Beyond Infinity

Quantum uncertainty, chaos—these forever screen precise knowledge of the future from our eyes.

Uncompromising zeal doesn’t look in the mirror much.

You need friends to keep you on your feet, and enemies to keep you on your toes.

Nature’s nature was change. It was not a museum.

“How can you shrug off history?”…

“By studied neglect.”

Propaganda of sufficient age became art.

Individual recollections of the past are easily shaped by others. After a while they need have little bearing on the once-lived events.

Evolution was still at work, pruning the failures from the gene pool with unblinking patience.

When you know nothing, you are free to hope.

Weeds sprouted in spaces where once-important people had proclaimed that their presumptions were imperishable.

But then, growing up was not supposed to be easy. One Mom remarked offhandedly, “It’s the toughest work you’ll ever do.”

The intellectual breeds of humans think in terms of abstractions. But most people have emotions and think they are having ideas.

“You humans have emotions,” Seeker said slowly, “but more often emotions have you.”

Great error, seen up close, can look like true greatness.

An animal that liked abstractions? Maybe that wasn’t all that bad a definition of being human.

Curious, how any tool properly made acquires a beauty.

In any case, caution outweighed theory, as mice knew about elephants.

To us, most human morality is carefully thought-through self-congratulation.

While a gigantic amount has been written or spoken, culture in the end is the fraction that gets remembered.

Seeker laughed. “You are so—well, human. You always think you are the ultimate.”

“And…we’re not.”

Seeker inspected the ceiling. “It seems unlikely.”

For her it was a slippery descent into a labyrinth where twin urges fought, revenge versus survival. These two instincts, already ancient before the first hominid walked, rarely married with any security. Yet if she did not feel the pinch of their competition, she would not be, by her own judgment, a true human.

History held counterexamples to any facile rule.

Naturals felt best in groups of a hundred or so, and better if only a few dozen were involved. Hunting parties had been about that size, for the long-extinct big game. Many important institutions were of the same rough scale: the ancient village, governing councils of nations, commanding elites of vast armies, teams playing games, orchestras, family fests. All human enterprises that worked were of that size, and nearly everything that failed was not.

In his view, the true deep human fantasy was the conviction of safety. Men believed their women were devoted; wives felt that their men were dependable. Both ignored contrary evidence.

They all lived as ants in the shadow of mountains of millennia, and time’s sheer mass shaded every word.

Nothing is eternal—including prisons.

Good food was like sex, one of life’s blessings, but they both lost their edge when talked about too much.