The Uncertainty Principle
“The whole future lies in uncertainty, live immediately.” (~Seneca)
“We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.”
(~Primo Levi).
Levi’s words are etched in remembrance and at entrances to holocaust museums. They will remain there as we, human beings, repeat exactly what he was asking us to be vigilant about.
“Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.”
( ~Carl Sandburg “The Grass”)
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I keep reading, throughout history, how “never again” will we slaughter people in the battlefield and elsewhere. Europe is a vast killing field over the centuries. It’s all B.S. We, human beings, have an infinite, unsatiable capacity for cruelty and evil and destruction. It is so true now.
I’m selectively posting from the blood-and-muck fields of Ypres and Flanders where 108 years ago the killings were incomprehendingly mindless.
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I react poorly to finger-wagging certainty. This morning I was in a scrum of people, men of my age mostly, when one of them said about me: “He’s a guy who travels more than anyone I know.” Another two jumped in almost immediately to remark: “I’ve done that, been there, I have a picture framed; I don’t need to anymore.” Meantime, I hadn’t said a word. I was sure that that the “certainty” pair weren’t interested in why I travel or what curiosity means to me.
The enormity of the universe makes my adventures in curiosity seemingly endless and in knowing the uncertainty of our lives, gives hope.
The greatest scientists, wrapping their arms around the immense puzzlements of the physical world, knew the importance of the glimmer of uncertainty: (Einstein): “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
I can read about Peter Paul Rubens, the greatest of the Flemish Baroque painters, about his sensual art, resplendent tapestries, and soaring allegorical paintings. I recently stood for some hours before over 100 of his paintings at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. For some moments, I thought Rubens would make me a believer with the fervidness of his visual story telling. I couldn’t get that feeling by simply reading about it.
And in that moment, standing in front of what Rubens painted over 400 years ago, I knew why I traveled.
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