Claustrophobia: Part III

In Steven Weinberg's introduction to cosmology, The First Three Minutes--along with enumerating a dizzying, even ludicrous array of subatomic particles--he describes the beginning of the universe as well as speculates on the end of it. Near the end of his discussion he comments on the reality of the universe: "Flying over Wyoming en route home from San Francisco to Boston . . . below, the earth looks very soft and comfortable--fluffy clouds here and there, snow turning pink as the sun sets, roads stretching straight across the country from one town to another. It is very hard to realize that this is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless" (154). Earlier, in commenting on the end of the universe, when it "collapses" and atoms separate into constituent elements and particles, he asks: "Can we really carry this sad story all the way to its end, to a state of infinite temperature and density? Does time really have a stop some three minutes after the temperature reaches a thousand million degrees? Obviously, we cannot be sure. All the uncetainties . . . in trying to explore the first hundredth of a second . . . will return to perplex us as we look into the last hundredth of a second. Above all, the whole universe must be described in the language of quantum mechanics at temperatures above 100 million million million million degrees (10 32nd degreee K), and no one has any idea what happened then" (152-3). Somehow, words like "Wyoming," "San Francisco," and "Boston" seem comprehensible and tolerable, especially when juxtaposed to "infinite temperature and density." But, in the final analysis, it doesn't matter. Still, what does Robert Frost write? "They cannot scare me with their empty spaces / Between stars--on stars where no human race is. / I have it in me so much nearer home / to scare myself with my own desert places" ("Desert Places" 195).

The Universe Again

From Bill Bryson's folksy survey of scientific knowledge, A Short History of Nearly Everything: "It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity [the dimensionless 'spot' into which all matter had been squeezed, so to speak, and from which the universe in a sense emerges] as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no 'around' around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. We can't even ask how long it has been there--whether it has just popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there forever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn't exist. There is no past for it to emerge from" (10). And our universe? "Now the question that has occurred to all of us at some point is: what would happen of you traveled out to the edge of the universe and, as it were, put your head through the curtains? Where would your head be if it were no longer in the universe? What would you find beyond? The answer, disappointingly, is that you can never get to the edge of the universe. That's not because it would take too long to get there--though of course it would--but because even if you traveled outward and outward in a straight line, indefinitely and pugnaciously, you would never arrive at an outer boundary. Instead, you would come back to where you began . . . " (16-17). The curvature of time and space in the universe and all that. In such a condition, do anxieties like claustrophobia mean anything? And so I am answered (see posting on 5/31/10): we're not really in a floating cigar. Ultimately, from a cosmic perspective, we're nowhere at all.

The Cognitive Dissonance of the Fuhrerdammerung

I just finished Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945, his account of the final major European battles of World War II. The Russian soldiers--enraged by Nazi German atrocities in the Soviet Union, whipped into a fury by Soviet propaganda, and undoubtedly driven by the brutalization of war itself--overwhelm the hopelessly outnumbered and equipment and ammunition poor German troops and rape every woman they can get their hands on. (The German civilians attribute the attacks to Slavic bestiality, of course.) On the other side, lunatic Nazi leaders continue to believe that they will prevail. During the last days of the fight in Berlin, with the remaining German forces driven back into the city center and fighting from cellars, of course there are still military police who are executing anyone they suspect of cowardice. One might think that, at that point, they might as well join the fight against the Soviets themselves. But no. Along with Hitler and his other fanatics, there are other officers and soldiers who still believe in the cause. All of which suggests that, despite evidence otherwise, there's always someone who won't acknowledge reality. At times, our delusions don't necessarily harm us--especially if we have the assets (money, wealth) to recover from them or if they simply don't put us into a position to harm ourselves. This is especially true for the upper and, to a degree, middle-classes--or in a racialized society whatever group that designates itself as the elite. But if a true crisis hits, then even privilege can't protect us from its consequences. Any number of people oppose universal health insurance in America--and for some of them, they will never have to face the consequences of their attitudes. But there will be some. They may not recognize it--but that will be the reason.

Attention Deficit Disorder

One standard ploy of politicians is to flatter the American people by referring to their inate wisdom--this despite the fact that, time and again, the American people have been and continue to be fooled by nonsense and obfuscation, lies and fantasies. Nowadays, we have fools coming out of the walls in America, people who really have no idea what they're saying or doing--and they're running in primaries and winning. And if they get into power, they would be unable to do anything in a crisis--beyond bombing someone somewhere. That is my nightmare image: there's a crisis, and they're frozen into a Bambi pose because they simply have no idea what to do. Yet we also have the corporate politicians who remain in power by placating the rich, whose reflex action is to protect great wealth. Is this any way to run a society?

On a more local note, we have fools who run educational institutions into the ground. I read an article saying that at one fancy liberal arts college, 70 percent of its employees were non-teaching. It would be interesting to know what the percentage is at my school. This occurred incrementally--year after year--without much or any comment, so that now it seems "normal." We can't remember how it used to be--in American politics, we seem to be able to go back a few months, no more. Is it an attention deficit disorder or just some kind of historical amnesia? Is it inherent in human beings, an evolutionry necessity? Or do we have rituals that ask us to remember the wrong or pointless things? Is that the function of religion?

American Language, Time, Science

"Rip you a new one"--is an interesting American phrase. It suggests violence and pain--but also anatomy and excrement. A testament to American lingusitic creativity?

Yet my guess is that 90-95 percent of what people say, maybe even closer to 99 percent, is mundane, even pointless.

There will be human beings 2000 years from now--in some form. They'll probably look at us the same way we look at Anthony and Cleopatra--as somehow oddly ancient.

I read Patricia Fara's Science: A Four-Thousand Year History in which every male scientist is a racist imperialist who exploits women and other ordinary people and every female scientist is a unacknowledged or underacknowledged heroine. Some, even much of what she says, is undoubtedly true, yet is science so hopeless compromised?

Illness

Being ill almost compels one to focus solely on the current moment: you can't plan ahead when you're in pain. I'm now convinced that I have something called Costochondritis, "an inflammation of the junctions were the upper ribs join with the cartilage that holds them to the breastbone or sternum." The cause is unknown and it usually goes away. That has been true in the past, but this time it seems to be hanging on, making it impossible to sleep on my right side, making sleep fitful and making me tired. So far: not exactly the summer of Rog.

Definitions

Praying is actually begging.
Wisdom is resignation.
I read Sam Lipsyte's Venus Drive and Home Land. They won't last--but they have amusing parts. A writer needs to be both good and lucky: Joyce wrote about growing up in a suffocating land that was about to explode. He was good and lucky. Post-modern American mall culture just doesn't lend itself to noteworthy literature. Maybe when the oil runs out and we're going crazy trying to step on our neighbors, then we'll have a literature that both good and noteworthy.