Healing

How to Be a Sea: Albert Camus on Learning to Die and Learning to Live

Leave a comment

By Maria Popova (themarginalian.org)

The summer I turned sixteen, I took a bus across Bulgaria — I suppose you could call it running away, though my parents were aware and unconcerned — to go sit on the edge of the Black Sea and watch the blue horizon, to touch its infinite loneliness and infinite happiness. I have watched many horizons in the lifetime since, and always they shimmer with the same strange duality, the same absolute awareness of mortality and of aliveness — the crest and trough of the same wave lapping at the essence of being.

Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) was forty when he articulated this with uncommon splendor in his essay “The Sea Close By,” found in his Lyrical and Critical Essays (public library) — the altogether ravishing collection that also gave us his meditations on happiness and despair, the three antidotes to the absurdity of life, and how to live whole in a broken world.

Albert Camus

Conjuring up a long sea voyage halfway around the world, Camus writes:

We are setting sail at daybreak. The moment we leave the harbor a short, gusty wind vigorously brushes the sea, which curls backward in small, foamless waves. A little later, the wind freshens and strews the sea with swiftly vanishing camellias. Thus, throughout the morning, we hear our sails slapping above a cheerful pond. The waters are heavy, scaly, covered with cool froth. From time to time the waves lap against the bow; a bitter, unctuous foam, the gods’ saliva, flows along the wood and loses itself in the water, where it scatters into shapes that die and are reborn, the hide of some white and blue cow, an exhausted beast that floats for a long time in our wake.

Finding himself “alone with the horizon,” he touches into the infinite loneliness from which everything we know of love is born:

The waves come from the invisible East, patiently, one by one; they reach us, and then, patiently, set off again for the unknown West, one by one. A long voyage, with no beginning and no end … Rivers and streams pass by, the sea passes and remains. This is how one ought to love, faithful and fleeting. I wed the sea.

When the engine dies in the middle of the Atlantic, the sky opens into the sea:

The curious austral moon, looking slightly pared, keeps us company for several nights and then slides rapidly from the sky into the sea, which swallows it. The Southern Cross, the infrequent stars, the porous air remain. At the same instant, the wind ceases. The sky rolls and pitches above our immobile masts… There are days like this when all is accomplished; we must let ourselves flow with them.

Marie Tharp’s revolutionary map of the ocean floor. (Library of Congress.)

Eventually, South America emerges on the horizon like a postcard from paradise as they curl around the coast and into the Pacific:

Our sails are like iron under the imperious wind. The coast drifts at full speed before our eyes, forests of royal coconut trees whose feet are bathed by emerald lagoons, a quiet bay, full of red sails, moonlit beaches… At night, the ice from Tierra del Fuego comes and beats for hours against our hull, the ship hardly loses speed and tacks about. In the morning, the single wave of the Pacific, whose cold foam boils green and white for thousands of kilometers along the Chilean coast, slowly lifts us up and threatens to wreck us. The helm avoids it, overtakes the Kerguelen Islands. In the sweetish evening the first Malayan boats come out to meet us.

And then, one morning, the voyage comes to an end and the metaphor cracks open:

We drop anchor in a bay filled with a strange silence, beaconed with fixed sails. A few sea birds are quarrelling in the sky over scraps of reeds. We swim ashore to an empty beach; all day plunging into the water and drying off on the sand. When evening comes, under a sky that turns green and fades into the distance, the sea, already calm, grows more peaceful still. Short waves shower vaporous foam on the lukewarm shore. The sea birds have disappeared. All that is left is space, open to a motionless voyage.

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us die. Great sea, ever in motion, ever virgin, my religion along with night! It washes and satiates us in its sterile billows, frees us and holds us upright. Each breaker brings its promise, always the same. What does each say? If I were to die surrounded by cold mountains, ignored by the world, an outcast, at the end of my strength, at the final moment the sea would flood my cell, would lift me above myself and help me die without hatred.

