Humans Being Here
In Praise of Mystery
The Problem of a Tattered Sail
Imagine you are the captain of a ship. The ship rests at a bustling dock, its sail flapping in the wind, catching only parts of the breeze through tattered edges – threadbare echoes of past adventures. With a new journey on the horizon, your first instinct may be to fix those frayed ends, right? It's a common response – mend what's visibly broken.
But now, think deeper. What if the real snag isn't the worn sail at all? What if, while your hands work on those ragged tears, the compass that's supposed to steer the ship has become rusted under its bright, brassy sheen, slowly losing its ability to point North?
This scenario in America's Grand Challenges mirrors how we often tackle problems. We're quick to focus on what's right in front of us, just like sewing up that sail while the compass goes unchecked. We're adept at dealing with the obvious, but what if the real solution lies in questioning the compass's reliability – the thing that sets our course?
So, how do we genuinely solve the problem of a tattered sail?
It starts by not just patching up the obvious but by probing the integrity of our compass, the force that ensures our efforts sail in the right direction. After all, facing challenges requires more than cosmetic repairs; it demands understanding the unseen forces guiding our journey.
In pursuing America's Grand Challenges, scientists and businesses fervently seek solutions. However, should we not also prioritize the act of asking profound, insightful questions? A recent discourse on MIT Press by Herlinde Koelbl with the renowned geneticist Paul Nurse emphasizes this perspective, suggesting that progress often emerges from dismantling preexisting ideas. Nurse's reflections on his journey, punctuated by his Nobel Prize achievement and encounters with failure, highlight the delicate balance between posing questions and seeking answers.
For me, a standout feature of Koelbl's "Fascination of Science" series is the intimate practice of asking scientists to encapsulate the essence of their research by writing it on the palm of their hand—a symbolic merger of simplicity and depth. It’s an approach that brings out the genuine, almost childlike curiosity at the heart of scientific exploration. Through intertwining creative expression with science, Koelbl nudges us to contemplate the human being behind our era's groundbreaking discoveries.
As America bears down to address its multidimensional transition to artificial intelligence, applied quantum computing, and the future of work, I offer that we must anchor our big bets—the so-called “Grand Challenges”—in what it means to be human. This is the only approach for ensuring that our questions lead to deeply meaningful solutions. After all, the ultimate end-users are us—humans being here, together, on planet Earth… and beyond.
In Praise of Mystery
An October 25, 2024, New York Times article profiled NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which is set to explore the potential for life on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. The mission is a journey with a poetic twist: In Praise of Mystery, a poem by the 24th United States Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, is engraved on its vault plate.
As part of NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” initiative, this project aimed to connect science with the human spirit, sending data and verse into space. Initially struggling to write a “NASA poem,” Limón found clarity when her husband encouraged her to focus on a more personal, authentic voice. The result was a poem that celebrates both the wonder of Europa and the life-giving beauty of Earth.
The poem symbolizes the mission’s ethos, emphasizing humanity’s creative spirit in the pursuit of discovery. Engraved alongside the Drake Equation and water symbols in 103 languages, Limón’s words reflect the collaborative effort of more than 4,000 hands that built the spacecraft. As Europa Clipper launched, carrying a message of hope and unity, Limón expressed her wish for a sense of “soothing” to emerge—not just for humanity but all living beings, affirming that science and poetry together can inspire a deeper connection to the universe.
Poetry isn’t like eggs made to order, of course. It’s hard to cook up a collection of words for a specific palate; the process is more alchemy than science.
Eventually, Limón husband, Lucas Marquardt, told her, “‘You need to stop writing a NASA poem and start writing a poem you would actually write.”
The point was to deliver a message, not a lesson, she realized.
“That was where the poem took off,” Limón said. “I wanted to make sure it was a poem of praise and wonder. Yes, we’re going to this incredible place; and yes, we might find all of the ingredients for life and this could be an incredible moment in history. But we’re also on the most incredible planet, and it is full of life.”
“In Praise of Mystery” functions as an introduction of Earth to Europa. It includes songbirds and wind-shaken trees, grief and pleasure, sun and shadow. It strikes a liquid note — “O second moon, we, too, are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas” — and gives a solid sense of what unites human beings: awe, mystery, wishes.
To borrow a phrase from another laureate-level auteur, the poem contains multitudes.
Whose Job Is Truth?
