I wonder if birds ever feel despair as us humans do. Do they experience loneliness? Is there ever a moment in a bird’s lifetime when they feel outcast by their fellow feathered folk and they can’t find a single thing — nary a single branch — in this world to lean or rest upon? What do they do in those moments? How do they go on? Or are they contented with searching the skies for yet another seed to peck at?
This notion sounds ridiculous, but I wonder if our experiences (birds, humans) are more similar than one may initially imagine. This morning, I saw a female sparrow (well, they aren’t really sparrows, but I’ve forgotten the correct name for them) nip at the feathers of a male, vying for his attention. A bird’s equivalent of flirtatious pursuit, I presume. It made me dream about the microcosm of the bird’s love life — on their scale, are there gestures as subtle as a blush, a stolen glance, or a light caress on another’s shoulders? Do they exist, only to be imperceptible to the naïve human’s eye?
I spent a bit of time attempting to recall the word for the study of putting oneself in the animal’s shoes (or rather, hide? perhaps this is too grotesque), and after a few moments of contemplation, the word flashed into my mind. Ethology.
This spark of cognition made me question how it is that we experience these types of “revelatory” thoughts. What happens in the brain when we attempt to recall something that is on the tip of our tongue? How do we suddenly come to connecting the dots? In this particular instance, I knew that the word began with the letter “E,” and that it was the title of a lecture video on human behavioral biology that I am currently watching. I knew that one such word that fit into this category was “Endocrinology,” but I knew that it wasn’t what I was searching for. But the harder I tried to remember, the more the word seemed to evade me, until I decided to put it on the back burner of my mind. I entrusted the task to my future self, thinking “it’ll come to me later,” and not five seconds had passed until it popped into my brain.
But what had happened? I wasn’t actively thinking about the word. My mind had already jumped to another object of consideration. What was my brainInteresting that I have to make the distinction between "me" and "my brain." Reminds me of V.S. Ramachandran's commentary on the illusory self in Phantoms in the Brain: what am "I"? doing without me knowing? It’s clear that there are an uncountable number of cognitive processes that occur simultaneously in our brain, a vast majority of them outside of the realm of conscious perception. It reminds me of what Thich Nhat Hahn mentions in The Sun My Heart: we have a “store-house consciousness” that carries the seeds of our thought, nurtures it without our conscious attention, and bears the fruit of knowledge in due time. This idea is also something that Professor de Silva conveyed to me (albeit in different form), and I’ve held many of his words close to my heart. I wholly believe it to be true.
Intellect prepares the soil of the mind and sows the seeds there. Until the seeds sprout, intellect can do no more. To try would only be floundering in a void. Then, at unexpected moments, the seeds send shoots up into the intelligence. These moments usually come because the scientist has “hatched” them. He or she has “sat” on the problem while awake, asleep, eating, walking, until suddenly a solution! The new discovery breaks the old knowledge, and the intellect is forced to destroy today’s structures to build tomorrow’s.
Editorial note: The following is a slight descent into madness, prompted by an unexpected change in my personal life compounded with my current reading of books like Logicomix and Gödel, Esher, Bach (in fact, these thoughts flooded into my brain immediately after finishing Chapter 8 in GEB). So please forgive the fragmentation and disorder. I’ve tried to bring more context to the words post-descent, but with varying amounts of effectiveness.
I’ve come to the sobering realization that I have not learned to love and care for others more than I crave my self-preservation and the defense of my ego and pride.
What is more important? Stability or truth? Consistency or completeness? Machinery or humanity? Which would you choose? Is humanity incurably cursed, or divinely blessed?
I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin. “In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.” “Alright then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
Humans crave the unknown. Why? Why do we get bored? Shouldn’t it be the case that we’ve evolved to prefer stability, safety, predictability? Why do we insist on living at the edge of chaos? Perhaps we need to feel progress and advancement towards some goal. Why? Do we feel that if we aren’t making progress, we’re falling behind? Do we all have some form of existential anxiety stemming from our knowledge of the future, or the knowledge of our own deaths, that we have the compulsion to prepare for?
Maybe some people crave chaos and others crave stability. I think I am one of the latter, since I’ve been in enough volatility to last me a lifetime and because, as a result of that conditioning, I create enough chaos and uncertainty in my own mind. It’s an incurable malady to crave stability in such a manner, to have what I have self-diagnosed as a deathly phobia of contingencies, and yet to be so unwilling to take things on faith alone. Do I have the energy anymore? What is the point of it all?
Life seems a Sisyphean task. Then, Camus declares, one must imagine oneself happy. Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to Buddhism. The moment is sufficient for the moment. It seems to be a self-contained truth. To be is to be is to be. But is this a lie and a placation? How can one be certain of anything? I think this is what drives logicians to madness. It’s uncertainty. And the sinking suspicion that the things that are certain are bound to be trivial.
DFW says this is water, and I am drowning. I don’t have fucking gills. You can hope that maybe, 100 million years into the future, humanity will evolve to acquire gills or invent some fancy contraption to enable life under water, but what do we do right now? Accept fate and breathe the water deep into your lungs?
At some point in thinking about these things, my mind hits a wall. It’s like thinking about death: some incomprehensible unknown that overwhelms you. At this point, I have no idea what to do with myself. I just want someone to understand. I just want a hug.