by M. Stow11
Summary: The dramatic prose poem commences with the introduction of a journey from EarthCentre as a theme park ride of cosmological proportions, with the reader and author as companions, and with spoken commentary inter-mixed with conversation. We are taken through scientific historical theoretical and legendary mythological scenarios that bring the various stories, and that of The Universe, to life.
Initially, there is doubt and anxiety around The Past Excised: the passing of time, and any regrets that may be left behind. The question of Universal physical laws, and as to whether The Universe has meta-physical origin, with ethical moral imperative or not; any greater purpose, fates or graces, or ultimate judgement of humanity as individuals and society, or ultimate truth, is raised. The only truth is conceived of as the existential passing of time, and that the past cannot be returned to, without elements of falsity and mythmaking arising. The End of The Universe Journey (Odyssey) is then seen as a chance of discovering the truth and purpose of the universe, if any, as well as that of EarthCentre and humanity, society, family and future.
The Journey taken from EarthCentre to The End of The Universe is both into The Future real as into The-Past gone in that the journey into space also entails returning towards the original source of light in The Universe, the light horizon, and Big Bang, with a reverse of Universal Inflation.
The sense of purpose becomes actually physically and in understanding towards birth and death, to the endpoint of The Journey/Universe (past the visible light horizon): The Centre of The Sun, The Galaxy, and Our-Selves. Light and Dark matter/energy are contrasted as the ultimate duality in The Universe, in and from that respect The Journey takes place also as a mind experiment based on current scientific knowledge and conjecture.
The initial journey through the Inner and Outer Solar Systems, the origins of Our-Selves, in family and society are described and related through world mythology from ancient times to the present, introducing the stories of the related planets in shared myth and scientific description of composition through immortal/mortal and atomic/planetary accretion. Through the inner asteroid belt, to Jupiter and Saturn (failed Suns) and the disquieting suggestion that through myth and science mortal humanity is necessarily born of gender adultery, as early humans must have had to been initially closely genetically and familiarly related to reproduce sexually. The universal incest taboo is referenced through the ancient mythological and modern psycho-analytic approach.
Complex evolutionary adaptation and change through ever widening (other island) family ties from the inter-breeding breeding of two primal cells: matrilineal mitochondria and ordinary paternal bacteria (Panspermia through space; Ocean floor hot vents; Pri-mordial atmospheric soup) provides the necessary diversification required for survival into The Future, and the significance of this for family and society through the generations. Since the most recent common ancestors: ancestral YX-chromosomal Adam and XX mitochondrial-Eve and global counterparts, are reflected across world mythology and deified Earthly-Mothers and Godly Fathers, prevailling as both originators and keepers of evolutionary social-morality as the preservers, and destroyers of life.
Demeter, Penelope, and Circe are comparable as deity/mortals becoming the blamed as clarifiers of sexual error, envy and jealousy, and a warning of life’s contradictory birth and death, through beauty and moral-being as autocratically (or naturalistic fallacy) resulting in cataclysmic destruction in Wars (as Troy/Ragnorak/Kurukshetra) and other ‘natural’ events, to present modern Super-Hero and Manga characters and computer games reviving such complex story-telling for modernity.
There is a suggestion here of moving from Jovian and Other-Pagan and subsequent religious in-breeding and ignorance, to the modern secular and scientific, revealed through democratic (sharing-value) cosmological and atomic-genetic spectography, consciously measuring light phenomena against dark matter and energy (as the sub-conscious). As in perhaps pseudo-scientific but none the less interesting: psycho-analysis, links science and mythology, with the ancients (Zeus/Hera; Oedipus/Electra) and finally (as in Homer’s Odyssey) with mortal Penelope and Circe resolving the ancient dilemma of risky mistaken/rivalrous jealous love-triangles and inter-familial marriage; by marrying each other’s sons (Telemachus and Telegony ‘the distant ones’ and ‘far from war’) from separate islands, and with this love- rectangle/geometry of space and time, their separate families thus maintaining newly surviving evolutionary lines of gender and Being.
The Universal themes of Jungian psychology and archtypical collective unconscious as Universal science and experience, are returned to in the notion that as more is understood through modern science of the physical nature of The Universe, the common features of atomic-universal confluence throughout especially the understanding of the role of electro-magnetism and gravitational nucleation of parts, are likened throughout The Universe; in atoms, stars, planets, moons and asteroids, comets and meteors, living cells, and modern information-technology and story-telling, and video-gaming continuing the stories begun in ancient times and pursued through logical rational scientific philosophical and physical-being (ontology) secular existentialist good/bad faith, and theories of knowledge and enquiry (epistemology) based on fixed scientific-method, rather than naturalistic-fallacy.
The history of this shared-story telling is told in terms of the movement of humanity and civilisation, Out Of Africa, through Asiatic India and China; across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and to The Australia’s and Americas; and returning westward to the mid-East, East and Northern Africa, and Greco-Roman and Norse Europe.