Over the last three decades, my professional path has woven through American systems of arts, business, and academic institutions. I learned their unique lexicons, navigated their intricate architectures, and gauged their risk-to-reward mechanisms. Each expedition was fueled by hope, curiosity, and the allure of personal growth. While every experience enriched my reservoir of knowledge, a feeling of incompleteness lingered. Something seemed disconnected. Despite the grand promises and eloquent narratives, I perceived a glaring, growing, and ironic omission in our American blueprint. In our relentless stride toward progress, the systems we’ve built often seem to ignore the complex truth of what it means to be human.
For millennia, philosophers, theologians, scientists, artists, and thinkers of all kinds have contemplated this question. The answer is one of multitudes and varies depending on cultural, philosophical, and personal beliefs.
Here are a just a few perspectives:
Biological Perspective: At a basic level, being human means belonging to Homo sapiens. It involves certain biological characteristics such as walking upright, having a large brain relative to body size, and the ability to speak.
Cognitive and Emotional Perspective: We humans are known for our complex cognitive abilities. One of the defining features of humanity is the ability to create and express oneself, whether through art, music, literature, or other forms of expression. We have the capacity for abstract thought, understanding concepts such as time, self-awareness, and the ability to experience a range of emotions.
Social Perspective: Being human also means being social. Humans inherently seek connections with others, create communities, establish norms and values, and have the ability to engage in conflict or cooperation.
Existential Perspective: Philosophers have often focused on humanity's existential aspects. Questions of purpose, freedom, mortality, and the nature of existence are central to understanding the human experience.
Cultural Perspective: Throughout history, cultures worldwide have defined what it means to be human in various ways, often tied to religious or spiritual beliefs, traditions, and customs.
Moral Perspective: Being human often involves questions of morality and ethics. Concepts of right and wrong, justice, and the greater good are deeply intertwined with human nature.
At its core, the truth of being human is both universal and deeply personal. It's a question without a definitive answer; perhaps this quest for understanding defines our humanity more than anything.
In contemporary society, “truth” is often reserved for the domain of scientists, whose work is portrayed as the relentless pursuit of objective realities. Yet, artists and entrepreneurs share this quest, each within their unique spheres of influence, shaping our collective understanding of truth in myriad ways.
While scientists undoubtedly strive for objective truths, the confines of a single discipline can limit their view. Just as peering through a keyhole offers only a limited perspective of what lies beyond a door, a scientist confined to one discipline sees but a slice of reality. Though deep and insightful, this narrow viewpoint misses the interconnected richness that a broader, interdisciplinary view might offer.
Like opening a door wide to grasp the full scene beyond, scientists embracing insights from varied disciplines gain a larger understanding – an imperative in a complex phenomenon like being human. Today, I am excited to see many scientists beginning to take this step. It requires them to hold a paradox of extreme confidence with radical humility. It’s hard work, but, ultimately may be the best visible indicator for separating transformational scientists from transactional ones. It seems that could be a pretty valuable indicator for investors and other stakeholders who depend on the scientific findings.
Science isn't the sole custodian of truth. Artists engage the depths of human emotion and societal reflections, painting, sculpting, or performing truths that scientific data can't capture. Their work often serves as mirrors, reflecting aspects of humanity that are sometimes ineffable yet undeniably real.
The best entrepreneurs, too, are centered on human truth. They discern gaps in the market, innovate solutions, and shape the industries that shape our human thoughts, actions, and relationships. The market's response validates entrepreneurial truth in its embrace or rejection of a product or idea. The entrepreneurial search for meeting genuine needs with effective solutions and genuine value aligns them with the search for truth that artists and scientists cherish.
Whether a human is a scientist, artist, or entrepreneur, defining truth is a pivotal part of the work. We each offer a unique lens, widening society's collective perspective, challenging accepted norms, and striving to shape a richer, more nuanced understanding of our shared reality. The word “shared” is the key here.
As much as the American system rewards the presentation of confidence and assuredness, the one thing that I am most confident about is that scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs need each other. Our problems today are too complex for any one group to go it alone, and believe that there is no value for them in collaborating with others who approach problem-construction and problem-solving differently.
Art & Science of Wonder
Life, in its essence, is a blend of art and science. In our human journeys, there's a place for logic, emotion, and mystery. The existence of one does not diminish the uniqueness or value of the other two. All three are necessary to make sense of our individual and collective experience of humans being here together. Your “here” may be as an artist, scientist, entrepreneur, healer, teacher, or many other important roles. Each of us has all of these possibilities within us and embodies facets of them all as we navigate our daily lives.
