Free Revolution by Russell Brand Page A
Authors: Russell Brand
can’t possibly know it’s called that any more than a newborn baby can know whether it’s a Christian or a Muslim), Jupiter is orbited by four moons. What struck me as I looked at Jupiter, 370 million miles away, in perfect suspension, with the moons visibly revolving, was not the might of this planet, which the Romans took to be the king of their gods, but its elegant fragility. The awe. Whatever you are doing, Jupiter and its moons are up there, silent or roaring, observing or ignoring, connected through time and light and an unbreakable chain of subatomic threads.
We receive data through five portals, five windows; the house of human consciousness has but five windows. Do you imagine that we will ever perceive all through these five windows? Do you imaginethat that which is most important can ever be seen? How do you describe the most important things that have ever happened to you? The moment you knew you loved her: Can you reassemble that magnetic pull with the Lego of light and language? The moment you heard he’d died—can you define it, calcify it, crystallize it, make it live again, or is it at best a kind of taxidermy that language can provide? A stuffed dead effigy with cold unseeing eyes.
And Jupiter revolves. And the moon watches, the moon you saw as a child, the moon that hung in the sky when Christ was crucified, the crescent moon, like a tear in heaven as the Prophet heard Allah. As Carl Sagan said, all human history, every poem, every lie, all here on this sphere.
What am I, a small creature measuring seven spans of my own hand? I am enclosed in a potlike universe composed of material nature, the total material energy, false ego, ether, air, water and earth. And what is Your glory? Unlimited universes pass through the pores of Your body just as particles of dust pass through the openings of a screened window
.
(
Bhagavata Purana
10.14.11)
It is perhaps because of passages like the one above that Joseph Campbell favored Hindu and pre-Hindu mythology as an efficient tool to convey important stories. Clearly this passage is poetic, philosophical, and attempting to explain a mystery which now has been colonized by materialistic thinking. I also wonder whether “seven hand spans” is a normal height. I’ve been trying to measure myself using this technique but am always hijacked at the groin.
The American poet and feminist Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is not made of atoms, it’s made of stories.” I suppose what that implies is that atoms are themselves a metaphor, a symbol, a tool for telling a story. They were only temporarily the zenith of our understanding; they have already been surpassed in the spiraling journey down into the microcosmic by quarks.
What mayhem too lives in that tiny world where electrons appear simultaneously in the same place—not different electrons, thesame electron. Where electrons will behave as either particles or waves, depending on whether or not they are being observed. I don’t want to seem ungrateful to science—science, after all, is what has provided me with this story—but now is the time to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
The ideological battle that needed to be fought against repressive orthodoxy, bigoted institutions, and repressive religions can now be won. For it not to be futile, we must overcome similar dogma now in the field of science.
A person experiences life as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness
.
(Albert Einstein)
That bed-headed genius was on to something: We need to focus on relevant truths, the truths that will aid our survival. Not the temporary truth that we are dislocated, mechanical blobs motivated by our cocks and our guts.
We must promote the pertinent truths, the way that bigoted Republicans have Frankensteined the perfect Christ for their cause.
We receive data through five portals, five windows; the house of human consciousness has but five windows. Do you imagine that we will ever perceive all through these five windows? Do you imaginethat that which is most important can ever be seen? How do you describe the most important things that have ever happened to you? The moment you knew you loved her: Can you reassemble that magnetic pull with the Lego of light and language? The moment you heard he’d died—can you define it, calcify it, crystallize it, make it live again, or is it at best a kind of taxidermy that language can provide? A stuffed dead effigy with cold unseeing eyes.
And Jupiter revolves. And the moon watches, the moon you saw as a child, the moon that hung in the sky when Christ was crucified, the crescent moon, like a tear in heaven as the Prophet heard Allah. As Carl Sagan said, all human history, every poem, every lie, all here on this sphere.
What am I, a small creature measuring seven spans of my own hand? I am enclosed in a potlike universe composed of material nature, the total material energy, false ego, ether, air, water and earth. And what is Your glory? Unlimited universes pass through the pores of Your body just as particles of dust pass through the openings of a screened window
.
(
Bhagavata Purana
10.14.11)
It is perhaps because of passages like the one above that Joseph Campbell favored Hindu and pre-Hindu mythology as an efficient tool to convey important stories. Clearly this passage is poetic, philosophical, and attempting to explain a mystery which now has been colonized by materialistic thinking. I also wonder whether “seven hand spans” is a normal height. I’ve been trying to measure myself using this technique but am always hijacked at the groin.
The American poet and feminist Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is not made of atoms, it’s made of stories.” I suppose what that implies is that atoms are themselves a metaphor, a symbol, a tool for telling a story. They were only temporarily the zenith of our understanding; they have already been surpassed in the spiraling journey down into the microcosmic by quarks.
What mayhem too lives in that tiny world where electrons appear simultaneously in the same place—not different electrons, thesame electron. Where electrons will behave as either particles or waves, depending on whether or not they are being observed. I don’t want to seem ungrateful to science—science, after all, is what has provided me with this story—but now is the time to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
The ideological battle that needed to be fought against repressive orthodoxy, bigoted institutions, and repressive religions can now be won. For it not to be futile, we must overcome similar dogma now in the field of science.
A person experiences life as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness
.
(Albert Einstein)
That bed-headed genius was on to something: We need to focus on relevant truths, the truths that will aid our survival. Not the temporary truth that we are dislocated, mechanical blobs motivated by our cocks and our guts.
We must promote the pertinent truths, the way that bigoted Republicans have Frankensteined the perfect Christ for their cause.