Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Right Now
Right now, somewhere out in soft wet dirt in England, one particular Mimivirus is infecting an individual Ameoba, thus replaying a scene that has occurred countless times during the Earth's several billion orbits around the sun.
Right now the sun is setting on Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the volcano strewn Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Russia. I'd imagine many of the residents are looking forward to spring. Are any of them in an existentialist mood as they settle in for the night? The colors of the sunset, perhaps, inspiring them for the moment to not take reality for granted, as it is so easy to do?
Right now, out in the cold waters of the northern Pacific, an individual blue whale is swimming alone in the darkening waters. I wonder what it's consciousness is like. Is it just a river of sensory input and emotions, forever living in the present moment, as some of the Buddhist monks attempt? How similar are it's sensory experiences and emotions to ours? Does it contemplate the past and plan for the future?
Right now a giant storm, the size of one of Earth's continents, is churning in the clouds of saturn. As exceedingly large as planet Earth is, with all of it's rich lifeforms, and the brains of six and a half billion people, each one an exceedingly complex structure, all of it is easily dwarfed in size by the majestic outer planets. While flying in a plane and looking out the window and using powers of ten one can almost get a feel for the size of the Earth, but the mind reels when faced with the colossal cold clouds of saturn.
Right now the entire universe exists.
Right now the sun is setting on Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the volcano strewn Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Russia. I'd imagine many of the residents are looking forward to spring. Are any of them in an existentialist mood as they settle in for the night? The colors of the sunset, perhaps, inspiring them for the moment to not take reality for granted, as it is so easy to do?
Right now, out in the cold waters of the northern Pacific, an individual blue whale is swimming alone in the darkening waters. I wonder what it's consciousness is like. Is it just a river of sensory input and emotions, forever living in the present moment, as some of the Buddhist monks attempt? How similar are it's sensory experiences and emotions to ours? Does it contemplate the past and plan for the future?
Right now a giant storm, the size of one of Earth's continents, is churning in the clouds of saturn. As exceedingly large as planet Earth is, with all of it's rich lifeforms, and the brains of six and a half billion people, each one an exceedingly complex structure, all of it is easily dwarfed in size by the majestic outer planets. While flying in a plane and looking out the window and using powers of ten one can almost get a feel for the size of the Earth, but the mind reels when faced with the colossal cold clouds of saturn.
Right now the entire universe exists.
