The New World and the Old Made Explicit: Excursus on the Meaning of Life

Only through time time is conquered. 

- Burt Norton

Exploration leads to new cartography. (Americas appear on the European globe; experiments modify theory; relationships lead to words of promise)

New cartography to new questions. (The antique globe suggests possible trade routes; theory has sudden holes; promises suggest future joy or incongruences leading to fissures )

New questions to further exploration. (Poking around for the Northwest Passage; inventing the Hadron Collider; kindling of passion, searching for betrayal)

The only real satisfaction is an entire world understood; the entirety of the terrain traversed, the relations of the whole complete and coherent. The pulling together of all joys, facts, and accomplishments. In every world we are to explore, every world we are given, there is a world to be achieved so that greater satisfaction is to be had. And this is where we find ourselves. Human beings are to explore to achieve satisfaction.

To obtain achievement in this direction is to obtain greater satisfaction. As is stated in The Good Book, human being's purpose is to cultivate a garden for their own enjoyment. And this enjoyment is life. Life is nothing other than complete satisfaction.

But this cultivation is a pain. For we must abandon our old conceptions, abandon everything our self clings to in order to survive. And this is death.

Hence as poets have long known, death and life are inseparable. To achieve life, one must go by the way of death.

Hence also, the scientists. A cell divides. A tree degrades into nutrients for other trees. Theories give way to better ones.

Hence also, the religious. Self denial leads to self fulfillment. And further than this: complete death, leads to complete life: death in service to The Way, leads to Resurrection. And Resurrection is no metaphor, it is the fullness of this process itself.