Painting by Oliver Jeffers from his series Measuring Land and Sea

The sea then becomes a shimmering reminder of the hardest, simplest truth — that we spend our lives learning to die, which is the same thing as learning to live:

At midnight… the sky itself has weighed anchor, with all its stars, like the ships covered with lights which at this very hour throughout the world illuminate dark harbors. Space and silence weigh equally upon the heart. A sudden love, a great work, a decisive act, a thought that transfigures, all these at certain moments bring the same unbearable anxiety, quickened with an irresistible charm. Living like this, in the delicious anguish of being, in exquisite proximity to a danger whose name we do not know… I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.

Camus never reached the horizon of fifty. Not long after becoming the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, he died in a car crash traveling back to Paris from a winter holiday, an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket.

Couple with this oceanic poem about how to live and how to die, then revisit Rachel Carson on the ocean and the meaning of life and Alan Watts on the wisdom of water.

Uncategorized

Hafiz on falling in love

Leave a comment

Posthumous portrait of Hafez by Anselm Feuerbach, 1852

“There is a Beautiful Creature
Living in a hole you have dug.
So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and milk
Besides your soft earthen mounds,
And I often sing.
But still, my dear,
You do not come out.
I have fallen in love with Someone
Who hides inside you.
We should talk about this problem –
Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.”

~ Hafiz

Khajeh Shams-od-Din Mohammad Hafez Shirazi[a] (1325–1390), also known by his pen nameHafez,[b][2] was a Persianlyric poet whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as one of the highest pinnacles of Persian literature.[3][4] His works are often found in the homes of Persian speakers, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary, and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author.[5][6] He is also known by his sobriquet Lisan al-Ghayb (Tongue of the Unseen).[7][8][9]

Space

It’s been 20 years since Pluto lost planet status. Will it ever get its title back?

Leave a comment

By Keith Cooper

Published yesterday (Space.com)

The debate as to whether Pluto is a dwarf planet, or a fully fledged planet, continues to rage.

A view of a world with tan shades and a reddish area toward the bottom left of it.
Is Pluto really a planet? (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

In August of 2006, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) democratically voted to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet — but 20 years later, with our greater knowledge and understanding of planetary systems, is it time to revisit the controversial decision? Should Pluto be called a planet again?

For several years before the IAU vote, there had been agitators among the astronomical community lobbying for our solar system’s nine worlds to become eight, and for Pluto‘s planetary status to be revoked. In 2000, Neil DeGrasse Tyson even went as far as to remove Pluto from the planets display at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. The questioning of Pluto’s status began even earlier, in the 1990s, with the discovery of distant objects in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune which had similar orbits to Pluto.

It all came to a head in July of 2005 with the discovery of Eris, which is a Pluto-size body even further from the sun than Pluto is. Was Eris the 10th planet? If it was not a planet, then how could we still call Pluto a planet? A year later, the issue was debated at a meeting of the IAU, where astronomers from all over the world convened to discuss various conundrums. Numerous proposals and counter-proposals were put forward, some of which even increased the number of recognized planets to as many as 14. But in the end, Pluto became a dwarf planet.

Though Pluto was officially “reclassified,” to many in the public it seemed as though Pluto had experienced a demotion. This viewpoint was the one promoted by those scientists who were against the decision such as Alan Stern, who was the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern’s spacecraft would launch in 2005 on a journey to a planet, but arrive at a dwarf planet in 2015.

Some argued that Pluto was still a kind of planet, just a small one. This argument is undermined somewhat by the IAU giving Pluto a minor planet number — 134340 — which is typically reserved for asteroids. Nationalistic arguments from some in the United States said Pluto should remain a planet because it was discovered by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, at Arizona’s Lowell Observatory in 1930. And when New Horizons reached Pluto, it revealed not a minor body, but rather a complex world in its own right.You may like

What is Pluto?

Nevertheless, for 20 years, Pluto has remained a dwarf planet, but on the anniversary of that fateful IAU vote, is it time to revisit that decision? Paul Byrne, a planetary astronomer at the University of Washington in St Louis, certainly thinks so.

“Yes, Pluto is a planet,” he told Space.com. And not just Pluto, but the other dwarf planets too: Ceres, Eris, Makemake and Haumea, not to mention the likes of Sedna and Quaoar that are dwarf planets in all but name.

“Ultimately I think they are all planets and I don’t think there’s any benefit to not including Pluto as a planet,” Byrne said.

To a point this entire debate is semantics, and Byrne accepts this viewpoint, reminding us that: “Nature doesn’t care what we call Pluto.”

However, perception is another matter, which is where Byrne thinks that the IAU’s 2006 decree ultimately failed us. Byrne describes how, when he gives public talks about the planets, members of the audience don’t ask questions about Pluto’s amazing active nitrogen glaciers or what formed its giant heart-shaped feature. Instead, they want to know why it was demoted. The entire issue has got in the way of presenting the science to the public.What to read next

“We’ve done a massive disservice to the public from a science communication perspective,” Byrne said. “The messaging has got in the way of trying to understand what Pluto is.”

A view of white sections of a world with some reddish areas toward the left.
Pluto’s active nitrogen glaciers are typical of planetary processes. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

One of the arguments in 2006 was that models of the solar system‘s formation predict that there could be hundreds of objects like Pluto and Eris that remain undiscovered in the Scattered Disk and the Oort Cloud, which is a vast unexplored region that could extend up to a light-year from the sun.

“One of the issues people brought up was, how would kids remember the names of 200 planets?” said Byrne. “But just look at how many Pokémon there are that kids know the names of. If ultimately there are 200 planets in the solar system, then so what?”

The IAU definition of a planet

Semantics or not, how we categorize celestial objects has to be grounded in some kind of scientific thinking. In 2006, the IAU came up with a three-point plan on what makes a planet.

First, a planet had to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning that its gravity has pulled it into a spherical shape. Furthermore, its interior will have become differentiated, with the heavier elements sinking to the core. Everyone seems to agree with this part of the planetary definition.

A view of a white world with ridges.
Pluto’s gravity has shaped it into a spherical object. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

Second was that it must be in orbit around the sun, so a moon isn’t a planet because a moon doesn’t orbit the sun, it orbits a planet instead (though Byrne notes that if he had his way, he’d call the large moons planets too). Strictly speaking, this rules out exoplanets because they don’t orbit our sun, but common sense dictates that they’re fine because they orbit their own star instead. However, what about rogue planets that wander interstellar space alone? Astronomers are now beginning to discover very many of these free-floating worlds. It could be argued that most of these did indeed form in orbit around a star only to be ejected, so it’s okay to still call them planets, but some rogue planets seem to have formed directly from the collapse of a gas cloud without having a parent star. Such planets fall through the gaps in the IAU’s definition.

It’s the third point that draws the critics’ ire the most. It states that to be a planet, an object must have cleared its neighborhood. In other words, it must be dominant in the region around its orbit, its gravity having swept away any other bodies. Pluto fails at this because its orbit actually crosses Neptune’s, and it’s accompanied by other Kuiper belt objects in neighboring orbits. But then you could say Neptune mustn’t be a planet because it has Pluto infringing on its orbital realm. And what about the existence of near-Earth asteroids? Does their existence mean that Earth isn’t a planet because it hasn’t cleared those away yet? There certainly does seem to be some sloppiness in this part of the definition of a planet, perhaps resulting from the somewhat rushed nature of the vote 20 years ago.

Planetary processes

But if the IAU decision were to be rejected, what should replace it? How should we classify planets? Byrne has some ideas.

“Being round and having some amount of differentiation makes a lot of sense to me,” he said. “Geophysically, if they are big enough to pull themselves into balls, then they are big enough to have undergone some kind of internal chemical processing and are capable of having some kind of active geology, in terms of the outgassing of volatiles to form an atmosphere, volcanism, surface geomorphological processes, even a short-lived magnetic field. That’s why I count the moon as a planet because it has had these planetary processes.”

Byrne acknowledges that gas giants don’t have these properties since they have no solid surface, but no one is doubting Jupiter‘s planetary credentials, and when it comes to Uranus and Neptune we don’t actually know whether or not there is some sort of super-Earth itself lurking deep within them.

The moniker “dwarf” doesn’t impress Byrne either. To him, it sounds like it implies there is a hierarchy of planets with the gas giants at the top and the dwarf planets at the bottom.

