Thought Experiment

It’s clear and sunny on this January morning in the Pacific NW. . . It should be raining and overcast, that is, pre-global warming it should be raining. All bets are off now, I guess the days of weatherly shoulds have permanently joined the ranks of the endangered. We’ve had spring-like conditions all this month with plenty of sun. Reminds me that the one sure thing in this life we can all count on is change. Change is squawking stridently in the rising temperatures, the melting ice, and the howling storms brewing over earth’s distant seas.

Instead of hopping out of bed to take myself and my dog to the trail for an early morning walk, I took myself back to bed. The only energy I expended was to make a pot of tea and pick up my computer in my other room where it’s been soaking up energy all night long from the long white cord that travels the length of a glass countertop that holds my TV and speakers. I snatched my pulsing black MacBook from it’s little spot in my compact tech center and hauled it to my bed. Now I’m ready to settle into a time of exploration . . . It’s another day. Imagination kicking in, tea in hand, fingers ready to respond . . . Here I go.

First stop, a thought experiment . . . What would it look like if I tipped global warming on it’s side and looked at it from another angle? What if, (remember, this is a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT!) global warming was exactly what was supposed to be happening according to earth’s destiny? Before I’m thrown off the planet, let me explain how I understand a thought experiment . . . It’s an exercise in creative, free thinking very similar to brain storming--no judgments, no values. In a thought experiment an idea is drawn up and pursued without censure.

I work with thought experiments a lot, they help me go outside the box of my normal everyday experience, assist my process of freeing my mind. I am drawn to liberating my mind like a moth to the flame and this is an exercise that I find helps loosen the tight grip of well worn neuronal pathways and impulses . . . Those voices in the dark recesses of my cranium that say, “This is good, this is bad, beware, be quiet, be still, be this, be that, go there, say yes, say no, get angry, get sad, jump up, sit down, get embarrassed, be shamed, be buoyant, be brave . . .” The endless, never ceasing, always chatting mind ready to fill in the blanks of my experience with pre-approved information, like those Hot & Ready pizzas all boxed up and ready for you BEFORE you walk in the door . . . Who really made the decision to walk in and out with a pepperoni pizza--was it me, them? If me, what me? The one I’m in touch with now or those voices in the dark prompting my every step into Little Caesar’s? Creepy!

In my many thought experiments I’ve wiped out entire populations of people, left all that I know to pursue volunteer work in third world countries, given away all I own, held open auctions for my entire body of art, written the book of my life, gone back to school to study architecture, lived in complete seclusion-something akin to Walden for an undetermined amount of time, lived on a cattle ranch in Montana, stood on the moon, and freely become a human subject for time travel experimentation . . . In a thought experiment the subject matter isn’t the real point.

The real benefit of a thought experiment is the practice of loosing the mind from the sticky pre-programming. It’s like our thoughts are little feet lined with velcro and our mind the receptive surface--one step and we’re stuck. If we’re persistent enough to pull free of that little move, the next one will be sure to anchor us back in the familiar. That’s not all bad--it’s nice to know where the light switch and car keys are. It’s just that’s it’s so damn easy for our human vitality to go to sleep by the routinization of our neuronal pathways . . . We don’t want to wake up when we have already lived through our lives and discover we weren’t awake, we were sleep-living.

Back to global warming. It’s happening, right? Our unenlightened exuberance for the consumption of natural resources, CO2 emissions, multiple progeny, and the resulting pollution of industrialization has landed us a situation that is, for the most part irreversible. I’m NOT advocating throwing our hands up in the air and indulging further since the damage is already done--far from it. I strongly believe that to the very best of our ability, each of us take responsibility for the impact of our lives with global consciousness, right where we are, in this very moment.

The thought experiment is something along the lines of . . . How does it inform my life if I looked at global warming as an awkward, messy birthing in our human and planetary evolution? Who says we’re supposed to go on anyway . . . I’m not advocating we shouldn’t, I’m wondering how we can be so sure we should??? What if there’s some sort of cosmic hand-off going on here? What are we moving toward as a species on a time limited planet? It IS time limited, just like us . . . only a considerably LONGER frame of reference. What do I learn from my speculating by ‘be-friending’ global warming as an inevitability?

First thing I think of is my own death. It’s hanging out there somewhere in space and time. I will die, so will you, by the way. My personal take on death is that it’s an extraordinarily good counselor that informs me of living, keeps me awake, so to speak. The eventual slumber is, oddly enough, my wake up call, my life alarm . . . “In light of your undetermined, time-limited experience here . . . do you REALLY want to be worried about things you can’t control anyway? Is that a good use of a perfectly wonderful day to be alive?”

I think we live like a people bent on living at all costs. We pump our elderly full of drugs and tubes and processes that keep their lungs operating, heart and kidneys from failing as they exist in sterile environments surrounded by strangers. People are beginning to have a harder time simply dying that surviving technology and legalities keeping them from letting go when their bodies are . . . I know of a dying man whose family over-rode his ‘no death watch’ order, and suffered on until at long last he was alone for a few minutes and simply died. It’s the way he wanted it. Why is this? Why do we fear something so common as death?

The one thing we can be sure of is change. In our present form we will all die, as will all life on this planet, as will all vegetation if we do indeed kick into another ice age that might start the whole process all over again. Would that be BAD? Is death BAD? Can we really say anymore than . . . It’s unknown.

We, each of us, are infinitesimal specks in the swelling mass of humanity from the moment the primate lifted his torso toward the sun to some point in the future where the stuff of homo sapiens could become crystalline, pure light, or bio-engineered beings fit to withstand any number of planetary conditions that would today crush our fragile, gravity bound beings. We are like the one grain of sand on an endless beach, unrecognizable from anything other than a microscopic perspective. Is that all we are? I don’t think so. For as miniscule as we are in light of the sway of geologic and conscious evolution, we are a particle. That’s important.

I think we tend to overlook the influence of the small, the less perceptible in preference to the grand and obvious. Perhaps we could liken ourselves to the mosquito in the ear of the universe. It’s a fantastic thought that, as seemingly unimportant as we are, we influence. The energetics and thought content emanating from the one impacts the all. I believe that. It’s a paradox I choose to live with, that while my life is, to all appearance insignificant, I influence the course of evolution. Fantastic thought! I am planted here along with you and many others to move this course of evolution along, and all that I am and all that I do matters. And that goes for you too!

It matters that I learn to contain my emotions and develop strong conscious muscles through the material of my life. It matters that I consider the state of the planet in all my doings, whether we’re already on a crash course with an ice age or not. It matters that I inject kindness and compassion into a world where people are hurting, and it matters that I live every moment to the very best of my capacity. It matters. I matter, you matter . . . global warming is--but none of us can say what that really means. Face it, the planet is warming. Face it, you are on a time-limited experience, you are going to die. Face it, you only really have this one moment to live . . . and, as the German poet says so much more eloquently than I . . .

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

And try to love the questions themselves.

Do not now seek the answers that cannot be given to you

Because you would not be able to live them

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will gradually,

Without noticing it,

Live along some distant day

Into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .