Note: This the working draft of my Existential Espresso podcast (September 5, 2010) of the same title. This draft does not include all my spontaneous ad libs and has not been edited for perfect grammar or to remove its casual style and tone. I am posting this merely for those who are interested in accessing an online text version of the ideas in this podcast. This should not be considered a final draft or my complete thoughts on these topics. For that, you should refer to my books in the Theory Zero series, available in Amazon.
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With the fabulous weather in Philadelphia this morning, my neighborhood coffeehouses were a little too noisy, so I had to return to my loft. But, I am armed with my espresso and ready to get some neurons firing and I hope you are, too.
For me, my summer is over and the new semester has started. Over 15 years as a college professor. Hard to believe, the years are going by. As I mentioned in my previous podcast, about “Living in the Milky Way,” this summer I spent several weeks in the deserts of the Big Bend are in far west Texas and thoroughly enjoyed the vistas, the landscapes, the quiet, and the night skies. There, you realize you are living on a planet in the Milky Way. Now, it is back to life in the metropolis, the urban universe that let’s us pretend we are center of everything. Since the new semester has started:
I am happy to report that my new text-anthology is now in-print, as of two weeks ago. Just in time! Published by Cognella academic books, the text is called Media Environments. It combines movies and theory to critique the role of media in society. And, I put together a great roster of authors: Carl Sagan, Al Gore, Naomi Wolf, Susan Jacoby, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Jean Baudrillard, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and many others, including Stephen Hawking. So, that is very cool.
Part 1: The Issue
Speaking of Stephen Hawking, as some of you may know, Hawking's new book is due out in a few days and it is already generating much controversy in the science-religion debate. Entitled The Grand Design, the book apparently claims that recent breakthroughs in cosmology show that the universe does not need a God to explain its existence. Since this book is not out yet, I have not read it. According to the BBC site, Hawking’s book claims:
"That science can explain the Universe's origin without invoking God, instead arguing that the existence of gravity means the Universe can create itself from nothing."
Regarding the first part of that phrase, that science can explain the universe without reference to God, well, Stephen, that is not news to existentialists. Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential ontology accomplished a similar task in Being and Nothingness in the 1940s, most specifically pages 3-26. Famed atheist Ayn Rand modified and streamlined the same essential argument in her critique of religion in Atlas Shrugged in 1957. Others have made similar arguments.
As for the second part of the phrase, about the role of gravity in permitting the Universe to create something from nothing, I will wait and read the book. Gravity is surely a powerful key force in the cosmos, but I am highly skeptical of the claim of something coming from nothing. This is because it seems something is what makes nothing possible. As Sartre showed in Being and Nothingness, it is existence and consciousness that makes possible all nothingnesses. More on this in a few moments.
As you might expect, in response to Hawking’s new book, the apologists for theology are leaping to the defense of superstition as a guide for human existence in the cosmos. At the BBC web site, there are the usual simplistic defenses of religion against science, assertions that have been refuted by many writers in the past, most recently Sam Harris and others. At the CNN site, there was a story about Hawking's new book, with almost half of the text devoted to religious assertions presented as profound insights that supposedly refuted or negated Hawking.
Of course, the so-called science-religion debate is not really a debate, it is the science-superstition meme popularity contest. It is not a debate, because debate implies evidence from which human reason logically makes an argument. Since there is no evidence for a Creator, religious disputes can only be resolved through force, not persuasion, which is why religion causes wars and mass slaughter. Just read the news: “sectarian violence” is the Orwellian code name for religious war. The Terror War is, at root, a religious war.
There is no evidence for any grand Creator, only centuries of foundationless assertions, buttressed by reassurances that God has a mysterious plan for everything, including the promise of eternal life after death for those that choose myth and superstition over reason and science.
Must everything, especially our most profound ideas and insights and aspirations, be dumbed down by our mass media and pop culture to the level of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Tea Party metaphysics? If so, then in the words of Apollo 13, “Houston, We Have a Problem.”
