Know Thyself

Ancient Greece was big on proverbs. "Know thyself," is one of 147 aphorisms found inscribed in the Greek City of Delphi, this one at the Temple of Apollo. It is a peculiarity of humanity to devour bits of advice of variable quality in small doses. From time to time, we all just read news headlines, browse Facebook updates, or follow Twitter trends to access information. This is why long-form journalism is a forlorn occupation and why NFL RedZone exists. Humans want dense subject matter presented in small packages that are easy to remember and understand. Complexity and subtlety are hard.

I particularly find "Know Thyself" to be that rare aphorism that is actually worth remembering and applying. For starters, it's something that any human can do relatively well, requiring no discernible skill (except maybe discernment). One needs no external equipment, professorial input, nor large investment of time. Further, it can be done at any hour of the day or night, on any day of the year, and in any place. The results can be kept in secret or shared publicly, and there is only a single criterion for success or failure: whether one has learned anything about oneself.

But, aphorisms will always be aphorisms (great aphorism!). They will always look and sound trite to the cynic and false to the skeptic until one actually tries using them.

If knowing oneself is not a shocking piece of advice, what about a thing knowing itself? Is that even possible? The answer, surprisingly, is.... yes. And what is this magical thingy that knows itself? I'll let Dr. Carl Sagan take it from here:

The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.



Let that sink in... Everything we see when we look at the sky, or the ground, or our dinner, or ourselves has traveled billions of miles over billions of years to right where we are now. How lucky those atoms are. If we humans are special creatures, and I certainly believe we are, how much more special is the cosmos and its laws...and its Creator...because of the fact that the plasma expelled into spacetime 14.5 billion years ago pooled into atoms, which fused into heavy elements, which have combined to make everything we see or ever could see. And we, as the cosmos, can study the cosmos: we can study the very thing we are. The cosmos can know itself. How amazing is that...