Parable (original) (raw)
nerkitt kinda weirded out
February 10 2010, 20:00
Here's something I've just written up on the spur of a moment. The basic idea behind it was already in my head for a while, but I never even considered writing it down in this concise reduced form.
As I started writing on it, my heart was pounding.
This is a story, merely a story and nothing but a story. Read this and learn; read this and be enlightened.
Once, there was a physicist. He was a brilliant man, working in theoretical particle physics; but though his achievements were many and he had done many a great deed, he still found himself lacking. With every result that came to him, he kept looking for the next one, always striving onwards, always looking for the next piece of the Grand Design; And he wouldn't stop and he wouldn't rest until finally, all would be revealed to him.
And then, one day, as he was frantically working away on his equations and his experimental results, as he was working long into the night, not resting nor sleeping, it finally was revealed to him; and he was enlightened.
And so, he went to a colleague of his, another brilliant mind just like him, who had done great work in thermodynamics and quantum statistics; and as they sat down together for tea, he told his story.
"Listen to me," he said, "I have a story that you may or may not believe; but it is true nonetheless. As you know, I have always worked and striven to unveil the mysteries of the universe, to find the key to its Grand Design, and finally, I have found it. I have been made to see and understand the beauty of the world; I know, how the cogs of this magnificent machinery grip into each other to create something far greater than the sum of its parts. I know the work of art that is evolution, which makes simple forms become brilliantly complex beings; I now see how simple, minute events blossom into fractal chains of events by the wonder that is nonlinear dynamics; I see how everything is part of a greater pattern, and I have embraced it. I have understood the world, and it is beautiful."
His colleague listened silently, then bent over the table to the other physicist and said, "I know what you are talking about. As you know, I, too, have worked and striven, and now, I, too, have been enlightened. I have been made to understand the unstoppable force that is entropy; I know how all of the world is slowly spiralling into chaos. I have seen how every time one lights up a cigarette, or starts an engine, or simply breathes, a tiny sliver of the well-ordered cosmos dies into the mediocrity of uniform energy distribution. I see how everything is breaking down bit by tiny bit, and I have embraced it."
And, as the poison in his colleague's tea took hold and the other one slowly went utterly rigid in his chair, he added,
"I have understood the world, and it is dying."