Program 7: Finding meaning in life among its mundanities

This episode followings on the previous prgrams about the shortness  off life and the inevitability of death. It reviews the poetry and writings of people who have had to grapple with the boring and the routine that consumes so much of our short lives

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Transcript

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Ideas that have shaped human history as expressed in poetry, speeches, myth, and documents. A podcast by Alan Anforth.

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I've entitled this program Finding Meaning in Life Amongst Its Mundanities. This program has got nothing to do with Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the supercomputer Deep Thought was programmed to operate for millions of years to return an answer to the question of what is the meaning of life. And after that time of calculating and processing, Deep Thought came up with the answer forty-two. Of course, the meaninglessness of that answer simply reflects the meaninglessness of the question that was put to Deep Thought. For any question to be answered, there needs to be sufficient specificity in the question that permits an answer to be given. Hopefully in this program I can raise some of those issues. At its most basic, there are essentially two alternatives to the question of the meaning of life. Firstly, that there is some intrinsic meaning in life, and secondly, that there is none, and life only has the meaning in which an individual finds or invests in it. The first alternative is one commonly taken in various religious traditions and is not addressed in this program. This program is devoted to the second of these alternatives. For pessimists such as German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 to 1860, life is dominated by suffering, and the suffering outweighs the satisfaction. Contrast this with the Jewish Austrian psychologist Victor Frankel, nineteen oh five to nineteen ninety seven, who spent time in the Nazi extermination camps. He argued the need to find meaning in all aspects of life, including suffering and its seeming pointlessness. He argued that the drive for secular and religious power was a sublimation of this motivation. The issue of pessimism was recently the subject of British philosopher David Cooper in his book Pessimism, Quietism and Nature as a Refuge, where he noted that the pessimism of Schopenhauer and others is based on two premises. First, that the present state of the human condition is deplorable, and secondly, that there's no likelihood of it improving. This form of pessimism is widespread across and within societies such as to cause the German existentialist atheist philosopher Martin Heidegger to quip that only God can save us. The most commonly held view of the search for meaning in life is to find peace and contentment in some form and to escape suffering. This motivation commonly underpins forms of monasticism and other religious traditions. Not everyone had a pessimistic view about human nature and the meaning of life. The positive view was famously embodied in the desperato Words for Life by the American German academic Max Eelmann 1872 to 1945, which read Go placidly amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant. They too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons. They are a vexation to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it is the real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is. Many persons strive for high ideals, and every one's life is full of heroism. Be yourself, especially do not feign affection, neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. Do not stress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul. With all its shams, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. The call for resilience in the face of life's strife found expression in the serenity prayer of the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebel eighteen ninety two to nineteen seventy one, which has been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous around the world. It reads O God, give us the courage to change what must be changed, the serenity to accept what we cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. There are other approaches taken by some, including, firstly, a more focused form of desterata to find meaning within family, vocation, and the resulting mundanities of life. Secondly, to find a sense of belonging in some community or social tribe. Thirdly, to find meaning in the pursuit of some external pursuit or goal. The search for meaning involves choices, and a refusal to choose is itself a choice in favour of the status quo and whatever fate that may deliver. The issue of making choices was the subject of The Road Not Taken by American poet Robert Frost, 1874 to 1963, which was first published in August of 1915. Frost spent the years nineteen twelve to nineteen fifteen in England, where amongst his acquaintances was the writer Edward Thomas. Frost wrote this poem as a joke directed at his friend Edward Thomas, who was often indecisive about which route to take when the two went out walking. At the outbreak of World War I, Frost chose to return to America to pursue his academic career. Thomas enlisted in the army and was killed in the French Front. The speaker in the poem is Thomas, who Frost maintains was, and I quote, a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. The poem reads Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both, and be one traveller long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent into the undergrowth. Then took the other as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear, though as for that the passing there had warned them really about the same. And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden back. Oh I kept the first for another day, yet knowing how ways lead to ways, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence, two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference. It's possible that the two paths the Frost is referring to is the path he took to return to America to his academic career, and the path that his friend Thomas took to enlist in the army and go to war, which was the path most commonly trodden by young men at that time. In the Desterade the listener was urged to take kindly the counsel of years and to gracefully surrender the things of youth. This was the topic of the British suffragette Alice Maynel, eighteen forty seven to nineteen twenty two, who wrote a letter from a girl to her own old age. The poem puts Alice back in the shoes of her younger self, who offers advice to the older Alice, but with the benefit of the hindsight of the older Alice. In the end it's advice that the older Alice rejects. It reads Listen and when thy hand this paper presses, O time worn woman, think of her who blesses that what thy thin fingers touch with her caresses. O mother, for weight of years that break thee, O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee, and from the changes of my heart must make thee. O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven. Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven, and they were calm about the fall of even. Pause near the ending of thy long migration, for this one sudden hour of desolation appeals to one hour of thy meditation. Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee, of the great hills that storm the sky behind thee, of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee. Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander, is but a grey and silent world, but ponder the misty mounts of the morning yonder. What part of this wild heart of mine I know not, will follow with thee where the great winds blow not, and where the young flowers from the mountain grow not Yet let my letter, with thy lost thoughts in it, tell what the way was and when thou didst begin it, and win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it. I have not written this letter of divining to make a glory of thy silent pining, a triumph thy mute and strange declining Only one youth and the bright life were shrouded, only one morning and the day was clouded, and one old age with all regrets is crowded. O hush, oh hush, thy tears my words steeping, O hush, oh hush, so full the font of weeping Poor eyes so quickly moved, so near to sleeping Pardon the girl, such strange desires beset her. Poor woman lay aside the mournful letter that breaks thy heart, the one who wrote it forget her. The one who now thy faded features guesses, with filial fingers thy grey hair caresses, with mournful tears thy mournful twilight blesses. One of the choices open to people is to pursue the path of comfort and self-interest, even to the point of narcissism and harm to others. Of these people little needs to be said. They have received their thirty pieces of silver in accordance with their Faustian contract. The British satirist Rob Sears has compiled a small book of poetry by Donald Trump. One of those poems is entitled Win So Much and it reads We're going to win so much. We're going to win a lot, we're going to win a lot, we're going to win so much, you're all going to get sick and tired of winning. You're going to say, Oh no, not again. I'm only kidding, you never get tired of winning, right? Never. In the spirit of Maynel's letter to herself from her younger self, I have penned my own humble contribution entitled The Lament of an Aging Male, which reads In As You Like It, Shakespeare, during the prime of his life, once described his observations of the seven ages of the human life. It begins with the dependent and helpless baby, and it ends with the also dependent and helpless geriatric. He paints a pathetic picture of the geriatric years involving physical and mental decay followed by the inevitability of death. This is said to be the fate that awaits all humans who live so long, and whilst this truth is obvious to any objective observer, it is not one that occupies the attention of people in their prime. The full pathos of Shakespeare's observations only became apparent to me when I entered this seventh and final stage of life. It set in train an urgent quest for meaning in what remains of my life, immersed in a tide of jarring realism and sustained depression. In my earlier years my priority were the children, home and career. Now the children have left home and have children and careers of their own, in which there is little need or role for me. My long suffering wife now bears the burden of my greater daily presence in the home. She compares my presence to that of a lazy teenager who was an impediment to the efficient functioning of the house, and this is despite my long and capable service as a gardener, garbage mean and trolley pusher in the supermarket. In the myopia of my youth my energies outside the home were directed to the pursuit of climbing the greasy pole of career, but careers come to an end, and with age the greasy pole becomes something you slide down rather than climb up. After a while I was unwanted in the workplace and was seen as an impediment to the bravado and confidence of youth, who in turn and not without some justification, protested