Speaking of Apollo, we can trace this dumbing down of the profound back to Apollo 8, when the astronauts read from Genesis to a billion people watching on TV back on Earth. The astronauts were reading creation myths while orbiting the moon through the genius of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, and others, and broadcasting a quarter-million miles back to Earth through the discoveries of electromagnetism and television. The astronauts read from Genesis to supposedly give meaning to the accomplishment, while comforting the masses back on Earth. This was a great leap backward for the human mind and is the ground zero for the rise of fundamentalism, as I showed in my book Starry Skies Moving Away (available in Amazon). Should we be surprised that 50-60% of America is creationist! And, all religion and faith further undermine the respect for evidence and logic and reason throughout society, while reducing our most profound issues into stories, assertions, and mindless rants.
The metameme that is science has an expanding and evolving universe of evidence, provided by ever more powerful media technologies — the Hubble space telescope, various electron microscopes, WMAP space probe, COBE satellite, and many other space telescopes coming in the near future. These media technologies illustrate what I call the first law of media technologies — media technologies are not neutral, as they increase in power, they change our view of the cosmos, society, and our place in both. From Galileo’s telescope to the microscope to the microchip, this has proven true. Look at the effects of the printing press, the television, and the computer. The telescope may be the most important. And, powered by Moore’s Law, these media technologies are gathering ever more power, doubling in power every 18-24 months for the past 60 years and into the foreseeable future. This means our telescopes and computers will evermore evidence to provide ever deeper understanding of our strange and beautiful universe, at the micro and macro levels.
The Hubble space telescope is the most powerful eye humanity has. This electronic eye has peered across billions of light years of space-time, looking back billions of year into the early stages of the universe and galaxy formation. It has found black holes, furthering the work of Hawking and many others. Hubble has provided astonishing new insights into the number of galaxies in the universe. The Hubble Deep Field images revealed thousands of galaxies in a tiny dark spot in the night sky, which is one key reason why we know there are 100+ billion galaxies in the visible universe.
But, there is one thing this eye has not seen or discovered: any sign or evidence of a Creator. Or any evidence of a heaven with spirits in harmony with each other. Why deny what our most powerful eye shows … and what it knows? There is no Creator out there, anywhere, much less overlooking our little planet and advising us on who to have sex with at night. For that matter, go do your own experiment. Have some crazy sex beneath the starry skies at night and see what happens. It will be like looking through the Hubble telescope. You will have some great fun amidst the stars, but you will not get a message from any Creator.
Of course, fun sex does not falsify God, even beneath the stars. Evidence and media technology, however overwhelming and powerful, is not enough to make the total case for no Creator. Rigorous logical reasoning is equally important. Let me explain. This podcast will have three more parts. Part 2, some back story about recent events and pop culture. Part 3, a discussion showing that a Creator does exist and is an impossibility. Part 4, I will highlight a few issues about existential roles of media technology.
Part 2: Back Story
Before I discuss Hawking and Dawkins, I should make clear that I am not going to refute every argument or claim for a Creator. I am only going to discuss the ultimate one and show why a Creator, of any kind, is logically and existentially impossible. Thus, all theologies are false. And, before you bombard me with emails, read my books in Amazon and post your complaints there; my books can always use some controversy! The two books most relevant are Starry Skies Moving Away and Crashing Into the Vanishing Points. Covering art, science, film, architecture, and media theory, my books provide a broad, unique take on contemporary culture and religion is just one of the many topics I cover.
Of course, the past several decades have produced numerous writers and books that have shown the falsity, hypocrisy, and contradictions of all theologies, with much greater insight than Nietzsche’s famous 19th century assertion that “God is dead.” Since 9/11, it has become clear that global superstitions seek to reverse the trajectories of modern secular culture in creating theological empires that return humanity to the past, to the supposedly glorious spiritual paradises of the premodern mind. Thus, there has been a recent spurt of atheist books, written by courageous writers willing to challenge the creationist dogma and the anti-intellectualism of the global media, especially in America. These include works of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others. You can find them easily in Amazon or at your chain bookstore and in some independent bookstores.
I have been an existentialist, without the angst, since my early 20s. I was probably somewhat of an existentialist as a child and just did not know it. Anyway, I have long ignored the folly of superstition. That is until 9/11 and the Terror War, which, at its most essential level, is a religious war between two tribes of fundamentalists, both at war with the culture and secular values of the modern world. Glenn Beck’s rant at his rally perfectly illustrated this idea. According to CNN, Beck said:
"America today begins to turn back to God. For too long, this country has wandered in darkness."
Turn back to God or Allah, it does not matter. It is the same superstitious concept and both memes are false. The memes of the two religions are virtually identical, as I wrote in the text for Peter Granser’s art-photography book, Signs, published in Europe and America by Hatje Cantz and The Chicago Museum of Contemporary photography. The book, a collection of photos about neoconservative US culture, have been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world.
The best book that I read on the specific overall of a Creator is George Smith’s 1980 classic, Atheism: The Case Against God, which systematically dismantles all the key arguments offered for a Creator, despite the lack of evidence. And it is precisely because belief in the great Creator is buttressed by zero evidence, that logical reasoning must appear on the stage. It would help if there were some artists who would jump on stage to help promote sanity, but they seem too busy making movies about zombies, vampires, monsters, totalitarian computers, and end-of-the-world apocalypses. And, of course, the endless stream of movies about action heroes and people falling in and out of love. Other than Julia Sweeney’s monologue about Letting Go of God, and Bill Maher’s light-hearted, but hilarious film, Religulous, who else in the popular media and Hollywood is standing on the side of sanity?
For that matter, where are the hip business leaders of Silicon Valley. Very quiet. But, then, they have customers who they are afraid to offend and stockholders who be would upset if over 50% of their customers dropped their brand. After all, well over 50% of America is creationist and one presumes that their God and sacred texts would compel them to not use the products of a company led by an atheist who believes in evolution and the Big Bang.
And, where are my friends and colleagues on the Left? Most are very quiet on this issue, apparently content in their relativism, which, however well-intended, is naive. This is the apparent policy of The New York Times, which rarely challenges anything essential about any religion anywhere, except extremism. All beliefs are equally profound the Times seems to suggest, apparently oblivious to the idea that it is moderation, implied virtue, and uncritical toleration that makes extremism possible. Even Noam Chomsky did not single out religion or fundamentalism one of the century’s great challenges in his new book, Hopes and Prospects. Chomsky sees our challenge for the century to be merely “decent survival.” For Chomsky, the greatest threats to our survival are imperialism, ecological apocalypse and nuclear apocalypse, but apparently not the intellectual apocalypse that is fundamentalism, creationism, and superstition.
Regarding relativism, some values are relative to their context, but not all. The phrase “Everything is relative” is a self contradiction and makes sense only if it is excluded from what it claims; if everything is relative, that would include the statement itself, which then means some things can only be not relative.
The same can be said for uncertainty. To say there is no certainty is a contradiction in terms, for the statement itself makes a claim to certainty: there is no certainty. If one wants to claim they are uncertain of everything, including their belief in uncertainty, then they necessarily concede that certainties are possible. This is the flaw in pure skepticism and Bill Maher’s ontology of “doubt.”
So, we are given three existential choices in the popular media, religion or relativism or skepticism, with science and philosophy merely bystanders to the spectacle.
Of course, a short term global strategy has to be to cultivate peace among religious tribes. This especially necessary to prevent a nuclear detonation or exchange, as well as protect the human rights of women, children, and gays, all of whom are targeted for exploitation and domination by the theological rulers, which are usually patriarchies. But the only long term path is to promote cosmic sanity. And that means abandoning the premodern idea of a Creator of the cosmos.