The stories and science evidenced from pictogram paintings and spoken word accounts referenced, written and paper and electronic-printed word (as this book). The conjecture is made that the first Gods were male and fe-male Pan and Tan Gou (All/enough) from China/India/Greece/Africa, and possibly the basis of all the major cultural stories then of The World: Arctic and Pacific Americas, Sumerian Greco-Roman and Norse European Empires, leaking into the modern European Fairy Tale, and with Super and Manga Heroes and Villains in graphic comic books, and filmic computer games
Modern as ancient myth-making, takes on origins and the daily struggle of life (generally avoiding disastrous violent wars, peace seeking fairness in social transactions), Game Theory, and a suggested Universal Democracy of Each Our Own if tainted angst-ridden and uncertain Existential pragmatic secular human (ism) (Dewey). As Socrates, Sartre, Iris Murdoch or Ayn Rand, The Good is essentially seen as mortal, not Godly, or Universal Truth, Fate or good-Grace; rather, as individual-choice or Free-Will between good and evil for an immediately and consequential (intended or otherwise) unknown gratifying personal/social value of good/evil (cruelty/kindness).
Whether argued for through religious (as generally contrary to self-destructive suicide, murderous nihilism, and inflicted-pain and ignorance) or scientific means (neutral-ethics) individual existential-values are life-critical and may appear as apparent Laws of The-Universe (as Platonic/Kantian ideals/imperatives) but that these are able to change over Time, according to Each of Our Own and conditionality, share bio-evolutionary necessity, and as argued here, empirical resolution for continuation (of atoms, cells, stars planets and galaxies) of ourselves as Universal Life-Force.
The conjunction of Global myth, legend, and historical-Truth (if such a ‘thing’ is possible, probable, or not at all) as anthropomorphically, anthropically, integrally Our-Selves, suggests that The Universe does have a teleological end in the origination, not only of itself, but of life itself. As Ourselves, obvious day-by-day, until, and inevitably, Death must however eventually dis-continue Life. We have Our Own mobile as motile features/character changing all the time, and relationships between Us confuse and muddle the issues, and lead easily to mis-understanding. For example, it may be argued that lying or not telling the truth is a Universal Ethic. However, the sheer complexity of Life and The Universe described numerically and through language and in the nebulous arguments of the ancients and moderns, can be refined
, and may explain, the evidence that the saving lie is also a natural exception, perhaps for survival, as wanting to tell the truth maybe a requirement for encouraging others to speak the truth too. Although more populous and diverse The EarthCentre, is modernly more peaceful and becoming more peaceful overall, than at any other time in recorded history(Pinker 2010).
The Natural-World itself including Hu-Manity, and where Hu-Man made natural-disasters may be exacerbating through global warming, pollution threatening relatively-more/less peaceful continuation of individuals and families in society; socially, in Time and Space we do continue surely now doing what We always do always have-done: through careful friendly co-operation and free and fair, perhaps evolving, democracy, this may be seen as the purpose of The Universe itself, of the whole in harmony. As with EarthCentre, for The Sun, The Galaxy, Ourselves at The Universal Solar-Galactic centres conjoined in The End, as the end of life itself, being inevitable maybe un-predictably sudden, despite, or perhaps because of trusted-knowledge and defensive-complacency (personal and planetary health/infection, asteroidal-collision, cyber-collapse).
We will be and end as ever, and forever, in inevitable decay and albeit democratic conflict and destruction as well as plurality harmony and success.
We cannot know the precise moment of death.
But we can enjoy ourselves and be happy and be happy for others while we are here.
This leads to the final assertion of the notion that there may be both Being and Nothingness at the centre of everything as light and dark dis-proportionate, absurd; as Sartrian-existentialism (I am because there is Other; alternatively, I am, because I choose to Act, to fill the void). With Free-Will, and the initial question of purpose and now morality in The Universe, EarthCentre and Hu-manity re-solved with the idea of fair and free personal and social value, responsibility, and respect for the existence of all else, as necessary to Our Own lives emerged and emergent becomings; as negotiable Zero-Sum Game, between Our-Selves and All Other (The Universe). Oneness as Being of All, and necessarily Being as from and returning all-together from EarthCentre. To The End of The Universe: once more returning optimistically existentially as philosophically, as emotionally comedic as tragic, as joyous and exciting as dull and depressing, as physical as meta/sub-physical Being and Nothingness…
Photo-evidence is used to show Galaxies, Stars, Planets. As atoms, as cellular (egg/albumen-like) and as having similar properties in simple appearance i.e. bulging central (as solar and galactic) nucleate core or focal-point; orbital moving spiral electro-magnetic rings as spectral planetary/stellar atomic particulate, cloud-barrier switching binary circuit exchangers with the inevitability of continual effective difference and change in Space and Time, as Energy to Mass: as Our-Living Selves as in and of and as The Natural World: as Other; as core mantle and crust: EarthCentre from where we once arrived, and depart again.