The Age of Deep Mystery

Today we feel so smart. We know how brain chemistry effects our desire for things like gambling or why companies give us choice in our pick of spaghetti sauces even if it makes us all crazy. We are always on the lookout for that Nash equilibrium. Min/Maxing is not just limited to RPG players any more. We are cracking the secrets of ourselves. We are finding out just how we all tick and how to tweak ourselves to get what we want out of life.

This is all mostly a process of demystifying our lives. By figuring out all these little things so we can profit from them, or at least be aware of them, we are working toward a kind of understanding of the world, but this is not just some kind of modern age enlightenment.

With every look at just what might sum us up we always admit there is a wall. This wall comes in many forms. We can't see that far out. We do not know how to directly observe that. There is no pattern in the noise. We can't observe its spin and position at the same time. In every case it is the same. There is a point where the universe becomes unknowable.

Most of the time this unknowableness is acceptable. We have already found the practical answers to things like sickness or marketing. Because of this, these are the things we romanticize now. Just think, we have cracked how evolution works, but we still have no idea how cells are able to make the proteins they need to survive. It's a random process. Not something we flick a switch on. This is not just beautiful to us, it is the way we find beauty in the world.

This mode of thinking is drastically different than any other way of thinking before. The thinking that there is a wall to what we know and no matter if we break through that wall in our knowledge there will only be another wall is unique. The Enlightenment could not predict no end to these walls. The Romantics were busy building walls. Einstein hated that this was suggested by his ideas. The only people who could have seen this were those who just assumed it was turtles all the way down.

The fundamental problem of our times is coping with this. How do we accept that there is no base to the world? If there is always going to be something we don't have the ability to figure out, then does that mean we have to have some kind of spirituality? Organized religion has yet to provide any kind of way of thinking that doesn't blatantly ignore this. Does this mean that not even God is immune to this fear?