We like to think of ourselves as growing up. This seems to be a wholly welcome process in the arrangement for humans on Planet Earth. We leave behind toddling and being patted on the head in the patronising gesture that adults enjoy administering. We can use (some of) those more complicated words that mums and dads use when talking of other adults. We can make mistakes (though the untoward reaction of adult supervisors may make this occasionally inadvisable). We can read books that our mums and dads never read or disapproved of. We can contemplate training for career ideas of our own, like crossing the Sahara with a camel.
But it is not all growing up. We grow out of. We grow out of out shoes and our tops. More to the point, we grow out of the habit of finding out, of wonder, of one achievement after another, of the vast array of vocabulary at our disposal and the colours too.
We also grow out of thinking that mums and dads know all the answers.
We find ourselves living in a world we only partially understand. We become sceptical when we hear too often a systematic explanation of man’s place in that world, whether it be a philosopher, a political specialist or a prophet. Such scepticism is not new. The Enlightenment and its standard-bearers pressed for the autonomy of the sciences and he basing of theories on evidence.
This scepticism, healthy and invigorating, can be taken too far. We are not short of statements about our planet – about the weather, for example – that next day’s sunrise put to shame. Ideologies, like empires, rise and fall. At one time the Roman emperor was believed to be divine. Then came the turn of the engineers, with their steam, steel and eventually flying machines. Answers they had but not about the meaning of human existence.
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