We can blame it all on Galileo . . . and Copernicus too for that matter. Before they started thinking about things — and proving them — we had stability. The earth was the center of the universe and everyone knew it. We were cosmologically stable. We weren't on some small, wet, spinning rock, orbiting a huge fireball

No.

We had it figured out.

God created us. He took some clay and made a life-size man. He took one of his ribs (?), made a woman out of it, kicked both of them out of Paradise, and said they should flourish. And they did. That was easy enough to deal with.

Then along came Darwin. Oy vey. He said, "Well, er, no. . . ." Now, we have to cope with the idea that we're the product of billions of years of bio-ooze squiggling around, combining with other tiny Oozites, getting bigger, swimming, crawling, climbing, walking, and then advancing to the peak of Earth's creation: a brain-dominated humanoid that makes bombs capable of killing all Earth life (except cockroaches) with the push of a shiny red button. Now that's progress.

OK, OK: it's probably not Galileo's fault. All that he and his buddies did was to bring the West up to date with what Buddha said a couple millennia ago: Everything is in motion; all forms change; everything is temporary. OK, so if we can't pin it on those guys, then who — or what — do we blame?

Le Brain
The brain likes to know what's happening. That's its job. This requires a universe of patterns. Nice, neat, stable patterns, like something you'd find in a nice, neat, fictitious universe. Without those patterns, life becomes chaotic. Oh, and hats off to Edward Lorentz, for stumbling headlong into chaoS TheORY (as if Relativity wasn't bad enough), which led to a science of the unfathomable.

Intense happenings also convince the poor brain to discern patterns. When something impressive happens, it thinks, "Whoa! Intense! Yikes! Real!" It will continue applying that pattern, even in circumstances different from the original experience. Psychiatrists deal with this daily. They try to steer their patients to the understanding that their boss or spouse is not their mommy, daddy, or the ice cream man. Although time-related patterns exist "out there," many exist solely "in here," and Le Brain hallucinates and thinks they reflect "out there" reality. That's why change is so hard: "It is what it is" — even when Le Brain just knows it's something else.

Cha, Cha Changes
Buddha said that everything changes and is temporary. This is bad news, as humans seek security — some would rather die than change. It's no coincidence that many vision/versions of Heaven are built on the ideals of permanence and stability.

So, we find ourselves alive on a planet, equipped with a brain that wants something that doesn't exist, and wondering, "What the . . . ?" Our old time religion had provided a decent story, the assurance that the universe was stable and permanent, even if our little lives weren't. Unfortunately, the story was demonstrably wrong. Stupid Galileo. So, what to do? WHAT TO DO?