Journeys and Star Gazing

I was having coffee with a friend who happens to be a teacher. I watched the steam spiral as my companion clinked her spoon against the porcelain, stirring her cup absently. As these coffee conversations do, we meandered from the mundane to the metaphysical. From the internet we went to the meaning of life. My friend has a knack for asking the right questions at the right time.

“So, tell me – what’s the point of it all?” she asked as she gazed through the cafe window where a woman passed by pushing a pram.

“I don’t know. When I die, when you die, my and your senses are dead, so we’re not here. So much for the factual world,” I replied, trying to remember which philosopher said something like that.

She smiled and, looking directly into my eyes, replied, “But you believe in reincarnation, don’t you? Isn’t that laden with purpose?”

I shrugged, “Sure it’s romantic to believe in some kind of afterlife. But, look around – does this scream purpose to you?”

She brushed her hair away from her forehead then her eyes wandered to the window again. A street performer decided to stand in front of the window and perform some clumsy juggling.

“Religion tries to make sense of it all,” I pressed on, “But even the high priests of science kneel before an empty throne. Their emptiness includes weirdo quarks, quantum realms and even god-particles – they say forces beyond our comprehension. It kinda sounds poetic that Tao dances in the heart of the matter, even beautiful. But sacred? No way.”

Her brow furrowed. “So science is the new religion?”

I leaned in, gesturing toward the phone lying between us. “No, not science. Scientism. It replaces reverence with results, mystery with measurability, quality with quantity.” I picked up the phone, “And it’s not just the gadgets.” My voice softened, “It’s the mindset: sharp edges, hard lines, reducing everything – life, death, the cosmos itself – to equations and particles. Even love is written off as a bunch of chemicals sloshing in the brain.” I shook my head, placing the phone on the table. “Wow, what are we left with?”

Her silence invited me to continue.

“Don’t you see?” my voice quickening. “We’re told we’re nothing but the products of chemical accidents on a spinning rock around a Type G star. What is prayer? It’s just some sound waves pushing through the air. Yep, random collisions of chemicals over the millenniums mutated into creatures who love, create, play and pray. OK, the ancient gods may have been illusions, but at least they offered dignity. What does scientism give us? Purpose replaced by algorithms, reverence and a sense of the sacred by replicable results.”

I stopped and leant back in my chair. Took another sip of my coffee. Her hands folded, her expression thoughtful. “But isn’t technology also liberating. It connects us and makes life easier.”

“Ah,” I said, raising a finger. “I love what science has given us. Science didn’t just discover miracles; it made them. Instead of AD – as our way of marking history, I would like to see AP – After Penicillin. I love that technology has freed us from chores. But that freedom might also free us from the planet. No, not sending seed ships on interplanetary and galactic colonization trips. I mean a final liberation – our extinction.”

Now, I was on a roll. I couldn’t stop the impetus of my talking, “Science didn’t just explain lightning; it gave us bombs more destructive than Zeus’s wrath. It replaced the sacred with equations, prayer with noise, and purpose with randomness.”

She frowned and looked at her near-empty cup of coffee. “You make it sound hopeless.”

“Maybe it is,” I admitted. “Scientism is a product of rigid thinking and religious fundamentalism has the same rigidity. You know – dogma in robes and dogma in lab coats. The kind of thinking that says it has the answers but does not know how to listen.”

She studied me for a long moment. “So what’s your solution?”

I smiled, took another sip of my coffee and looked out the window at the juggler. “I don’t know if there is a solution. Maybe we don’t need one. Maybe we just need to live without demanding it be solved. To sit with the questions, like we’re doing now.”

She chuckled softly. “Sounds like you just reinvented faith.”

I laughed. “Maybe, but I like to see scientists do a bit of Zen Koan thinking. You know, like wonder what is the sound of one hand clapping and have their logic scrambled just for a short while.”

What’s left for us, I asked my friend, when both gods and reason fail? My coffee had gone cold by then. The swirling depths had disappeared, as had the steam. But the question lingered, unanswered.

And maybe that’s all it ever will be—a question.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 21st, 2024 at 5:18 pm and is filed under consciousness, Expression, fiction, philosophy, Science, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.