WHERE DO WE GO AND WHAT DO WE BECOME WHEN OUR DREAMS DIE? last night kickstarted the award-winning series Cosmos again. It had gone on a bit of a hiatus with the illness and passing of the highly respected giant in the field of science and astrophysicists, the imminent, astute, and world-renowned Dr. Carl Sagan! Sagan was a pioneer who almost single-handedly carried a dubious scientific community and legions of skeptical blue-collar regular Joes upon his back for a boost-up assist--to get a peek at the wonderful, panoramic vista of ourselves and our relationship to the universe. Dr. Sagan never put ordinary people off with the look-at-me, Im smarter-than YOU-are manner and style of many of the scientists that lecture us through our tv screens today. Dr. Sagans style was friendly, and comforting. He fed us our diet of light years, parsecs, supernovae, pulsars, etc. in bite-size peices so it all went down easy. Furthermore, he had a nice, folksy style, like that friendly grocery at your neighborhood corner store, or that favorite uncle, who with a wink and a nod, would supply you with treats when your mothers back was turned. Thats how he seemed to me. He joins the ranks of great minds of the past--brilliant and irreplaceable. A former disciple of Carl Sagan, a scientific heavyweight in his own right, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, was at the helm. He style is the same as his mentors. Of course, he is a regular staple on tv., holds a number of esteemed positions, and has a huge following. He took the viewers step by step through the science mumbo-jumbo maze, laid everything out nice and neat for us. It didnt seem complicated at all the way he explained it. As interesting as his talk of stars and galaxies was, the most relative and significant things he talked about took place on earth some hundreds of years ago. A Franciscan Friar, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake because he dared to question the dogma of established beliefs regarding the movement of the earth and its relationship to the other planets and the sun. The widely held belief at that time--though Eastern thinking and ancient Egyptians saw it differently--was that the earth was the center of the universe, and everything--the sun included--revolved around it. It all seems very dated and silly now, but it was a belief accepted and endorsed by Rome; disagreeing, and VOICING that disagreement was enough to get you tortured and killed! Bruno had a dream one day in which things were revealed. Things became clear to him. He spread his message, was imprisoned for 8 years, and, because he wouldnt recant, was eventually put to death. Sad. What I thought about after, was how much of our total composition makes up our dreams, wishes, reverie, and prognostications? How are we able to tap into the x-factor of things verifiably unknown and unseen? What devices, weights and standards do we use to measure our intangibles, and what value do we place upon dreams and imagination, the starting-engines for discovery, invention, and progress? And what becomes of us when we are denied the gift of dreams? Have we gotten it all wrong? Is our primary existence thought and energy, and our secondary flesh, blood, bone and sinew? Do we experience true death with the cessation of dreams and flights of fantasy? We are much more than the sum of our total parts. Even the fires of medieval ignorance paled in comparison to the flames of truth. You cant censor or muffle things that actually are. People were martyred by the thousands but the earth still circled the sun. Things exist independent of our verification, and are just continuing about their business until our discovery catches up with them. Cosmos is a terrific show. It strokes us intellectually, and sets our gaze upward.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 10:28:55 +0000
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