Alright, now that I've reeled you in with my incisive wit, and deep penetrating intellect; it's time to run the gauntlet ( sorry, couldn't resist ) and throw out some thick gooey darkness at the end of town.
Life is a great cosmic joke.
The fun, of course, is we play it on ourselves. We can, or some can; as I don't believe this view is universally held, blame this on God. It is, after all, his house of cards. That we're seated at the back of the room; I don't feel, should be held against him ( you may insert whatever relevant pronoun you feel is applicable if you don't care for " him " ). We set ourselves down this particular lane; admonitions to the contrary, and we're doomed to see it to the end. I doubt we, as a collective, will one day hearken to a blinding vision, turn on a dime, and change course. And why should we; we've convinced ourselves of our inestimable value to the universe, and to deny that now would be somewhat hypocritical. We are Humanity, dammit! We carry the favor of God's eye. Our many sacred texts bear this out. That we have a hubristic finger in all these pies apparently is beside the point. God is on our side and he wouldn't abandon us, or play a cruel joke on us either. Would he? If we are created in his image, and we have a sense of humor, the depth and quality of which is remarkable ( assuming you are not a person of ill humor ); the obvious conclusion is that God does as well. As such, his may be cosmologically transcendent!
In an intellectual exercise; such as this, let us break our argument into three components; the cosmological, the biological, and the psychological.
Cosmologically, we are dust in the wind. By simply noting the size and scale of the universe, and our small, and by that I mean our incredibly small, little part of it; we are nearly infinitesimal. In cosmological time, our lives are nanoseconds; as was once proverbially noted, a blink in the eyes of God. The immense scale of the universe works against our notions of being special; one offs, if you will. As the universe is governed by the same laws regardless of location, and is made up of the same elements; as well as the same dynamics, the idea that there aren't many more carbon based life forms out there is self serving. There are many more of us out there, brother. That we struggle to bridge the time and distance inherent in a universe of this magnitude, as well as our biological limitations; the great impediment to our Star Trek fantasies, does not diminish the existence of others. The lack of evidence or contact is not, in and of itself, proof that no other sentient beings are out there. The cosmology of the great joke is probably the least diabolical, if not the greatest to overcome. We are what we are, where we are, and are bound by the immutable forces that govern the universe. Try as we may, we can only hope to understand the consistency of the soup we're in.
The biological conundrum is that, for some of us, the accumulation of knowledge and experience is juxtaposed by the inevitable disintegration of the body; including the brain, which is part of the body. That seems to be forgotten from time to time. In a society that fawns and obsesses over the physical, rather than revering the wisdom that presumably comes with age, there is great comedy in watching people desperately trying to defy the ossification of their cherished vessels. Surgery, creams, potions, appliques; all designed to forestall decay for a nominal service charge. This is high comedy. Our advertisements are filled with the lithe, the fit, and the young hawking products for the old, sedentary, and fat promising them a way to eternal life, or at least some bargain basement approximation of it. A good diet, exercise, moderation, and restraint are too much work. And while they will have an effect on the quality of your life; they may not have as big a desired effect on the superficiality of our visual selves. At one point in the mists of time, it was a compliment to say someone has aged gracefully. Given the bloating of the American public in this age of plenty, you don't hear that much anymore. Add to the fact that no one wants to get old anymore, and it's probably just as well. Of course, in the long run no of this matters. We'll get to that later.
Last, but not least, is the psychological. The iron clad belief that this all means something; that we're no just here out of cosmological and biological forces that we can't control. We're here to do God's work in whatever catechism we happen to believe in. We're born into circumstances we can't control, which has a predominant say in how our life will mature. Our life is shaped further by the actions of individuals we both know and don't know; for better or worse. That we are masters of our domain is mostly ephemeral. None the less, we continue to pray at the alter of the exception; that for everyone who toils in anonymity, a few will rise up to take their place in our histories and lore. It's very seductive. It plays to our vanity and greed.
The joke, of course, is that, cosmically, it matters not. As was famously stated, we fret and strut upon the stage til our part is over, to be played no more. Whether remembered or not. And remembrance is illusory as well. Some events and characters retain their place, but only a few. There can be but one Alexander. We have our histories, but they are incomplete and by human nature biased. The greatness of individuals is harnessed within memory of their time, after which it is in the hands of people to whom they are nothing more than pictures, words, and someone else's memories. It takes quite a character to truly impact human history. All the rest? Dust in the wind. I can only see my own family's face back to my great grandmothers. Anyone further back and I have no physical connection. Only what is passed down by those who knew or heard of them. What of all the human beings that have populated the earth from the beginning? Come and gone. Consumed by their needs and the vagaries of the age. We all simply pass through. The day will come that the dying sun's expansion will make the earth uninhabitable; later it will consume the earth as it dies. All our history; all the artifacts we leave behind go with it. Maybe we'll shoot it all into space, assuming the atmosphere isn't too filled with debris. Maybe we'll build an ark to ferry humanity to another world full of bucolic splendor. Maybe we'll kill ourselves off never having reconciled our ability to create with our darker impulses of destruction. Maybe.
Next we have a conversation with God. What does he think?
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