Man’s folly

September 19, 2007

Man’s sublime existence has been largely undermined because of too much rationalization. How simple things would have been if we were like the bird who greets the morning with a song.  The bird doesn’t think why the sun always rises in the east, nor question the caprices of the seasons — it just lives. Enjoying whatever surprises the morning offers, totally oblivious to the approaching afternoon armed with the knowledge that nature holds whatever it requires. With that realization, only a food wouldn’t burst into a song.

Why do we think that we are greater than nature? Why do we feel the need to control the universe and take comfort in science and religion? Do you think that identifying the parts of the tree you claim it as your own? Do the bird’s physiological and anatomical characteristics define what it is? Don’t you think its soul, its life force, characterizes the bird regardless of species and form? For example, If I have the structure of a man but I have the animus of a woman, would you call me a man? I think my superficial qualities are incidental; my design makes me what I am.

Our ego is so great that we dismiss everything as false until we say it’s the truth. We dismiss the idea that the universe will continue without us; we dismiss anything that we can’t identify and explain as an illusion; we dismiss the idea that we are made of the same element from the lowest grub that crawls the earth. We dismiss the idea that we are not gods.

How great is the man who knows that he is nothing for only in knowing that we are a mere dust in nature’s eye that it can easily flicker away can we truly marvel at the vast wonder of the universe. Only in knowing that we are small can we begin to be great.

All our lives we are made to believe that we are special; that we have the faculties to design the world as we see fit. We took a passage from the book of Genesis that we are to be the caretakers of the earth, distort it and gave it new meaning — that we can do anything we like with it.

But how can we call ourselves caretakers when it’s been nature that’s taking care of us all along? She could have easily annihilated the human race with a mere sneeze, but she chose not to. She endured the destruction that we inflicted. Nature endured for us. Now, how can we presume to take care of her when we’re the ones hurting her?
Man thinks that his ordinariness is his curse and that’s why he constantly denies it.  I think Angela Hayes played by Mena Suvari in the movie American Beauty summed this impulse to be better when she said: “I don’t think there’s anything worse than being ordinary.”

And that’s where fools exceed geniuses, because they never claim to be otherwise than being ordinary. Why do we revere geniuses anyway, are they better than us? Do they possess special faculties that weren’t sprinkled to everybody when the gods distributed talents? Was Shakespeare a better man for composing all those literatures, however majestic they were? Was the Greek philosopher Plato superior because of his dialogues?

Genius is but an offspring of necessity; man’s involvement is unintended.

Why do you presume to be better than anybody else? Is it your intelligence, your wealth or good looks? You die like everybody else and worms will feed on your belly. That means, dear sir, you will succumb to the laws of nature just like everybody else.

For is it not conceit and self-delusion that make us kill an ant without guilt and yet almost worship the television set and all the modern appliances we have on our living rooms?  We think that the television is more precious than the ant. We think our creation is better than nature.

Can we not grasp that the single step an ant makes is much finer that the most advanced robotic limb invented by man? That a single particle of sand possesses qualities that are much more complex that the most expensive computer known to man? Yet, it’s there on the ground to be walked upon, totally ignored!

Man’s folly is thinking he’s not one; for presuming that he breathes the same air as gods; for presuming that he is greater than his own nature. If he just but pause and think how inconsequential he is in relation to the workings of the universe, how insignificant society that he created is, then he can truly appreciate the reason why he is here in the first place — to experience life.