey stuff that are so easily squashed, poked, suffocated, invaded, cooked, poisoned, and frozen, sitting in a Universe that, on a regular basis, squashes, pokes, suffocates, invades, cooks, poisons, and freezes things – how is that a reasonable state of affairs.

Most babies that I have encountered don’t seem to be worried about it at all. They just gleefully charge after whatever tickles their fancy – often, to the utter horror of some doting guardian. It isn’t until the fire burns – or the little hand gets slapped away – that they begin to equate the world with danger.

Are babies wrong to fear nothing? Is our grief, should something happen to that baby, warranted? What is lost when life ends? How are we different from, say, a rock? What is it that experiences pain as unpleasant? Does a rock feel pain?

Life’s preoccupation with survival, when compared to the events in the Universe, truly seems to be trivial. But then, is everything as it seems?




In this blog I intend to explore this and many other aspects of life, happiness, and the perplexing nature of existence.