Friday, October 07, 2005
The Mass of God
One of my favorite songwriters (and singers, incidentally) is Leonard Cohen. His album The Future is at the top of my list of desert island CD's. Can't say I'm a Leonard Cohen fanatic, but I do so appreciate his dark humor. Lines like "It don't matter how you pray as long as you're on your knees" seem to cut straight to the bone. Why dance around the issues, when you can sing right to them.The quickest way to get to the point does not go unnoticed in some of his other lines. I've always been fond of his proud stance on the value of humanities with his dubious line "There will be nothing we can't measure anymore." I forget the song that line's in, but it's definitely on The Future.
In the age of the Internet, it's important to understand that facts matter. More importantly, measurable, repeatable, scientific approaches to facts matter. But substituting the qualitative for the quantitative (as William S. Burroughs suggests in Spare Ass Annie) is a Faustian bargain for the masses. Still , though, the tools for insight are finite. The math of the natural world, which inspires so much in art, is not fuzzy. In fact, some of the greatest scientific studies have been matters of quantifying what previous was thought to be unquantifiable. Like the speed of light. Or the existence of sub-atomic particles. Measurement, is the foundation of inspiration. Without it - nay, without the attempt to measure the immeasurable, we are less than human. The ultimate humanity is religion. In fact so many religions have a central tenet of immeasurability. It's about the faith, stupid. And yet, the holy grail (pun intended) of science is to prove or disprove the existence of God. The more we are able to measure, the more we are able to agree that Atheism does not mean a loss of humanity. So in that sense, I think I disagree with Mr. Cohen, if not in mind then spirit.
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