Yet, we often find ourselves pigeonholed within the American way of getting things done. Our systems nudge us to select a singular label to wear professionally that defines for others who we are— our identity. In this singular focus, the allure of choices can eclipse the destination. In other words, we let choosing our label become the goal. Instead of being this or that, what if our goal was to become the journey that will unlock the fullness each of us has within us?
When have you paused to contemplate the boundless potential that can unfold if you don’t confine yourself to one label?
How would your life be different if you could access the wisdom in all your choices not made?
Each new question that we are brave enough to ask is an evolutionary possibility. In a world unfurling around us at what seems to be an increasingly accelerating rate, it is easy to get scared. When this happens, the brain’s cognitive biases tell us that sticking with the status quo is the best choice — even when we know the status quo is no longer working. What propels our motion forward as humans? What is the source code for transformational breakthroughs? I posit it's an enduring, timeless human spiritual technology: wonder.
From Socrates to poet John O'Donohue, we’ve come to know wonder as the "beginning of all wisdom." Our human capacity for wonder fuels discovery and our inquisitive spirit. Wonder characterizes our essence and fortifies communities during challenges – aiding in conflict resolution, fostering communication, evolving shared languages, and nurturing trust.
Let's simplify various scientific disciplines that investigate wonder into an understandable metaphor and liken wonder to an airplane. This plane embodies the combined creative capacity of a group of people, its passengers. On one end of the plane’s route is a sense of awe, where passengers reflect deeply, contemplating their place in the universe and recognizing their shared bond. This state is continually expanding, eluding final comprehension. On the other end of the plane’s route is curiosity – representing the void between what the group knows and what it wants to know. Curiosity, when pursued, satiates the seekers. It’s like an itch that can be scratched with effort.
As the creativity plane oscillates between the two ends of the route, its passenger composition is in perpetual flux. Think of this like your team at work. Some team members are like the plane’s crew or frequent fliers. They remain quite constant. Others—transient passengers—briefly join the core team in passing through on their own creative journeys. Over time, all of these interactions and stories intertwine to shape a collective sense of wonder. This is what we call culture.
Poetry: Wonder Handprints of Our Collective Mind
In the opening section of this article, I introduced Koelbl’s Fascination of Science series, in which scientists distill the essence of their research into the palm of their hands—a gesture that blends simplicity with depth. This gesture is a powerful metaphor for how vast ideas can be held within intimate spaces, much like poetry itself.
Of all the languages that we use, poetry is unique. Poetry can cradle the vastness of our challenges, aspirations, and identities. Poetry is our solace in adversity and the spark of the revolution. Poetry, like wonder, transcends the limitations of time and space to echo future history.
Our shared presence on Earth at this moment in time is extraordinary and humbling—a testament to the wonder that unites us humans, being here together.
This wonder is not only personal; it also shapes the broader story of America. America itself is a poem. Experience has taught me that only poetry can withstand the weight of America's current and emerging challenges without being crushed under their enormity. Poetry is the language of wonder that propels us to reshape problems, unite creativity and cognition, and invest strategically in transformational innovation.
In the voyage of a poem, we locate the infinite in the present—infinite stories etched within our collective soul. A poem shapes the quiet spaces between words. This is where the wisdom of all our choices not yet made patiently waits for us to call it forward and engage in the praise of mystery.
Limitations of Light in a Shining City on a Hill
A poem of hopeful reflection on the state of America’s sense of wonder.
