Maximize!

Being human is so exciting, scary, confounding, utterly paradoxical and bizarre. One thing we have at least figured out is that no ONE person will ever be the uber-genius who gets it all.. there is no elegant solution, no perfect clarity or eureka! moment to end all moments.

The brain-sparkingly scintillating mag New Scientist has a great intro to their report on the state of the Theory of Everything. [This is the theory that was Einstein's audacious endeavour to "read the mind of God" alternatively called Grand Unification or Unified Field Theory. He spent the last thirty years of his life, to no avail, ardently hunting the inch-long mathematical sentence that would explain all physical phenomena ..just to put it into some perspective].

“OK, so nobody expects it to actually explain everything. No genius is going to slap their forehead one day and say, “Oh yes, P equals Q squared minus Z. Now it’s all so clear – how the mind works, what happened to the dinosaurs, where socks disappear to…”

If like me you take a fancy to having your brain teased by classy well-formed thinking; even if you know it won’t be consummated with a satisfying solution to it all>> then I heartily recommend Brian Greene’s “The Elegant Universe” to titillate your synapses. It’s one of the most accessible ways of understanding how us humble humans can even CONTEMPLATE the Theory of Everything, the bravery of Einstein’s imagination and the zingy answer to it all that may be held by string theory.Yes, it’s a science book, but this is science to make you sigh. (I guess the caveat would be that you have at least a vague interest in what life exists beyond the confines of the TV guide, or that when I say “star” that Brad Pitt isn’t the first thing that comes to mind)

Astronomy and physics have shown us that we are infinitesimally teeny in the grand old universal oneness – in fact super-small & potentially insignificant not just in our own universe, but astronomers, string theorists and other quirky scientists of their ilk suggest there is strong evidence of a neighbourhood of multiple universes out there.

It’s all too big and too out of hand to comprehend anyway so why worry.. looking at life like a game with puzzle pieces to be put together all the while adventuring, eating wonderful food, laughing, conquering our fears, falling in love, building empires, creating, negotiating, trading, sharing stories of what we’ve discovered with one another. This is life.

If we don’t get uptight about the fact that what is “reality” or indeed TRUTH today, may not be same tomorrow.. we can really sit back and enjoy watching the science show. Let it unfold and be entertained as we discover more about ourselves and our ever expanding starry petrie-dish than I think we’ll ever be able to make good sense of. (But that whould never stop us from trying!).

“Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious” Brendan Gill