I sat at work today, for the last part of the workday, reading an article on wired.com. I had come across it by a small chain of events (and weblinks); first a desire (the basis of which I have forgotten) to look up the wikipedia article on the postcyberpunk genre. From there, it was only one hyperlink to Snow Crash, a foundational novel in the genre, written by Neal Stephenson. From there, one more hyperlink to an article about the man himself. After skimming the article, I noticed a link to an entry about an article Stephenson had written for Wired.com, about the role the tech-explosion in China was playing in the culture there. I chased down the article itself, glad that Wired.com keeps extensive archives, and read it. It was a lengthy and glorious exposition of the grimy, wire-tangled backstreets of China, where in the midst of a communist regime, capitolism flourishes on a level unknown in the US, yet leads to no increased freedoms on a cultural level. Hooked by Stephenson's seamless integration of a love for technology (and how it relates to everything else), captivating writing style, and socio-political commentary, I went back to my search results on Wired.com to see if he had written any other articles.
I found a 56-page behemoth about his experiences as a self-proclaimed 'hacker tourist', whilst tracing the route of the longest undersea cable ever layed. Lovingly, he began with the history of undersea cables themselves, originally encased by gutta-percha, a substance rather like tree-rubber. From there, he began to jump, country by country, locale by locale, into a series of expeditions into the colorful neighborhoods near or through which the wire passed. Giving GPS coordinates of each stop, and punctuating his descriptive narration of the locations and personalities with technical descriptions of how information cables, and indeed the entire global information network, operate.
While devouring this flood of well-conveyed information like a chocolate-addict who has just bought a brick of special dark and decided to have it all in one sitting, I sit in my dingy cubicle, listening on my iPod (manufactured in China) to music by Yoko Kanno, an eclectic composer extremely popular among a small niche group in Japan and America (and perhaps a few other countries). Soon, -days, even- I will be in Taiwan. Yet there I can jump onto any computer with an internet connection and access the same article. I am never totally away from home, in an earthly sense at least, if I have an internet connection. By that link, I can communicate with friends and loved ones, and maintain the flow of both relevant and irrelevant information that my brain has become so accustomed to.
The world grows smaller, and yet larger. Products made in some and designed in other various countries jostle each other with an innocent familiarity. What if one were to trace down each factory where they were made? One would see places and have adventures and meet people enough for a lifetime. And yet not enough, for on each trip a world would open up, waiting to be explored, and yet followed by an endless stream of others. There is perhaps no general location on earth that cannot be reached within a few weeks by someone sufficiently motivated and with sufficient resources. The very accessibility of the world makes it enormously unaccessible. The very number of countries one might visit taunts one with the knowledge that there is not time in a life to visit them all. And visiting is not to know, to know intimately. The local culture, the small things that any child born there ceases to even think about, yet are totally unknown to the transient observer. Even within our own towns, these places exist. Do we really ever pay attention? We drive, ride, or fly to our various destinations, heedless to the thousands and millions of lives playing out as we pass. The world has become endlessly complicated and yet a simplicity emerges.
But here I sit, isolated from most external sources of stimulus; the artificial lights maintain a steady (save for the occasional flicker), unceasing illumination. My cube does not move, or change, the only difference in its appearance now than from an hour ago is the constantly updating image displayed on my computer screen. The occasional noise from the hall filters in; uncomfortable shoes banging their soles against the dirty tiles, someone washing their coffee mug, perhaps a door closing as an office empties at the end of the day. These are masked and blurred by the ceaseless humming of the grimy air vents, which pump in conditioned air to keep the temperature constant. Occasionally, random forces cause a slightly more forceful push of air, and a welcome draft blows past me. The smells do not change, unless someone burns a bag of popcorn (a frequent occurrence), when a burnt, sweet smell fills the air, and dissipates, to linger eternally in the complex smell of dust, plastic, mildew, and vague smells of people and lunches that soon deadens the sense of smell so that it is no longer noticeable. I do not hate this place, but I grow weary of it.
I must see, I must know. It is this desire which propels me forward. I am drawn by the places yet unseen, the air yet unbreathed, the food yet untasted. The changing skies, the seas, the oceans, the forests, the weather, the cities, the people, the books, the endless sea of knowledge, infinitely absorbable and yet infinitely continuing, rushing past me and every moment both wasted in my failure to comprehend but a tiny portion of it.
We tritely ascribe omniscience as one of God's attributes, vaguely imaging it to be an encyclopedic sort of knowledge. Yet we cannot truly (never fully) appreciate anything like it without realizing how much there is to be known. God set forth a creation and a reality dependent upon Himself, and reality presents us with an incomprehensible torrent of what can be known. (Choices too, the vast majority of which are unconscious and automatic, lest our minds be broken by the sheer unending number of them)
All reality streams from the One self-existent reality, somehow This and yet a Person, a never-ending flow of what is, from the never-ending One who simply, Is.
That this Source of all reality can be mindful of us, can endure our endless pettiness and triviality, and yet love us with a love beyond all that the human race could collectively imagine, could Himself, Who is Meaning, descend to become that for which meaning is derived, and suffer Himself to be slain by -and for the sake of- those whose very existence is utterly and totally dependent upon Him in every infinitesimal unit of time, is beyond all comprehension. What sufficient response can there be but to utterly and totally submit, by whatever free will (real or apparent) is given to us, the whole of our beings to Him Who has done this thing?
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