Cosmic Resonance

I am abusing the term "cosmic resonance" here.

For the sake of my ramblings, cosmic resonance does not imply the idea that two apparently unrelated events can effect one another (my dancing in my room is unlikely to cause a car crash unless I happen to have left the curtains open and the driver loses sight of the road). Instead, I only wish to take from this idea that of connectivity; how we are very much part of the world, and the spiritual resonance this causes.

Not exactly a new thought, I know, but I'm intent to throw in my two pence.

For a long time now I have been struck by the surreality of housepets. We habitually surround ourselves with the artificial. We live in houses largely fabricated out of man-made materials and designed with lots of straight lines and flat surfaces. Very practical, if nothing else. And yet we seem strangely determined to have living things in these spaces. The odd pot plant doesn't really strike me as strange. They have a pot; we have designated a space for them. Even goldfish or whatnot, anything which has been allocated an area in which is belongs, fails to strike me as particularly noteworthy. Primarily it is cats and dogs which leave me feeling a little confused. They just wander about the place as if it were normal. The vegetative equivalent would presumably be to have ivy growing up the walls of your living room, which I'm sure would cause comment among company. There is just something about watching an animal move which fascinates me. These are living breathing creatures, treating our fold out sofa beds as if they were a fallen tree. Don't get me wrong, I like cats and dogs. If I thought I could be trusted with their care, I would probably surround myself with them (as it stands I think I'm just going to let ivy start growing in my bedroom). My point is that there is something incongruous about the situation. We seem determined to live in a space clearly demarcated from the natural world, but equally feel the need to surround ourselves with life in some form or another.

Lately this feeling has been penetrating my life on a wider scale. Birds in particular will fascinate me. They are so perfectly engineered. Let's face it, if you're going to fly you better be pretty sure that all the parts are going to work properly. Except that, of course, they aren't engineered at all. They just are; the product of evolutionary forces and the inexorable passage of time.

What fascinates me here is the apparent contrast between the natural and the artificial. Given pretty much anything artificial, we can point at it and at least offer an explanation. This house; to keep us warm and dry. The bus I can hear passing by; to get people from A to B. The electric iron I can see out of the corner of my eye; well, I struggle with that one slightly but I at least understand that some people feel the need to look neat from time to time, even if I don't understand quite why. The products of artifice.

(Perhaps not everything we create falls under this category. Art and music generally seem to lack any well defined purpose. We create these because we have to. Because we have no choice. In this sense it is possible that art has, in a vague sense, something like life.)

The natural, on the other hand, is more difficult. Of course, we can offer explanations as to how things have come to be (it is raining because the heat of the sun causes water to evaporate, whereupon it condenses in the atmosphere and, after the droplets of water vapour become too heavy, precipitation ensues). But we can't speak of these things purposively. They just are. Imagine a conversation;

Dreamer: Hey there human couple!
Couple: Hello!
Dreamer: Why do you have that tiny person with you?
Couple: The tiny person is our child!
Dreamer: Why do you have a child?
Couple: Well, we felt that we had reached that point in our relationship, that we had a lot of love to offer a child and that being parents would be an emotionally enriching experience.
Dreamer: So the purpose of the child is to provide you with a sense of enrichment and to give you something to love?
Couple: Well, not exactly... Ummm...

Ok, so dialogue isn't my strong point. The point is that it doesn't make sense to ask what the purpose of a child is. It isn't a category which can be applied to living creatures. Or to the world in general. To a certain extent this is something that we have lost sight of; the human species does not feel connected to the world. People identify more with the artificial environments in which they reside, decked out as they are with posters of film stars and fast moving vehicles, than they do with the world they are part of. Nature enters into our consciousness primarily in terms of the phrase "natural resources" or as a place to visit and gawp at. It is something to be manipulated; either in terms of stripping it bare and utilising it or in terms of demarcating it as an area separate from the human.

It is perhaps because of this that the experience of cosmic resonance can, paradoxically, be quite alienating. You find yourself in awe at the world, at once so massive and so miniscule, and that you are part of this... and that the world is part of everything (there is perhaps a limit to the amount that the human mind can process without shutting down in self defense, so I recommend contemplation of the latter only be undertaken under a starry night sky with a bottle of red wine to hand). But you also, perhaps, find yourself alienated from the human and the artificial (What is this city doing here? And you! You with the Metallica t-shirt! Don't you realise that we are all manifestations of qi?)

But I occasionally think that this is missing the point somewhat. I am focussing on the artificial rather than the artificers. The reason the natural world, birds and all, fascinate me so is their unfathomability. Of course, it could be that, faced with this, you posit some higher power. But I can't go for this. I'm an anti-transcendentalist. I just don't see how you can justify belief in the traditional conception of God (God the artisan). Without getting bogged down in theology, the argument largely seems to boil down to the idea that nothing would make sense without God. But then, say I, maybe things just don't make sense. I'm not sure who it was that told you that they would.

This, of course, leads to another issue. If nothing in this world makes sense, then perhaps we should just give up on it. Perhaps all there is to this world is suffering and illusion, and what we should, therefore, really be doing is trying to limit this. See through the madness. Stop the pain and the yearning. There is definitely something noble about this, and I admire anyone who approaches the world in this way. But it isn't for me. Y'see, contrary to popular belief, I actually quite like being alive. I love the sensation of being out in the coutryside, barefoot in the grass. I love when I realise that I'm arguing with someone about something we agree on. I love having a jazz cigarette and singing to myself at two o'clock in the morning. Admittedly, the more lenient of Buddhist would probably argue that none of this is necessarily forbidden by the Middle Way, but, all the same, I don't think it is for me.

The beauty of the pointlessness of everything is that it keeps on going. By some strange chance of chemistry life exists. It isn't getting anywhere. There was no "grand plan" to which it is progressing. It just is. Being is all. And the idea of not being terrifies us to our core. Pretty much every living thing is simply striving to perpetuate. We run from danger and fuck quite a lot. So do the birds (well, mostly they fly). Admittedly, there are cases when an animal will sacrifice itself, but usually this is to protect its young or its fellows. Humans do this too sometimes. Sadly, humans do seem to self-destruct more often than other animals, but I think there is a reason for this. Or reasons, anyway.

In philosophy, this absence of meaning is often called the Absurd. To be more exact, the Absurd describes the gap between the lack of meaning in the world and our expectation and need for meaning. It is in the face of the Absurd that humanity destroys itself. On the individual level, it can be too much to bear for some people. On the collective level, we deify. We create values and then place them beyond ourselves. God is worth killing for, by this logic. So are any number of things. I'm sure you see where this is going. Of course, things aren't simple. There will always be conflict. And maybe some things are worth dying for. But it feels to me as if human life is often cheapened in the name of ideas, when presumably the purpose of these ideas in the first place was to give human life meaning. It is fair to say that this does not always sit easily with me.

But despite this, there is staggering beauty to be found in our Sisyphean struggle. I think this struggle finds its purest expression in the natural world. Life, without feeling any need to try and justify itself, just keeps on going, despite everything. And we needn't limit this to just the organic. It is very possible to picture the entire world as being, in a certain sense, alive. The universe is massive and uncaring and, ultimately, is tending towards entropy. But still, life goes on. If life had any particular purpose, it surely would have given up long ago. Perhaps this is simply a product of hippyish sentiment, but I like this.

I am an Absurdist. It isn't at all a tenable philosophical position, but then I'm not really a tenable philosopher. Albert Camus, the father of Absurdism, writes that giving up is conceding to the Absurd. Rather than do this, we should rebel. If the universe fails to provide us with meaning, then the only thing we can do is keep on going and find happiness in that. Doing this involves creating all of our own values, and taking joy in what we can. This is, it should be noted, distinct from the deification of human values and ideas because one should never lose sight of the Absurd, and therefore never let our values transcend us, as when they do someone is going to get hurt. They will either crush us when they collapse under the weight of expectation, or they will lead us to hurt those who think our ideas aren't all they are cracked up to be. So, instead, the most noble thing we can do is carry on, constantly keeping the Absurd with us, but never giving in.

Ok, so life in general doesn't really do this. It implies a sense of self-awareness that, as far as I know, nobody has suggested is part of Gaia theory. But then we rarely have this either. Which is kind of the point. Every time I feel at one with the world and this struggle that it is almost entirely unaware of, I am also identifying with mankind and all of it's artificialities. Everything we do is an expression of this same desire to survive, and not just to survive in the moment but to survive ourselves. We want to have a family, we want to provide for that family, we want to achieve great things... we want to leave our mark. We don't know why we're doing all this, and we'll almost never acknowledge that it is because we're scared there is nothing for us to believe in beyond ourselves. So we create. We surround ourselves with meaning. Even that fucking electric iron is an expression, however distantly, of the idea that there is a right way to live, that there is something bigger than ourselves that we are buying in to.

And isn't this fantastic? We're all buzzing around posting letters, buying second hand cars and attending political summits for exactly the same reasons as the world and everything in it does everything that it does; to hold of the yawning emptiness of the void. It is beautiful, even if we don't realise it and I feel strangely peaceful to be part of it.

And this is why people keep housepets.