I found comfort for our current mess at a natural history museum.

[Arugula Latte]

Last week my family visited relatives in the Denver area. We spent one afternoon at that city's wonderful natural history museum. There is an exhibit on the origins of life on Earth which put things into perspective for me. For billions of years after the Earth was formed, there was no life -- not even simple one-celled organisms. When the amino acids finally did line up to form living creatures, these extremely primitive beings constituted life on Earth for another, oh, billion or more years (I'm a little fuzzy on the exact time frame). If you compress the history of life on the planet into a one-year calendar, life doesn't move onto land until very late in the year. It's not until December 10 that dinosaurs make their appearance. Humans do not come into the picture until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the year.

All we are is dust in the wind. George W. "Ozymandius" Bush is dust in the wind. Karl Rove is dust in the wind. James Dobson is dust in the wind. So are all the corporate fascists. So are the PsychoChristians. So are all the members of all the governments on Earth.

I find that comforting.

[stubtoe]

1. Always wise to seek comfort in Nature.

We humans are wired that way. Also do try spending time doing absolutely nothing in a comfortable spot outside. Doing this at least once a day helps put all our troubles into perspective and gives our psyches a needed rest.

[Bullwinkle925]

2. That was beautiful.

I have days (literally) that I could just sit down and cry over this mess.
Thanks for your wonderful post.

[Arugula Latte]

3. You're welcome!

Sometimes insignificance is bliss.

[lonestarnot]

4. Nope, there is never an excuse to do nothing!

[Arugula Latte]

6. I agree, but it's still nice to help put things into a

long-term framework. I think everyone needs to rest their minds a bit and find a little comfort, no matter how you reach it. This exhibit helped me. But, yes, by all means, we need to fight tooth and nail.

[Hello_Kitty]

9. I see it differently. I think it inspires action.

A lot of us don't act because we are so very afraid of the consequences. Putting things in their true perspective helps me be more willing to act and less afraid to fail.

[lonestarnot]

16. Ok just so you put it into perspective and come out swinging!

[Democracy White]

5. Someone told me this analogy before

and I really believe in it, no matter what the PseudoScience Christians tell me, this world is old... and carbon dating proves it.

Dee

[FreedomAngel82]

13. I think it is too

And I'm Christian myself but I love science and just looking at everything and seeing for myself. :) I've never really seen for myself what the Bible says except just reading through it but not seriously studying it. My church mostly pays attention to the New Testament.

[AlienGirl]

7. Science is a great comfort

Though I usually turn to physics:

Certainty (a poem for comfort)

When everything else
is running off-kilter around me
they're always there, cold friends.
Some of them I know by name
electron, proton, positron,
quarks up and down and strange
and charmed. I thought
I was living a charmed life,
but it was only strange.

The uncertainty of particles is better
than the uncertainty of living, or at least
it's less scary. I'm scared all the time now
trying not to collapse into myself.

Those cosmic rays are still at it
going right through me as if I were a ghost
and maybe the way you need
that sneaky square root of minus one
to solve the universe (or even build a TV set)
holds out hope of immortality: if i
is real, and necessary,
maybe so am I?

In the closest thing to total vacuum
particles come and go, sometimes tending to exist.
Sometimes
I tend to hope, but too often
hope flickers back into the void, leaving
the closest thing to total despair.

The net energy of the entire universe
may be zero: each star cancelled out by its own death
space imploding back toward its beginning. That's
the sound of one hand clapping.

Yet the unused six dimensions
are curled up smaller than atoms.
Everything that is might be the vibration
of threads too small to see,
musical notes of superstrings.
Take two particles from the same source
separate them, any distance will do,
and what you do to one of them
will instantly affect the other. (As I
am affected by you.)
At this smallest level the usual rules don't apply
time is just a field to roam in
ghosts occur
miracles are the order of the day.
This is where the solid daily world comes from,
all these mysteries and miracles
built upon each other until they seem ordinary.

Tucker

[wli]

8. we are also at the mercy of natural forces far larger than any of us

Look into the luminosity of the sun for an idea of how our time is limited.

[Cleita]

10. Yeah, I remember my Zoology professor using the same time

line analogy. Maybe that's why the Cosmos isn't in a hurry to fix things. It will all be over in a blink of the Universe's eye. :shrug:

[FreedomAngel82]

14. In other dimensions

there is no time and space. Only our dimension has time and space. Why? I really don't know. I think of it as keeping records of things that have happened. But to those spirits who are not of this world a whole lifetime can be just the feel of a day.

[MisterP]

15. because if there was no space or time there would be no us

thanks to the linearity of time (beyond the quantum scale, of course) the past and the present are discrete: that's why the creationist argument of "a perfectly placed Earth must be divine" doesn't hold water--we'd say the same if Mars kept a real atmosphere and some of us grew there

[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. Denver Museum - great memory from 3rd grade...

In the big city for medical tests. Just Mom and me, the dioramas are still so vivid in my mind. Definitely kicked off my fascination with prehistory. And it's huge! One of our national treasures imho.

[FreedomAngel82]

12. Oh of course

Even in the Bible it says we came from the dust and we'll go back to the dust when our bodies die and rot and all that. Isn't it comforting? The beauty of nature.