I Long for a Golden Age

I long for a golden age
when I could be among the first Christians to enter Hagia Sophia
and stand trembling at its vastness,
sunlight glittering from each small gold tile
on its walls and arches.
Or a French peasant standing in a wheat field
watching the Chartres cathedral rising
from the distant horizon.
I am weary of the meanness, the grayness,
the dark pessimism of the current age
as we wait for the oceans to rise and
submerge our cities,
wait for the last bee or frog to become extinct,
wait for melting glaciers to send their last drop to the sea,
wait for a new feudal age bereft
of divinely appointed kings,
overseen by undiluted greed,
populated by men and women who have forgotten how to plant.
We wait.  We have lost the trick of being able to hope.
I watch young people walking through the night,
as they seemingly talk to themselves
their faces bathed in the eerie bluish glow
emanating from their cell phones,
a white wire plugged into their heads.
I long to hear for the first time the strains
of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony echoing
through a candle-lit cathedral
instead of being reduced to bits and bytes on
a revolving plastic disk.
Somewhere in hidden caches
the rich hoard their gold and silver
only employing it for private pleasures
of putting it to work to multiply
even further.
They are no longer the patrons of
cathedrals or palaces or libraries or music or art.
They no longer explore; they only exploit.
They only count.

The End of Everything?

This can't be an original thought that I had a few days ago.  Yet, for some reason, it seemed rather novel as it occurred to me, and since having it, I can't seem to shake the notion.  Here it is.  Suppose an asteroid comes out of the cosmos and, in little more than instant, destroys Earth.  Suppose further, that, contrary to what many scientists tell us, our planet has been the only home for intelligent or even conscious beings in the universe.  Two basic questions immediately arise.  First of all, without conscious beings, would the universe have any meaning? Second, more fundamentally, would the universe even exist?
       A universe without any conscious beings would, on one level, be the ultimate triumph of matter over mind or spirit.  However, if we accept the latest theories of quantum physics, matter only exists if there is a conscious observer, leading to the deeper conclusion that the destruction of a singular Earth would instantaneously dissolve both matter and mind, giving us nothing or nothingness.
      The experience also served to bring me back to an experience I had with my oldest son, Christopher, when he was about 11 years old.  Pace University hosted a wonderful science exhibit for children and adults about thirty years ago, calling it The Museum of Philosophy.  There were several hands-on exhibits that visitors could interact with, stuff like Locke's Socks.  Among them, too, a computer that presented an early trial of AI, or artifical intelligence.  The computer could both answer and ask questions.  The last question posed was, "When you leave this room, will this computer still be here?"  There was a brief pause as Christopher pondered the question, a moment of suspense for me standing behind his chair and looking over his shoulder.  What would he say?  He began to type, summarily, confidently, depressing just two keys to produce his one-word response, "No."  He then abrubtly rose from his chair and began looking for the next exhibit.
       My own reaction at the time, long before Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle had become almost a household phrase, was to marvel at the self-centeredness of children, if not of Christopher.  A strong materialistic bias I  had at the time would have led me to answer the question in the affirmative.  Anything else was, if not narcissistic, then solipsism, the belief held by thinkers since ancient times that all reality was just an individual's projected dream or illusion.  (Even solipsism requires something to exist.  The Cartesian thinker who proves his existence merely by thinking.)  By current standards, however, Christopher was ahead of his time.
       But is our Earth truly singular?  Suppose there is what is now called a "mulitiverse," an infinite number of universes, or, as one physicist posits, an infinite number of multiverses?  Would that asteroid, had it the power to destroy our universe by slamming into and atomizing Earth, simultaneously destroy all universes?  Create the ultimate Big Collapse?  The extinction of Being?  True Nihilism?
       I tried to imagine a paradoxical visit to an Earth-less universe.  In one sense, easy enough to do, I thought.  There it is, filled with stars and galaxies and lots of what we now know not-to-be-empty space, full of Higgs bosons and a lot of other stuff invisible to the naked eye, just out there like a beautiful photograph or silent movie, or better, a 3D hologram.  But could one really call it beautiful, without anyone there to experience its beauty? Or its awesomeness, or vastness, or horror?  Even if the universe "hung in there" without us, it wouldn't mean anything; it would mean nothing.
      This goes beyond nihilism or pessimism.  The glass would be neither half empty nor half full.  There would be no glass at all.  Seen another way, however, the notion that our demise would destroy all existence,  I finally conclude, should give us a sense of our incredible power, the power of mind and imagination, feelings and emotion, the frailty and therefore supremely rare preciocity of the lives we live.

       Or...do I make the same mistake the old priests made who put our unique little Earth at the center of everything, and there are other beings out there thinking how precious their lives are?