Do we need mystery??

Eolas Pellor · #1 (**permalink**) 20th July 2007, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Please Never Find A Giant Squid

We haven't really captured a live one yet.

This is the good news. Sure, there have been a handful of sightings and a few astonishing photos and some large squishy things that were neither Lindsay Lohan nor Rosie O'Donnell washed up dead on shore with scientists rushing to try and uncover a few secrets before they all rotted and decayed, and some New Zealand fisherman just this year managed to snag in their nets one of the largest live ones ever seen, weighing 1,100 pounds and measuring 33 feet long, before the thing quickly died.

But for the most part, the elusive, magical monster giant squid of deep-sea lore is still, well, way the hell down there, somewhere, squirming and gliding and swimming deep in our collective unconscious. And for this we should only be very grateful. Oh yes we should.

Can we right now put out an offering, a meek and humble supplication to the gods of nature and time and science and human endeavor? Can we make it a juicy and spiritually-charged appeal that runs in direct opposition to the mad and never-ending human need to find and grab and trap and kill every gorgeous messy squishy mystery we ever encounter so as to study it and quantify it and force-fit it into our rather narrow worldview, a very specific offering that says please, oh please, let us never, ever capture and understand and fully comprehend a live 50-foot, 2-ton colossal deep-sea squid? Please?

I know, it's a bit silly. It might even be a bit contrarian, indefensible, futile. But the truth is, we as a culture, as a wary and war-torn species ever searching for things to fire the near-dead synapses of our increasingly numb imaginations, we actually need stuff like the giant deep-sea squid. To make life interesting. To make the world better. To, well, to keep us alive.

It's an idea that nearly everyone on the planet sort of intuits but which generally gets beaten out of us through the effects of time, age, too much bitter, cold experience: The human soul craves mystery. Hell yes it does. The spirit truly yearns for constant licks of the giant popsicle of the divine unknown, of supernatural enchantment, a deliciously anxious taste of the Other. It is the purest sort of spiritual food, nourishing us, reminding us over and over again of just how much more potent magic exists in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our meager philosophy.

And what's more, if we don't get that nourishment, if we are somehow found lacking in our daily requirement of awe and wonder and oh-my-god-what-the-hell-is-that, well, we tend to flounder and scrape and moan, to start reaching for scraps, for hollow, b.s.-laden facsimiles of true cosmic mystery that tend to smell like organized religion and taste like bad drugs and feel very much like having sex with a large hunk of concrete. Which is to say, not the slightest bit juicy or divine at all.

The giant deep-sea squid is, quite simply, the perfect thing. Unlike UFOs, unlike lizard beings from the fifth dimension, unlike the GOP's heart, we actually we know for certain that it exists, that it has officially moved from the realm of fantasy and ancient mythology into the arena of (potentially) knowable entity, something that actually shares this planet with us and, relatively speaking, isn't all that far away.

And yet, we know next to nothing about these creatures. They live and breed and roam in absolute blackness, in the coldest depths of the ocean, display incredible battle scars and unusual chemical makeup and seem to ooze a sort of delicious nightmarish intelligence, yet we have no real idea just what the hell they do all day and night, way down there. Their world is, in short, so wildly, diametrically opposed to our bright, warmth-craving, sunlit, calamari-loving world, it can only make our ids shudder and swoon.

True, you could say a similar sort of magic exists around other earthly phenomena, like the mysteries of the human mind, of dreams, whale song, dark matter and water crystal formation and, well, love. In fact, you could say that if you care to make even the slightest attempt to tune into it, you'd know we are awash in mystery, drenched to the very core -- we've just forgotten how to let the id roam that particular playground like delirious children stoned on sugar and dragons and stardust.

But the squid seems to be something more, different, a bit darker, more Other, a truly dramatic blank slate of possibility, deep and beautifully creepy and tantalizing as hell. And verily, we don't seem to have many mysteries like it left.

