Grounding the demigods

I think the ‘divine’ is all around us but goes by different names. The same goes for ‘god(s)’. We have spent millennia imbuing these concepts with mythical narratives, and the enforcements and indoctrinations of beliefs have occluded reality.

Our strange predicament

We are about 12,000 years past the agricultural revolution (a rather short time, geologically speaking) and are actively developing artificial intelligence (AI) to foster our survival while threatening nuclear warfare that could precipitate our destruction.

We are a very creative yet very confused species.

I think what I admire most about the ‘pagan’ ways versus those of Abrahamic-religion-based societies, is the distinction between the imminent and the transcendent. I am an ‘atheist’ in that I don’t believe that any religion of our creation is ‘right’, and I do not believe in the literal existence of any of the gods in our stories. But I am also a scientist, and practicing the natural sciences has instilled in me a deep reverence for life and the world around us.

Truly, none of us knows what awaits us, if anything. But while we are here, we are aware of such beauty.

The absurd absurdity

Amidst all the chaos and meaninglessness, it really is absurd how plants combine light with carbon dioxide and water, to produce sugars that sustain themselves and other organisms, just as it is equally absurd that a species of sentient organisms has found ways to delve deep into both outer space and the tiny worlds of the Lego bricks that we call ‘atoms’.

I struggle plentily with the existential ponderings about the ‘meaning’ of it all and if ‘I’ will disappear forever in some years’ time.

Yet there truly is something higher than us apes — even if all it is, is evolution, Nature, the void, or similar. There is something (sure, maybe even a super-smart programmer running a simulation).

Regardless, there is such beauty around us — ourselves included.

The many faces of the same thing(s)

I feel that our species is at a critical juncture, both in terms of evolutionary development and profound existential threats. I worry that many of our species have truly fallen so deeply asleep — far into some fever dream that is so like the matrix yet so desperately disconnected from Nature — that we may be risking our own annihilation.

Though our universe is expanding (as it needs to, to house the entropic increases in information), it is still finite; it goes without saying that everything is thus connected. The ‘divine’ is throughout.

I feel like we may have spent centuries or millennia debating whether this ‘everywhere-ness’ is ‘God’ or not; but I think that entire debate has been some folly rooted in humans inventing words to discuss human-created concepts that explain human-observed phenomena.

It’s all truly absurd. But we’re here to contemplate the absurdity, no? Something strange is afoot, it seems. Maybe it is just entropy. Maybe ‘God’ is just the information of the universe. Does it matter?

I’m not sure that having that answer is what we need in order to love one another and our planet, or to take huge steps back and ask ourselves what we are doing.

Our existential trajectory

I think not just life but existence in general, is ‘divine’. As humans have wondered for millennia: Why is there something rather than nothing? I don’t have an answer. But if we treat existence itself as being divine, maybe we will better come together as a species.

We aren’t (demi)gods, but we have definitely granted ourselves the status, apparently to reign supreme over Earth and make everything about us, consequences be damned.

Maybe I’m just cynical, having reached my 30s, to sorely admit that we seem to be creating a mass grave for us all. But maybe I’m not the only person feeling like our entire species would benefit from a firm grounding.

Will we come together as the global superorganism that we are and save ourselves from self-inflicted annihilation? Honestly, I’m not confident about that possibility. Maybe we will. But I think we might need to bring people back to ‘reality’ and remind one another about how truly ‘divine’ existence itself is.

I think we might be so confused, trying to distinguish the stories from the Stories.

In the meantime, Earth is singing to us the two words that it does for every species: “Tick. Tock.”

Looking within, to move forward

I don’t think we’re ever going back to the pre-COVID world. I think we have entered a new era. And I think we may be living in the time that will determine whether we:

• flourish and create something bold;
• stagnate and remain contentedly discontent; or
• succumb to our own trespasses.

It is horrifyingly exciting.

I’m not sure what will happen. I just hear those words, in tune with the pulsing of my blood:

Tick. Tock.

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Originally published on Medium