So I am trying to plow through Stephen Hawking's A Brief History In Time which is sort of amusing cos normally the only time I find to read is late late at night sometimes after having had several glasses of wine which makes reading something like this a bit entertaining ... like trying to understand general relativity and the difference between Newton's absolute time and space and Einstein's relative time and space and how light bends as it crosses through a particularly strong gravitational field, thus making a star near in-line with our sun appear to be in a different position in space than it, well, actually is ... and so on.
But of course Hawking writes much about Einstein (Hawking of course is widely-considered to be the brightest theoretical physicist since Einstein himself), and so randomly perusing through my old blog again I came across this little quote I had posted -
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
~ Albert EinsteinYes, through evolution our brains have increased in size of course to the point now where we have the capability to write symphonies, determine to the millionth-decimal place the relationship of a circle's diameter to its circumference, question our own reason for being and so on and so on and on and on. Remarkable. Absolutely.
What seems to get overshadowed though with our anthropocentric thinking - even from a religious point (and - without getting into a religious debate - I only say that because of the irony that it tends to be Western religions holding onto this idea despite dozens and dozens of contradictory statements in the Bible, of which this one is one of my favourites) is - given our position - a clear direction that we are tasked with caring for and being stewards of the Earth and all its varied life. Not to - because of some self-imagined superiority - harm and pillage it for our own selfish gain.
And - at least from where I'm sitting so-to-speak - it would seem this act of stewardship can certainly be carried out without our thinking of ourselves as superior, which inherently then puts us at odds with everything else on Earth.
Einstein was just trying to remind us of this. That life is beautiful and we are more similar to all of it then maybe we sometimes think. Certainly more inter-connected to it then we often realize.
It's nothing new and - like right and wrong - through our evolution and upbringing we all know it to be true. And ... maybe most importantly I feel ... remembering this and practicing it is necessary and a critical component to our continued survival.
ps - it is no coincidence in either the fact that Einstein's statement can be taken to also mean 'being separated from the rest' as holding ourselves up in our drywall boxes because that's where we feel comfortable and safe rather than getting out and experiencing nature in all its grandeur and uncompromising power and beauty (and no, this does not mean stopping the car at the roadside pullout to quick take a snapshot of some mountains), or in the irony that in doing so (getting out into nature) often creates the very ability in us to understand better how similar and connected we are to everything, thereby shedding ourselves of the notion of any sort of superiority complex ...
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