Ah, but there is bad news lurking. We are simply not known for respecting mystery, for letting such things remain unfound, unchopped, undead. We simply don't seem to care. Hell, some 11-year-old kid in Alabama recently shot and killed one of the largest wild hogs ever seen, an incredible, monstrous 1,000-pound beast, and he stood over it with his little, idiotic 50-caliber military-grade popgun and gloated to the camera, as if that huge, gnarly, powerful old creature was some sort of dumb trophy, as if it hadn't lived in the forests for ages and earned its share of folklore and magical wisdom. The kid was lauded as some sort of hero. Right.

Examples like that are, sadly, legion. No sooner do you read of some astonishing new discovery, some first-ever creature found or photographed or accidentally snagged in a trap set for some other, "common" creature, than you read the next line where it says the incredible thing was quickly trapped and killed and cut apart and its guts were photographed and it will all soon be on display at a musty science museum near you that no one ever really visits because they're all out having the remaining shreds of their imaginations stomped to death by "Transformers."

Which is not to devalue knowledge, science, discovery, awareness, expansion of consciousness. Truly, the more we learn, the more we understand how little we actually know. And to be sure, science offers no shortage of wonder and amazement, and swims in its own realms of delicious mystery.

But in a world gone mad with know-it-alledness, with a religious right that thinks it has the one true answer to all questions regarding nature and sex and even gender, and with a sour social structure that tends to frame everything in terms of caution, paranoia, and even low-level dread, it simply means that, in terms of our overall karmic health, maybe, just maybe, some of those truly luminous, slippery mysteries are better left sliding around the murky depths of our dreams.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...d=rss.mmorford

Comments? Thoughs?

**Rev. Kelly** · #2 (**permalink**) 20th July 2007, 11:28 PM

I think that stories about a giant squid or the Loche Ness Monster or whatever came from something based on reality and our imaginations just ran away with us.

I like the mystery, we can't prove that these things exist nor can we completely discount it. It fuels the imagination for stories and keeps folktales alive. It makes good TV (I watch the SciFi channel alot). I like being able to wonder about them.

How about you?

aged hippy · #3 (**permalink**) 21st July 2007, 01:12 PM

I think we need such 'mysteries', because they exercise the mind.

As for the Loch Ness Monster, i'll believe in it if someone can explain how it could have survived all those Ice Ages when the loch would have been frozen solid....

.... and no, "It buried itself in the mud" will not do.

Peace, Love, & Light

vivamis123 · #4 (**permalink**) 21st July 2007, 02:22 PM

I agree with aged hippy that mysteries stretch our imagination and cause us to ask questions beyond the "norm". I believe we create mysteries and they serve a purpose, even though I don't believe in any of them.

comet · #5 (**permalink**) 21st July 2007, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rev. Kelly

I think that stories about a giant squid or the Loche Ness Monster or whatever came from something based on reality and our imaginations just ran away with us.

I like the mystery, we can't prove that these things exist nor can we completely discount it. It fuels the imagination for stories and keeps folktales alive. It makes good TV (I watch the SciFi channel alot). I like being able to wonder about them.

How about you?

I watch the SciFi channel as well I like the suspense and the mystery of some things like you said it fuels the imagination and makes us wonder if things really exist i love it

But i can do without the scary stuff

Thats a cool mystery thanks for sharing

**Rev. Kelly** · #6 (**permalink**) 22nd July 2007, 04:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aged hippy

I think we need such 'mysteries', because they exercise the mind.

As for the Loch Ness Monster, i'll believe in it if someone can explain how it could have survived all those Ice Ages when the loch would have been frozen solid....

.... and no, "It buried itself in the mud" will not do.

Peace, Love, & Light

Hey, this stretches the imagination, not the boundries of science. LOL

tariki · #7 (**permalink**) 7th August 2007, 11:12 AM

There are only two ways to live, one is as though nothing is a miracle.The other is as if everything is.

(Albert Einstein)

Miracle is not mystery, yet they are close companions. I find it better to realise that life only be lived, but can never be "thought" or adequately "explained". Thought is dualistic and ultimately only sets limits and creates parameters that enclose us.

Some of the most perverse forms and expressions of religion seem to be when the human mind becomes far too "logical" and "rational", building up theologies from a succession/selection of Biblical verses, creating another Tower of Babel that - hopefully - the "Living God" will eventually knock down in favour of a true and living Grace.

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