The times are a changing

  

Subject: The times are a changing.

What we see is only a fraction of what’s out there and our perception takes in a fraction of that and our thoughts about what we perceive narrows it down even further as we try  to make sense of it. This means “our” reality is always partial. The real world that exists independently of us is simply the whole of what is out there. We glimpse only that small part that is within our reach and only concentrate on a small part of that.

It’s a shock to think we have such a small perception of the world around us since in our minds eye we are important but like the galaxy in which we exist we are only on the periphery of that reality, the enormous concentration of stars which make up what we folksily call ‘the Milky Way' which  itself is just one of untold numbers of galaxies that make up the universe.

Yesterdays an Arian rocket carried the Web telescope and as I write is positioning itself in a terrestrial  orbit prior to its unfurling, like a flower to start receiving those minute infra red electro magnetic signals which indicate the event we call "The Big Bang", 13.8 billion years ago which signalling the actual creation of all we conceive as our universe.

The question of what went before is almost impossible to imagine given we can only just conceive of the Big Bang, a cataclysmic eruption which caused something we call matter to move apart on a trajectory which continues to expand 13.8 millions of years later. Web will probe the outskirts or the periphery of this expanding phenomena when time started and way before our own earthly contribution which was infinitely small.  We wonder at the chances of a repeat of what happened on earth happening somewhere else in the universe and certainty statistically speaking it's possible but the biblical folk-law might need updating but even there the  impossible is possible.

Of course with biblical dating God created the world 3928 BC which, adding the extra years since the birth of Christ, 2021 gives us 5949 years in total, somewhat short of the actual 13.8 billion but of course the 'creationists' would have us believe otherwise.

Today we received the news that Desmond Tutu has died, yet anther towering anti Apartheid  figure fades into the past. A charismatic character, full of fun and exuding a dogged determination to oppose Separate Development in all its guises he discomforted the South African Government by his humanism which struck a cord with the people, black and white who were living under the policy of “them and us”.

His buoyancy in the face of criticism knew no bounds and he was one of those unwavering optimists in the face of such a brutal government which threw many of his contemporaries in jail, or worse. His infectious chuckling personality made him impervious to criticism and he was a shining light over this whole sordid chapter in South African history.