by Theo Edmonds
I have seen the flashing of a light beating and shining at the hardcore of human existence. I have been instructed by strange coincidence. I am a poem in a machine breaking down but still objectively real. Our mechanistic metrics say so. Did you ever notice that science today can sometimes seem most certain of its smallness? Science cannot share harvest wine with cavalier creatures and beautiful bandits in a quest to construct an exquisite corpse. Only a poem can remain intact and humble when thrust into tunnels shaped by bluster and fury. To discover transformation, our science must unlearn and rekindle the larger language of stardust captured within us... within us, value judgments are the enemy within us, resides atomic curiosity. Art does not tell people what to do. It brings beautiful confusion. A confusion that somehow serves as both inquisition and starlight ingredients of revelation moving us beyond the frontier. America floats now, unbound by the concept of time. Earned fluid boundaries. Tilled soil. Waves of deep lack. Particles of invisible wounds. Concocted theories of objective reality Held hostage by unprocessed grief inside gray matter building elaborate pathways to move beyond lonely find a thingness called blue. We know the unreal. Our certain gaze has been our distraction. (we are 3,717,792 miles plus an hour, from them both now). Looking back, We see the mappiness of our political agreements Giving name to the places where we have been. Places where - no-fi hi-fi and semper fi are tucked away together in the bedrooms of the dirty South. Places where - go-go dancers and secretive trios evangelize on dance floors in Chicago and Miami. Places where pop freaks and self-involved redemptions (Things Nina would call funkier than a mosquito's tweeter) alley-oop the street beat of new jack swing into dubious triumphs out in LaLa Land. Places where - voodoo tambourines still shake in the Louisiana swamps -a wash tub city- with piano-stabbing climaxes still parading down streets (streets that weren't laid out for neon disco. But, to survive, pretend for the customers like disco is here to stay). To where - poor, trash-talking mountains and hollers are tucked away from interstate commerce and the public eye. Uncharacteristically content to be portrayed by workable stereotypes -- those uninformed ideas barreling over media channels-- Though devoid of contextual foundations, the bones know there is an expectation that must be played out if survival is to be survived. In reality, the blood feels good just to be noticed. Everywhere! I hear our pavement songs. America has 3,717,792 poems plus an hour Traveling in every direction. These are our pavement songs. Songs of scruffy mentalist who could never get clean no matter how hard they got washed, beat upon or taken to the cleaners. Songs that ping pong between Chappell Roan and Beyoncé's throne between Dolly Parton and Kendrick Lamar, between Lizzo and Lynard Skynard, between Nina Simone and Ariana Grande, between Snoop Dogg and Dean Martin, between Tupac and Elton between Grateful Dead and Radiohead Between Lil Nas X and infinity between gospel greats and acid jazz between hustlers and preachers between our ears, heartbeats, bellies and toes between drunken stage brawls and dark, sophisticated moments of communal detox... which never seem to last for long. Songs of higher than the stars bold glamor filter faces Faking Insta memories of harvest festivals as they dive headlong into time-traveling through allegory caves …TikTok… TikTok… TikTok… Where's the filter for enticing a memory from a forgotten analog sound locked within a memory palace? The place where we first heard reverberating the intrigue of a little night music. Little acoustic waves where it sounded like... “Is you is or is you ain’t my baby. You... is still my baby, baby” Tomorrow, baby gonna find somebody new. Songs laid down... for survival jobs in Web3 digital crypto marketing with libertarian leanings Songs of up-tempo funk laid out in the sandy circles of ugly duckling mandala digital architecture and scratchy calypso Twitter scorn. Songs of … Red Bulls … Blue Walls … and, Bingo Halls. We are 3,717,792 poems plus an hour breaking through nostalgia as pavement songs. They are our sentinels, wrenching out our imminent revelation. In every direction, we feel the secret, painful, and lonely wisdom that comes from being a cool, wet seed in hot, scorched earth. Caught between mud brick and flame Caught between moonlight and Tesla cars, Caught between running and clutching A cool, wet seed turning in hot, scorched earth. Revealing flexible truths of politicos and merchant kings to be seen for what they are. Wet bones standing in moody shoes. A dream of fire. A baby with a swollen belly. A child looking at us all from a puzzled soul A child who takes notice of the emperor's new clothes. It is a child brave enough to ask the only question which truly frightens the mirror. Why DO some... feel the need to be rulers, everywhere? (Inescapably, we know that we are all mirrors and windows.) Through all this Noise. Bluster. Fury. The distractions of our tender voice continues to sneak up on us still. Our tender voice in a strong poem, conjuring memories from before the time we followed others who wanted us to believe... ...that there is only ONE set of words to name our experience as stardust. ...that there is only ONE set of words to name the journey of a flower. We can still remember imagination. This memory of awe mingles with curiosity to stir our future. The memory of being a cool, wet seed beginning to turn. Courage. Reaching through wonder to stretch beyond the limitations of light found in this shining city on a hill.
Theo Edmonds, Culture Futurist® & Founder, Creativity America | Bridging Creative Industries and Brain Science with Technology and Future of Work
©2024 Theo Edmonds | All Rights Reserved. Please credit the author when using any of this content. The views expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any organization with which the author is affiliated.