Rocky McBoulderstone and Me

I made a new friend recently.  His name is Rocky McBoulderstone.  My new friend Rocky is actually quite old.  He is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 billion years old.  Rocky never gave much thought to his age, and the variance exists because it was roughly 1.5 billion and 2.5 billion years before anyone thought to ask, or even cared to know.  Rocky is essentially a piece of granite, with a bunch of feldspar in it, which accounts for his reddish/pinkish hue.  

Rocky and I have had some interesting conversations in the time he has lived in my yard.  It is about a month or so.  I’ve actually lost track.  And although these conversations have been rather one sided, as a typical human conversation goes, Rocky actually has contributed quite a lot.  Without saying a word, Rocky manages to communicate a particular idea, which meshes well with one of my constant questions.  Take any question about human activity, or human nature.  Are people rational, and when and how does that behavior appear and recede?  Is there a God?  Does life have meaning?  Why are mullets?

Rocky McBoulderstone’s wordless eloquence has a very profound message regarding most of these questions, and many others.  From his perspective, a human’s behavior is no different from human behavior.  Rationality and irrationality have no separation on graphed data.  The standard deviation is virtually nonexistent.  The human perspective viewed through the perspective of a piece of granite is constant.  Similarly, the granite experience through the prism of human experience is rather constant.  In the month or so that Rocky has lived here, he has changed very little, has expressed no odd, unpredictable opinions, and does not make a perceptible sound.  You almost wouldn’t know he was there unless you ran into him.  

5AM is time for two cups of coffee, and quiet contemplation.  My little town is pleasantly still, and quiet at that time of morning, and with a nice cup of coffee, my mind unfolds from its balled paper contortion from the previous night of sleep.  It slowly, silently opens into the shape that it has before being constricted by sleep.  The squinting blur of dysphoria that arrives with being awaken is slowly eroded by the warm caffeine absorption into my bloodstream.  This process loves quiet.  I also happen to live with two dogs, Miles and Bode.  Bode is a 9 year old terrier, and Miles in an 11 and a half month old Labrador retriever.  Both are fans of coffee time, but almost for the opposite reason.  Dogs enjoy this quiet because I make an easy victim when I am not busy.  This is precisely the time when they want all of my attention, and they are quite detailed in their observations while this process takes place.  There are a number of things that they never fail to notice, but one of them is my favorite.  Bode, and Miles, his student, watch the angle of my cup.  The low angle of tilt represents a full cup, and generates little activity on their part.  A moderate tilt representing a half full cup brings them closer, with expectation in their eyes.  They are notifying me that it is on in a few minutes.  Then the high tilt of the cup representing an emptying cup brings barks, and from Bode it also brings punches.  Bode jumps up onto whatever I am sitting on and pounds me with both front paws.

This contrasts to the extreme with Rocky.  If I can’t bear to have the quiet re-inflation of my brain being interrupted, I can now go onto the front porch and look at Rocky.  I didn’t realize when Rocky moved in that Rocky had anything to say…in his silent way.  In time I came to realize that he does.  Questions of ethics, within the context of human experience, bring certain values.  But, the same such questions within McBoulderstone’s perspective have a different azimuth.  The difference is like the difference between true north and magnetic north.  Within a short distance, or over a short time frame, the questions do not bring deeply meaningful distinctions.  However, over a great deal of time, or in the context of permanence, if you will, the conclusions are quite different.  How you ask your question, and what context you consider to be important, has a great significance with whatever you are able to discern.

Such is the case with the question of ethics, vis a vis the existence of God, as that applies to permanence, versus the question of ethics, vis a vis the existence of God, as that applies to the life of a human, or human perspective.  Martin Heidegger introduced a concept that he called “Dasein”, which means being there, and is translated often in English to mean existence.  This is the context that I like to place my personal questions of ethics and the existence of God.  Religion, for example, is a question of ethics with regard to other humans, within the constraints of human life.  Those questions have their value, but they also lack.  Questions about the state of nature, or that which is, differs from memberships in clubs, or games, game theory, or judgements.  Again, those prisms have their value, but they are not the only ways to contemplate such issues.  Rocky McBoulderstone, even without saying anything, manages to communicate that one can consider the noble, unchanging perspective.  “Winning” is a concept limited to the comparison to others.  Truth transcends winning.  Existence precedes essence.  At least, that is what Rocky McBoulderstone says.