Due to unforseen circumstances I had an empty diary today so I went online and began surfing on my bored-om, looking to ride in the ‘green room’ of a wave of inspiration to carry me through the afternoon. Fortunately the murky depths yielded up the gift of HG Wells’s last essay ‘Mind at the End of it’s Tether.
I happened upon this little beauty as I was ‘bashing’ from here to here to here to here from whence I was then animated to go in search of the essay, which I found here.
Written in 1943, it brings, according to Wells himself-
“ to a conclusive end the series of essays, memoranda, pamphlets, through which the writer has experimented, challenged discussion, and assembled material bearing upon the fundamental nature of life and time. So far as fundamentals go he has nothing more and never will have anything more to say.”
While I would recommend a reading, it’s not for the feint hearted, depressed or suicidal. Nor is it for those of a melancholy disposition aggravated by the suspicion that their life and it’s ambitions may be like a hungry grope inside a bulb-less empty fridge.
However it was written by a successful man at the end of the third act of life who had spent some considerable time thinking and writing. So he should have something of value to share.
Despite his pessimistic stance on evolution’s relentless drive to render obsolete anything that fails to adapt to change quickly enough, regardless of how beautiful, good or true, he essentially makes a case for continuing a conscious evolution. Picking up the tempo set by a blind yet instinctive conductor with an urge to drive the orchestra of life to play bigger, bolder and better. He makes a case against human beings becoming complacent and bloated by the idea that mankind as it stands (or stood in 1943) has the final truth or is the final product.
At one point Wells struggles to find a word to describe the urge to exist that began the whole process. He says ‘Power’ is unsatisfactory as it suggests 'something within' the universe and he wished to express something entirely outside. He thumbs through a few suggestions, offering: Cosmic process, the Beyond, the Unknown and the Unknowable, but finds them all to be carrying “unsound implications”.
Finally he settles on ‘The Antagonist’ which he uses to describe the unknown creative force that evoked life and has now turned against it. His scathing reflections were no doubt brought on by the horrors he was witnessing as a result of the second of two world wars and the rise of Nazism.
Anyway I won’t dissect the text any further as each should interpret the work as they find it, but I will say that I believe his final concern still holds true. And it is this:
“ It is possible that there are wide variations in the mental adaptability of contemporary mankind. It is possible that the mass of contemporary mankind may not be as readily accessible to fresh ideas as the younger, more childish minds of earlier generations and it is also possible that hard, imaginative thinking has not increased so as to keep pace with the expansion and complication of human societies and organisations. That is the darkest shadow upon the hopes of mankind.”
Having read the essay again I’m not entirely sure what he is ultimately sceptical about. Whether he fears that the universe, having started with a Big Bang, full of flowing radiant energy, dancing atoms and exploding fireworks, will ultimately wind down and end in a small fart. Or is it that mankind will ultimately be unable to realise it's full potential because of the biological, psychological and spiritual limits of the species. You'll just have to read it and decide for yourself.
If I may offer my interpretation, it is that this essay is a call to creativity. Wells was writing at a time when scientists were suggesting that after a good start the universe is now slowing down and is merely a finite, Godless, self- creating, purposeless organism, frustrated by it’s own limitations and destined for a cold and lonely end.
But this was before the Hubble telescope revealed that, far from winding down, the universe has actually been speeding up in it’s expansion since the Big Bang. It appears we’ve only just begun. New stars are being created across the length and breadth of infinity.
Yes, the struggle maybe between an infinite ‘Antagonist’ only able to express itself as a finite Protagonist for now, but that primal anxiety is the source of it’s creativity. And you never know, it just might succeed in bringing something wonderful into existence.
The more we learn about new discoveries in cosmology the more we realise the universe may be full of life bearing planets. We may then suspect that the Kosmos has a purpose after all - to produce life.
And that's something to be optimistic about.
Tom
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