Hiatus Schmiatus

Hiatuses are for wimps.

I realized something yesterday. I realized that the whole purpose of the hiatus was to go within, figure it out, come back with something of some modicum of value. But that's not the way knowledge works... what if the questions that I ask have no real answers? What if the most important questions have only the answers that we give them?

I have a suspicion this is very much the case, but a curious arrangement arises out of such a perspective: you can't be wrong. Initially this is dis-settling. We like to be wrong; being wrong tells us that we can, if we try/think/look/listen long enough, be right. This is a familiar enough concept to metaphysical realists: the problem is that if you aren't aware of the true nature of reality, you're just... done. Taken along for a ride. Screwed. Deprived of truth.

This is why I hate epistemology.

At some point we have to accept that even the most basic perception is relative: we don't see individual atoms because this is unhelpful to us, being composed as we are, giant, lumbering organisms. But there's an important distinction here between the observability of atoms and one's musings over meaning and role within the universe, namely that one is, over the other, definitive. To some extent, at any rate.

Last night I fell asleep during a show about the Big Bang, dozing off to Einstein's displeasure with an idea of a universe with a beginning, his preference for a static, eternal universe with no end, no beginning. I can understand that sort of frustration; how your own theories upset your deepest convictions, how he must have felt (and how the church must have felt) when the evidence pointed to a universe that exploded into being in a singular moment of force, fire, and expansion. Neither is really the easy path, though, is it? Whether it's a static universe or one that expands and contracts and expands again, the question remains: where did this matter come from?

Did you see that question coming? What I mean is that it isn't just God that's an infinite regress; the Big Bang is just a fancier version. How did the universe begin? At the singularity. How did the singularity occur? Because of the contraction of the universe. Why did the universe contract? Because it stopped expanding. What caused the expansion? The singularity.

I think it would be funny if the universe began in utter paradox, if someone found a way to travel infinitely far into the past and as they did spacetime was invented to accommodate them and then BAM! they were shrunk to the size of an electron. And then BAM! again, explosion-city. Universe created. Thanks!

What was I talking about? Oh, right. The hiatus. See, the thing was that I thought that just by looking within, I could find some sort of definitive method of dealing with the world around me. But I just can't. I need to be outside, out in the world, fumbling around and making mistakes and loving and learning and trying to be the best I can be, every day... that's how I learn. The very best way, in fact.

As for the rest of it, I can't say. Can I find God? If I do, it will be a deeply personal experience, and even then I don't know if I could fully surrender. Nor can I fully subscribe to strong atheism - the belief in no-god, not just a lack of belief in God - because it relies on the same conviction, the same belief in rightness. Instead I will learn to be more comfortable in my discomfort, my not-knowing.

So that's it, then. If you want to follow along with me in my trial and error and success, please do. You won't always get a giggle, but then again, you might. You might curse at my stupidity, or, more frequently, just curse at my very bad writing. But I won't censor myself anymore - this is real. The only thing that's ever stood between you or me or anything else has been fear. Fear of the unknown.

And, well, fear be damned.