A very interesting conversation about the origin of the universe, and the mysteries of life. I particularly appreciated this statement by Weinberg:
"I think essentially the position of human beings is a tragic one. And the more we understand, the more clearly tragic it is....how do we live with this tragedy... well, Shakespeare showed us that one way of living with tragedy is to mix it in with comedy."
I've found it to be true. And it scares me to think that it becomes more tragic with understanding, and how much older and smarter Weinberg is.
For me in recent years, the Ken Burns documentaries have delved a sense of the tragic deep into my understanding of the human experience. The Civil War and his WWII documentaries give us a glimpse of the completely unimaginable horrifying acts that mankind has regularly performed on itself ever since that point in history where the the first shoulder articulation could swing a weighted object quickly. We use concepts of "heroism" to provide some sort of sugar coating to the meaningless.
And now in Iraq you have a situation like that of Vietnam, where nobody can even pinpoint the exact purpose of the sacrifice, so the purpose becomes the exaltation of bravery and patriotism itself. But the troops coming home with PTSD know better than to think that the contrived narratives developed around Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman are more than stories the non-combatants need to justify a war whose purpose nobody can put a finger on with a straight face.
And what of the religionists who continue to deny the stunning realities science has discovered and cemented as fact? It is a case where everyone can plainly see that they have lost the argument but themselves. Why do we still have to fight over an argument we have already won as decisively as can be? The answer surely is tied up with Weinberg's observation- "the more we understand the more clearly tragic it is".
Who wants to understand, when understanding is tragic?