Alexandersmap

    Tag: Richard Dawkins

    • To Be Touched by Everything I’ve Found

      One obvious problem with long drives is that it eats into reading time. You can solve this with audio books, of course, but then what of podcasts? As a heavy consumer of both, what do you choose? And this is where time becomes our enemy.

      Long drives require epic podcast episodes, and there’s nothing more epic than Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. For the last year I’ve been saving long stretches of travel to complete Supernova of the East, which is like all of Carlin’s podcasts: devastating edge of your seat listening. You want a little perspective as you crawl along in traffic over the Tappan Zee Bridge? Listen to the details of the Battle of Okinawa as Carlin spins his magic.

      What do you do when you’ve finished a series like Supernova of the East and you need to step back into the better side of humanity? Music helps. Lately I’ve been mixing classic rock and what today is known as “Americana” music (personally, I just call it music). Specifically, diving into old Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tunes and new Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit compilations. Looking for poetry set to music? You can’t go wrong with either. As a lover of words piled together just so, Isbell does to your brain cells what a complex Cabernet does to your taste buds.

      The best I can do
      Is to let myself trust that you know
      Who’ll be strong enough to carry your heart
      – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Letting You Go

      When you get to a hotel room in some remote place and you’ve caught up on all those emails and administrative work, what next? Drink? Watch television? Or dive back into the books that have tapping you on the shoulder for attention? There’s a place for every form of entertainment, but in most of my travels the hotel television never gets turned on. But the Kindle app does.

      After some consistent prodding by a friend of mine, I’m finally finishing Sapiens by Yusef Noah Harari. I know, what took me so long? Honestly it just kept slipping down the pile as other books jumped ahead. Regrettable, but life is about tradeoffs. What we choose to dance with in our brief time makes all the difference in how we see the world. Now that I’ve almost wrapped it up, I see what all the fuss is about.

      “Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years. If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers.” – Yusef Noah Harari, Sapiens

      Speaking of that stack of books, I put aside a couple of other books to focus on completing Sapiens. One in particular, The Blind Watchmaker, is a heavier lift than Sapiens, but compliments it well. I’ve referenced it before in the blog, and look forward to moving it to the virtual “done” pile. Combined, these two books have shaken my perspective of the world and how we got here.

      “If you have a mental picture of X and you find it implausible that the human eye could have arisen directly from it, this simply means that you have chosen the wrong X.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

      Inevitably I need to sprinkle in page-turner fiction, poetry and sharp left turn material to shake off reality until I can catch my breath again. Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda was a definite left turn for me, an interesting read that got me thinking about mysticism and craving more time in the desert Southwest.

      “You can do better. There is one simple thing wrong with you—you think you have plenty of time.” – Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

      The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love by David Whyte is a lovely collection of poems by one of our living masters. Whyte stirs words together with the best of them and catches my imagination with his alchemy. I’ll surely spend more time with Whyte in this blog in the near future.

      “be weathered by what comes to you, like the way you
      too
      have travelled from so far away to be here, once
      reluctant
      and now as solid and as here and as willing
      to be touched as everything you have found.”
      – David Whyte, The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love

      We collect bits of wisdom and memorable nuggets in our consumption. Does this make us better conversationalists or a faster draw on Jeopardy? Most likely, but there’s something more to it than that. To revisit the old cliche, we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. What we consume either amplifies our biases or challenges them. I choose to be challenged, and find myself slowly stretching and building a better mind, with greater perspective, through what I listen to, watch and read.

      In short, to be touched by everything I’ve found.

    • Ignoring That Other Urge to Merge

      “Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.” – Carlos Castaneda, Journey To Ixtlan

      If the measure of a life is our contribution to the larger world around us, should we work harder, or focus on what moves the world through us? Shouldn’t we rejoice in the wonder of waking up this morning, feel the vibration of the world around us (such that it is), and make the most of this one more day? Moving the world through us takes imagination, vigor and commitment to our calling.

      It feels easier to just grind it out, making the most of the path we choose, than to step off that path and try another. It feels easier to just turn on the television and immerse ourselves in something outside ourselves. To meet expectations and be a part of the way things are. Instead of moving the world through us we move through the world as everyone else does.

      And there’s the trap. When we surrender to the world we lose our essence – we lose our autonomy. And, I hate to do it, but I’m going to use the same quote that Jeff Bezos used in his final letter to Amazon shareholders because it hasn’t left me since I read it:

      “Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself — and that is what it is when it dies — the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the acidity, the water content or the electrical potential in a living body, you will typically find that it is markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings… More generally, if living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

      Which reminds me of the most famous episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation:

      “We are the Borg. Existence, as you know it, is over. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile.” – The Borg, from Star Trek, The Next Generation

      You and I, we aren’t ready to merge into our surroundings, are we? We aren’t ready to be assimilated. No, death hasn’t touched us yet, not today. And so we must remain autonomous. We must hear the call of our own heartbeat and somehow resist the temptation to just go with the flow. We must learn to move the world through us. To be unique.

      None of this is easy. I struggle with autonomy, influenced as heavily as you might be by family and friends, quarterly numbers that demand attention and the occasional soundbite or affront to humanity making the rounds on social media. It’s hard to remember sometimes that all that is outside of us. All that wants us to merge with it and amplify the chorus with our voice. It takes courage to turn away, see a different path and start down it.

      Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch.

      Ignore the urge to merge. Move through this world in your own way. Down your own path. While there’s still time.