From the time we started to think as modern Homo sapiens
we have sought out explanations for this strange world around us and its
mystifying skies full of stars above. Initially it was with myth and
superstition that we filled the dark voids in our knowledge. Both served as the
best and in fairness, only alternative true understanding. Perhaps it is
because we adopted this way of thinking so early on, that it seems in many ways
to have more or less becomes an internal fixture in our minds, a habit of
thought from which it has become very difficult to break free.
Constantly seeking to explain the world we see around us,
even now we seemingly struggle to accept that there are questions to which we
will never know the answers. In the past it was into that void in our
understanding and our knowledge that our ancient ancestors poured the quick
drying cement of their superstitions and ancient faiths, based on fantasy and
often fear. Yet, even today, everything must still have an explanation, and in
the absence of this we too often fall back superstition and myth. We don’t call
it that of course, now it's the paranormal, the pseudoscientific, so called
"revealed knowledge, pure (blind) faith and so on. Just consider that
crowded gallery of competing gods to whom we pledge our competing allegiances.
The majority are ancient memes whose shadows stretch back, sometimes into
antiquity. Their characters and attitudes seem like those of flawed heroes from
out of ancient legend (which perhaps they are). They all seem to exhibit a
spectrum of startlingly schizophrenic behaviours: violent and loving, forgiving but capable of blood chilling all
damning judgement, barbaric hateful
savagery mixed in with enlightened philosophies of peace and tolerance to
others ; more likely it is our imaginations in permanent overdrive.
Yet it was our endlessly enquiring minds that may well have been what
was essential to our survival as a species, especially at the dawn of the human
era. After all, we have few other self-preserving physical assets, like tough
skins, poisonous bites or stings or being able to move at anything more than a
rather feeble walking speed over any meaningful distance. Understanding our
environments, being able to explain why events transpired as they did, being
able to predict the likely behaviour of prey, not to mention predators, all
would have been key to the survival of early humans.
As with cause and effect, grappling with why things
happened and understanding and being able to foresee the outcomes of our
actions would have been an integral part of how we developed. This ability to
project what if scenarios and to anticipate, even influence the course of
future events, all would contribute to the development of our concepts of the
passage of time and our fleeting place within it. As we became more aware and perceptive with
this increasingly advanced form of thinking, it seems only natural that we
would have started contemplating more deeply our own position in the order of
things: why we exist and are we alone,
how did it all come into being, and what happens to us when we die?
In so many ways our knowledge is immeasurably greater in
every sense since our earliest ancestors started contemplating these questions.
Yet some of these questions will always remain a mystery. And in that sense,
sometimes it seems we have hardly changed. It is as if we are still in those
dark caves of our ancestors, and, with crude ochre paints, etching out our
fantasies and dreams in the flickering half light of guttering fires, and
mumbling our clumsy words of worship before stone alters. The astute observer
will of course happily and perhaps caustically point out that we are no longer, quite
literally, in the caves of such ignorance. For we have now applied the satisfying
veneer of sophistication to our fantasies and superstitions. Now we worship
super beings in magnificent cathedrals, argue whether aliens are stealing our
DNA and debate how we will spend eternity in Internet forums and on Whatsapp.
Isn't progress a magnificent thing
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