Anyone remember that Bene Gesserit mantra about fear from the original Dune novel? Been years since I read it so I don't remember it all offhand, but it begins something like "I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer, the little death..." It really caught my imagination at the time, and seemed deeply true to me. It still does. Fear can be paralyzing, both physically and mentally.
I was strongly struck by karrie's observation here too, about losing someone we love. I've often wondered how much of what drives us comes from our awareness of mortality, our own and of those we love. I have no good answer for that, though lots of writers have speculated on how different things would if mortality wasn't an issue for us. Certainly a lot of religious dogma and speculation is driven by our awareness of our mortality and our attempts to make sense of it, or deny it in some way. I also think that remark of Tielhard de Chardin's that MikeyDB quoted is profoundly true. I think we're all deeply spiritual, in the sense that our emotional connections to people and nature (that's the love part) are far more important to our mental health than all the material things so many of us seem determined to collect mountains of. As an atheist my view of human spirituality is likely to be quite different from most people's (because most people aren't atheists), but only an ignorant fool could deny it exists.
We're all searching for the numinous and transcendent, that need is built deeply into human nature. I can't pretend to understand why, but there's no denying it. I find it in two places: my connections to those I care most about, which I'm delighted to say now includes a few people I've met here (you know who you are), and the knowledge of the world around me that a lifetime in science has given me. I'm sure I don't have to explain the first to anyone who's ever loved anyone (and for anyone who hasn't, explanations are hopeless and all I can say is, aw jeez, ya poor bastard...), but the second might require some explanation.
Last summer I was at the family cabin at Wakaw Lake in central Saskatchewan. One clear moonless night one of my brothers and I took his 6" telescope out to a very dark place, 80 km away from the nearest urban lighting, to look at the night sky. I have seen with my own eyes galaxies far far away, great clouds of gas and dust where new stars are being born, supernova remnants... But the naked eye view is really what moved me. If you understand the structure of the galaxy and know what you're looking at, you can look at the Milky Way and visualize the great 30,000 light year curve of that arm of the galaxy winding in toward the centre in Sagittarius, where there's a great black hole. Anybody who can look at that without a sense of awe and wonder must be dead from the neck up.
Ach, I'm rambling a bit, it's late and I've had a long day and I'm not sure I'm making any sense. I just felt moved to share that.