Having reading three of Hawking's books, I always thought he was weak in how he addressed the God question or the Creator issue. Of course, most famously, he asserted at the end of The Theory of Everything that a unified theory of cosmology – the so-called theory of everything – might eventually allow us “to see the mind of God.” To me, this comment undermined the rest of the book, however witty his intent. Of course, Hawking might have meant that science will make us gods in our ability to understand the cosmos in ways unimaginable prior to modern science. In a profound way, he is right. But, we know that know that theologians would never take his phrase that way. It was the equivalent of saying that culmination of cosmology is to understand Genesis in the Bible. In effect, Hawking repeated the intellectual crash of Apollo 8.
If the theory of everything could allow us to see the mind of God, then why can’t the sacred texts – supposedly the word of God – allow us to understand the universe, as revealed by our media technologies? The sacred texts have nothing to say about the vast universe we now know exists, precisely because the texts came before science and telescopes and microscopes. Nothing to say on genetics, quantum mechanics, evolution, electromagnetism, relativity, black holes, galaxies, the big bang, and so on.
Scientists are great discoverers, but usually poor philosophers. This is not an attack on Hawking or Dawkins, for they are great scientists and writers. But, my point is that most scientists, in their passion for discovery, have not spent enough time thinking through the philosophical arguments and questions.
If Hawking has determined that recent discoveries and theories in cosmology reveal that God is not necessary for the existence of the universe, then he has merely re-stated what Sartre’s existentialist philosophy has known a long time.
Richard Dawkins is a great scientist and ardent defender of reason and sanity against the forces of superstition and human ignorance, i.e. fundamentalism and creationism. His views are often misrepresented or misunderstood by critics. Dawkins is correct that Darwin and evolution removes the need for a Creator because genetic evolution – replication, variation, and selection – will produce design without a grand plan, without a grand designer. Though scientists often quibble over specialized details, I think his books have proved this beyond any doubt. This summer I read his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth. The last chapter is especially fabulous: a great treatment of the sublime beauty of evolution, as Darwin suggested in the last line of his famous book, Origin of the Species.
But, Dawkins, for all his biological and scientific genius, is wrong on one philosophical point, the most important point. In The God Delusion and in interviews, he allows the possibility (however slim) of a Creator, because he apparently thinks that the idea of a Creator cannot be disproved 100%. In other words, in the terms of the dominant philosophy of science methodology, the hypothesis of a Creator cannot be falsified with 100% certainty, a certainty derived from experimental testing and empirical evidence. Of course, Dawkins cleverly shows that one cannot falsify a flying spaghetti monster, either. But, while the falsification methodology, which came from Karl Popper, has much merit in the science lab, it is overlooks some key logical insights necessary to refute the meme of Creators of the cosmos.
Part 3: There is no Creator
To show that there is no Creator, I am going to combine the ideas of several thinkers into one brief and basic and irrefutable point. These include some of Aristotle’s metaphysics, Sartre’s ontology in Being and Nothingness, Rand’s views on God, and others.
Dawkins is correct when he asks why should the God hypothesis be exempt from critique and the requirements of verifiable evidence and logic, unlike the Gaia hypothesis, or evolution, or the big bang, all of which must face rigorous scrutiny in the academic world? As many philosophers and scientists have understood, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs and the burden of proof is on those who make the claims. The assertion of a Creator of the universe should qualify as an extraordinary claim, as is the claim that such a Creator has placed the faithful at the center of the universe, reads their minds, and has secured their collective and personal destinies. There is zero evidence for such claims.
Despite what is believed in churches, temples, and mosques, and assumed throughout popular culture (especially in the mass media and Hollywood movies), all of the arguments for gods and Creators have failed to meet the philosophical and evidentiary criteria associated with truth and human knowledge. There are endless myths, anecdotes, and torturous assumptions that claim the existence of deities and gods, but the ultimate empirical and intellectual foundation for proposing any Creator of the universe is flawed, illogical, and contradictory.
