I woke up this morning with a headache from dreaming. Last night, chopping celery, I cut myself, not badly, just a little, and I watched my finger bleed and I thought about what humans are doing to the earth, and then I started thinking about humans and the earth, and then I thought, humans are the earth. We weren't placed her by some alien visitors, we evolved out of life naturally. We are part of nature, in every way. So what about what we're doing to nature? What are we doing to ourselves, to the balance, to the homeostasis? Aren't we just hurting ourselves? Or are we remaking nature in our own image? That's the project, that's the goal of science. Prediction and control. If there's an answer to the environmental crisis caused by science, it lies in science itself. We cannot unmake what we have made, we can only make more. That is what we do. We think, and that is science. We make, and that is technology. That is it. Oh, well, there's art. What about art? Art arises spontaneously. It has rules, sometimes, but there is otherwise limitless freedom to make something and give it aesthetic value. Maybe all art is just a kind of technology. The technology of beauty maybe, although that sounds hopelessly maudlin. Maybe all technology is art, although that sounds hopelessly Classical. I was always taught that things which are natural, or seem natural, like the chaotic curves of oil paint against a canvas forming the image of a face or lake, are beautiful. I was taught by other people that perfectly straight lines, perfectly right angles, uniform surfaces, perfect shapes, are beautiful. But they are clearly different kinds of beauty, right? Right?
I believe in science. I believe in the world. I believe in myself. I cling to these
beliefs like a drowning man clings to a slippery branch. I see everyone else letting go
and washing away into madness, but I still cling. I do not expect them to wave to me,
breathing easily from the bottom of the ocean. But what will happen when I am the only
one still clinging? Can I stop the way the current is flowing? What do I do when I am
the only one who believes?
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