The privilege of not knowing
On the enormous privilege of asking what we don't know
I’ve been watching a lot of videos on The Royal Institution’s YouTube channel about the universe over the last month or so because my fascination with the cosmos only keeps growing with each day. Perhaps the easiest way to get your mind’s hole not only blown, but shattered is to stand back and wonder about the fact that you and I are but a fortuitous collection of particles on a piece of rock all formed from the dust ejected by an explosion 13.8 billion years ago. Whenever I think about this, it just makes me feel so small and fills me with awe and reverence.
Anyway, one video that I rewatched was "The Big Picture: From the Big Bang to the Meaning of Life" by the brilliant physicist Sean Carroll whose books lie wistfully yearning for my touch on my bookshelf. It's a wonderful video that I highly recommend watching based on his book by the same title. Around the 46-minute mark, Sean starts talking about the vocabulary we use to talk about life and it wedged into some crevice in my brain causing it to go into overdrive. I've highlighted the specific part of the transcript in bold:
Life is not a force or a substance that is in your body and then leaves it. It is a feature. It is a way of talking about what is happening inside you. The bad news is that that means it will end someday, but we'll get to that in a second. I have lots of bad news, don't worry.
The good news is that once this happens—once you get life, once you get this chemical reaction that sustains itself and reproduces and wants to keep going—there's this wonderful thing that kicks in called evolution. If there are different ways the chemical reaction could arrange itself, and some of them are more robust and more likely to survive, Professor Darwin would tell you that's what's going to happen. Those more robust ones are likely to dominate the future ecosystem in that particular environment.
And what that means is that we can once again change our vocabularies, just as we changed our vocabulary going from particles and atoms to eggs and entropy and time. We can change our vocabulary when we start talking about biology and evolution because the new words that creep into our vocabulary are words of purpose and reasons why.
Why is it that a giraffe has a very long neck? You could say, if you want to be annoying about it, 'Well, because of the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe.' That's why a giraffe has its long neck. That's the answer to every question: 'Why is something true?' 'Laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe.' But it's not the only possible answer; in fact, it's not a very sensible answer.
There's another answer that says, 'Well, giraffes had mutations in their genes, and some of them got longer necks. And those were able to reach sources of food up on trees that other animals with which they were competing were not able to reach.' Therefore, over successive generations, the longer and longer necks survived and flourished. And they were naturally selected to be like that. So, in a very real sense, the purpose of the giraffe's long neck is to help it reach food sources that it couldn't otherwise reach.
Where did that purpose come in? Did someone put it there? No, it evolved naturally, but that doesn't mean it's fake. It doesn't mean it's an illusion. It is a useful emergent vocabulary for talking about what happens at the macroscopic level.
Now that this part of the talk was stuck in my brain, it sparked a series of questions about things I don't know anything about.
How did I get here?
Who started all this?
Who or what made me?
What’s that person-thing like?
Does he like Jay Z’s Empire State of Mind and Led Zeppelin's When the Levee Breaks?
Does he fart?
What do the creator’s farts sound and smell like?
Is he black, white, yellow, or translucent?
Does he get food poisoning?
Does the creator poop in the morning and is his poop brown or rainbow colored?
Where did the stuff I am made of come from?
Where does the stuff go once I am no more?
What does it mean when I am no more?
Where do I go after I am no more?
How did the dance of atoms and molecules create Cate Blanchett, Gary Oldman, George Carlin and Cristiano Ronaldo?
Who made the stuff that makes me?
Why is there something as opposed to nothing?
Why am I here?
Is my being here an accident or is there a purpose?
Who decided that I should be born instead of somebody else?
What are the odds that I was born instead of somebody else?
If I wasn't here, would things be different?
How do I figure out why am I here?
Who do I ask about why I am here? Is there a customer care?
Now that I am here what am I supposed to do?
How do I opt out of being here?
Why is there life despite all the cosmic injustices and disasters?
Should I do what I am supposed to or something else?
Why was my consent not taken before making me?
Am I just a windbag of particles dancing to the fundamental laws of physics?
Am I making the choices or reacting to the long line of choices made by my predecessors?
Is free will an illusion?
Are we alone in the universe?
If not, what do my other kinsmen look like?
Do their farts smell like my own—three-day-old popcorn marinated in spaghetti sauce and puliyogare?
Why does time flow forward?
Who made this rock I'm standing on?
What is time?
What is space?
How were time and space created?
Why does poop stink?
Why do tides of joy and emotions fill me when my little nephew laughs and high-fives me?
How can the same God that created Salman Rushdie allow injustices like world wars and Salman Khan movies?
Is a virus alive?
Why do I sink into oneiric reveries when I lay down on the ground and stare at the ambling clouds?
Why does great music evoke such a maelstrom of emotions?
How can such great beauty exist amidst so much misery?
How can the collection of particles that is a human being be at once the noblest and cruelest creature in the known universe?
Do we know the universe?
What is the universe?
How many universes are there?
Why do we feel the sting of love and loss so keenly?
Why do love and death have the power to create imaginary worlds and violently destroy them?
Why do we mourn?
How can the same thing that created Ray Charles but also Donald Trump?
Why do rappers curse like there are bees stuck in their urinal tracts?
How can the supposedly all-knowing being be so competent and incompetent at the same time?
Why does a watermelon taste like summer?
Why are solitary walks so entrancing?
Why does a midsummer’s day feel so heavenly?
Why do I feel the full spectrum of human existence punch me in the gut when I read Tolstoy?
What did dinosaur dicks look like?
Why does eating pineapple and pomegranate feel like conducting fruit surgery?
How can collections of random lines that are words rouse the human spirit and lift it past the heavens?
Why do we live, love, laugh and cry?
Why does Zeus have such a hard time keeping his dick in his pants?
Why do we feel love when in the warm embrace of a beautiful other?
Why are leaves of so many colors?
Why is Hegel so fucking hard to understand?
Why are men so greedy?
What is chaos?
Why am I not as rich as Warren Buffett even though I am more handsome?
Why am I here?
What is this ache when I see old photographs?
Why do the words of mothers have such magic properties?
Why does the ocean make me feel both infinite and small?
Why do people believe in mysterious things?
Do we know everything we need to know?
Is there some mysterious thing orchestrating life?
If yes, why is he or she photo shy?
Why do I keep buying so many books even though I don’t read them?
Is life really contingent? If it is, who's orchestrating this contingency?
Why am I cursed to be so beautiful?
Why do we do bad things despite knowing they are bad?
Why do I keep saving things to read later even though I don’t?
Why do people keep using “synergy” and “circle back”?
Why does it feel like time travel when I read a book?
Why do tides of emotions and feelings swell and rage when I read a beautiful poem?
Why do we believe in some fellow called “god” even though there is no proof that he or she exists?
Why are there dichotomies?
What is our ultimate destiny?
What is the meaning of life?
To me, the meaning of life is to have the enormous privilege to ask these questions. It is to savor the grace of being curious and to always seek more answers and questions all the while knowing we'll never have them all. It's to be thankful for an existence that allows us to strive to shrink the shape of our ignorance with each passing day. If there's a more meaningful life, I can't imagine it.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke