Accepting the Permanence of Loss

My dog died. He's gone. I wish I could say he's gone on somewhere. Maybe into a childishly wishful doggie heaven, where he will be forever happy, forever chewing on a treat at the foot of his protective master, my grandfather, who also breathed his last lungful of nitrogen and oxygen molecules a few years ago. I wish I could take comfort in that ideal but mythological land where the dead live blissfully on. There are many people who actually believe that such a place exists and that some invisible, intangible aspect of themselves that still has the ability to experience will go there when their neurons stop firing. I am not one of those people.

Perhaps I could still find comfort in another popular belief that some essence of old Blue, again ethereal and imperceptible, has floated off and slipped into a freshly fertilized canid zygote, or into a collection of cells that recently replicated and thus fits into the human-defined category of: an organism. I must admit, the weight of loss would not feel so heavy with a conviction that Blue-Mo has been reincarnated as a new puppy somewhere, with so many socks yet to chew on, so many dinners yet to enthusiastically wolf down. But where is this essence that latches itself into new flesh at some magic moment? There isn't even a hint that such a thing exists. If it did, then how much of it could really even be Blue? His memories of his experiences, his capacity to sense and to make decisions based on what he sensed, his capacity to react to stimuli... his canine emotions, his houndish thoughts, all arise from the complexity of his biology, the mechanisms, structures, and processes that require no supernatural spark, no transcendental essence to function. Not only is there no reason to believe in that spark, there is good reason not to think that any defining but undefined part of Blue has found a new "host" to reside in, as the idea of reincarnation demands. If I believe that, I may as well believe my stub-tailed companion is in doggie heaven.

No, Blue is gone. Every mole chase he ever experienced has slipped away, unrecorded and irretrievable. In a way, many good times he had still remain, but only as they were recorded from the perspective that my family's and my faulty and biased memories still hold. What was the view like from Blue's end of the frayed article of my sister's clothing during a friendly-snarl-filled game of tug-of-war? Blue's memories, which for a time were recorded by the flashing of electrical impulses in his canine brain can never be played back in our hominid brains. So I'd like to say he "lives on" in my memory. But that's really just a euphemism for the fact that all that's left of his presence is what is recorded, (sometimes in error) in the gray matter of those who had experiences involving him. Still, that euphemism is so much more accurate than the trite and ridiculous phrase suggesting he has "gone to a better place." (Accurate only if said by a true pessimist who considers oblivion better than the alternative experienced by the living.)

It is undeniably true that the effects of Blue's existence and his actions will still ripple outward in time (like that proverbial roughly-spheroid of silicate matter being gravitationally pulled in the direction of and finally into a small inland containment of dihydrogen monoxide between 0 and 100 degrees Celsius). Blues existence, an effect of a long line of other causes itself, will definitely continue to create more effects in the world, mostly in unforeseeable, unknowable ways. Many of the effects of these ripples we may consider "good," others, we would likely consider "bad." But "what Blue is" does not exist at this point in time, or at any point in the future. A dog who once ate a whole thanksgiving turkey and threw it up, only to dine on it once more, does not exist past this point in the dimension defined by it's increase in entropy. That dog I loved, he only exists in the past now, along with my childhood. Along with my Grandparents. Along with another loss that is even now still too overwhelming for me say. Still too difficult to fully accept. I know that everything I've said of Blue applies to far deeper losses as well. But that's reality, and to deny it will only detract from the importance and the meaning of what has been lost.

In some ways, this is bleak. In this light, we see that not just our personal losses, but the losses of history are all the more tragic. We must not forget, though, that the universe could have followed an infinite number of other paths, but instead it took a path where you existed, where I existed... where Blue existed. It took a path that had us on it, travelers ourselves. And as existence rolled along this path that included us, we experienced. And we loved. I loved Blue. I loved my other non-human companions, too. And I loved my Grandparents. I loved my Mother. Even if love (like everything) at the smallest scale is described only by the interactions of particles, like the complexity of organic life or the simplicity of a spiral shape of a galaxy, but unlike the promises of mythology, Love is real.

Goodbye Blue. I'm glad our paths crossed.

Exorcising the "Demon-Haunted World"

I recently read the jewel of a book that is Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. It is one of those books that I think should be widely read in popular culture, not just by those apt to agree with it's premise. Sadly, the ones who would most benefit from reading it are the least likely to do so. There are many brilliant reviews of this book on the internet that do it better justice than I ever could, so that's not what this post is going to be.

The title of this great book stirred up some thoughts and images in my mind that the book itself only addressed tangentially. These images which were inspired by Sagan's book, though not it's subject, is what I'd like to talk about. Despite my expectations prior to having read it, Demon Haunted World focused very little on the history of science and it's accomplishments. I don't want to give the impression that I fault the book for not living up to my expectations, because it did. It exceeded them. It just didn't delve into some of the territory I thought it was going to. That makes it no less of a masterpiece. I didn't expect it to be a description of specific advancements through time, necessarily, and it wasn't this. (Other works have already done this extremely well). I (somewhat) mistakenly thought it would be a more general reflection on how science has gradually illuminated the shadows of superstition, revealing them as only the flickering shapes our minds construct from the incomplete bits of reality we can see peeking out from the darkness that hides the deeper but entirely natural truths of the universe. This darkness exists because we have not yet been able to figure a way to bring our candle to that shrouded corner, but this does not mean we never can or that we never will. Indeed, the history of science is the story of our holding that candle up to the dark places where the shadows of ignorance lurk, lighting realities that could not have even been guessed at or dreamed of had it never been lit.

Think of prehistoric times, when humanity undoubtedly believed the world to be haunted by demons and spirits as prolifically as it was by humans and animals. Over time, with a slow growing understanding of nature, with the embracing of logic and rationality to show us reality from mythological explanations invented to avail our fears, those endless demons were exorcised from the collective minds of humanity. They were unmasked as natural phenomena, as the understandable effects of discoverable causes. But the human world, despite all its advances in thought and technology, to this day is still unfortunately far from having completely exorcised it's superstitious false beliefs. The most tenacious and arguably the most dangerous one still remains. The supreme supernatural being. The supposed omniscient demon that still powerfully haunts so many otherwise rational minds: God. It seems clear to me that if we are successful in truly exorcising this last irrationality, it will help to usher in a time of unhindered discovery and possibly of greater peace. For peace is rational. If we fail to do such a thing, even as our technology and our capacity for self harm increases, we will be doomed not just to stifled progress, but perhaps eventually to a return to the demon-haunted world of old. Our logical and technological progress having been only a transient aspect of our species. So many people cling to this last vestige of supernatural wishful thinking in an attempt to appeal to the part of themselves that longs for "something more." But something more than what? More than the mind-boggling majesty that nature is still unveiling to us as reality? The vast majority of those who would use such an impotent argument to hold onto their superstitious hope of an all-powerful and watchful father-figure have no idea of the profound grandeur that only rational and skeptical inquiry has been able to reveal. Yes, there is "more out there." Much more. So let's keep looking instead of giving up and erroneously, childishly giving all mystery the name of just another demon/deity in the shadows.