In Search of Certainty

Chapter 1. King Canute and the Butterfly: How we create the illusion of being in control.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Imagine a scene in a movie. A quiet night on the ocean, on the deck of a magnificent ship, sailing dreamily into destiny. Moonlight reflects in a calm pond that stretches off into the distance, waves lap serenely against the bow of the ship, and – had there been crickets on the ocean, we would have heard that reassuring purring of the night to calm the senses.

The captain, replete with perfectly adjusted uniform, comes up to the night helmsman and asks: “How goes it, sailor?” To which the sailor replies: “No problem. All’s quiet, sir. Making a small course correction. Everything’s shipshape and under control.”

At this moment, the soundtrack stirs, swelling into darker tones, because we know that those famous last words are surely a sign of trouble in any Hollywood script.

At that very moment, the camera seems to dive into the helmsman’s body, swimming frantically along his arteries with his bloodstream to a cavernous opening, where we view a deadly parasite within him that will kill him within the hour. Then the camera pulls back of him and pans out, rising above the ship, up into the air to an altitude at which the clear, still pond of the ocean seems to freckle and ...