WOW! Wonder and Paganism

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S4E19 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, Yucca,

Mark: and I'm Mark.

Yucca: and today we're gonna talk about wonder. So that's what we're about, right? We're about, this is the wonder. So we're gonna explore the idea of wonder, and then we're also gonna talk about a few things that inspire that in us as well.

Mark: Things that make us go Wow.

Yucca: Yep.

Mark: Yeah. The. The reason that I suggested that the name of the podcast be The Wonder is that I think that that is at root, the spiritual motivation, right? That you know to, yes, there's the desire for meaning, there's the desire for a sense of place in the world and purpose in life and all those kinds of things.

But fundamentally, I think. That sense of just being awestruck by the, the fact that we exist, the fact of the universe and the world existing. I just think that's really a core spiritual sentiment and or, or experience. And so a lot of what I focus. My rituals on and, you know, efforts at creating oth, you know, materials to support other people in creating their rituals is about fostering that sense of wonder and awe.

Yucca: Yes. Yeah. And there's. There's so much of it really, it, it, whatever, wherever your interests lie, there's, there's just so much to explore and and it's one of those sensations that's very hard to describe, but it's really feeding in. Its to experience that.

Mark: Yeah. I mean, the more I learn about the world, you know, in, you know, in microcosm or in macrocosm, the more often I wanna say, wow, that's amazing.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: You know, I, I think about, I mean, there's, there's millions of examples, but talk so toxoplasmosis. Let's, let's start there. Okay. This is a virus that is communica that cats get, and it's also communicable to humans and to other mammals.

Toxoplasmosis controls your brain when it goes into rodents. They get careless, they get bolder and braver and And more fool, hearty. And that works perfectly for cats, right?

Yucca: Yes, it works out right.

Mark: so now cats have toxoplasmosis, right? And cats that have toxoplasmosis are friendlier. They are more apt to be domesticated.

So then they move in with the humans, and the humans by contact with the cat's. Feces can get toxoplasmosis, and one of the things that it makes them really want to do is to feed the cats.

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: So, I mean, literally all of this stuff is scientifically demonstrated. All of this is this little tiny virus, which is, you know, just a little string of genetic information.

And all of this stuff is true and it, you look at this and just go, my God, how is this possible?

Yucca: Mm-hmm. And it's, and it's all over. Right? I know that that's something that is regularly tested for. If you're, if you're pregnant, they test, they go, oh, do you have a cat? Okay, let's test you for that.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Yucca: yeah, and I don't know if there are, what health implications there are for that other than it does have some impact on personality, right.

For people as well. That it makes them more like that they. Their relation to ship to risk is a little, just like with the mice, is a little bit different than it might be if you didn't have the infection.

Mark: Yeah, and it makes them a little bit more agreeable as well, just a little bit more amenable to going along with whatever somebody else suggests which is just a hell of a thing. You know, we, we think we have free will. We think that we are piloting our ourselves through our lives, and here comes this little bug and it actually distorts our decision making process.

Yucca: Well, it challenges the, the idea of who self is. There's a lot of things today that do that, that really have us look at what is me really,

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: Right. What, and especially when we start getting into the realm of, of the microbiome and where do we start drawing the line between my microbiome and my cells?

Which ones are me, which ones aren't? Are we saying we distinguishing between d n a? What about mitochondria? All of that stuff starts to we're starting to find that the lines between all of that are a lot more blurry than we used to think.

Mark: Right e each of us is a, a functioning interpenetrated ecosystem. One emergent property of which is this thing called consciousness. But that is that because it is an emergent property of a body, which is an interpenetrated ecosystem is heavily influenced by what's going on in that ecosystem. And some of that is human, d n a and some of it's not. In fact, more of it is not than is.

Yucca: So let's, let's, before we can, there's a whole bunch of different things we can discuss, but let's come back to the idea of wonder a little bit before going into some of the specifics of things that that feel, that evoke that sense in us. One of the things that we were talking about when we were coming up with what topics we wanted to discuss was the idea that, that some people have that wonder has to also include ignorance that you can only have wonder if you are ignorant about it.

And that's something that I wanna say that I don't agree with.

Mark: Me

Yucca: think that wonder often has a, has humility as part of it. That's certainly for me, is often a sense when I look at the night sky. There's this, I'm just overwhelmed with the awe and the wonder of all of it and the knowledge that I know very, very little about it, but I also know a lot about it.

Right. That's my, that's my field. I know a lot about that little red dot right there that we call Mars. Right. For me only makes it more awe-inspiring because there's even more, the, the knowledge of all of that is part of that awe, but also the recognition that there is a lot that I don't know.

But it doesn't have to be. Awe isn't just what I don't understand. There's awe at what I do understand as well.

Mark: Right. Yeah. When we were talking about this, I was mentioning that a, apparently there's some academic who has written that naturalistic paganism is somehow. Either faulty or not real in some sense. Because the awe that happens when you don't, the awe that comes from mystery is somehow has a cache that the awe that comes from knowledge doesn't.

And I really disagree as you do Yucca. When I'm standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I can be awestruck by what a gigantic big hole that is. But the fact that I know that it's billions of years of accumulated layers of sedimentary rock that I'm looking at, that just changes everything.

Understanding that the slow uplift of the Kibab plateau allowed the Colorado River to carve that amazing, magnificent earth temple. Is that really blows my socks off. So, so, you know, in the same way that I'm, you know, filled with wonder by a, a beautiful rainbow, even though I understand how refraction works

Yucca: And then you get to be awed by that

Mark: yes,

Yucca: and then thinking, and then it leads to, wait a second, our eyes perceive those particular colors. Why is that right? And tracing all of that back and we're back to, you know, jellyfish. We'll come back to jellyfish in a while. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. So, you know, what I find is that scientists who. Truly embrace the scientific mindset. And there are many scientists who don't. There are many scientists who are, they're either ego involved with their findings or they're just very, very narrowly focused and you know, are very invested in being emotionally dispassionate.

But, but the scientists that I know that are truly filled with that, that humble curiosity. Just to, you know, I just want to find out how does this work? Einstein was one, Fineman was one. Hawking was one. Carl Sagan was one. You know, these are people that are, you know, elated at, at what they know about the universe.

Filled to the brim with joy about. About what they know and about what …