639
Whatever the dreams, our time works against us. All the explanations merely
layer the absolute finale with accretions, centuries of obfuscation. Plato did not
invent the cave but the other way ‘round. This shadow-play of reciprocities easily
refuses genetic distinctions. Evolution slowly reforms barriers to distribution.
Mutation might tease forth a new concept now and then, testing the waters, but
human time, even hominid time, is a temporality with little possibility of transcending the improbable, invoking instead a steady meditation upon the sad course of
misanthropy.
For all those gifts established by our kind, with their penchant for transforming
certain moments into a higher calling, the plateau ultimately tumbles. Stated simply,
1 + 1 fails to equal 2, while 2 × 2 goes nowhere. And 3 divided by itself remains a
member of that class of objects signified by those units which are never members of
their same class and may be manipulated by whatever volumes, swells, population
dynamics and discord will predictably emerge. Note Russell’s Paradox, earlier discussed. Human causes and consequences are defined most readily by their ultimately purposeless relations, a symptom of all the numbers that must be eschewed,
as one formulation after another fails to generate meaning. Mathematically, no
number of atoms, cells, molecules, neurons, proteins, bonds, or strands of DNA will
alter outcomes. Breeds and hybrids are equally suborned by that force of destiny
which paleontology has eerily foretold.
Archaeologically, the rules of probability remain unchangeable from graveyard
to graveyard; between middens, cultures and cave walls the dreary monotony of the
dead gives no real insight into who these multitudes really were. That they lived has
no more rational appeal to us today than the nuances of a fossil record dictated by
minerology, hydrology and the weather. The brief record of our past does not prepare us for the end. We argue between hope and despair, neither of which offer
much by way of a solution to the darkness of caves or the blinding light of a star. In
the greens, between, one searches for what one has already found, to paraphrase
Pascal (Fig. 68.4).
68.5 Co-evolution amid Misanthropic Airs
Our species can rightly be said to be evolving and co-evolving anew. But evolution
herself is not evolving, as far as can be ascertained, and thus the molecular and
(purely psychological) numbers and proportions are unvarying. Their depictable
rudiments, that is, binary, analogue, do not accrue new characteristics vulnerable to
natural selection, either at the cellular or conceptual levels. Dust, ash, lithic tuff,
pyroclastic surge beds, andesitic lavas, meteoric water, all the sulfuric acid drops
and other stormy configurations of the elements are fixed, both in extant and flux.
As part of this irremediable ecology, our feelings and intuitions, unmasked in every
poem and protest, stare with equal fixity at the improbable. We won’t say impossible, though the logic that would have it thus far seems unequivocal.
68.5 Co-evolution amid Misanthropic Airs
Whatever the dreams, our time works against us. All the explanations merely
layer the absolute finale with accretions, centuries of obfuscation. Plato did not
invent the cave but the other way ‘round. This shadow-play of reciprocities easily
refuses genetic distinctions. Evolution slowly reforms barriers to distribution.
Mutation might tease forth a new concept now and then, testing the waters, but
human time, even hominid time, is a temporality with little possibility of transcending the improbable, invoking instead a steady meditation upon the sad course of
misanthropy.
For all those gifts established by our kind, with their penchant for transforming
certain moments into a higher calling, the plateau ultimately tumbles. Stated simply,
1 + 1 fails to equal 2, while 2 × 2 goes nowhere. And 3 divided by itself remains a
member of that class of objects signified by those units which are never members of
their same class and may be manipulated by whatever volumes, swells, population
dynamics and discord will predictably emerge. Note Russell’s Paradox, earlier discussed. Human causes and consequences are defined most readily by their ultimately purposeless relations, a symptom of all the numbers that must be eschewed,
as one formulation after another fails to generate meaning. Mathematically, no
number of atoms, cells, molecules, neurons, proteins, bonds, or strands of DNA will
alter outcomes. Breeds and hybrids are equally suborned by that force of destiny
which paleontology has eerily foretold.
Archaeologically, the rules of probability remain unchangeable from graveyard
to graveyard; between middens, cultures and cave walls the dreary monotony of the
dead gives no real insight into who these multitudes really were. That they lived has
no more rational appeal to us today than the nuances of a fossil record dictated by
minerology, hydrology and the weather. The brief record of our past does not prepare us for the end. We argue between hope and despair, neither of which offer
much by way of a solution to the darkness of caves or the blinding light of a star. In
the greens, between, one searches for what one has already found, to paraphrase
Pascal (Fig. 68.4).
68.5 Co-evolution amid Misanthropic Airs
Our species can rightly be said to be evolving and co-evolving anew. But evolution
herself is not evolving, as far as can be ascertained, and thus the molecular and
(purely psychological) numbers and proportions are unvarying. Their depictable
rudiments, that is, binary, analogue, do not accrue new characteristics vulnerable to
natural selection, either at the cellular or conceptual levels. Dust, ash, lithic tuff,
pyroclastic surge beds, andesitic lavas, meteoric water, all the sulfuric acid drops
and other stormy configurations of the elements are fixed, both in extant and flux.
As part of this irremediable ecology, our feelings and intuitions, unmasked in every
poem and protest, stare with equal fixity at the improbable. We won’t say impossible, though the logic that would have it thus far seems unequivocal.
68.5 Co-evolution amid Misanthropic Airs