Tribute To Kurt Vonnegut, almost
Out of an infinite singularity time and space erupt. Energy, matter, dimensions, all cascading out of a point of unlocated mystery.
Heat pushes against absolute cold, the universe spreads light and bounces gravity around.
Time is now a fact, time so vast that humans can't imagine it.
Space is vast, galaxies are drifting in the immensity.
Billions of years pass.
On a small planet that orbits an ordinary star a bipedal creature learns to walk on it's hind feet.
Many years later, the descendents of this creature learn to make sounds that mean all kinds of things. Communication is refined in this species known human beings, more than the sounds of other creatures.
Insects communicate through smell and touch, and birds have many different sounds for song or different dangers or for mating rituals. The human beings make lots of sounds that help them survive, explore and learn. Improved communication helps accelerate the growth of intelligence,in an exponential way.
The hands of early humans could grasp large branches or small delicate plants. Hands learn to shape tools that occur to the mind of the humans. So the sounds the humans make declare the pride in the hunt, or the bonds of family. Sounds are made that help the tribe feel strong, and express joy in success or happiness.The tools of the hunt must have sounds to describe them,also sounds for strategies during hunting, because tis is life or death, eat or starve. The human creature was like other creature that made soothing sounds to declare friendship.
After thousands of years of primitive survival, sounds became solidified into words, language, with subtleties and certainties. The adult humans made visual copies of their prey, and important ideas to share with the younger ones. It became an ongoing pattern, the elders had learned from their elders, so they taught the young. The growth of knowledge exploded in this human creature.
Animals could share all kinds of communication and survive well. Humans had found a door to another way of life. Words were a human made machine that changed the vagueness of something unknown into a clear useful fact. Sometime in this early language there was made the mighty two- "Yes" and "No". These were locked to the concepts of "safe" or "danger". Animals make sounds that meant something similar, but largely loud and raucous. Humans could make a quiet sound that could save a life, or end it.
The acceleration of learning and survival and intelligence helped make language into visual form. Humans agreed that sounds could be shown in brief lines. Lots of languages made lots of different signs. We can still trace the early forms of todays languages, it's a huge area of study.
Words are like time machines that allow us to travel incredibly far into the past, or into the future.
I've been able to read since some early age, about five or six, I guess.
I learned reading in that wonder world that is primary school, with kind teachers doing the ABC and helping us to be interested in books.
Many people have shared this experience. As young students we were allowed to borrow books from the school library, as long as we had a large heavy fabric bag to carry the books in. The bag had a draw string, and we all carried the books home and back to school like soldiers on a mission. The stories unfolded before us with joy and magic. Some titles I remember are The Five Brothers, Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Dr. Seuss, The Wind in the Willows, so many wonders opened up through words and pictures in books.
Soon, life was kind of wonderful in different ways. There was some music by a bunch of British lads named the Beatles, and comics had heroes with wonderful powers. There was a box called television, and James Bond was defeating villains and kissing women, not always in that order.
Books became full of weird stories of science gone wild, with people travelling into outer space .
The former optimism of the brilliance of human intelligence was changed into a cautious warning about dangers unforeseen. In one story gigantic poisonous plants walked in a world where almost everyone had gone blind.That was Day of the Triffids, an end of the world story, scary and strange.Science might not be able to solve all problems. Science might even be responsible for really huge threats to human existence. In Lord of the Flies, a group of boys are on a lonely island, with no adults to help them, after some kind of war has destroyed civilization. The potential for anarchy in boys is brilliantly shown in that book.
This is a slow intro to my connection and awareness of Kurt Vonnegut and his imagination.
The world of imagination is a window into infinite possibilities. In a library packed with history, with wars and politics, science fiction asks the reader to imagine incredible concepts.
The planet was said to be round. Roundness is just a rumor. Who can see it?
Galileo was an Italian rebel who had ideas. Ideas are dangerous, the Catholic Church said.
Science was taught in Universities, but, let's face it, science is strange.
Knowledge is just a general feeling.
Better go with the existing order. Rule Brittania, Brittainia rules the waves.
The mighty plans of vast empires are built up to show mankinds dominance of nature. We rule the world. The world doesn't rule us. Mankind is a mass of people, a society following leaders, and without leaders, humanity dies.
These are clunky dumb ideas, but ideas that were truth, if you lived in the 1890s.
Colonies and domination, it's the white mans kind guidance that made the savages into humans. The white races of England and Europe were supposed to be blessed by the Almighty to Rule this Earth, subdue nature, and bring the light of the true faith to the heathens of Africa, Asia, and other wild regions.
Yes, throw up if you like, it's a blindness that ruled, and was believed to be the only way of looking. Blindness is not just a physical thing, it's a way of thinking.
Some blind people like the musician Stevie Wonder, have more insight than sighted folks.
It's just a way of thinking but it scares some.
Humour is a dangerous tool of radicals. Humor shows insight into the fragile ideas that prop up pompous self righteousness.
Kurt Vonneguts writing has a wonderful and silly sense of the absurd.
He knows how science works, and how science falls down. He asks us to explore the vanity of our self congratulation.
Science was a largely unknown concept a mere three hundred years ago, although there were learned people who were able to see the possibility. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is now called a scientist, but in his day, the world knew him as an erratic polymath, a dabbler in fields that meant little to most people. His greatest popular success might be the invention of the lightening rod, that allowed the large buildings constructed of timber to remain standing, especially church steeples. Science stopped nature from showing the irony of Gods house being destroyed by an act of God.
