Edited by author 03-14-2001 11:19 AM
Dan K here: Offlist, I shared Jamie's and my musings on "earthquake creates art; world too" with a cousin of mine, a lawyer in Seattle WA USA. He lives in Olympia near the epicenter, and he'd seen the Gaelic Wolf pendulum page before. Here's his imho illuminating reaction: [reposted in QuickTopic by permission]

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Thanks for your reminiscence of epiphany. It was quite moving. Despite your religious disclaimer up front, I think that this is, in fact, not apostasy but a reconfirmation and a new telling of the Garden of Eden story, as it is retold in other forms and other traditions constantly. When God told the First Pair (not W. and Laura) not to eat of the fruit of knowledge, it was because He knew knowledge was a God attribute, and He wanted the franchise monopoly. This message is constantly rediscovered as we achieve new levels of world perspective and knowledge as a species, and we become more interconnected, and both the knowledge and its universality acccelerates. With this acceleration comes increasing control over things that we always attributed exclusively to The Creator.

The interconnection has also, as you have noted in a more poetic vein, created more of a single organism out of our species than has ever existed. The human family, for all of its internecine wars, is moving toward singularity of knowledge, experience, and even race. What a time to be alive.

The film Pi, by a fellow named Darren Aronofsky, is largely a meditation on these themes with a kind of film noir overlay that is extraordinary. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you do so. Much of Lewis Thomas' writing ("The Lives of a Cell," "The Medusa and the Snail") also plays with these ideas.