the arrogance of age and office. Still, for five decades now, I've daily toiled in the same duties which have become repetitive and tedious. At this point karma makes its unwelcome entry into my life. Courtesy of my own financial apathy over the years, I've now no choice other than to continue working for as long as I can until I can work no more. In my younger years I did not anticipate that I would live so long, and hence the need to save in the present for a future that may or may not happen. In these earlier years I shared the problem of most males of that age in that my penis exercised an excessive control over my cerebellum, and of course hindsight is always a wonderful teacher. In the absence of any remaining greater purpose in life, distraction becomes the default goal. Distraction comes in different forms, including without being limited to spectating and playing sports. I, along with other men of my vintage, play regular golf, and we pretend that there is meaning to be found in a close analysis of the unfairness and fickleness of the golfing gods carried out in the nineteenth hole with a beer or wine in hand. It is easy to slip into the confidence that alcohol brings with its amazing insights and wisdoms that are not otherwise open to us. I struggle with the distraction to visit the club with one or more of my small number of male friends who are experiencing the same thoughts as myself. This is important to me because it is boring to talk only to people who have no experience of existential anxiety and for whom the whole issue is just the melodramatic moanings of an ungrateful, privileged, aging white, educated and overweight male. We drink, we play poker machines and talk politics whilst bemoaning our deteriorating circumstances in life, but also congratulating each other on having found solutions to the world's problems. My wife's take on this comes from her long and deep study of the philosophy of Confucius, who apparently once said, and I quote, a man who hangs out with grumpy old men becomes a grumpy old man. In my earlier life, possessions and social standing were important goals, but as I age the need for them has all but gone, and with it has gone any need for an image of social success. In the end it is pointless to possess things that my health, physical state, and interests prevent me from enjoying or caring for, lest they just become clutter and I but a hoarder. As time passes, memories fade of even the important events in my life. Even more frustrating is the search each morning for my keys, phone and wallet. Constant and annoying computer changes outstripped my capacity and interest in keeping abreast of them, so now I use the password for everything, lest I forget. I sometimes stare at old textbooks in my library that were probably written by authors in their intellectual prime, and no doubt with great enthusiasm and fanfare, but who are now just a name. I ponder on the time and effort that must have gone into these books, which are now all but irrelevant to the world, which will soon be the fate of my own writings. My university degrees are good only to adorn my headstone in the cemetery, and the title of long unread books in the dusty archives of some library somewhere. Each day the local and international use presents the spectacle of selfish and greedy men continually at war with themselves and the planet. I see toxic masculinity and all manner of social, economic and religious tribalism playing out at all levels, in commercial, political and military machinations inflicting hurt on innocent people and creatures. I see military strongmen engaging in arms races for new or further wars, while the planet is undergoing climatic upheaval and many innocent people are dying. I see businessmen justifying their selfish and destructive behaviour in terms of their belief in the divinity of the inspired holy market in which they repose blind faith. This faith persists for so long as the market forces are consistent with their financial self-interest, in default of which there is a self-evident need to regulate the market in order to permit the socialization of any of their economic losses. I see a gullible population that are beguiled by all manner of obvious misinformation and propaganda in different parts of the media, in a world where fact and truth is now regarded only as a tool, as part of a revival of a long discredited practice of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the strategy of arguing for the purpose of convincing someone to your point of view, irrespective of its truth content. For these people the only truth is a convenient truth, and they live in the world where there are alternate facts that can exist. It is now impossible for me not to confront my own mortality. Friends and family move away or die. Even my long term and faithful pets have or will soon die. Funerals are now the occasion of catching up with those who remain. My previous well tented garden will eventually revert to a suburban jungle or fall under the bulldozer of the developer. My memory of my first decade is just a blur, and the next decade and a half are an unpleasant memory of hormonal and social tensions, confusions and neuroticism. They still inspire nightmares that haunt me more than five decades later, and no doubt have carried over into my role as a husband and parent. The next four decades were devoted to the children house and career, towards the end of which I was just starting to feel comfortable with my small role in the short life on this little planet. Then one day I awoke, showered and shaved for work. I saw in the bathroom mirror