The Cosmos and the Highland Thing
by Ted Carr
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 60
Autumn 1998

Introduction

Ted Carr
Ted and his wife Dawn have recently returned from two years in the New Guinea highlands where they worked for the Catholic Diocese of Wabag.

A MIDNIGHT FAILURE OF THE hydro-electric plant results in another early morning for me; a trip down to the weir at first light to get power back on for the mission station and the hospital.
It is not a wearisome job. It's something that I enjoy, and this morning it has an unexpected bonus. There are times when things of great import become suddenly clear to me, and this is one of those occasions.

I have been somewhat depressed and angry over the last few weeks by our apparent failure to get anything of value done here in Papua New Guinea. I had been mulling over this, and all kinds of negative explanations were arising for the state of things here.

The hydro problem is mostly leaf rubbish in the primary filters, Casurina and Kunai, and I spend quite some time just standing in the (cold) creek kicking leaves out. The morning is cool, misty and quiet and the setting is an ideal one for some contemplation. From where I stand in a beautiful rain forest valley, above a waterfall, I can see distant mountains with their ever-present tiaras of clouds. One can see the immediate-one can see forever.

Some of my recent reading on the 'new cosmology' has given me a lot of food for thought. Some of the thinking seems rather negative and this troubles me as I stand kicking leaves in a remote highland stream.

It is clear now that the cosmos makes choices, it experiments. Some of its choices seem unimaginably wasteful. I am awed, for instance, by the concept of vast galaxies of sterile stars. Miniscule 'decisions' in the first nanoseconds of their creation meant that, although they could coalesce from interstellar gas into giant galaxies of billions of stars, they lacked the structure and density variations necessary for the 'triggering' of second generation stars.

No supernovas occur in such galaxies, and therefore no distribution of basic elements needed for the formation of roses. Unimaginably vast communities of lifeless stars that will never produce a bird-call. Doomed to a lonely and distant heat-death. What a waste! I think to myself, and feel a chill that doesn't come from the cold water around my bare feet.

But this is in the nature of the cosmos. The cosmos makes a choice, a leap into the future where even the cosmos does not appear to know what will become of it.

But then, so they say, the cosmos reflects on the outcome! A reflective cosmos? It certainly behaves as if that is so. It would appear to shrug off and ignore the failures, but inexplicably, it always runs with the choice that brings about further creation. This is exactly the same power that we see revealed in biological evolution, the same experimentation and aspiration for life. The principle is at the very heart of creation.

There is no reason for this in our terms. We can readily echo the question of the first Greek Philosopher, Parmenides, "Why is there not nothing?"

In my darkest hours I reflect that the world could just be one of the failures of the cosmos. So much we could have achieved and created and loved, but collectively we have blown it. Maybe on some distant planet, in some other galaxy, choices have been made that the cosmos can pick up and run with. Perhaps for us there are only the sterile stars! I see no hope in the future that humankind will save its own home. Here in PNG the problems go so, so far back; back to first causes that I can't even begin to address. Given the kind of efforts that are being brought to bear by those who have the power to change, we have no hope. The country is 'bagarap' and no one really seems to care. No one seems to even understand the depth of the problems, let alone have the strength to address them.

It is easy to feel depressed and useless¾here, and I often say that I suspect the only useful thing I do here is help wipe snotty noses in the kindergartens.

To: Part 2