How we talk about reality has everything to do with how we interact with it.
There is that famous line from Einstein: “I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.
“For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.
“If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning. But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives…God does not play dice with the universe.”
In other words, we know now - unlike the plagues of the 14th and 17th centuries that this is not God’s wrath or grand poker game. Nor is God stirring the cosmic soup but accidentally left the back door open to let in all the bugs. Nor is God throwing handfuls of COVID19 at those of us who are sinners. It just is. But that isness has something to do with an evolutionary response to this present moment.
It seems like we have a choice here: to opt for fear (which is not the same as caution) and make all our responses about giving into fear; to opt for indifference which is to proceed as if it is business as usual; or to opt for curiosity and understanding...what do we need to hear nature—including human nature— tell us? It’s not useful to stay in the mechanistic world view - human vs. the natural world, or human vs. human. That is unfriendly. It is useful to see humans as part of nature, to see everyone as such. And even if we can’t yet understand what’s going on, are we able to see any gifts of this moment? In 1971 Marvin Gaye released the song “What’s Goin On” under a very different set of circumstances - the middle of the Vietnam War and free love, the back end of the Civil Rights Movement, the front end of great economic struggle. He sings:
Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today.
It might be time for us to choose to participate differently, to be open to this moment in the long arc of time, however scary or unknown. Struggle always presents an opportunity to discern whether we should hold the course or plot a new one. In either case, we need to find our way. If we decide the universe is friendly, that means we opt to be an aspect of that friendliness and bring more lovin’. The opposite is also true.
What say you? Is the universe a friendly place?
