What dreams may come...

Well if anyone has been checking this blog recently, you may be lamenting the almost three week gap between posts. I have been on finals week, vacation in the middle of the forest, and without internet at my new apt. since my last post but I assure you this is the soonest I could get back on here. And it's a good thing too because I have had a lot on my mind recently, probably enough to fill two posts so this will one will be a corollary to my last post.

You may recall that my last post was on my recent turn to godlessness. Today I have been thinking about immortality. You see, in giving up the possibility that there is a personal and loving god that wants to hang with me when I die, I must accept the fact that there are now only to ways to live on after I die: fame and family. These are much less permanent, of course, but nonetheless powerful, I think. Hell, even the people who believe in an immortal soul want to earn some measure of fame and it is everyone's evolutionary imperative to try to reproduce their genes. So as my brief tenure on this little planet approaches two decades, I am faced with the realization that both of these methods may be rapidly fleeing from my grasp.

Of course, for most people the much easier method of attaining some measure of immortality is through reproduction. You don't exactly have to be a rocket surgeon to make babies. In fact I would say that in terms of reproduction rate, the most ignorant populations tend to have the highest growth rates. But I digress. By far the harder thing to achieve is fame. To be remembered in the long run you have to do something really astounding. Babe Ruth achieved immortality by becoming such a dominant force in baseball that even decades after all his records had fallen, his name is still whispered with reverent awe when people talk about the greatest players who ever picked up a bat and a glove. In my field, I would argue, it is perhaps a bit more difficult to achieve this level of fame. This is because physics, unfortunately, is much less accessible to the general public than sports. If you asked the average person on the street to name a physicist you might get Newton, or Einstein, or perhaps even Richard Feynman if the person is particularly perverse. These men all have one thing in common: inspiration. I believe that true genius requires something in the brain that the rest of us don't have, a way of looking at things that is so extraordinary that it only occurs in maybe one in a billion people, perhaps even more. Newton revolutionized scientific thought by having the audacity to suggest that the objects in the heavens are governed by the very same laws as objects here on earth. Einstein likewise took two simple and related observations (1 that the speed of light is invariant between different constant velocity observers, and 2 that one cannot tell the difference between being accelerated and being in a gravitational field) and turned the world on its head once again by proposing that, not only are space and time fundamentally linked, but they can be warped and curved. The most staggering consequence of this is that two observers moving relative to each other will not agree on the simultaneity (or the correct order) of two disparate events. My point is these were two men who were completely unique for their times in terms of the way they thought. Indeed as I approach the twentieth anniversary of my birth, it may be time for my to acknowledge the possibility that I am not lucky enough to have this extraordinary kind of mind.

But the other option is not looking so great either. I think most people would find it pathetic for a heterosexual man of twenty to never have had a girlfriend. But alas, such has been my lot so far. I suppose I allowed myself to be preoccupied with other pursuits in high school but it seems like every girl I take an interest in now already has a serious boyfriend. Needless to say my prospects of leaving a part of me behind when I die feel like they are dwindling daily. (Disclaimer: please do not read this as a declaration that I am looking to have kids right now. It just seems like the older I get without gaining any kind of romantic experience, the greater the probability that I end up spending my days alone and, ipso-facto, of leaving no one behind when I die.)

And I do fear death. I think it would be foolish not to. Richard Dawkins writes that (and I'm paraphrasing here) he does not fear death because he was dead (so to speak) for billions of years before he was born and it never seemed to bother him then. This is a bit to clever for me to find it entirely comforting. Perhaps its because I was raised to expect immortality that it is so hard to let go of the idea now.

So goodnight everyone. You can expect to hear from me again in the next few days.