![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloJudy was talking about a Heinlein story where people who are on a space flight lasting several generations come to think that their ship is the whole universe- and how it got itself plagiarised by Star Trek and others- and I said, yes, but that idea- that the world as we experience it is a bit phoney and there must be something more- didn't begin with Heinlein; it's all over our culture- andt keeps cropping up in one form or another. Think The Matrix and the Truman Show for other recent versions. It persists, I think, because the instinct behind it is true.
We do like to keep intellectually cosy, us humans. We wrap ourselves in our philosophies and world views and get shirty when people suggest that perhaps we might like to peek out from under the blankets. The current paradigm is Darwinian-materialist and people who have been embraced by it get angry- often splutteringly angry- if you go "ghosts" or "aliens" or "Atlantis". They've got the universe figured as an essentially meaningless interval between an explosion and an implosion- and that's how they like it. They've done enough thinking for one lifetime; don't ask them to do any more.
We do like to keep intellectually cosy, us humans. We wrap ourselves in our philosophies and world views and get shirty when people suggest that perhaps we might like to peek out from under the blankets. The current paradigm is Darwinian-materialist and people who have been embraced by it get angry- often splutteringly angry- if you go "ghosts" or "aliens" or "Atlantis". They've got the universe figured as an essentially meaningless interval between an explosion and an implosion- and that's how they like it. They've done enough thinking for one lifetime; don't ask them to do any more.
