The meaning of knowledge; the knowledge of meaning ~ Tom Mahon

Tom Mahon
Tom Mahon
Aug 23, 2017 · 7 min read

(Occasional observations by one who was raised a believer and educated in the humanities, then spent 40 years as a writer in Silicon Valley, and after several heart attacks is now trying to figure out what it all meant.)

When I was six, I asked my grandmother why the grass was green. Grandma was a first generation Irish-American, born in New Jersey a few weeks after Lincoln was assassinated. She told me the grass was green because the wee folk came around every night and painted it that color in honor of blessed St. Patrick.

Some say the wee folk paint the grass green every night

I did my best to stay awake nights to catch sight of the wee ones at work in the moonlight, but never did. Yet every summer morning I’d go in the backyard and find the grass was wet and fresh and green. The world was magical then, even in my own backyard.

Then three years later, in third grade science, the teacher explained the grass was green because it contained a chemical compound called chlorophyll.

Others say chlorophyll molecules make grass green

Within only three years, I had to transition from grandma’s magical account of why the grass was green (and she may have believed it herself), to the mechanical account from the science textbook. But neither is completely satisfying, and I still wonder why, in the grand scheme of things, grass is green. What is the meaning of that?

Is it just because it is or because, as a middle bandwidth color between the intensity of infrared and the more tranquil ultraviolet, green keeps grass from getting too hot or too cold? Green vegetation also provides a background that allows both predator and prey to see each other’s approach, giving each a fighting, or fleeing, chance.

So is grass green to serve a wider purpose, or being green does it have unintended consequences? One day we’ll know, and go beyond both the ancient magical, and contemporary mechanical, descriptions to find and appreciate the meaning, the value, the virtue — if there is such a thing — of green grass in the grand scheme of things.

Another chapter in my search for meaning occurred in the mid-1990s. I was invited to speak at one of the early conferences meant to promote dialogue between scientists and theologians after the centuries of profound silence between them that has left “a god-shaped hole” in the Western mind.

A conference at these centers of excellence was a start to finding the meaning of green grass

The Conference was co-sponsored by the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, and the Boston Theological Institute (BTI), a consortium of divinity schools including the Harvard Divinity School.

The time and place of the event itself was charged with meaning. Harvard was established in 1636 to prepare ministers to preach to the good people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony about God’s central role in their lives.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was established next door in 1861 to explain the world and the universe with no reference to “the god hypothesis.”

Being neither a theologian nor a scientist, I think I was invited because I’d recently had an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal (January 12, 1996) suggesting there should be such dialogue. But beyond being one of several people encouraging such meetings I wasn’t sure I had anything to say to such an august group of scholars and researchers.

The speaker ahead of me was a prominent astrophysicist whose talk echoed the conclusion in Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg’s famous quote: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

Ah, a topic I think I can discuss. As he turned the podium over to me, I asked him why, if the universe is pointless, meaningless, there are conscious beings like us to observe the pointlessness? What’s the point?

A very frosty silence followed my breach of etiquette. And to break it, I asked the previous speaker if that was a wedding ring he was wearing.

You’re married? I asked. Do you have children?

“Yes.”

Do you love them?

“Of course I love my wife and children,” he replied.

They bring joy into your life? I asked

“Of course they do.”

Yet you find the universe pointless? How is that?

“All right,” he said. “Yes, I am aware of that inconsistency, and someday I plan to give it more thought.”

Maybe it’s time we all begin to give this further thought. Reconnecting quantity and quality.

Then some years ago, I went into the hospital for some necessary surgery on my spine. There were complications afterwards and as a result I was in a coma and kept unconscious for the next fifty days. When I finally came to, all my limbs had atrophied and I had to learn to walk and talk again.

Early one evening during my weeks of Rehab an orderly wheeled me outside to the hospital’s rooftop garden to get some fresh air. And then he left me there, promising to be back in five minutes. I had a momentary sense of panic. I was being forced to sit by myself for five minutes with no social media or streaming media or even a magazine or book to distract me. The only things in my line of sight were some tall grasses in front me with a slight breeze rustling through them.

So I resigned myself to my fate and began to look at the scene. Really look at it. Study it. And then I actually saw it. It was the Big Bang playing out. That singularity of zero mass and infinite density when time was naught, from which exploded all that was, is, and will be into existence. It’s still going on.

I realized I was witnessing the continuing notes of the Big Bang, the original cast recoding of existence, still reverberating across the cosmos for these 14 billion years. The energy released way back then was there before me, as wind rippling the grass. And the grass itself is ancient energy cooled down, made visible, and now alive. Perhaps even sentient, for all we know.

And the light that was reflected off the grass impinged on my retinas and I absorbed grass-energy. And the energy I gave off was absorbed by the grass and even by the wind.

From nothing, something that manifests everything

Like many, I’d been taught that measurement is done in one silo, called science-and-technology. And meaning was only found in another silo called spirituality or faith.

But the very strange phantasmagorical visions I’d encountered during nearly two months of unconsciousness, had left me open to thinking anything was possible. Seven weeks in the company of endless visual and aural shape-shifters brought home to me that there are no silos. There is only one energy field: the expanse of existence itself.

And the energy released in the Big Bang was not only evident in the wind and the grass, but was also beginning to find its way again through my atrophied synaptic connections and muscles.

In my enforced reflection time, until the aide came, I carried the line of thought further to realize we are all — even my worst enemy — ripples in a single energy flow that originated in the first fire. Our one common genesis in an always-changing, but always-complete, uni-verse that manifest the balance and harmony found at every level of nature, from quantum to cosmic.

And close observations of nature by the wise men and women in the past have resulted in the nearly-universal commandment in the world’s ethical systems: be kind to one another. It’s not a suggestion; it’s a commandment.

And the first step to kindness is learning composure. We cannot be kind to others if we’re at odds with our own selves.

To the extent that the technology we are all immersed in now promotes composure and compassion, it is truly a godsend. To the extent our silicon technologies frustrate our pursuit of the golden mean (moderation) and golden rule (kindness), we need to begin rethinking them.

In a world of constant disruptions and transitions that cause far too much anxiety, what is constant and stable to remediate the stress of the fast-paced digital world we have created for ourselves? Where is the meaning in all the knowledge and big data we are accumulating?

Maybe meaning, value, virtue are, were and will be in front of us all the time. We just need to recognize them, simply moving through some wind-rippled blades of grass that are composed, as we are, of the one field of energy - revealed in sunshine, human ingenuity, and even in the face of one’s enemy — that has been evolving and expanding since time began.

© 2017, Tom Mahon

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Tom Mahon

Written by

Tom Mahon

Storyteller. I’ve been a filmmaker, merchant sailor, glass artisan, playwright, and 40-year veteran of Silicon Valley. And each job brought new stories to tell…

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