in gratitude to a foggy mind
Jun. 10th, 2004 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI recently had the unsettling experience of an online exchange with some very bigoted christians. One had violently hateful views of gay people in particular, and more generally of anybody whose views didn't coincide with his own; in short he wished them death. Another didn't seem as wicked, but still lived in a world governed by 2000 year old superstitions.
The reason I feel grateful to these poor lost souls is that they made me realise just how damn lucky I am in having a wide understanding of the real world and being able to think clearly, and how enriched I am by the variety of people I meet.
It made walking around among the trees and birds, and looking at the clouds and the hills just that much more wonderful. All too often I take my ability to understand things for granted.
When I look at a cloud I don't simply see something beautiful that might make a lovely painting or photo, but I also see water vapor shaped by wind currents, first dissolved by the warmer air then condensing out into visible droplets when the air cools.
When I see a tree I see the proteins constructing the lignin which forms the wood, making the tree sturdy, and I see the fluids and nutrients flowing up from the roots through the layer of living tissue around the wood under the surface bark, I also see other fluids and nutrients flowing back down to the roots. I see the leaves -- the main chemical factories, building sugar from carbon dioxide and water using sunlight as a power source, and also being the motive force for drawing up the water from below via capillary action. I see the genetic rules that cause one plant to grow differently to another, governing leaf shape, branching frequency and geometry, speed of growth, and the balance of hormones which together determine the overall shape of the tree.
Beyond this all is the 600 million year history of each plant and all the animal and other life around it, from the birds and wallabies to the microscopic fungi, slime moulds, bacteria, and protozoa in the damp ground and leaf litter. Each organism is a success story of unbroken generations from the first living things till now -- of increasing complexity, and occasional simplification powered by that sweet process: evolution. I can see and feel how the process works in all things around me because I've directed evolution on my computer and know how such a simple thing can produce remarkable complexity in a surprisingly short series of steps.
Normally I consider myself just an average person -- lucky because of my addiction to reading and learning, but basically of ordinary intelligence. I am in awe of youth today who are so much smarter than my generation and learn greater amounts and much more quickly.
Tangling with those poor, blinkered, religious fools was a wakeup call for me. Their minds were so badly stunted that it forced me to see that what I'd considered normal, is really a shining light. I saw that I'd vastly undervalued the ability to understand and reason. I meet so many smart, intelligent people that I'd come to feel that being able to think clearly and truly appreciate the world around us is the norm. Unfortunately it isn't.
I now look through my eyes with a renewed sense of wonder and awe and an enhanced appreciation for how truly precious a good mind is.
The reason I feel grateful to these poor lost souls is that they made me realise just how damn lucky I am in having a wide understanding of the real world and being able to think clearly, and how enriched I am by the variety of people I meet.
It made walking around among the trees and birds, and looking at the clouds and the hills just that much more wonderful. All too often I take my ability to understand things for granted.
When I look at a cloud I don't simply see something beautiful that might make a lovely painting or photo, but I also see water vapor shaped by wind currents, first dissolved by the warmer air then condensing out into visible droplets when the air cools.
When I see a tree I see the proteins constructing the lignin which forms the wood, making the tree sturdy, and I see the fluids and nutrients flowing up from the roots through the layer of living tissue around the wood under the surface bark, I also see other fluids and nutrients flowing back down to the roots. I see the leaves -- the main chemical factories, building sugar from carbon dioxide and water using sunlight as a power source, and also being the motive force for drawing up the water from below via capillary action. I see the genetic rules that cause one plant to grow differently to another, governing leaf shape, branching frequency and geometry, speed of growth, and the balance of hormones which together determine the overall shape of the tree.
Beyond this all is the 600 million year history of each plant and all the animal and other life around it, from the birds and wallabies to the microscopic fungi, slime moulds, bacteria, and protozoa in the damp ground and leaf litter. Each organism is a success story of unbroken generations from the first living things till now -- of increasing complexity, and occasional simplification powered by that sweet process: evolution. I can see and feel how the process works in all things around me because I've directed evolution on my computer and know how such a simple thing can produce remarkable complexity in a surprisingly short series of steps.
Normally I consider myself just an average person -- lucky because of my addiction to reading and learning, but basically of ordinary intelligence. I am in awe of youth today who are so much smarter than my generation and learn greater amounts and much more quickly.
Tangling with those poor, blinkered, religious fools was a wakeup call for me. Their minds were so badly stunted that it forced me to see that what I'd considered normal, is really a shining light. I saw that I'd vastly undervalued the ability to understand and reason. I meet so many smart, intelligent people that I'd come to feel that being able to think clearly and truly appreciate the world around us is the norm. Unfortunately it isn't.
I now look through my eyes with a renewed sense of wonder and awe and an enhanced appreciation for how truly precious a good mind is.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-10 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-10 03:00 pm (UTC)Sweetie, I would be delighted for you to quote me anytime, with or without credits. If I can ever be any help then I'm rapt.