Heat pushes against absolute cold, the universe spreads light and bounces gravity around.
Time is now a fact, time so vast that humans can't imagine it.
Space is vast, galaxies are drifting in the immensity.
Billions of years pass.
On a small planet that orbits an ordinary star a bipedal creature learns to walk on it's hind feet.
Many years later, the descendents of this creature learn to make sounds that mean all kinds of things. Communication is refined in this species known human beings, more than the sounds of other creatures.
Insects communicate through smell and touch, and birds have many different sounds for song or different dangers or for mating rituals. The human beings make lots of sounds that help them survive, explore and learn. Improved communication helps accelerate the growth of intelligence,in an exponential way.
The hands of early humans could grasp large branches or small delicate plants. Hands learn to shape tools that occur to the mind of the humans. So the sounds the humans make declare the pride in the hunt, or the bonds of family. Sounds are made that help the tribe feel strong, and express joy in success or happiness.The tools of the hunt must have sounds to describe them,also sounds for strategies during hunting, because tis is life or death, eat or starve. The human creature was like other creature that made soothing sounds to declare friendship.
After thousands of years of primitive survival, sounds became solidified into words, language, with subtleties and certainties. The adult humans made visual copies of their prey, and important ideas to share with the younger ones. It became an ongoing pattern, the elders had learned from their elders, so they taught the young. The growth of knowledge exploded in this human creature.
Animals could share all kinds of communication and survive well. Humans had found a door to another way of life. Words were a human made machine that changed the vagueness of something unknown into a clear useful fact. Sometime in this early language there was made the mighty two- "Yes" and "No". These were locked to the concepts of "safe" or "danger". Animals make sounds that meant something similar, but largely loud and raucous. Humans could make a quiet sound that could save a life, or end it.
The acceleration of learning and survival and intelligence helped make language into visual form. Humans agreed that sounds could be shown in brief lines. Lots of languages made lots of different signs. We can still trace the early forms of todays languages, it's a huge area of study.
Words are like time machines that allow us to travel incredibly far into the past, or into the future.
I've been able to read since some early age, about five or six, I guess.
I learned reading in that wonder world that is primary school, with kind teachers doing the ABC and helping us to be interested in books.
Many people have shared this experience. As young students we were allowed to borrow books from the school library, as long as we had a large heavy fabric bag to carry the books in. The bag had a draw string, and we all carried the books home and back to school like soldiers on a mission. The stories unfolded before us with joy and magic. Some titles I remember are The Five Brothers, Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Dr. Seuss, The Wind in the Willows, so many wonders opened up through words and pictures in books.
Soon, life was kind of wonderful in different ways. There was some music by a bunch of British lads named the Beatles, and comics had heroes with wonderful powers. There was a box called television, and James Bond was defeating villains and kissing women, not always in that order.
Books became full of weird stories of science gone wild, with people travelling into outer space .
The former optimism of the brilliance of human intelligence was changed into a cautious warning about dangers unforeseen. In one story gigantic poisonous plants walked in a world where almost everyone had gone blind.That was Day of the Triffids, an end of the world story, scary and strange.Science might not be able to solve all problems. Science might even be responsible for really huge threats to human existence. In Lord of the Flies, a group of boys are on a lonely island, with no adults to help them, after some kind of war has destroyed civilization. The potential for anarchy in boys is brilliantly shown in that book.
This is a slow intro to my connection and awareness of Kurt Vonnegut and his imagination.
The world of imagination is a window into infinite possibilities. In a library packed with history, with wars and politics, science fiction asks the reader to imagine incredible concepts.
The planet was said to be round. Roundness is just a rumor. Who can see it?
Galileo was an Italian rebel who had ideas. Ideas are dangerous, the Catholic Church said.
Science was taught in Universities, but, let's face it, science is strange.
Knowledge is just a general feeling.
Better go with the existing order. Rule Brittania, Brittainia rules the waves.
The mighty plans of vast empires are built up to show mankinds dominance of nature. We rule the world. The world doesn't rule us. Mankind is a mass of people, a society following leaders, and without leaders, humanity dies.
These are clunky dumb ideas, but ideas that were truth, if you lived in the 1890s.
Colonies and domination, it's the white mans kind guidance that made the savages into humans. The white races of England and Europe were supposed to be blessed by the Almighty to Rule this Earth, subdue nature, and bring the light of the true faith to the heathens of Africa, Asia, and other wild regions.
Yes, throw up if you like, it's a blindness that ruled, and was believed to be the only way of looking. Blindness is not just a physical thing, it's a way of thinking.
Some blind people like the musician Stevie Wonder, have more insight than sighted folks.
It's just a way of thinking but it scares some.
Humour is a dangerous tool of radicals. Humor shows insight into the fragile ideas that prop up pompous self righteousness.
Kurt Vonneguts writing has a wonderful and silly sense of the absurd.
He knows how science works, and how science falls down. He asks us to explore the vanity of our self congratulation.
Science was a largely unknown concept a mere three hundred years ago, although there were learned people who were able to see the possibility. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is now called a scientist, but in his day, the world knew him as an erratic polymath, a dabbler in fields that meant little to most people. His greatest popular success might be the invention of the lightening rod, that allowed the large buildings constructed of timber to remain standing, especially church steeples. Science stopped nature from showing the irony of Gods house being destroyed by an act of God.