Sometimes I like to look up at the stars and think about what it might have been like for that first early human with the capacity for imagination to see all that wonder with no reference to past or future. How mighty the things up there must have been. To them there was no history or sense of their place in the cosmos. We were ignorant creatures who had just begun to discover what our minds were soon to be capable of. Weather and natural disasters were as mysterious as those stars in the heavens, and with no understanding of philosophy or reason, they found answers in their perspective of the world; the only eyes available to them. When viewed from this far out from where we find ourselves now, we can, I think, begin to forgive the pervasive ignorance of our species to understand things from a rational and scientific point of view. We stumbled into consciousness, unready for what awaited us. If you truly comprehend how the evolutionary process works you will also understand that this awakening was not instantaneous. Like every aspect of our evolutionary biology, it developed over time and progressed slowly over tens of thousands of years stretching back to when that glimmer of intellect was just a random mutation in one of our long forgotten ancestors. Knowing then how truly ignorant we once were, we can come to terms better with the change that is happening right now. We live in a strange age. It is one where humankind now possesses the ability to reach for those stars we once worshiped as gods or prayed to as ancestors, but at the same time so many of us still cling to the beliefs we formed in fear of the unknown. We pray to deities based on the gods of tribal kingdoms that believed the sacrifice of animal blood could appease invisible beings that ruled us through the mouths of powerful men. While we reach out to the solar system and plan trips to Mars and bases on the moon, people still seek the wisdom of voices who can no longer guide us where we need to go. The voice inside our heads has always been us. From that moment when we looked up and did not yet understand, and created answers to fill the void of knowledge, it has always been us lighting the way toward the future that awaits us beyond this earthly realm. Just as that original awakening did not occur instantaneously, those of us who can see that winding path to a long lost hilltop where a young human sat looking up at the sky and first wondered where it all came from...we must realize that our fellow humans deserve, perhaps, a little patience and understanding as we jostle them out of slumber. And, as they awake one by one, just as this fellow traveler has done, they will be awestruck by not only the beauty they see out here, but dumbfounded as to why they ever accepted a creation so limited in its scope. -Timothy havener
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:40:31 +0000
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