A front-page headline in the New York Times announcing the discovery of a ninth planet.
The New York Times article from when Pluto was discovered. (Image credit: The New York Times Archive)

“There is no natural hierarchy; they don’t form according to one,” he said. And although Pluto, Eris and the other dwarf planets are made from detritus left over from the construction of the solar system, they still coalesced in the same way as the other planets, in the sense that building blocks came together to form these larger objects.

A counterargument to Pluto being a planet, however, is that if it is just one of 200, then it is nothing special; it would become forgotten and ultimately treated almost incidentally. As a dwarf planet, it is the standard bearer of its kind, the guardian of an entire realm of similarly sized worlds. It’s a choice between being a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond.

The other 200 planets?

The real test will come when astronomers begin to discover some of these purported 200 or so planets far from the sun. As long as they are all roughly Pluto-size, there will be no debate — but what happens when astronomers discover one the size of Mars, or one even as large as Earth? We would surely think of an object so large as a planet. Perhaps this world would have formed closer to the sun but was kicked out through gravitational interactions with one of the giant planets, but on the other hand perhaps it formed out there in the outer solar system from the same detritus as Pluto did.

“By the IAU definition it would fail to be defined as a planet because it wouldn’t have cleared its neighborhood,” said Byrne. “If we did find such a planet it would be another nail in the coffin of trying to distinguish these things solely on the basis of where they are and not what they are.”

Whatever the case, if Pluto is to be a planet again, it must deserve to be so scientifically. Nostalgia, or nationalistic pride, or giving kids names of planets to remember aren;t sufficient reasons to revoke the original IAU decision. Revisiting the name “dwarf planet” and finding a more appropriate category could be the way to go instead.

Or, perhaps we just don’t have the words to describe the things that we are discovering. Concepts such as planets are rooted in history going back millennia when there was no understanding what these wandering “stars” really were, so perhaps it is not surprising that we are now running into difficulty when trying to apply the term “planet” to our modern understanding of the different types of worlds. If there is no way of categorizing these objects that is consistent and satisfactory to everyone, then perhaps we ought to stop worrying so much about it.

Whatever we decide to call it, Pluto will always be Pluto.

Keith Cooper

Keith Cooper

Contributing writer

Keith Cooper is a freelance science journalist and editor in the United Kingdom, and has a degree in physics and astrophysics from the University of Manchester. He’s the author of “The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020) and has written articles on astronomy, space, physics and astrobiology for a multitude of magazines and websites.

Biography, Quotes

Simone Weil on prayer

Leave a comment
Simone Weil

“Prayer [is] only attention in its pure form.”

― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

Simone Adolphine Weil was a French philosopher, mystic, political activist and labourer. Despite her short life, her ideas concerning religion, spirituality and politics have remained widely influential in contemporary philosophy. She was born in Paris to an Alsatian Jewish family. Wikipedia

Born February 3, 1909, Paris, France

Died August 24, 1943 (age 34 years), Ashford, United Kingdom

God

How God became real

Leave a comment

(AbeBooks.com)

I sat down on a flat rock ledge and started to do my deep breathing from Aikido. I was hoping it would take the edge off. . . . Somehow, I managed to get so centered that I detached from myself. . . . At that point, a crystal- clear voice comes cutting through all of this chaos and disintegration and says, “You know surrender is in order.” . . . There was a flash of white light. . . . There was an ever so brief revelation into the underling unity of things. . . . It was a tremendous shock to my system to suddenly realize that Someone was running the universe, and running it with exquisite control, awareness, sophistication, and utter fairness. . . . I looked out at some sandpipers that were running around on the beach. I remember feeling so incredibly close to them. . . At that point the voice came again. It was a crystal-clear voice. It once again cut through all the chaos in my mind and said, “It’s time for you to walk in the water.” . . . As soon as the bottoms of my feet touched the water, a feeling of love, energy , and radiance coursed through my entire body. . . . Tears of joy came to my eyes, and at that moment it became pretty clear to me that there really was a God.

