Lessons of Darkness
Saturday, September 14
One last Herzog - this time, from the Minnesota Declaration, prepared remarks that he spontaneously delivered before a public dialogue he had been invited to participate in:
Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of hell that during evolution some species — including man — crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.
Even if it doesn’t mitigate our suffering, one thing that may make it feel less mysterious, and less unfair, is the reminder that we are creatures borne of suffering.
As he recognizes in Grizzly Man, “the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder.” We, as animals in this universe, are no exception.
There are far more ways for an animal to lose their reproductive potential than to double it. The brutal logic of evolution by natural selection led to our mental life being filled more with “sticks” than “carrots” — hoping that suffering, and the threat of it, would help keep us on track.
But Herzog also sees a beauty in this. A beauty that he loves against his better judgment:
“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”