Wed 2 Apr 2008
As much as I’d like to think that Big Big Question (along with a number of other fine sites and misc. internet and non-internet venues) makes for a good way to get some head-scratchers scratched and What Ifs what-iffed, there are probably some more complicated life mysteries that seems less solvable, less answerable.
So what are the big (or not so big) things you worry or suspect you’ll never really understand? What are the answers you think you might never get?
Posted by Josh Millard17 answers so far!
I know it’s a bit of a cliche answer, but honestly, women.
Relativity and quantum mechanics. I’m a science-minded kind of girl, but this stuff is so unlike what I experience in my day-to-day life that I can’t seem to get my brain to hold onto it. Sometimes I think I get it for maybe 2 minutes at a time, but it always slips away.
Life.
Consciousness
Geography.
the nature of Time
what are the big (or not so big) things you worry or suspect you’ll never really understand?
I’ve got to agree with ssg here and say consciousness or, more specifically, what the human mind is truly capable of.
What are the answers you think you might never get?
Whether we are alone in the universe. I’m pretty sure extraterrestrial intelligence exists out there — I mean the odds are pretty damn good — and I also think that one day we’re going to find evidence of it or be contacted. But I’m also pretty sure it’s going to be after I’m dead. Makes me sad. Unless, you know, they’re trying to steal our bodily fluids or harvest our eyeballs or something.
Whether we are alone in the universe.
Me too. I think all the “odds” stuff is bullshit, whistling in the dark, but it’s certainly conceivable that there are other intelligences out there, and it would be nifty as hell, but I’m never going to know. Dammit.
(Life, consciousness, and the nature of Time I already understand. Send self-addressed stamped envelope for brochure.)
People.
Love.
Electrical wiring.
Is “world peace” even possible, given our collective natures?
We we ever have a largely proactive society as opposed to a reactive society?
(On a much more prosaic level, regular expressions. I understand each symbol, and I understand the basic idea, and I can even construct simple ones, but an intuitive understanding escapes me–and I have tried.)
I will never understand why there is so much suffering in the world. I will never understand the ability of some people to inflict cruelty on others. I also don’t get why anyone would enjoy watching this, even simulated, in television or film.
I don’t understand why we’re not all deliriously happy most of the time, myself included, given the astronomical odds of any one of us ever being born in the first place.
The “why” of my faith.
The other day I ate some magic mushrooms and marveled at the mandalas. I thought about the various eastern religions I studied as an undergraduate, the complex cloud of systems wrapped around some pretty fundamental notions regarding the hidden architecture of the universe.
But I follow a different model - I engage and dialog with Western theology and so (thanks primarily to Eliade and Moltmann, and people like Dorothy Day, Martin King and the Berrigans) I’m a Christian. But Christianity is so profoundly systematic and I don’t always feel like it makes a strong enough connection to the natural world. Sometimes I worry that my emphasis on feminine sacrality and ecojustice issues are simply expressions of my subconscious attempting to reconcile this empty place in my theology. Why Jesus, over any other great thinker who has ever lived? Jesus was persecuted by an empire (perhaps The Empire, sort of an ur-empire) and I need the whole “confronting these evil machines with love and forgiveness” to make my life work. But what does this say about the architecture? To love and serve the Lord your God? These are marching orders, but they do not really seem to fill an empty space that is named every time I watch the sun set over Lake Michigan. I recently read an ecofeminist exegesis of the birth narratives in Luke. It was amazing - incredible, but I kept thinking, “this would be so much easier in a Keralan context” or some other, eastern faith tradition.
Maybe it’s just the mushrooms talking. But that’s another thing! In my Derrida seminar on Monday I kept wanting to mention the new, incredible connections, but I felt so completely removed from the possibility of reconciling my western education with any kind of shamanic experience (by the risk of being labeled a moon-bat or new-agey wacko) that I just sat there and kept silent.
The khora - the aporia - these things are vital to post-structuralist studies but if we “mystify” or “mythologize” them for a nanosecond we’re thrust from the academy as though we’re covered in bees.
It seems that Christianity is, in so many ways, perfect for me - it allows me to relish and celebrate my personal heritage, my family and community’s history and heritage (there’s always something a little unsavory about western converts to eastern faith) - it’s a labyrinth of cultural appropriation and it’s a world wherein I’m a political minority and, therefore, have a dog in the fight. It’s clean and crisp - it has a model.
But there’s something wild in my heart that is seeking that “time in the desert” - Christ’s departure after his baptism - something we rarely talk about outside of the context of temptation - something in me that wants to leave the systems and books behind and find God under a rotting log or in the warmth of the crocus bud or the song of a chickadee in spring. I don’t know where to find that in my current faith journey.
People.
Love.
Electrical wiring.
For some reason my brain keeps parsing this as an emphatic statement of fact instead of as a list. People really do love electrical wiring.
Christianity is so profoundly systematic and I don’t always feel like it makes a strong enough connection to the natural world. Sometimes I worry that my emphasis on feminine sacrality and ecojustice issues are simply expressions of my subconscious attempting to reconcile this empty place in my theology.
Oh my, I could have written this word for word. I am at a similar place right now, trying to reconcile what I believe about feminine spirituality and divinity and a strong connection to the wild spaces that surround us with a return to a confusing sort of liberal Christianity.
Calculus.
economics, hindi
I have a bunch of books on the subjects, but the Internet has robbed me of the ability to focus for extended periods. Or maybe I am just getting old.
stupidity.
which apparently is really difficult to comprehend.