Understanding

by Falling Phoenix

I was sitting in my bathtub when I realized. I got it, I understood!" Rating for profundity. Just musings, really.

Understanding
by Falling Phoenix

I was sitting in my bathtub this evening when my cat walked in to sniff at the toilet. I had had a long, strenuous night and afternoon of homework and trying to teach to a daft nine year-old the ideas of settings in stories. I said to my cat (I always talk to my cat, I'm one of those cooky people who will have thirty when I'm old and live alone) "Hi kitty! You are so preeeetty! Do you love me, kitty-kee? I love you! But you don't have compassion like we do, do you?" This last question I said more to myself.

A little more explanation of the history of this writing would be helpful right about now. I am a high school student, in a gifted English class. Right now our class is working on Paradise Lost, by John Milton (brilliant guy btw. Dead, but brilliant). Anyway, we also read today in class this thing by Pascal called Man and the Universe. Reading that might help understand my ramblings… but I'll try to be explicit.

So, Pascal is all about science and math (he was a geometry prodigy, re-discovering all of Euclid's crap by age twelve or something) but on top of that he's really religious. That's something I still don't really get, but whatever. (I mean, if you believe in geometric principles and proof and stuff, how can you feel so strongly about something that you have no idea exists, that you have never seen, and only know about from a book and guys who don't have sex?) Sorry. Anyway…

So he had this idea that man is a paradox. It is differentiated from other animals and beasts by thoughts. We obtain and create conscious thoughts. But his paradox is that those thoughts are blessing and curse. We can think and understand and feel and stuff, but it is that which makes us so despicable. I mean, you don't see porcupines starting wars with each other because one has bigger quills that the other, do you? And the fishes don't genocide each other because some of them are blue and some of them are sliver, do they? No. We are wicked and disgraceful, and all because we can think for ourselves.

At least that was Pascal's musings on the idea.

So I was thinking… I know about some of these ideas because I am a huge fan of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy. It explains human understanding in the fantastical metaphor of Dust. Lord Asriel explained a bit of it to Lyra at the end of The Golden Compass/Northern Lights. He uses the Bible to explain to Lyra that when Eve ate the fruit, she understood. She saw the difference between good and evil, and she was ashamed because she had done wrong. Dust settled on her then and her dæmon took its fixed form. In other words, she matured. She became an adult, and Dust a.k.a. sin took hold of her.

But then I remembered a line from the third book, when I think it was Balthamos who was explaining to Will what Dust was. He used a line so simple, and I knew it so well. He said: "Dust is simply the name for when matter understands itself." Of course! I knew that. I've known that line, remembered it from the first time I read the book!

Then it hit me. We don't understand ourselves! None of us makes sense! We will never be great enough to comprehend how our minds work, or how we can go from a clump of dividing cells in a woman's uterus to full grown beings who are capable of both extremes: we can blow up other people, shoot other humans in the face for no good reason, and we can also help someone in need, give whole-heartedly, and hug our mothers. We will never understand how those emotions and feelings and thoughts work, or where they come from, when the develop!

And something else hit me. THAT was the paradox Pascal meant! I mean, I think so. He could have meant just what I said before, that thoughts are a gift and curse, but what if there is an underlying meaning in there, before even the purpose of thought? The paradox is that we are conscious beings with thoughts because we understand ourselves, but we don't understand ourselves! We don't! We never will! Just like we cannot comprehend the idea of infinity and the universe, (Pascal's main-er point in Man and the Universe) we will never understand ourselves.

But maybe that's it too. Maybe to understand that we cannot understand ourselves is to be truly conscious. As Serafina may say, that is one of the key steps to wisdom.

Well, of course, these ideas open up whole other multitudes of questions: What is the difference between thoughts and emotions? Are there really three parts of our being (body, heart/soul, mind)? Why are we here? Is there a higher being that actually created us? And if there is, why did he/she do it, if we are so corrupt and evil? And what does it take to be evil? What makes a person wicked? What pushes someone past that point? And the more common question: What happens when we die? Is there a paradise for the non-wicked? Is there a hell, or as Phillip Pullman thinks, a nowhere land for everyone? I certainly hope there is no such place as that of Dante's imagination!

Finally, I will end on a question that my brilliant and amazing English teacher posed today: Is it better to believe and then find there is nothing in the afterlife, or to not believe and discover we should have, and then be punished for all eternity?

Thank you for listening, and goodnight to all.
I would love to hear other people's views on this matter, or others mentioned, or anything that has to do with His Dark Materials in genereal. I am a huge fan and phan, and love to talk to other people. It would be great comfort to know that I am not the only silly sixteen year old girl who muses on the meanings of life. Thank you again.
-FP