A Beautiful, Wonderful Hopelessness To It All

The veranda I’m resting on is a medley of sounds, smells and sights each so subtly spectacular that any words I craft for them falls pitifully short. Each breeze or noise carries this awesome unpredictability that just strips you of any and all illusion of knowledge.

So much chaos and yet, from it, springs this well of near order and harmony that defies explanation. It’s very presence mocks us. The most fundamental of laws, so absolute on the smallest of scales, suddenly broken with impunity by Maxwell’s demon.

Take the 21 year Glenlivet Scotch in the bottom of my rocks glass. It’s such a simple straightforward liquid. The tastes and aroma themselves a pleasantness that we’ve become so accustomed to it hardly seems worth talking about at all.

But the journey that this bottle took to get into my liquor cabinet is itself an epic so fraught with beautiful chaos that the mere existence of it is almost a miracle.

This was the handcrafted product of a master artisan; quite possibly the greatest work of this man or woman’s life. Decades of careful study, impinged with failures, setbacks, and hardship, somehow gives way to this – the culmination of their lives. Twenty one years the liquid spent in a casket, with no way for the humble worker to possibly know whether it would be an accomplishment worthy of the admiration and appreciation of anyone, on a warm August night. Or a spoiled waste.

When this drink was being fashioned by the thoughtful work of some person, who may be dead now for all I know, the modern internet of the World Wide Web probably did not exist. Neither did cell phones. If we humbly admit that the real time to create this masterpiece extended well longer than 21 years, then it is equally plausible that neither did personal computers, CD’s, or DNA fingerprinting.

And what of the life of this obscure person, who worked so hard so that we can have this experience, decades later? This person was probably born before the cure for Polio, before MRI, and before Tylenol.

Or take the cigar, burning faintly in my left hand. The worker who rolled this cigar is no less mysterious, if not quite so distant in time. While this person may be closer to I am today, the cigar itself is a good symbol of the immense energies so inconspicuously present in our day to day lives.

What would happen if these people failed to find good students to pass their crafts on to? A dereliction of this sacred duty could deprive us of these small comforts in ways so terribly beyond our control… and yet we indulge in so many of these wonders without ever stopping to appreciate what splendor it is.

The smoke curling up the length of my finger, wrapping on an angle with my knuckles, and fraying into the space before my eyes, contains no less mysteries as the men and women who touch us every day.

If I froze the space in time, I could construct a field model that near perfectly describe the smokes wispy pathways. I could do this for any instant you might desire. I could do this for approximately every instant between two arbitrary points in our view.

But it would be such a wasted effort, for it would tell me nothing. The next light breeze to come along would swipe away my hubris and any pretense of understanding as definitively as mortality will surely swipe away Cain Hammond Thaler.

If I attempted to control fate, and protect my model, I could spend my life networking across the space around my small field. I could create thousands of adaptations based on information of change pushing into my little balcony. And if I wasted all the energy which my life has to offer, this effort could give me a tiny window into the future. But this window would expire so quickly, all of that time would be wasted. If I could have firm control over every particle in this county, the pressure from the rest of the planet would quickly exert itself.

If I could control the planet, the heavens would move against me in a matter of minutes.

The greatest minds of our species have understood this. As example, Poincare showed it over one hundred and fifty years ago. Lorenz’ life was dedicated to this pursuit. Feigenbaum persists in this study to this day. Yet, here we are, listening seriously to voices telling us that our understanding of the unpredictable, the unknown, the unfathomable, is somehow better because now we know that our understanding of these things can never truly be better. And always, the simple terrifying truth of it all is never uttered.

Folly and arrogance of the highest order are found in all of these things.

Sit with me on this pleasant night. Take slow breaths after the inhale of the cigar smoke. Feel the cool air take life into your lungs.

The dynamic between our taking breath and the trees around us are chaotic. The minute functions of our respective bodies is chaotic. The impact of infinite iterations of the universe are chaotic. Yet, time and again, we begin our sentences with the dreadful words, “we know”.

The work of these people is being tainted by the second hand malpractice of their misguided pupils, striving to apply false or trivial knowledge.

The sun is setting on the horizon, the trees hiding in the shadows. And they are as invisible to me as their secret inner workings.

Prepare for bed and rest. And do so in the beautiful comfort of our complete ignorance. Tomorrow is as unfathomable as yesterday, and yesterday will soon be as hazy to your mind as tomorrow. But the moment…the moment is wonderfully clear.

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