The Human Code
I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.
[The Beatles are] more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.
John Lennon
One of my favourite television programmes is that of “The Universe” on the History Channel (if your television is HD, I recommend watching it on History HD). In one episode, a computer animation was shown comparing the size of Earth to that of our Sun, the size of our Sun to the size of even larger stars, and the size of larger stars to the size of, well, even larger stars…It was like big fish eating smaller fish, or a series of matryoshkas. Watching the segment made me feel very small but it’s also something which staggers me.
We live on a tiny planet in one galaxy out of millions (if not billions) of other galaxies, which themselves could (and, in my opinion, probably do) harvest some sort of life. What makes us think we are of any great significance or worth in the cosmos? Why should we think that our little piece of cosmic dust has any great position in the grand scheme of things? Most Human Beings don’t reach past eighty or ninety-years-old and yet there are stars, planets and galaxies which have lasted for thousands of years (indeed, you don’t even have to go into Outer Space – there are trees on Earth which have lasted for hundreds of years).
I have been thinking about how we, as Human Beings, measure success, or what gives us meaning and purpose in life. What makes, or what is, a successful person? The answer, no doubt, is different for everyone. Some people find success in their career or business and the revenue they generate from it; others find it in marrying the love of their life and starting a family with that person; some find it in achieving well academically and still others find success in simply tidying the garage or nailing the perfect recipe for a cake. To many people, success is what “floats your boat” – what makes you happy in life.
Success, for some people, may even be the answer to the following question:
- What does it mean to be “Human”?
To some people, being Human means having a special “place” in the cosmos. To others, being Human means having a unique genetic code, or biological blueprint. In a post I wrote about two-years-ago, I said:
For some people, Life is just one of those things that we just happen to be a part of – that we’re just forms of Matter wandering about and that we create the meaning to our own existence. For others, it’s a belief in a supernatural God or gods who made us and who have a plan for us and our lives; and still for others, there is no meaning or purpose to Life and there is no such thing as reality.
Summer is now over and Autumn has arrived. While Autumn and Winter can be very cold, I often find that Nature displays its greatest wonders at such times. I am often awe-struck by the gold and red of the leaves and the snow as it descends onto the the Earth (although, what is nice for one may be nasty for another: snow may be nice to watch while beside a roaring fire but it’s maybe not so nice if you have to drive in it or work in it. Sometimes too much of something can be a bad thing and snow, in vast amounts, can be deadly).
My epiphany towards Autumn and Winter can, I think, be summed up in one of my favourite poems by Robert Frost entitled, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there’s some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The Book of Ecclesiastes, much like some of Frost’s poetry, can be read as a depressing book and, in many regards, such a statement is true (although I would call it more sombre than depressing). However, what fascinates me about the book, and why it is one of my favourites of the Bible, is that it’s realistic – a sombre take on life (not that the other books of the Bible aren’t realistic – it’s just that Ecclesiastes seems to have a particular Human quality to it). The writer, in my mind, certainly has a “here today, gone tomorrow” mentality – he acknowledges that life is a fleeting thing – here one minute, gone the next:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build…He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no-one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3 v 1-3, 11
Reading through the chapter, what also intrigues me is how the writer, in a sense, puts Humans on the same level as animals (at least, with regards to mortality):
Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: as one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; the human race has no advantage over animals.
Ecclesiastes 3 v 19
What I’ve highlighted in bold is often seen as the anti-thesis of Human thought. We like to think that we have multiple advantages over animals – we like to think that we are vastly superior and can outwit them, whether it be in speed, strength or mental capabilities (a cheetah can run faster than a professional athlete sprinter). Indeed, many Theists like to think that Humans are more special than animals because they were made personally by God. However, I don’t think the writer, in this case, is referring to speed, strength, mental prowess or even the idea of a personal God creating Humans – if anything, he is stating the fact that Humans, like animals, suffer from mortality – we may be superior to animals in our mental, scientific and engineering capabilities but, like animals, we are still affected by Death.
Some people plan their lives out in military fashion – they will plan what they hope to do next year or in ten years time (such as: be married before reaching thirty-years-old or travel the world before reaching fifty-years-old). While I don’t think it’s particularly wrong to plan ahead, I do think that the future is somewhat obscure. When we think of the future, we think of ten years from now, or fifty years from now, not a day from now or a week from now. Indeed, the “future” is not limited to tomorrow – the future is thirty minutes away, fifteen minutes away and even sixty seconds away. When you started reading this Blog post is now in the past.
History is often, if not always, outlined in a finite time-scale. Historical events, whether they be somebody’s birth or a battle, are given positions on the time-scale; but not just any old position – they are set in a particular order in relation to each other. Using a “line”, we can trace (or represent) the history of Man right back to the Beginning of Time (or recorded history).
All of us are accustomed with finite Time. We measure Time with our clocks and we live in days, weeks, months and years (months being associated with different seasons, or drastic changes in climate). In the West, most people begin their year in January and end it in December. So, most of us associate Time with some kind of structure. What makes the concept of Eternity interesting (or confusing) is that it’s structureless – there is no “A to B” in Eternity – no “Beginning and End”. Such a lack of linearity throws us off guard when we then begin to “imagine” what Eternity must be like. In some regards, we will never fully be able to “imagine” Eternity until we break out of the cycle of linearity (a feat which may be impossible).
In a finite time system, things grow, become older, start to decay and then finally die (or wear away) – in other words, numerous changes take place. Even though there is no Beginning and End in Eternity, does that mean that things, or people, don’t age? To age is to imply that there are “Start” and “Finish” dates. I am not the same age I was ten-years-ago, because months and years have passed since then. Even-so, I have aged biologically (maybe “aged” isn’t the right word. Maybe “developed” or “changed” would be better). To most of us, we associate old age with wrinkles and losing our physical vigour; to most of us, that is a sign that we are nearing the end of our biological life (that’s generally true if the person in question has been healthy throughout their life and has not been involved in, say, major accidents which have severely altered their body for the worse).