an aging and decaying man whose life had come and largely gone. I reflected on the delusional aspirations of my younger years, to win the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize and to imbibe the intoxicating atmosphere of Cambridge or Oxford. I recall my delusions about opening the batting and the bowling for Australia at Lord's Cricket Ground, and the applause as I strolled up the eighteenth Fairway at St. Andrew's. But still it was just a deluded old man staring back at me. The hard, cold reality is my life has come and mostly gone in a flicker of cosmic times, and I've contributed nothing of lasting value to the species. Throughout history, all aged and dead humans were once young, full of energy with aspirations of different kinds, but they all died. This is the same fate that awaits the present stock of humanity that is still in its prime. Human life is like the proverbial rose that blooms in the spring and dies in the autumn, except that unlike the rose it never blooms again. I am as the wilting rose, waiting for the first and fatal frost of autumn. Life is not a mere rehearsal. Once the years are gone, there is no second go at life. Thinking on the past usually ends with a feeling of guilt for all the poor decisions and behaviour that stretch out like a train wreck of my life. It causes me to cringe when thinking of the way which I behave, not the least in my roles of father and husband or concerned. It sometimes results in daydreaming about the decisions I would have made if I only knew back then what I know now. Then I ask myself, if given this impossible chance, what would I do? I tell myself that I would indulge myself in the daily explorations of the beauties of mathematics and physics. I would learn to play the intricacies of music, and would write prose and poetry even if it did nothing more than entertain and express myself. I would study archaeology, theology, and the history of mankind. I would seek to understand how women thought and what they wanted, and I would not devote time to the pointless pursuit of possession. And career. I would spend time with my children. I might choose to live like Diogenes, minus some of his more offensive extremes, and to discourse like Socrates. But this dreaming would entail the possibility of wishing away the birth of my children. And anyway, Einstein assures us that it's not possible. The result is that the whole daydreaming process is useless and delusional. In the seventh age of my life I not only have to deal with health issues, but also with the chronic physical and mental fatigue, degrees of immobility, incontinence, rotten and broken teeth, fading memories, and an enveloping intellectual fog. As Shakespeare anticipated, unless I die sooner, I will eventually suffer the indignity of needing assistance to toilet, shower, eat, and get into and out of bed. My thoughts then turn to eventually moving into a nursing home. This raises the less than exciting prospect of dementia, lying in bed most of the day, broken only by periods sitting in the chair and watching the television or staring at the roof and drooling. There is little dignity in just being a burden to others. There is, however, a positive aspect of pending and inevitable mortality. It puts an outer limit on both the longevity and severity of anxiety and boredom that must be endured in life. I find that during periods of self-pity, it is somewhat helpful to observe to myself, well there's not long left now anyway. I sometimes think on whether my parents and other dead friends had these same thoughts at similar times in their life, whether they aged seeking to resist their progressive physical and mental decay, whether they died seeking to resist the closing darkness, raging against the dying light in the words of Dylan Thomas, or whether they died in a state of resignation. If thinking about the past is futile and with no significant future to plan for, what then is there left to think about, other than just the immediate present? Some people convince themselves that life is worth living in the present just for its own sake. The contention goes that it's sufficient just to sit under a metaphorical tree, feel the sun and the breeze, and contemplate the life of the bird and the branch above, freed from any anxieties arising from the mundanity of everyday life. But the blindingly obvious fact is this is only a choice for the few who are able to rely on others to provide for their daily needs, without themselves having to labour to that end. It is a choice that can only be made if war or destruction does not impose itself and for as long as a person's health permits. I sometimes recall the advice my long dead mother once gave me. She said, quote, do not expect much of life and it will not disappoint you, close quote. But this advice seems to me to be only a different embodiment of the contention that survival is its own sufficient motivation and reward. Then I ask, how does sitting under the tree, feeling the sun, breathing, eating, drinking, defecating, but in a state of non-anxiety differ from many other creatures that do the same? I have a faithful and friendly dissect cat who spends most of his days doing just these things. The worms in my compost and garden live a life with no purpose other than to survive and procreate. But even if a person has the option and makes the above choice, then they feel calm for a few years. Then they start the process of aging and decay and finally death. What is the net gain from this life and for whom is it a gain? What is more I do not understand how so many people, including those in their seventh stage of