An Essay by Einstein: “The world as I see it”
From An Essay by Einstein: “The world as I see it”
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay.htm
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
Danny’s comment: I love the last paragraph.
My thoughts: Yep, he would. And Arieh. I get that. But still I Hunt. The last paragraph describes exactly what I struggle so hard for. I even realise I need to relax, have gratitude, enjoy; to get rid of the feeling of hunger but I am still terrified that not only will I become one of those people with empty hearts, as good as dead, but I am realising lately that maybe I already am and I just don’t know it yet… or am inexorably on that path…
He is torn out of his sleep with a silent scream on his lips. His chest rises and falls with his deep, heavy breaths, and cold sweat is on his forehead, and trickling down his back; his hands claw at the grey bed sheet, and there is a scratchy noise as his fingernails rake over the rough material, unnerving him. The window is opened wide, permits cool, fresh air to flow inside. Disgusted, Sirius contorts his face, touches the dry roof of his mouth with his tongue. It is as if his breath stank, as if his mouth was putrid: hot and furry feel his gums, and he is aware of every single of his teeth, as if they were loose, as if they were about to fall out. His eyes are stuck together with some strange fluid and he squeezes them shut tightly, one, twice, thrice. In the blackness behind his eyelids he finds refuge: calm down, it’s over, ‘t was just a dream.
-From a Harry Potter Fanfic
‘Failed’ by roterhimmel at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4432077/1/Failed
“Well I’m gonna burn in hell ’cause I do what I gotta do real well.”
-Lyrics to ‘Man’ by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
Samuel Johnson
“If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.”
George Santayana
Sig from Hazmo fanfiction forum:
Why am I fighting to live, if I’m just living to fight?
Why am I trying to see, if there ain’t nothing in sight?
Why am I trying to give, when no one gives me a try?
Why am I dying to live, if I’m just living to die?
- 2Pac
Talking to children about death
The main problem I have (and most people have, I assume) about how to discuss death with children is that I don’t have any easy way out. Neither did my mum. My parents ‘let’ me believe in heaven when I was very little (I remember believing it at one point, and being scared of hell, and that’s about when I decided a God who would invent hell didn’t sound like much of a humanist, and I lost most of my interest in organised religion. I was about six years old.) even though we weren’t Christians and didn’t go to church – although I do remember a Sunday class or two. Anyway, the answer my mum gave me was ‘real’ eg: no one know what happens. Now, I had a bit of a complex about death for a while, when I was about 6-7-8. Then I got over it. Then when I turned 12 a close school friend died which blew up my mum’s insistence “When you die you’ll be a little old lady with a lovely dog, (I loved dogs) who has lived a wonderful, long, and full life.” So I got another complex. I still wear a lot of black.
That could have been something that I felt whether or not mum had said ‘no one knows’, but I did feel very jealous of people who were bought up religious, who had faith in an afterlife. Possibly a very nice afterlife. Even if there were rules they had to follow. Do I just tell my future kids that reincarnation is the truth? Do I let them believe in heaven when they are little? It seems to close the subject satisfactorily for them. (But also seems a bit of a cop out when they’re older in a more advanced developmental stage). But what about hell? That’s kind of traumatising for a kid to believe I think. Maybe a buddhist karma kind of heaven. Or do I tell them what Arieh and I *really* believe? Our ‘Truth’: there’s nothing. We do differ on this view a little bit: Arieh think’s there’s nothing. Just extinction. I believe the same thing but HOPE SO GODDAM MUCH THAT IT’S NOT TRUE. [Post Script: Does this mean I have hope, but not faith?]
Do I tell my kids that? That ‘no one knows but I hope’? Mum didn’t say she hoped. Maybe that’s important? Or is that just sadder – then I give my kids a lifetime of uncertainty and faith in the shakiest thing. Although that’s what all faith is really I suppose. But some people take their faith for granted more than others I think – there are some people who, for most of their life, will tell you their faith is unshakeable. I mean, even I had a default faith from society and religion instruction and school: although intellectually I knew heaven and hell didn’t exist and they didn’t bother me, it was only in my early 20s that I really realised I didn’t believe in them any more – not as a ‘this doesn’t seem true’ but ‘this is definitely not true’. Probably when I got more into eastern religions and realised that growing up never hearing about christianity pretty much proves the christian hell and heaven don’t exist. But you also have to remember that the driving force behind nearly every religion is not just a code for living, but the promise of an afterlife. Maybe there is an afterlife but we have different views of it? (Like everything)
Anyway – back to the point. Here is an excerpt from a website:
“Where we have doubts, an honest, “I just don’t know the answer to that one,” may be more comforting than an explanation which we don’t quite believe. Children usually sense our doubts. White lies, no matter how well intended, can create uneasiness and distrust. Besides, sooner, or later, our children will learn that we are not all knowing, and maybe we can make that discovery easier for them if we calmly and matter-of-factly tell them we don’t have all the answers. Our non-defensive and accepting attitude may help them feel better about not knowing everything also.”
From: http://www.hospicenet.org/html/talking.html
Hmmm. You know what? Mum giving that answer just wasn’t that comforting AT ALL. Her accepting attitude drove me, an intense little thing, freaking nuts in my life. I really would have preferred for her to say oh, there’s a heaven. Or reincarnation. Or SOMETHING. Even if it’s ‘I don’t know….but I think it might be such-and-such.’ That’s a step up from ‘I don’t know’ and also ‘I don’t know but I HOPE there’s something’.
Names and Giacomo Casanova
So Arieh likes the name Ianto – but he did suffix that with ‘but when we have a girl, her name is Asuka’ as usual. So I don’t think he’d mind what we called a son!
So new names:
Ianto
Giacomo (Jackamo)
Also (i’ve been looking into Casanova’s biography since enjoying David Tennant play the part so much:
“I saw that everything in the world that is famous and beautiful, if we rely on the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it up close.” (from History of My Life, 1966-71)-Casanova
Ah so depressing and true. And a cure for itchy feet.
‘Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is– that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself–that comes too late–a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair’s breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up–he had judged. `The horror!’ He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth–the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best– a vision of greyness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things–even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps!’