Chapter 19 travel far

Not for a single minute did I believe that human wonder had come to an end.Only extremely well-informed scientists have repeatedly argued that after molecular biology and cosmophysics there is not much more to understand about matter.The only exception, they always add, is the nature of human consciousness.And they always add, Well, we can't get there because of the uncertainty principle.That is, our mind is so central to life that it cannot sit still while we observe it. But perhaps there is some way to go beyond that.It may turn out that the mechanism of consciousness is much more widespread, not only in us but also in other interconnected organisms in the biosphere.So, since we may not be so absolutely at the center, we might be able to look at it, but for this kind of neurobiology we will need a new technique; Endless amazement stretches ahead of us.Of course, always assume that we are still here.

In order to solve the near-term worries, we must rely on the help of scientists.But for long-term considerations, they had to rely on poets.We should learn to question them more closely, to listen to them more carefully.The poet is, after all, a kind of scientist, but one devoted to a qualitative discipline in which nothing can be measured; the data in which he lives are uncountable, and his experiments are made only once.By definition, the message in a poem cannot be copied.The poet's experiment involves discerning what comes into his head.His skills include the ability to make quick decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of.He examines and selects what bumps into his mind, looking for distant signs of similarity, for distant points of connection, for little irregularities that show that this one is really the same as the other, only more important.In doing this he is equal to a scientist.He precisely measures the stanza, and puts together the pieces of the universe accurately. The geometric configuration that is pieced together is as beautiful and balanced as the body.Musicians and painters listen and transcribe what they hear.

I hope poets can give specific answers to specific questions.But that would require astrophysicists to count their fingers while we watch the calculations.What I want to know is: How should I feel about the earth in this day and age?Where has the old nature gone?Where is the wild, writhing, unreasonable mass of life in the world now, where is our old frightened excitement now?But in the past 50 years, from when I was a boy in a small suburban town to today, the world has become a structure of steel and plastic, understandable, and squeezed out; my world was once a mystery in the suburbs of New York. The small village in the charming maple forest has now disappeared entirely.Trees and all, gone, and now it's a syncytium of apartment buildings bursting out of a cement matrix, filling the area where twenty-five thousand people used to walk on the grass.Now, I live in another, more distant town, with trees and lawns along the streets, but at night, I can hear the sound of cement, coming in like a rising tide, coming from New York along the Sunshine Highway.

If you fly around the Earth and look down all the way, you'll see that we're everywhere, we've made our homes everywhere.All the land has been plowed, all the peaks have been climbed and are being covered with steel concrete and plastic; some mountains, like the Appalachians, are simply felled like trees.The fish are all caught, domesticated, and bred in fish farms enclosed underwater.As for the beasts, we will never have enough plastic bags for their carcasses; soon the only survivors will be the midday sheep to feed ourselves, the dogs and cats in the house - and the whale meat When edible, they feed on whale meat.And rats and cockroaches, plus several species of reptiles.

Winged insects that can fly are disappearing, and calcium in bird eggs, along with birds. We have conquered and dominated nature.From now on, the earth is ours, and it has become our orchard and vegetable garden, until we learn to make chlorophyll by ourselves, put them in a plastic film and let them fly into the sun.We're going to build Scarsdale on Everest. We will bring everything under control, under governance.Then what do we do?What can we do on those long Saturday afternoons when we have no interlocutors but ourselves? It is for these reasons that we are busy now scrutinizing the dark sides of Mars, probing the hideous barrenness that appears lifeless.We were like a family looking through a guide book.

This is a bit too much.Because of our sheer numbers, and because we have so quickly developed the technology of artificial organs that allow people across the globe to hear and see each other for themselves, we feel more and more self-pitying.To hear us think, you would think that there is nothing meaningful on earth but us. Maybe we should try to get out of this place, at least for a while, and a change of scene might do us the boss' favor. The trouble is, all the nearby planets are barren, and maybe our green thumbs will be unlucky enough to create or sustain the meager life on Mars or Titan, Saturn's largest moon.What's stopping us from looking elsewhere, further afield?If we can learn to ride against the solar wind, we may sail there, tackle the wind, sail to the breath of the wind, practice free fall, practice all day long, look for gravity, chase luck, and try our luck.It would be like the old days.