Uncertainty, Illusion, Paradox,
Self-Creation, Imagination. These represent some of the mysterious forces that drive human activity. The root word for 'dreaming' is the same as for 'madness.' The Greeks knew this all too well. It is not reason but irrationality that best characterizes the human condition. The ability to channel the momentum of irrational energy generated by the permanently immature state of the human mind marks our resourcefulness, creativity and self determination. It is the essence of our originality.
What we immediately perceive of the world around us is mostly illusory. While such limited perception successfully enables us to move from place to place and day to day, it is left to our imagination to extend our scope of reality in order to extend our journey beyond the otherwise limited horizon.
As an example: our Sun appears to each of us to be a part of our immediate landscape. It took thousands of years and innumerable observations before it became apparent that this vast object, always present in our lives, was actually millions of miles out of reach. This sudden realization created a paradigm shift that allowed us to solve other mysteries and to eventually lead to our current concept of curved space and a finite but boundless Universe.
Humans possess a unique ability to create maps in our brains that delineate the world around us. We then make serial observations, comparisons and then to apply precise measurement in order to grasp the details and then to attempt to 'connect the dots.' Knowing even the smallest detail of some obscure fact will enable us to resolve other unknowns. The illusions remain but our thoughts, judgements and actions will continue to be heavily informed by what our minds know of reality.