–Man in his forties on how he found orthodox Judaism from How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others by T.M. Luhrmann

Biography, Quotes

Oscar Wilde on looking up

Leave a comment

Photo: © Napoleon Sarony / Pictures From History / The Image Works

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet, playwright, and novelist known for his wit, sharp social observations, and literary brilliance. His works, including The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, continue to inspire readers with their insights into human nature, individuality, and beauty. In the early 1890s, Wilde became one of London’s most popular and influential dramatists.  (Wikipedia.org)

Born October 16, 1854, Westland Row, Dublin, Ireland

Died November 30, 1900 (age 46 years), Paris, France

Psychedelic

The God molecule

Leave a comment
  • Google AI

“The God molecule” is a popular nickname for 5-MeO-DMT (5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine), a incredibly potent, naturally occurring psychedelic compound.

It earned this title because users frequently report rapid, profound mystical experiences, including complete ego dissolution and a feeling of merging with the universe or a higher power.

Key Facts About 5-MeO-DMT

  • Sources: It is found in several plant species, but its most famous natural source is the venom of the Incilius alvarius (Sonoran Desert toad). It can also be produced synthetically in a lab.
  • Intensity and Duration: Unlike its chemical cousin DMT (found in ayahuasca), which induces highly visual trips lasting 15 to 30 minutes, 5-MeO-DMT is less visual and much more conceptual. It produces an incredibly intense, overwhelming shift in consciousness that peaks within minutes and finishes in under an hour.
  • The Experience: Users often describe the trip as a total dissolution of time, space, and identity, replaced by an experience of “infinite nothingness” or absolute unity.

Modern Research and Medical Interest

In recent years, the compound has moved from underground spiritual circles into clinical trials. Scientists are researching its potential to treat treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. Because the experience is so short compared to psilocybin or LSD, researchers hope it could eventually be used as a highly efficient, fast-acting therapy option under strict medical supervision.

Safety and Legal Status

  • Risks: Because of its extreme intensity, it can cause severe psychological distress, panic, or disorientation if taken without proper preparation or supervision. It also poses physical risks, such as respiratory depression, if mixed with certain medications (like antidepressants).
  • Legality: In the United States and many other countries, 5-MeO-DMT is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, making it illegal to manufacture, possess, or distribute outside of approved clinical research.
Forensics

Chinese forensics: washing away of wrongs

Leave a comment
  • Google AI

[The Washing Away of Wrongs] (Xi Yuan Ji Lu) is the world’s oldest surviving forensic medical handbook, written in 1247 by Song Ci during the Southern Song dynasty in China. [1, 2, 3]

Overview and Purpose

  • Author: Song Ci (1186–1249), a Chinese judge, physician, and forensic scientist. [1]
  • Goal: Created as a practical guide for local magistrates and coroners to investigate suspicious, sudden, or violent deaths accurately and prevent judicial miscarriages. [1, 2]
  • Significance: It predates European forensic texts by centuries and establishes early principles of pathology, autopsy procedures, and crime scene investigation. [1]

Key Topics Covered

  • Crime Scene Examination: Detailed instructions on how to inspect the location of a death before the body is moved. [1]
  • Cause of Death Determination: Methods to differentiate between drowning, hanging, strangulation, poisoning, stabbings, and blunt force trauma. [1]
  • Post-Mortem Changes: Distinguishing artificial injuries (inflicted after death) from fatal wounds (inflicted during life).
  • Early Entomology: Famous early accounts of forensic entomology, including a recorded case where flies were attracted to trace amounts of blood on a single sickle, identifying the murder weapon and culprit.

Why is it called that?

The book is called The Washing Away of Wrongs (Xi Yuan Ji Lu) because its primary purpose was to clear the names of the innocent and ensure the guilty were properly punished, effectively “washing away” judicial injustices.

Meaning Breakdown

  • “Wrongs” (Xi Yuan): In ancient Chinese legal terms, Yuan refers to a miscarriage of justice, a false accusation, or an unavenged wrongful death.
  • “Washing Away”: This represents the purification of the legal process. By using objective, physical evidence rather than forced confessions, a judge could clear away the “stain” of a wrongful conviction or solve a covered-up murder.

The Philosophy Behind the Name

Song Ci believed that a single mistake by a coroner could lead to an innocent person being executed or a murderer walking free. In the book’s preface, he wrote that investigating a death with utmost care was a sacred duty, stating: “The miseries of the people arise from wrongs left unredressed.” The title reflects his mission to bring absolute truth to the courtroom.

Consciousness, spirituality, biography, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more