- TNP Nation
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- Marcus Antonius #8887
As I was driving from a recent visit to Ripon, in North Yorkshire. I had the radio switched on and Neil Oliver came on the air and he gave this fantastic speech on what he thought it was to be human. I hope you enjoy it.
~Marcus
Time.
Our awareness of time. There are many elements to being human, talking, writing, loving. Searching for understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. Reaching for the moon and towards the stars. A long list.
We are also conscious and conscious of time. We are finite beings and we know it, the clock is ticking and we hear it. As far as we know we human beings of planet Earth are the first and only animals to have felt the unbearable weight of forever, time before we were alive, time continuing after we are dead. We are the first creatures in the universe that have been bothered by the need to remember and to mourn. At the moment of our awakening as a species, Earth, even the universe itself awoke too. The clock started ticking, someone, somewhere started counting, one day more, one day less.
Time therefore starts with us. This is our blessing and our curse and so history starts with us as well. Only we have bothered to wonder what came before and to keep a record of the things as they unfold. This urge to keep track is part service to the future and part vanity. In addition to giving descendants the back story that will provide a context to their present. we might hope to be remembered there in the future to have been noticed and to have mattered. Memory, remembering, history, these are uniquely human. But they are made of our awareness of time. How much I have had? How much I have left?
We are Earth's youngest apes. Feeble, without claws or fangs with neither speed or strength, naked of feather or fur. And yet beneath thin caps of bone we are possessed of minds that reach forward and backward in time. It is a predicament that in all the universe we alone are troubled by when. Without the ticking clock of time though we are adrift in our lives and in the universe. As it is, because of our awareness of time, we are also confronted by the awful and I use the word awful, in it's old sense so that time must give us pause and is worthy of our respect and of our fear.
Above all I think time blesses us with responsibility. Alone among the animals we might understand our predicament. Our time, however much each of us has is limited. We know what is coming, in the meantime it is up to us to decide what to do with the time we have no matter what must happen we might choose to pick up and shoulder as much as possible of the blessing and burden of being awake for a moment in an infinite universe.
Time, this knowledge we have of time makes life worth living however much time I get with my wife, my children, my parents, will never be enough and so it makes it a gift of incalculable value.
This, if we are lucky enough to know it, is what it is to be alive and human.
Information on Neil Oliver http://www.neiloliver.com/
~Marcus
Time.
Our awareness of time. There are many elements to being human, talking, writing, loving. Searching for understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. Reaching for the moon and towards the stars. A long list.
We are also conscious and conscious of time. We are finite beings and we know it, the clock is ticking and we hear it. As far as we know we human beings of planet Earth are the first and only animals to have felt the unbearable weight of forever, time before we were alive, time continuing after we are dead. We are the first creatures in the universe that have been bothered by the need to remember and to mourn. At the moment of our awakening as a species, Earth, even the universe itself awoke too. The clock started ticking, someone, somewhere started counting, one day more, one day less.
Time therefore starts with us. This is our blessing and our curse and so history starts with us as well. Only we have bothered to wonder what came before and to keep a record of the things as they unfold. This urge to keep track is part service to the future and part vanity. In addition to giving descendants the back story that will provide a context to their present. we might hope to be remembered there in the future to have been noticed and to have mattered. Memory, remembering, history, these are uniquely human. But they are made of our awareness of time. How much I have had? How much I have left?
We are Earth's youngest apes. Feeble, without claws or fangs with neither speed or strength, naked of feather or fur. And yet beneath thin caps of bone we are possessed of minds that reach forward and backward in time. It is a predicament that in all the universe we alone are troubled by when. Without the ticking clock of time though we are adrift in our lives and in the universe. As it is, because of our awareness of time, we are also confronted by the awful and I use the word awful, in it's old sense so that time must give us pause and is worthy of our respect and of our fear.
Above all I think time blesses us with responsibility. Alone among the animals we might understand our predicament. Our time, however much each of us has is limited. We know what is coming, in the meantime it is up to us to decide what to do with the time we have no matter what must happen we might choose to pick up and shoulder as much as possible of the blessing and burden of being awake for a moment in an infinite universe.
Time, this knowledge we have of time makes life worth living however much time I get with my wife, my children, my parents, will never be enough and so it makes it a gift of incalculable value.
This, if we are lucky enough to know it, is what it is to be alive and human.
Information on Neil Oliver http://www.neiloliver.com/
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