From an existentialist perspective, all the authority of theology and the sacred texts begins with an assertion about the existence of a God or Creator. It is Genesis 1, Verse 1. That is the essential point of debate, the foundation upon which stands the entire edifice of religion. That is why the theologians must attack Hawking.
Without convincing evidence and proof, theology and religion then possess no more spiritual or intellectual merit than any other premodern model of the world that seeks to explain the origin of the cosmos and destiny of humanity, absent any reference or understanding of modern science. It does matter if the theologian is Pope Benedict or Benny Hinn or Osama bin Laden. It is the same assertion.
Let’s get a two key terms straight to avoid confusion. Those terms are existence and Creator.
By existence, I mean everything that exists, the universe, the multiverse, bubble universes popping in and out of existence, or any other conception of the entirety of the cosmos. Existence is everything that has existed, past, present, and future. This is, in essence, Sartre’s meaning of existence.
The other term is Creator. By Creator, I mean any concept of Deity, God, Allah, Omnipotent Being, Master of the Universe, etc.
All theological arguments for a Creator necessarily claim, assume, or presuppose that the Creator is immaterial and was conscious when creating existence. There is no argument for a Creator that does not explicitly or inherently assume the Creator has no material form, was conscious, and aware of what it was doing. The Creator is pure consciousness. The lack of material form is essential to the role of faith, or believing without evidence. Supposedly, this lack of material form makes it impossible to falsify the existence of a Creator, yet it simultaneously opens the door for a fatal flaw … though that will hardly matter to the faithful followers.
Now here are the contradictions and flaws.
1. If the Creator was conscious and there was no existence or no universe, then what was the Creator conscious of — itself? Impossible. Recall, it is immaterial, it is pure consciousness (or spirituality).
2. A consciousness aware only of itself is an impossibility; a consciousness (of any kind) can only identify itself in relation to some existing thing, external to itself, of which it is conscious or aware.
3. A consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. It is impossible for such to even exist. Before consciousness could even identify itself as being conscious, there must have been some existing thing to be conscious of, a thing external to consciousness and awareness.
In other words, existence necessarily precedes any form of consciousness. That’s it. There is no exit from that reality. That is why there is no Creator. So far as I know, this is the argument overlooked by Dawkins, Hawking, Hitchens, Carl Sagan, Bill Maher, and many other atheists, agnostics, or skeptics.
If someone wants to claim that a deity exists that is not perceivable, then what they are practicing is not consciousness, or awareness. They are believing a delusion.
Consciousness can only exist and function in relation to a physical existence, a physical universe of which it is aware, which explains why consciousness fits with evolutionary theory. Existence is everything that has ever existed, including consciousness and the universe, in whatever form(s). In relation to any kind of consciousness, existence must have always been prior in some form, however much existence has changed and evolved. Over the millennia, consciousness emerged from stardust to become alive and has adapted to the universe in becoming aware of existence.
This is a beautiful meme! It does not make me feel small or needing an explanation for existence of everything. Existence is the ground for all explanations. Existence was not created, nor was the universe. The big bang view of the universe is often imprecisely thought of as meaning that the universe was created, but that it is inaccurate. Actually, all we know, so far, is that the visible universe was a small region of space-time that massively expanded over 13.7 billion years into the visible universe and the vast realm of space-time that we know today. We do not know what caused this explosive expansion, but, as I explained earlier, we are certain it was not caused by a Creator.
So, what is the role of nothingness in these issues? Very important, while also illustrating the profound existential role of media technologies.
As Sartre explains in Being and Nothingness, existence is everything, the entirety of the universe. Existence precedes essence, existing prior to any Platonic forms or beliefs or consciousness or anything else. There are no things outside existence, including nothing.
