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@existentialskeptic
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Order is an illusion and everything moving toward chaos
Everything comes from chaos and gradually will decline into disorder. It's the entropy principle of thermodynamic law and nothing in the universe could ever escape it. Try as we might, every effort to create order is just a temporary illusion to make our life more comfortable. While they aren't entirely useless, just remember the order we created is not a solid ground to stand on. There is always danger if we cling too much to them
We barely know anything, even the simplest things under our feet
It's in the title of the book, fish don't exist. That's because all life evolved out of the water. Reptiles, mammals, birds, all came from something that we would say looked pretty much like a fish. In an evolutionary sense, there's no way to draw a category that will encompass everything we call a fish. The most accurate way is to call the species by its name - shark, grouper, angler, eel. It's the lesson of humility. "We have been wrong before and we will be wrong again. The true path to progress is paved not with certainty but doubt, with being open to revision."
Humans don't evolve to become higher species
There is no single hierarchy on evolution. "This was what Darwin was trying so hard to get his readers to see: that there is never just one way of ranking nature's organisms. To get stuck on a single hierarchy is to miss the bigger picture, the messy truth of nature," Miller writes. In this sense, our ego as humans often get in the way. We tend to think that we are the "gardener" or worse, "master" over other species. That everything else was provided for us by the creator. Just look where has this line of thinking got us now. Does human existence make the earth a better place?
Universally speaking, we don't matter
In the first chapter of her book, Miller recounts how, when she was seven years old, she asked her father about the Meaning Of Life. His response was: “Nothing!” Miller writes, “Chaos, he informed me, was our only ruler. This massive swirl of dumb forces was what made us, accidentally, and would destroy us, imminently. He informed me that there is no meaning in life. There is no point. There is no God. No one watching you or caring in any way. There is no afterlife. No destiny. No plan. And don’t believe anyone who tells you there is. These are all things people dream up to comfort themselves against the scary feeling that none of this matters and you don’t matter. But the truth is, none of this matters and you don’t matter."
There you go.
But maybe for someone, you are the universe
"It was the dandelion principle! To some people, a dandelion might look like a weed, but to others, that same plant can be so much more. To an herbalist, it’s a medicine; to a painter, it’s a pigment; to a hippie, a crown; a child, a wish." Telling stories of how groups of people support each other in their small ways, Miller writes, "Slowly, it came into focus. This small web of people keeps one another afloat. All these minuscule interactions- a friendly wave, a pencil sketch, some plastic beads strung up a nylon cord- might not look like much from the outside, but for the people caught inside that web? They might be everything, the very tethers that keep one bound to this planet."
Chaos and Order be damned.
The only thing to do is to give up the fish
Sure, we can continue to believe nothing out of order could ever fall upon us. We can choose to cling to what we always believe to be true. We can choose comfort over truth. It's the power of positive thinking, they said. "Scientists have discovered, it's true, that employing positive illusions will help you achieve your goals. But I have slowly come to believe that far better things await outside of the tunnel vision of your goals," Miller writes. "When I give up the fish, I get, at long last, that thing I had been searching for: a mantra, a trick, a prescription for hope. I get the promise that there are good things in store. Not because I deserve them. Not because I worked for them. But because they are as much a part of Chaos as destruction and loss. Life, the flip side of death. Growth, of rot."
As Darwin promised, there is grandeur in this view of life.
A wondrous debut from Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder.
Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist reads like a fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.
Personally, it's the best book I have read this year.
And what a year it was to read such a book.
By @existentialskeptic
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