Emily

The Random Nature of the Universe or Irrational Fears Justified

Wednesday, December 29, 2004 3:33:02 AM

On the brink of death each moment- that's all I can think about after the the Earth has moved. Like a giant twitching in her sleep, she rolls her shoulder, scratches, sighs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40668000/jpg/_40668525_busafp300.jpg

This is how small we are: the Earth opens and we are swallowed. She swats at us with the ocean, and we are swept away. We clamber in terror upon our own constructions, we topple them with the weight of our bodies. We suffer easily. News reports include survivors' accounts of a roaring wall of water containing bicycles and trees and bodies smashing into hotels and huts. The water snapped concrete pylons like matchsticks and smashed entire structures with sleeping people

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40669000/jpg/_40669993_chennai6_300.jpg

inside. People were snatched apart and instantly separated. One low-lying island in the Maldives was completely submerged.

Scientists think the Earth wobbled on its axis, that Sumatra moved 120 feet. I try to feel significant here in the Milky way, in the Universe.

Einsteinchiaroscuro

Comments

ridzuanaranur # Wednesday, December 29, 2004 3:33:02 AM

goes to show how insignificant we are to the entire universe.

but here we are, in existance, among billions of stars. there must be a reason... or all would not make sense.

John..lokutus-prime lokutus-prime # Wednesday, December 29, 2004 3:33:02 AM

Dear Emily, I was just thinking the same (your opening sentence). All the destructive armaments ever tested by humanity are as nothing, compared to this awesome demonstration of the planet's geological power. In a moment it reminds us that we take our existence on its surface for granted. In minutes it demonstrates that we are but 'ants', building and planning, scavenging and contriving without any actual power over events. We stay always at the margins.

We do not think about tectonic plates, continually moving against each other, miles below the oceans, and when the kinetic energy lashes at us the resulting catastrophe on the surface reminds us of the effect of their power with terrible consequences. I know you know all of this, but I remind myself.

I often debate, in my own mind, whether we are only significant to ourselves, or whether we put our existence into its context with the rest of the universe, and then measure ourselves against that cosmic scale. Out there, the Milky Way trails us in its wake, as if we were plankton caught up in that trail.

Peace,
~~lokutus

Emilygrisgris_girl # Wednesday, December 29, 2004 3:33:02 AM

L-

http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/pl_06.jpg

That debate is my internal monologue. There are some days when I feel like we are the same as this groovy little cluster of diatoms here. We clump together, according to laws of nature that we seldom even register. We are limited by our physical exterior. We are small and delicate, we are not preferred by suspension-feeding bivalve mollusks. And we can never hope to absorb the Mysteries of the Universe because we are the wrong shape and size. Perhaps our inadequacy lies in the intent of our design. We are little glass slippers, when God needs sturdy work-gloves, sewn to hold ten billion fingers.

But then why do we want it so, this understanding? Why the desire if we finally lack the capacity to perform? And why do I still believe, despite the vanity of such a thing, that God is

http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/images/subject_graphics/mathematics.jpg

trying to tell me something? The key, I believe, is mathematics. Numbers haunt me- stalk me- like coded messages. But I am like a gnat on a newspaper, trying to make sense of so much large print, of a language my finite mind can only look at and never hold.

Quentin S Crispquentinscrisp # Wednesday, December 29, 2004 3:33:02 AM

I think this disaster has left me lost for words, which is one reason I haven't mentioned it on my own blog. There really seems to be nothing one can say to something apparently so random. I suppose it makes me feel lucky, somehow, but also guilty. I don't know why. If I believed in the classroom model of the universe, I'd seriously ask what we're meant to learn from this. One thing's for certain - it can't be justice. But I don't believe in such a model. It's all just senselessly horrible. I only hope some good will come of humans forced to co-operate for once.

Emilygrisgris_girl # Wednesday, December 29, 2004 3:33:02 AM

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20041231/t/r741407708.jpg

Yes, "senseless" is just the word. I don't really believe in the classroom model either, or not in the sense that "God" is some nasty headmaster ready to whip the ocean into our faces when we just don't seem to "get it". I don't even know that there's a lesson to be

learned. I think that's a knee-jerk reaction, one that humans always have after devastation. We try to figure out what we could have done, cosmically or practically, to prevent this kind of thing. We scramble like scolded dogs to absorb a lesson that isn't there; it is a waste of time. There will always be a way for us to die.

I am not being glib when I say this, nor am I suggesting that this is the purpose of their deaths (because I don't think there is one) but I think that grief and only grief is the appropriate response to such a tragedy. It makes me sorry to hear people casting blame or

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20041231/t/r2532154059.jpg

speculating about warning systems or discussing global warming, etc. in light of what has happened. It reminds me of that quote by Stalin- "One man's death is a tragedy; a million men's deaths, that is a statistic.". I found myself struggling to feel anything in consideration of such monumental pain. It was like the world was suddenly bruised, and

I went into shock. Pain on this scale overwhelms the senses. What kind of monster cannot feel 120,000 suddenly-dead people, I wondered.

But suddenly in the pictures, the faces are my face: creased and opened by sorrow, horrified to the point of complete bewilderment, wild-eyed and desperately out-of-control. And the pain is not mine, but I know it- I remember it or feel it coming. And my heart aches like an old bone on a damp day.