We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but we notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.
According to the second law of thermodynamics, things fall apart. Structures disintegrate. Buckminster Fuller hinted at a reason we are here: By creating things, by thinking up new combinations, we counteract this flow of entropy. We make new structures, new wholeness, so the universe comes out even. A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars and thinks, ‘There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,’ is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves.
Annie Dillard, The Meaning of Life
3 comments:
I am sure this is a well known work, but not known to me.
Tabor, it's from an old Time Life publication called "The Meaning of Life: Reflections in Words and Pictures on Why We Are Here". Annie Dillard, Stephen Jay Gould, John Cage, Charles Bukowski and John Updike were just a few of the people quoted.
Hi Cate
A fovorite author but I had missed this passage until now.
Thanks
Guy
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