I am in search of a volunteer opportunity (or better yet, a real job) that furthers my a) science experience; or b) writing/journalism experience.
Where to start? Suggestions? Strokes of genius? Anything? Let me know.
While you think about that, think about this quote from The Stochastic Man:
“We are born by accident into a purely random universe. Our lives are determined by entirely fortuitous combinations of genes. Whatever happens happens by chance. The concepts of cause and effect are fallacies. There are only seeming causes leading to apparent effects. Since nothing truly follows from anything else, we swim each day through seas of chaos, and nothing is predictable, not even the events of the very next instant.
“Do you believe that?
“If you do, I pity you, because yours must be a bleak and terrifying and comfortless life.
“I think I once believed something very much like that, when I was seventeen and the world seemed hostile and incomprehensible. [But] adolescent cynicism is mainly a defense against fear. As I grew older I suppose I found the world less frightening, and I became less cynical.”
– KF –
Though I identify rather strongly with the speaker in railing against the view of universe as random, his blanket statement that “yours must be a bleak and terrifying and comfortless life” seems extremely harsh. A lot of people actually find a lot of comfort in feeling the lack of a guiding/controlling hand, that the meaning comes from them, and I identify with that too. I’ve lost a ton of cycnicism and I do feel like there’s a lot more, but I’ve never lost respect for those who try to earn their self-worth.