We begin our lives so narrowly confined — within frameworks of mechanistic chemical reactions, among strands of DNA in a soup of molecules. As we grow and learn we gain access to larger and larger contexts: first family, then neighborhood, community, nation, world, universe. We expand our scope in dimensions of the mind as well. We start with just the present moment, the now of physical sensation as infants. We discover language, history, literature, the arts and sciences, culture. Our grasp of time stretches to the millions and billions of years that compose evolutionary biology, geology, and cosmology.
And then ... we die. Can it be that death is in some sense a transition to a yet larger context? If so, what kind? Or is this just a pleasant conceit? Do we delude ourselves to avoid the real issue ... of Why?
Friday, October 15, 1999 at 22:04:15 (EDT) = 1999-10-15
(correlates: FourPiFeedback, FocusAndFanout, TopiaRy, ...)