What is Everything?
We all have to answer this question one way or another – about how we understand the world we live in, how we seek to order our lives, how we seek to engage some part of the world.
Prior to World War I, addressing the question “What is Everything” was the main point of education.
Our inability to restrain our destructive nature revealed in World War I – and in so much of our history since – has brought many to believe that addressing this larger question is meaningless. Whatever visions we dream up about how beautiful life could be, we will never achieve. So don’t waste time even thinking about it.
Since then education has tended towards what the Greeks called technon – acquiring skills.
Each of us has a desire to answer this broad question, though. And we give our answers every day by our lives.
How well do we think through these answers?
I propose that a good way to answer the question, “What is everything?” is by saying, “Everybody wants to live in a Good Place.”
One thing I like about this response: it doesn’t really seem like a direct answer. Hopefully that makes us go back and re-evaluate our understanding of the question.
Another thing I like: it provides a path by which to discover the answer more fully.
What is Everything?
Thales said water. I want to explore this answer: we all want to live in a Good Place.
Will you join me on this journey?
I love this picture!
(Do I keep saying that?)
View as found object: downtown Atlanta from a hotel window.
The rail lines and surface roads supporting the distant city, snaking through the lush, native flora. The image of that flora creeping over the concrete retaining wall meant to hold it back. The service trucks parked behind this large hotel to keep it all in working order. What a precarious balance we need to maintain to live the way we do. They say nature abhors a garden. It also seems to abhor everything else we do or build, applying constant pressure to take it back.
Against nature
nature serves well enough
the one who does not ask too much.
Wendell Berry Clearing