2001: A Space Odyssey; Humanity’s Gage towards the Heaven!

Amit Pokhrel
Sep 9, 2018 · 7 min read
All the picture source: — 2001: A Space Odyssey

Growing up we adored the way night sky looked. The season of fall when Mother Nature puts off her disguise and embraces the originality with all the shaded leaves on the ground. Nights grew colder and days shorter. But, there was something that was to be enjoyed. Clear sky with stars to the moon.

Not having known yet that man has successfully landed on the moon we worshipped the moon as ‘Jun Mama’ — ‘respectable maternal uncle.’ Starry nights had their own stories. They made you wonder- about the vastness of the universe. They made you ask about yourself and your kind. The humankind.

As early as 12 I was exposed to several religious epic books about formation of the universe and the world. What particularly interested me is to get to learn that our universe isn’t the only one. In fact there are millions per se. It was a nice thing to get to know that we live in a conundrum of multiverses. But, no matter how many universes there really are only a handful of the questions stood out to be the ultimate ones.

I think there is something similar to the way we feel ‘at awe’ while looking up at that night sky and while we get to see something being created. There is this same reason that makes us scratch our head when we have to tackle a difficult question — that to find answers, about ourselves.

The questions that start from ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What am I doing here?’ has a long potential to serve. There is much than what we as humans have discovered till the date. But, there, also, is something of more implication than finding a ‘position’ in the society full of the ones just like us. The society of questions.

As we progress by building and creating something new it gives us a sense of authority and something to feel proud of. It triggers our monkey brain. The cathartic stimuli to do more and better. Additionally, we tend to get a sense of freedom and greatness while having discovered something. This very play, this fondling, of humanity along with creation and discovery have brought us here.

Maybe this is the very reason why we like to think that we must be the highest civilization to have existed in the whole history of humankind (putting all the archeological facts found till the date and science aside, of course). Maybe this is where the original problem of the humanity starts up with!

Death scares us. But, what scares us more than death is the unknown. We want to know it all. We want to analyze it all. And, better than any achievements we want to tame it all. That is how we drive our civilizations. Or else, a dark sense of morbidity kicks in. We start to get paralyzed, from within, by the very sense of unachievable.

We humans are so morbid that we often like to forget about our own death. We devise various ways to confiscate that feeling of death. The feeling that spurs a notion upon us that we are not going to last for ever. That no matter what and how high we tend to think that we’ve achieved we are going to blend into the very dust we tend to think is under our feet every single day of our life.

In a better way to put it we like to forget it so much that we try to devise several ways to render ourselves a step further towards that sense of immortality. That very sense that something we have devised will remain for more that we as a body (say, mind included) can remain intact in a practical sense.

This very desire to be the master of ‘whatever can be seen’ is what makes us awake during night- looking at that very last answer. Trying to solve that very last puzzle. To kill that very morbidity out from within us.

There is something about our existence that puzzles us as humans! We’d definitely like to know the answers but there is something, we think, that defies the very notion that these ‘questions’ can really be answered. So, to ask oneself, who are we really?

Where is everybody? Are we alone here?

Did God create us? Or, does God exist?

Who put us here? Does death transcend us to another life? Or say, does death transcend us to another dimension?

Why are we here anyway?

* * *

We, who developed from apes, have come this far with a modest beginnings that the very thought of our resilience itself proves to be a driving factor to push ourselves forward. We hardly have any superlative physical quality. We have our limbs that are not as powerful to compete to wild beasts or that developed jaw-bones to attack. We do not have a massive built so that we could have physical dominance.

We were to look for devices and so we did. All thanks to our massive brain and a thumb that did it all. We now could hold and we could organize — better than most of the animals. Maybe that’s what the thumb stood out for. That’s why we give a thumbs up for the one who stands out or to the one who we want to stand out.

We then invented weapons, we learnt to farm and domesticate animals. We had it organized and we started building communities. We devised our devices. And, we devised one of the most sophisticated devices of all, ever. Language! Our organized and sophisticated form of device ‘language’ is the most potent of all the devices (or, call it a weapon), so far.

With the organizational structure of the society we had built and the sophisticated device called language we now thrived. We started building bigger communities, we built civilizations and we build empires. And, rest is the history.

But, what has always stood out of all the progress we have made is that we have always looked up towards the sky whenever there is a trouble, extreme pain, cathartic moment, happiness or whenever we are in an awe- the moment when we wonder about ourselves and about our origin. We have always gazed towards the sky looking for our answers.

On the date of 12 April 1961 the first man ‘Yuri Gagarin’ was sent to the space. That was a feat for the humanity, not only for Soviets, but for the whole humanity. To quote famous Nepali writer Shanker Lamichhane, “The day the first man went to the space, it was a very enthralling moment, it felt like Khrushchev borrowed the sickle and hammer from my home in order to put it on the flag that was to be commemorate the ceremony. It is The Day for the whole humanity.”

The Space Race went on. On 16 July 1969 Neil Armstrong along with Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Michael Collins, exactly after 8 years, 4 months and 4 days, the first man landed on the moon. The day the first human feet landed on the moon is another feat for humankind.

* * *

We humans have always been curious about what lies beyond what we see. From farthest and biggest to the smallest and nearest we have always been looking. We look for ‘God’ in those biggest and smallest of matters. With each findings we will have yet another milestone achieved on the course of humankind.

From the very beginning we have studied stars and we have studied ourselves. We have invented gods and we have become gods. We have created and we have destroyed. We have searched and we have found. We have devised and we have progressed. But, we hardly seem to have settled for.

From the very imagination of our creator to the way we have devised gods for each of our well being we have prayed and we have summoned. But, even though we might have prayed and summoned to what we think is the higher force we have never forgot to question back. We have never forgot to set a blow-back with our voyages.

From Africa, we- as humankind, have embarked several journeys to every corner of the world. We have toiled around the realm of our spiritual conscience to find a refuge in our beliefs but, we ‘with the nature of seeking for more than what we know’, also have wandered around the world seeking catharsis. We have been victim to several primitive superstitions but we also have embarked on several journeys on finding cure for our disease.

But, our curiosity could never have been cured. Thus, we seek further and further. We first prayed and sought for the answers. Then we started counting stars and tried to put the puzzle together. Now we send spaceships and radio-transmissions to answer our curiosity. What troubles us is in the uncertainty and the lack of answer. And, what we try to do is try to answer.

But, the answer for the problem we are trying to acquire lies in ‘the spooky action at a distant future’ but that’s what we have always been trying to do. We have always tried to predict the probability of the dice and the fate of humankind, altogether.

Maybe, that’s what we do with our art, literature and philosophy. We try to answer all the uncertainties in the most humanistic ways possible. Just like the way we have always gazed towards the sky (say, heaven) in an desire for the answer. And, maybe that’s wherein the meaning of humanity lies!

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