life, do not feel the same lament as me. How is it that they seemingly just accept whatever life dishes up for them day in, day out, without question or qualm? How is this different to the worm in my compost? These people appear to feel or choose to ignore their own cosmic insignificance. To them it seems of no moment that their life is but a flicker in the time and space of the universe. If survival for its own sake is a sufficient purpose in life, then does there come a point when the physical and mental suffering of life overrides that otherwise sufficient purpose? People imbued with this motivation appear to see no contradiction in inflicting suffering or death on others, at least where it is seen to be necessary for the protection and survival of themselves and their genetic offspring. Might this not be just a manifestation of primitive Darwinism? The same motivation that Tennyson told us is read in Tooth and Claw. To me there is soulless gazing at the stars at night, wondering and imagining what might be out there. I further indulge this curiosity through astronomy and science fiction, but ultimately my hope of ever knowing these things or of going into space is destined to futility. Occasionally I am encouraged by the projected plans for interplanetary exploration, but then sooner or later those that worship the holy market rise up and argue that there is no point in these plans unless it is justified by the prospect of immediate monetary profit and usually to themselves. Given the chance, I would willingly volunteer to be a human lab rat on a one way mission to Mars. We live on a small planet that is circling one ordinary star, that is among billions of such stars in this one ordinary galaxy, that is among countless billions of such galaxies. When we look at the sky during the day, we see what appears to be a blue semicircular dome with fluffy clouds floating under it. Most people have no sense that this is just a visual illusion arising from the diffraction of visual light due to the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere. They don't realize that they would see something entirely different if human vision operated in a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum. People have no sense of their movement through space and what exists above the blue dome, nor are they concerned about it. They have no sense of their own cosmic insignificance. Some people find purpose in writing the book they've always wanted to write. Other than professional academic writings, I've indulged myself in writing three books in conjunction with a close acquaintance, Albert the Alien, in which we have expressed our cynicism concerning the prospect of the survival of humanity. But after the book is written and no one wants to read it, what then? Some people find purpose in travelling on ocean liners or on caravans, but this costs money and depends on health. I suspect much of this travel is used as a time filler, occupied with eating, drinking and small talk to strangers. It can be a way of the aging traveller convincing himself they are occupied in doing something meaningful with the remainder of their life. There is irony in a number of people that are looking for things to occupy their remaining years, while others lament its scarcity. Some people attempt to avoid their anxiety about death by adopting a religious faith that offers an afterlife, conditional or otherwise. This may comfort those who have the self confidence that they satisfy the conditions of entry set by their God, but this is small comfort for others who have less self confidence and perhaps a more realistic appraisal of their own religious and moral character. The sheer and obvious self serving nature of such a belief is understandable at an emotional level and is a panacea for existential anxiety, but is logically unconvincing and no amount of fervent belief in such an afterlife makes it a fact of the universe or an answer to the above observations. Together with Albert I've posed an alternative possible future for human evolution, for mastering the tyranny of time and space and to defeat death as the last frontier for humans. But it is a somewhat speculative and conditional possibility that appears not to have found interest or favour with anyone other than Albert and I. Amongst other things we pose the obvious and rhetorical question of whether human theology needs to undergo a radical transformation consistent with the bigger cosmos in which we live. In the normal course of things, after the death of my spouse, children, siblings, and possibly the grandchildren, no living person will remember me. My name may appear in a headstone in a cemetery, it may appear in books or other documents, and perhaps even with a photograph of me. But what's in a name or an image divorced from the remembered personality, even if the name and image are recorded in history? I rhetorically ask, who amongst us now knows anything of the real human William Shakespeare? How many graves are there in cemeteries of every town or city in which lay the decaying bones of once living people, each who once had their own story to tell, but are now unknown to any living person and their graves are never visited. I personally witnessed the sacrilege of the beautiful and historical cemetery, the original explorers and settlers of Newcastle in Australia. They once enjoyed the spectacular views of the city and harbour from the high grounds of Newcastle's Anglican Cathedral. It contained the headstones of settlers and explorers with their names and stories until the developers moved in and levelled the site and just stacked the