Also, is this the least violent time? Including the unborn, who are slaughtered at a rate of 3,000 per day in the United States, violence is still with us.

Here is something the Dalai Lama said when asked about the future in an interview by Claudia Dreifus in a NYT Magazine:

Q: What will religions be like in a hundred years if there is little nature left on earth?

A: The world itself is nature. The sun, the moon, they are nature. Even if there were no animals, nature would still be here. For those religions that believe in a creator, they would have to find reasons to explain why our beautiful blue planet became a desert.

If you ask me whether it’s good or bad, of course it’s bad. But in the Buddhist tradition, something like that would not change our attitude. We believe the whole world will come and disappear, come and disappear – so eventually the world becomes a desert and even the ocean dries up. But then again, another new world is reborn. It’s endless.

So to answer Chris’s question as to whether to take the repetative big bang expanding universe theory to the Pope… I’d say nah… take it the Dalai Lama.

(the show has not come on yet out here but ah, a reminder that the world is round and rotating. I do find that comforting)

Sidewalker: again, thanks for the haiku. I may find more optimism in poetry than in science.

The pulse of fallen Angles

Beats against the night

The problem with pessimism is that it requires its assumptions to fail short of the ideal to justify its gloomy outlook, optimism is sanguine even if the ideal is not achieved. Pessimists, like insurance beneficiaries and bet hedgers can only win by losing; I’d rather be optimistic and dead wrong than be pessimistic and dead right. Optimistically believing the best will occur instead of imagining the worst case scenario avoids the stress pessimism tends to create.

I’m eternally optimistic that all human challenges are surmountable and we humans are infinitely adaptable to whatever situations we create.