From my journal this evening:
"Never abandon your dreams" cooed the sexy voice of the jazz singer
on the radio this evening. Such an elementary advice, which many of us
had embedded into us as a cliché in grade school.
Today we discovered water on Mars (Or at least something that melted when our rover cut out a chunk of
it). I have a rock with me right now which represents one of my more
inane fantasies. This particular dream deals primarily with the beach
-- but not just any beach.
Picture a vast expanse of heavy liquid, fraught with waves and
tumultuous froth, reflecting broken images of high white clouds in a
yellow sky. I stand on a rocky beach, surrounded by pebbles worn smooth
by the tide. My boot knocks some dirt loose from a small bank, and it
avalanches down into the water -- but no -- this sea is not composed of
our familiar H2O. There is no sun in the sky, but just an opaque layer
of yellow smog. The view is clear, the substances every bit as real and
tangible as at the beach of Lake Michigan. But no, this is Ligeia Mare,
the gigantic body of liquid methane on the surface of Titan, Saturn's
largest moon. A few drops of freezing cold rain meander their way down
my visor, and a strong wind eggs on the surface of the river flowing
out of the nearby gorge.
This vision struck me while at the beach last Sunday, and as I
discussed it with David L., I selected a smooth, flat rock about half
the size of my fist. Deciding to pretend it was a souvenir from
Saturn's dominion, I took it home with me. Now, a week later, the
feeling associated with it is still strong enough to drive me to write.
It's a rock. An ordinary hunk of sandstone.
I bought two books a week ago today, which I haven't touched yet.
Since I seem to think I'm so infused with singularitarian and
transhumanism, I finally decided to read up on these titillating ideas.
The two titles are The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005) and The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET, and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos (2007), by Ray Kurzweil and James Gardner, respectively.
Indulging in the dream of the Singularity turns life, if only for a
delusional moment, into a panoramic epic of limitless adventure.
Saturn? Why settle for so small? Immortality is within your reach, the
whole galaxy -- and perhaps universe -- yours to explore!!
But dare we dream? True space-age adventures aside, I for one have
plenty of more down-to-earth fantasies that are almost as unlikely as
skipping stones on a Titan sea. Romantic imagination alone can be quite
ungratifying, as with each crush one constantly dreams, but relatively
rarely sees his wants fulfilled. I dream of travels, of stories, of
intricately complicated projects (From game design to music to A.I.). I
long for the dramatic, the short-term realization of the epic. I bask in awe at the universe and our civilization.
The majority of the world's population earns in a week what I paid
for dinner and a movie last night. When one's life is centered on
survival tasks -- be it subsistence farming, factory labor, or taxi
driving -- I'm sure the sort of big-picture projects, so attractive to
our hopes and creative faculties, that I aim for in my life feel almost
as distant as Saturn.
Where is the balance between presumption and realism? Why should I,
of all the dreamers out there, deserve to expect anything from life
beyond the ordinary, the unexciting?
But there, what do I care? Disillusionment comes slowly (If at all), and I'm young. I will continue to dream.
SigmaX