Why do we evolve? We know that we do, but do we know why?
Our emotional, sensual response to the sight and smell of a flower encourages us to take one step after another until we reach the source. Not unlike other investigating creatures, we smell and touch it. Minutes have not ticked off any genuine clock. We haven’t floated on any stream. Time is our nut, and ours is the practical art of infinity and everything in it.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
By David Stone
The following is an excerpt from A Million Different Things: Meditations of the World’s Happiest Man by David Stone
Whatever we do, at whatever pace and at whatever level of complexity, we are in command, we are time, we select the space in which we wish to operate, declining the rest.
There are rules we accept when we come alive in physical space. We emerge into and evolve with the mass. We never jump so far off into space that what we say about or learn from our experiences can’t be understood. There are forerunners, commonly cast as freaks or mentally disturbed, but theirs is an extended context, on the fringes, not outside of it.
In human mass evolution, we are able to perceive within the confines of our three familiar dimensions. Evidence suggest we may be evolving into others. If so, the access is gradual and elusive.
It’s conceivable that some other creatures already experience dimensions we do not. We have no way of knowing, despite our public certainty.
Hints of other stuff outside the membranes of sensory observation abound, which I believe suggests an evolving capacity to cross over or add on.
Future generations have mysteries to get excited about.
Why do we evolve? Is It Spiritual?
Our connections to our spiritual history have been damaged or restricted by events or agreements made long before any of us made our appearances here. We’ve been rendered a little bit lost amid the vastness of an infinity greater than the universe we’ve been exploring.
Rediscovery of lost wisdom is a passion among the New Age adventurers, although there seems to be a tendency to become stuck in contemplation, much like bogging down in a not so dynamic romance.
After a while, looking backward, even in discovery, permits only tepid experiences. It’s now, now, now that matters, and getting on with it is inevitable. Contemplation can throw on the brakes.
To get the rules we are bound to live by, we start with a set at birth, a natal toolkit.
Evolution outfitted our brains with templates that make recognition of the world easier than if we had to learn everything from scratch. We, as well as other mammals, are born to suckle for survival, no lessons needed.
Down the road, there are templates for the expedited recognition of objects in our common environment without needing a full view.
Excerpted from A Million Different Things: Meditations of the World’s Happiest Man
This is the innate skill that lets us get so much information from simple sketches. We own templates for language learning and for understanding the subtleties of conversation beyond the words being used.
All these are tools, and along with others we inherit or create, we enable experience. We ramble in the world.
We make choices and we do things for a million different reasons.
David Stone is a New York City based writer whose most recent published books are 21 Poems and Lucky To Have Her, a novel.
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As the Dust Settles
The way the wind cuts across the river this time of year. The way older buildings hold heat but never quite hold air. I told myself that was why my chest felt tight again on certain mornings. Age, perhaps.
Reblogged this on Assorted Ideas, Large & Small and commented:
So, we assume that we do. How come no one asks why?