headstones against a fence there to continue their ongoing weathering. But then whoever promised me that I would live a long and interesting life? Why am I entitled to expect more of life than men working to support his family on the Mumbai slums? And so is it just melodrama and hubris for me to feel disappointed with the shortness and banality of my life? Should I not just surrender to its apparent and evitable permanent oblivion, as with all humans before me and all those yet to come? And should I not do so with good grace and without wasting the ink on this lament? Mundanity does not mean that the activity is not taxing on the individual. It could be intense physical or mental work. This just explains why the mundaneity of everyday life exists and is necessary, but it does not negate the fact that the perpetuation of the mundane is itself only a preservation of the status quo. The Roman stoic poet Seneca once put it thus surely I will yawn, I will sleep, I will eat, I will thirst, I will be cold, I will be hot, is there no end? But do all these things go in a circle? In the end the mundanity in life is unavoidable, even for the great minds. Bertrand Russell once wrote All great books contain boring portions and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches. No great achievement is possible without persistent work, so absorbing and so difficult that little energy is left over for the more strenuous kinds of amusement. The virtue of mundanity in the ordinary life was embodied in the poem by Keith Trestrail entitled He was a Friend of Mine. Trestrale was a Trinidadian and Tobago poet. He wrote He was a friend of mine, was living on borrowed time. He had nothing left to give alas, had nothing left to do but pass, and he was a friend of mine. He never had use for a wife, craved for himself a better life, never travelled too far from home, never feared death or the unknown, and he was a friend of mine. He always had a tale to tell. I heard em all and know em well. Forty years we were close, he and I, forty years I watched him slowly die, and he was a friend of mine. He never hurt a living soul. He never found peace in this world, loved a beer and a rolly cigarette, loved the mates he made and met, and he was a friend of mine. He drank now it's too late, was the master of his own fate. His sorrows died with him that day, his living demons all cast away, and he was a friend of mine. I didn't get to say goodbye, I didn't know the end was nigh, got the news from his hospital bed, closed his eyes till he was dead, and he was friend of mine. Similarly the poem The Beauty in the Mundane by an anonymous author reads Transition twin happy and sad times, the mundane, waking up to do the daily rituals, breakfast, shower, brushing teeth, and going to work. No glitz and glamour, but the basis of human life. Ritualistic creatures are we, inhabit the space set for us if we are to be plucked, a life in disarray. The daily rituals of the poor to the rich, allowing us to experience life at its most extreme, grief and joy and everything in between. Should every day be novel, then nothing will grasp our attention. Moments of pain and grief diluted, moments of joy and happiness watered down, a weakened experience without each transition, the beauty in the mundane. Obviously the point being made there was that the mundane punctuates the greater experiences in life and allows them to be accentuated. The anonymous poet Kitty Cat wrote Mundane Things, which reads These mundane things bore me, needs, routines and obligations. All the same are repeated, no matter how many times, how many ways every day they bore me. The work, the school, the home, it's all a cycle. Online bores me, people bore me. There are a few things that don't. Such a mundane life couldn't last. All these mundane things they repeat, become a cycle. They never end. This is a mundane life. Perhaps the most iconic poem applauding the small things in life, like the mundanity of life is that of William Wordsworth, 1770 to 1850, in his poem I wandered lonely as a cloud. Wordsworth's biography has been traversed earlier in the program. As a poet laureate in the UK, and he lived in the Lakes District in England. The poem describes the poet's experience of encountering a field of daffodils while taking a walk in the countryside. The sight of the beautiful and vibrant flowers dancing in the breeze brings joy and a sense of transcendence to the poet's lonely heart. The poem explores the power of nature to uplift the human spirit and highlights the significance of simple moments of natural beauty in our lives. The poem reads I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high over vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils, beside the lake beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle in on the milky way, they stretch in never ending line along the margin of a bay. Ten thousand saw I at a glance tossing their heads in a sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they outdid the sparkling waves in glee. A poet could not but be gay in such a jacund company. I gazed and gazed but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought, for oft when on my couch I lie in vacant or impensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude, and then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils. Leah Knowles wrote the poem Slow Looking, in which she applauds or encourages people to take their time with what they view in nature and around them and to appreciate the small things. It reads To travel through a landscape or portrait or sculptor, getting in details, slow breaths, observing