Making sense of it all

Of all the species on our planet, we are the least suited inhabitants of this orb. How so? For starters, we are not satisfied with merely existing and perpetuating our species. So we imagine, we invent, and we create. We are the only life-form that strives to leave this planet and visit other worlds. And paradoxically, we are both the caretakers of this planet and the only species capable of destroying it. In short, we are Earth’s outliers.

It is as if an alien civilization cast us off and plunked us down in the middle of this sphere as an undesirable life-form, the unfortunate outcome of a biological experiment. The story of our genesis could be the groundwork for the making of a science fiction novel. But the intent of this piece is not to spin a tale of fiction, but rather to make sense of it all.

Science says that we, like all other creatures, have evolved over millennia. Interestingly, unlike all other creatures on this planet, we are the only ones who have developed spiritually. Yet, despite our affinity toward religion, our sages teach that we are not the holiest species on this planet.

An unusual Midrash (Jewish parable with moral lesson) can best explain that notion. A Midrash says that when King David completed the Book of Psalms, he had a feeling of self-satisfaction. He said to G-d, “Is there any creation in Your world that sings songs and praises more than I?” That same hour, G-d sent a frog that said: “David! Do not be self-satisfied, for I sing songs and praises more than you do.” The lesson this midrash teaches is that a frog is holier than King David, thus more righteous than any human being.

Talking frogs used to convey a moral lesson? How does one make sense of it all? Unlike the frog or any other creature, people have been endowed with the ability to choose between various behaviors: good and evil, right and wrong, ethical and unethical. When we choose good, right, and ethical over their antonyms, we are making a moral choice. We alone carry the weighty burden of making moral choices. Other than humans, all our co-inhabitants of this planet are liberated from feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse, the regrettable consequence of not making the ‘right’ choice. Other than humans, all life-forms act solely in accordance with their survival instincts.

The popular science writer, Ed Young, explains that the Earth is teeming with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields, but every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each creature views the world from within its own sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. The zoologist Jakob von Uexkull coined the word Umvelt which means “environment,” referring to a creature’s sensory bubble, its constrained perspective of the world, its limited world. Young gives the following engrossing example of Umvelt.

“A tick, questing for mammalian blood, cares about body heat, the touch of hair, and the odor of butyric acid that emanates from the skin. These things constitute its Umvelt. “Trees of green, red roses too, skies of blue, and clouds of white – these are not part of its wonderful world.” The tick cannot sense them, therefore does not know they exist.” Young’s point is that every creature’s Umvelt, their perception of the physical world, is different. In fact, the same is true of organisms within the same species.

The well-known parable of the ‘six blind men and the elephant’ illustrates the Umvelt point. It teaches that even when presented with a real elephant, each man could “see” a limited part of the elephant. Each perceived only what he could touch and feel, be it the trunk, head, or tail. It teaches that each of us creates a unique view of the world based on our sensory equipment. Like the tick and the frog, our Umvelt is also restricted.  All we know and all we can know is constrained by our senses and the tools we create to enhance them. Although we hubristically believe that what we can see, hear, touch, feel, and discover is all that there is, that is an illusion.

Because we use our limited senses to transform stimuli into information and connect ourselves to our reality, what we cannot sense we cannot know or even imagine. No living organism contains all the sensory hardware available, for if it did, it would receive a flood of stimuli that would overwhelm it and obscure the pertinent information necessary to ensure its existence. Nothing can sense everything, because nothing needs to in order to survive.

So, the next time someone challenges you to prove there is a G-d, they are not really interested in proof, they want you to acquiesce to their notion that G-d does not exist. So, tell them the following: If I were to try, it would be a fool’s errand, because I do not possess all the necessary sensory organs to do it, in fact no living organism does. Faith in G-d is not a derivative of our senses. But if I did have the requisite sensory capabilities, the flood of stimuli would be so overwhelming it would leave me unable to differentiate, distinguish or discern anything, even my own existence. And finally, because my existence does not depend on proving G-d’s existence, there is no point in my trying to do so.