PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: For some time I have tried to give my answer to the question first formally posed by Edward R. Murrow and again later on National Public Radio. I call myself an atheist, but a classification by negation does not follow the phrase, “This I believe.” Being and the will to be, fill me with awe. Everywhere I look I see nature striving, not only to survive and reproduce, but to perfect itself; its not always pretty. Creation appears to contain will. The will to be is there in stone and the sun’s burning and precedes what we call life which forever experiments, striving until it finds better ways to be. The processes of selection have given humankind a brain unique to our sphere. It has given us two unique powers: dominion over nature and the knowledge that we are part of nature, part of a complex, balanced organism we call earth that exists in time. If anything is holy, it is the fertility of that organism, our common self. Together we must learn to pilot our biosphere. To do so we must learn to settle our differences justly and fulfill the Needs of all. To say the least, the challenge is daunting. Is this the challenge all life is pointed toward throughout Being?
The human brain is a child of Being. So far as I can tell, being is eternal. How could it be otherwise? The meaning of humanity, which we sometimes call the meaning of life, depends on our ability to continue being. More than that we will never know. Eternity is now. Anything else is, at best, beside the point.
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