In a nutshell, existence is the container for all empirical things, plus consciousness and nothingness. The universe is what it is, full of being. All living things have a lack, a state of incompleteness, forever seeking the fullness and completeness that motivates all action and thought. To have a lack or be incomplete is to not have something, or to have a nothing that needs to be filled with something. This is one key origin of nothing and nothingness. Here is the second. To be aware of any empirical thing, consciousness must not be that thing, much like seeing is separate from what is seen. Since all things are potential objects of consciousness, consciousness must be a non-thing, or a nothingness. Consciousness illuminates existence as it is … and as it is not … but could be, revealing nothingnesses to be filled. In sum, nothingness exists and we humans strive to improve or complete ourselves by filling nothingness with being. These nothingnesses are the discontinuities in a deterministic universe, the starting point for all human freedom and cultural possibility, collectively and individually, from past to present to future.
What does this mean for the Creator issue?
1. Since consciousness is a nothingness, it cannot be outside existence, thus eliminating the possibility for a Creator. So, now is the time to free our minds from myths and superstitions and confidently embrace the evolving scientific-existentialist view of the universe.
2. Nothing exists within existence; existence does not exist within nothing. The big bang universe is not filling up empty space; all space and time is within existence. Voids exist within existence, not the other way around. Surely, energy and matter are interchangeable, and the universe is strange. But can something literally come from nothing. Literally, the answer seems to be no. It is existence that makes possible nothing and nothingness.
Part 4: Media Technology and the Cosmos.
There is one sense that I agree with Glenn Beck (but not in the same meaning), in that Americans are “wandering in the darkness” … so is everyone on our planet.
Everyday, Spaceship Earth is hurtling through the darkness of the cosmic void, locked into the gravity of the sun and the Milky Way and being pulled along at 570,000 miles per hour. That’s right, 570,000 miles per hour, 24/7. Since Apollo 8, the masses have been able to see the true existential condition of our planet, viewing it in the famed Earthrise photo, where Earth was shown against the darkness, rising above the horizon of the moon. To believe in a Creator is an epic denial, as expressed by the Apollo 8 reading of Genesis.
We know we are not the center of the universe, a universe of 100s of billions of galaxies, each with 100s of billions of stars. And this universe is expanding, with vast voids and dark energy apparently driving the galaxies away from each other.
Every night, we avoid or evade these facts when our cities light up and the TVs and computers turn on. We have created artificial universes — our cities and cyberspace – where we can pretend we are the center of the universe. The media universe is a substitute universe, with hyperlinks placing us at the center; what else is the meaning of Facebook? A media universe for you, about you, starring you.
In contrast to wandering in cosmic darkness, we are also living in a time of bright lights, but it has nothing to do with our electrified cities or imaginary masters of the universe. Media technologies – in the form of ever more powerful telescopes, computers, and electronic screens – are revealing a universe of astonishing scale and beauty, with billions upon billions of radiant galaxies and stars. This is the brightest time in history for cosmology. We should embrace it.
We humans are not omniscient beings, so our methods of grasping existence have natural limits, but those limits are determined only by the nature of the cosmos and the nature of our consciousness, and our media technologies. Human knowledge is evolving and open ended. As the media technologies expand and increate in power, so to will our knowledge. Over time, some theories have been proven true, such as gravity, evolution, relativity, the big bang, and so on.. Other theories have been proven false, such as such as geocentrism, the flat Earth, and creationism. That theory and knowledge evolve with new evidence and new media technology is natural and need not imply utter relativism.
From the fact that no one person, institution, or nation can know everything, it does not follow that there must be a divine Creator, a cosmic spirit, intelligent designer, or any other supernatural entity. That we are not gods who know everything about the structure and evolution of the universe does not imply that the universe must have been “intelligently designed” by a god, Creator, or deity of any kind. Similarly, non-omniscience does not mean we have zero knowledge or zero certainty.
