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Monday, May 11, 2009

Human architecture - Part II

We are star dust

Carbon atoms, we are, originally from stars, exploding stars, carbon star dust, the building blocks of our every cell, the matter that makes us something, visible and touchable, the matter that most think matters.

But a thought is a matterless matter that 'real' matter fails to grasp, yet all around, the entire universe, the mundane of sameness -- sameness in all carbon atoms, one at the far-end of the universe and another in the cell of your fingertip -- mundane of sameness abounds, yet again, each of us that live, hold matterless matters within our skulls, bony carbon shells to protect the less (our existing right-now self awareness) from the more (the boundless universe of atoms and stuff).

1 comment:

Bijhan said...

Matterless matter, as you like to call it, is also the invisible bricks on which we built Wall Street. The lack of structure made it awfully hard to stand on. Because ideas don't necessarily have substance.

Tabloids and newspapers are almost identical. They both collect information, condense it, and disseminate it. What's the distinction? Tabloids have no practical application, while newspapers are designed for practical application.

Companies that made physical products, especially ones in demand, are having - with exception - a much easier time in this economy that companies that dealt with immaterial property, such as bonds and stocks (Morgan-Stanley), energy (Enron), and insurance (AIG). But some companies, like plumbers, contractors, lawyers, and doctors, all continue to thrive despite never once producing a physical product.

The moral of the story is that an idea is only as good as its practical application to humanity. Not all ideas are created equal. And just like with physical tools, the usefulness of ideas can come to a close. Why chip away at stone with an obsidian axe when you have a jackhammer?

Why devote your life to God when you could be devoting it to actually helping anyone?