Miraculous Magic of Cosmic Art
When you manage to catch the moment right before a dream commences, in some cases you will notice small flashes of white light flickering in pitch black void of your field of vision. This shimmering continues until a single spark in center remains, grows, and finally engulfs your whole view, which may feel like falling through a tunnel toward a bright light at its end.
In fact, you can observe that faint glimmer even while wide awake. Just pay attention to your peripheral vision — this vibrating granularity of your sight should become glaringly obvious.
In a similar fashion, fleeting electromagnetic waves and particles pop in and out of existence in quantum vacuum even as you read these lines. Hence, that dream analogy is how you can imagine the birth of Universe. Vrr. Vrr. Vr-vrr. Vrrr. Vr-vr-vrr-vroom. Taka-taka-taka-taka — like starting an engine, random configurations popped in an out of existence, until a stable one stuck and the causal chains we can observe to this day were set into motion.
No fine-tuning, no deliberation, no particular meaning. Clearly, it’s not that Universe is made to support life. There’s no reason or rhyme behind the cosmos. It’s just that in the Universe that emerged, life in the form as we know it is an inevitable option. After all, your existence is a definitive proof. And that strikes me more miraculous than if the Universe was fine-tuned for humans to exist.
Now, while you may consider the sum total of information in this Universe (which is, nevertheless, equivalent with the sum total of its energy and mass) to be the “mind of God”, if you search for intelligent designs, blueprints, and deliberate intentions, you basically debase Creator to a charlatan in need of an IKEA-like manual in order to assemble his creation. What a profanity.
To put it into perspective, and to highlight what true creativity is really all about, let me mention an anecdote I read recently. It went something like this:
During a banquet a young, ambitious boy approached Mozart and asked him for tips on how to write symphonies. “Start with simple compositions and gradually make your way up. Take your time and, in a few years, you’ll be there,” Mozart replied. “But!” the boy argued, “When you were my age, you were already writing symphonies!” And Mozart just smiled, “Sure. But I didn’t ask anyone how to do it.”
Put another way, true creativity simply happens. The rest is merely premeditated modular imitation. Cultural counterfeit of true art at best. Sure, you may argue that even the kind of creativity that “just happens” can entail planning, careful reasoning, and so on. But keep in mind that we are talking about human creativity here. The ideal creativity (and even in human case) just flows. That’s the true magic when genuine miracles happen.
Why would God need to rehearse his creation through any blueprint, deliberate plan, or specification of an intentional goal? That would be a pretty impotent god. And so, Universe is simply a perfect improvisation which also happens to exhibit an elaborate and intricate, flawless form. Each human is, then, simply a note on the staff of this unfolding cosmic opus.
Nevertheless, we have the ability to choose our timbre, articulation, and intensity. We can alter our pitch and, to an extent, also duration. We may even choose to be a rest or a “mere” grace note. Well, perhaps we are more like instruments than single notes, but, in either case, none of us can not participate in the symphony.
Do you hear yourself in the context of the ensemble? Do you respect the subtle instructions of our Conductor, who’s the author, performer, and audience all at the same time? Or do you just stubbornly sabotage all efforts only because you can?
Well, most probably you are just clumsy because you don’t know any better, though that’s hardly an excuse, especially, if you are already legally adult. However, no matter what kind of music a band plays, even noise or dissonance can be aesthetically pleasing, if the members of the band, as well as the audience, do want to play with each other.
Let’s start from there. The rest will inevitably follow.