every contour and brush stroke, each nick of the chisel, slow looking every gentle eruption of exquisiteness, letting your eyes adjust to what is laid before you waiting, waiting for you to unburden yourself of mundanity, allowing your shoulders to drop, to immerse yourself in the surreal experience of a thirst between beauty, skill and meaning, to emerge almost breathless in timeless air. You feel you have renewed a pact with yourself to be kind, to follow life in a slow lane, escape the mental trappings of the day to day, root yourself in stillness and attention. Allow your sense of time to distort. Through your instincts you may see what starts to speak to you, colours, forms, textures, emotions, and enjoy a moment of tranquility. No silver bullet to blast daily pressures, but a way of feeling more balanced and connected, recalled to life. The meaning of life can be defined in different ways. Daniel Dennett, 1942 to 2024, the famous philosopher of consciousness once said The secret to happiness is to find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it. The famous physicist Albert Einstein, eighteen seventy nine to nineteen forty five, wrote An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reasons that manifest themselves in nature. The physicist Michio Kaku nineteen forty seven expressed a similar motivation as follows Some people seek meaning in life through personal gain, through personal relationships or through personal experiences. However, it seems to me that being blessed with the intellect to divine the ultimate secrets of nature gives meaning enough to life. The anonymous Australian poet that goes under the name of the sleeping poet wrote The Power of Imagination, which reads The power of imagination roams free and wild, a canvas where thoughts can be compiled. Inspiration is drawn from nature's hue, a world of wonder endless and new. A sun kissed dawn, a misty morn, a river's flow, a meadow adorned, each sight, each sound, a story to tell, a symphony of emotions, a magic spell, the rustling leaves, the whispering breeze, the chirping birds, and the buzzing bees are all worn into a tale of beauty, a world of imagination free and weighty. With every breath a new creation is born, a vision of hope, a dream to adorn, the power of the mind unbound and free is a universe of art for all to see. The soul of an artist, a fire ablaze, a passion that burns, a mind that plays, exploring the depths of human heat, a journey of self discovery, a world of art, the natural world a muse supreme, an inspiration beyond any dream, a canvas where imagination flows, world of wonder free to grow. So let your mind wander, your spirit soar, embrace the power of imagination, and explore nature's beauty, the depth of the heart, a journey of discovery, a world of art. In chapter one of my book Extraterrestrials Humans and Their Religion, the evolution of evolution, I put the same issue differently. It reads Assume that one morning you awoke and the media was full of excitement that first contact had been made with intelligent extraterrestrial life. After absorbing this information, how do you think this development would affect your worldview, your place within humanity and humanity's place in the universe? Would you care or would it be just another interesting interruption to the mundanity of your domestic and working life? Or would you feel threatened? Or would it excite your curiosity and passion to learn more about the extraterrestrials? Different people are likely to react differently depending on where they fall on the spectrum of world views. At one end of this spectrum are people who have a self-centered view of their own place amongst present humanity and little or no view of humanity's place or its future place in a wider universe. For these people, the future fate of humanity beyond their own lifetime and perhaps the children is of little concern. They are busy with life's immediate challenges. The future fate of humanity is just pointless speculation. At the other end of the spectrum are people who see their own lives and that of other humans as only a small part in the whole history of humanity, all lived out on a small planet orbiting an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy. For these people, the announcement of first contact is likely to produce tremendous excitement, enthusiasm and energy to learn more about the extraterrestrials and the details of the contact made. It is likely to excite their imagination about what is possible for future humanity among the stars and amongst the extraterrestrials. Between these two responses there exists a spectrum of people with varying degrees of these two worldviews. The worldview of most humans is closely correlated to their perception of their own immediate self-interest. If they see first contact as representing a threat to that interest, then they are likely to either deny the contact or denigrate its importance. But if they see first contact as opening opportunities for themselves, including intellectual and existential ones, then they are more likely to welcome and embrace the happening. The worldview of most humans is driven by all manner of psychological and sociological needs, whether consciously or unconsciously. These needs each play their part in the competitive and inherently violent Darwinian paradigm in which we are currently embedded. These survival pressures give rise to higher level emergent social structures, including the phenomenon of tribalism of different kinds, of which religion is only one. The potential impact of any such first contact is a central theme of this book.