Knowledge should be thought of as contextual and evolutionary, not timeless or static, always open ended and subject to revision when presented with new evidence, new conditions, or new theories. If knowledge and certainty mean the total and complete grasp of an unchanging world or the entire universe, then we are left with the false alternatives of being either omniscient gods or ignorant fools. If certainty means omniscience, then we must certainly be forever blind. From the fact that we cannot know everything, it does not follow that we cannot understand anything — that we are not gods does not mean we are fools.
Final Thoughts
Now a few final thoughts on media technology and the cosmos. All the genius of Hawking is reliant upon the power of telescopes and computer technologies. Without the telescopes and computers, our knowledge of the cosmos would be tiny. But there is so much more going on with media and the cosmos and I want to touch upon a few points. The idea of “Media and Human Destiny” is my newest writing project and I have a great grad student working with me on the project, Agreen Wang, who you can hear on the Black Hole Media Theory podcast.
Marshall McLuhan viewed the electronic media as extensions of human consciousness and the central nervous system, resulting in a global network that functions as a “global nervous system” — technologies of perception deployed upon the world to map the world, but which also function to model and reorder the world. Television and movies are extensions of the camera and radio, which are extensions of the eye and spoken words, with words as an extension of human thought. Computers and cyberspace are extensions of the brain, consciousness, and memories. Satellites are also extensions. The Hubble telescope is a satellite extension of television, which is an extension of the eye, with all the data going into computers. Outer space is being stored in cyberspace.
Just think: With Hubble, we have extended our eyes into outer space, across billions of years of space and time, across vast voids of the cosmos. There is no sign or evidence of any Creator, only the cosmos evolving according to its own rules, which we are discovering.
If media are extensions of consciousness, and consciousness is a nothingness, then it follows that electronic media are nothingnesses — electronic nothingnesses extended from humans to fill a nothingness in existence and consciousness. A new laptop seems “empty” until put to use, with the gigabytes serving as a digital nothingness to be filled with images and information, the reflections of the world which provide the media content. No matter how much the media proliferate around the world, there will always be the sense of nothingness right next to the sense of being in the world, precisely because we have developed powerful media technology to mirror and model the world. The idea of being and nothingness existing, side-by-side, is implicit in the nature of digital technology — 1’s and 0’s, on and off, representation and non-representation, being and nothingness.
This means the Hubble space telescope and all the space probes are extensions of human consciousness and nothingness into outer space. Electronic and digital nothingnesses extended into space for the purpose of representing objects back to us on Earth. We have extended our consciousness throughout the solar system. We know now there is water on our moon, water and fog on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. As of June 2010, NASA and JPL report there are 450+ exoplanets, meaning the number of planets outside our solar system, orbiting other stars. The number of planets will likely reach thousands and maybe millions, just in the Milky Way. What about the billions of galaxies?
Of course, where there is water and planets, there is a good possibility of life, with 450 planets and counting. After all, our solar system has eight planets, one with life and moons with water. The odds suggest we are surely not the only game in town.
And, consider this. The Voyager space probe has left the solar system, with the Pioneer probes to follow. And other space probes to follow. Not only have we encircled Earth within our electronic nervous system, we have encompassed the solar system within our electronic consciousness, within our electronic nothingnesses. Outer space within cyberspace; vast cosmic voids within vast digital voids, representations of something within nothingness.
As I said earlier, media technologies are not neutral; as they increase in power they change our view of the cosmos, our view of existence, social organization, and out place in society and the cosmos. The single most important challenge facing humanity is finding meaning and destiny in the big bang universe, as revealed by our media technologies. That’s it. All else is secondary — all ideologies, all worldviews, all politics and moralities, all dreams and delusions. Let’s not pretend this is a task for religion or theology. It is long past time we grew up and abandoned such childish stories. Let’s not pretend this is a task for science, alone, either. And, certainly not politics. The task requires the collective effort of art, science, and philosophy.
And, it is beautiful challenge, but it will be a lengthy task, one that I hope humans are willing to face. Our sanity and fate depends on it.
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