Sunday, December 16, 2007

Darkness

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
Vladimir Nabokov

"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."
Aldous Huxley

I find humans to be quite strange creatures. No other living organism on this planet is as intelligent, yet as gullible as them. To think that the same species that discovered the laws of nature, that created such beautiful music, that made such fascinating art, is the same species that came up with religion, racism, and sexism, is an idea that astonishes me.