Maybe it’s because we’re so very very finite that we are a bit obsessed with how old things and people are. Time is, after all, more enemy than friend because of entropy regardless of how many vintage bottles of wine attract attention at auctions—even those that might have turned to vinegar—and how many people collect rickety antique chairs. Now, we’re obsessing over the age of mushrooms and universes? Go figure.
Ever since the COBE satellite captured the Echo of the Big Bang, everyone has been locked on 13.8 billion years (give or take a week) for the age of the universe. Considering its potential future of trillions of years, we find the birth of Everything rather young unless we do some comparing with objects that lie within the universe: Galaxies and their stars and stars with their planets. But the universe’s age isn’t as accurate as we might think, and it poses a really big question: What do we do with the “Methuselah star” (HD140283) that might be 14.5 billion years old? * You know the old saying: “You can’t be older than your mother.” Have you been happy with the 13.8 billion-year age of the universe based on the initial Cosmic Microwave Background assessment? Did you think: “Hey, there’s nothing I can do about it, and I have no way of cross checking all those bright scientists who stamped their approval on 13.8 billion years”? Well, now, somebody else has lowered the age of the universe by a billion years or so, and that makes the Methuselah star much older than its mother. **
Then someone came along and did the opposite for mushrooms, pushing back their origin by a half a billion years.*** It’s a paleontological analog of Methuselah’s age. Mushrooms thrive by consuming organic matter. If the mushroom was around a billion years ago, on what did it feed? We need to look into the possibility that other life-forms were flourishing a billion years ago, long before the Cambrian Explosion or the Ediacaran fossils that mark the fossil record with a widely accepted beginning for multicellular life.
So, why should I mention the universe’s age and the age of the oldest mushroom? I’ll mention a vague memory I have of a 1950s TV show, maybe Twilight Zone, in which one of the actors said he was “an old man” because he was in his 60s. Whereas it is definitely true that life can end at any age, in the 2000s, we are surrounded by a number of people whose sixth decade is a rather active one, more so, I believe, than it was for sixty-year-olds of the 1950s. Sure, we like to keep track of “absolute ages,” those we can pin down with a specific number, but relative age appears to be just as important and maybe even more so when it comes to feeling younger than the number might indicate.
As we all learn, we have two sets of ages: The numbered age and the attitudinal age. We can argue that the latter is a counter to the former and that staying physically active is the mechanism for staying young. But fighting off entropy is probably a losing cause; we’ve all cracked the age egg relatively long ago, and we’re not putting it back together. However, that attitudinal age is an egg from a different bird altogether. It’s an egg we can renew by being creative. Seeking to be creative can make the universe of the mind much younger than the universe of the brain. So what can you do to revitalize your youthful creative self?
You are immersed in matter and process, and you’ve been taught (directly and indirectly) which process applies to which matter. Think differently. Look to apply a process to matter with which it is never associated. Look for analogs.
Here’s an anecdote that reveals how ageing minds age. A colleague of mine introduced a new curriculum and course at a university-wide committee meeting. In the course proposal he recommended books that crossed a variety of academic fields. One committee member from a different department, was upset that books in his field were included in the reading list and angrily questioned how someone in another field could have the audacity to recommend books associated with his field of study. Is there any example more telling of an ageing mind than one showing a refusal to see knowledge holistically?
We are steeped in what we do every day, and it’s difficult for us to take a different approach to what we daily do. Yet, the only path to revitalization is one that is different from the typical. The creative mind can, in fact, be younger than its component parts; your personal universe can be younger than Methuselah. Also, in an analog of those very ancient mushrooms, you’ve been feeding on some ideas for a very long time even though you haven’t yet discovered fossil evidence that they have been there all along.
Sometimes going back to the beginning is the best way to the end.
* http://www.astronomy.com/news/2013/03/hubble-pins-down-age-of-oldest-known-star
** https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/04/25/universe-expanding-faster-than-expected/
*** https://phys.org/news/2019-05-billion-year-fungi-earth-oldest.html
Ever since the COBE satellite captured the Echo of the Big Bang, everyone has been locked on 13.8 billion years (give or take a week) for the age of the universe. Considering its potential future of trillions of years, we find the birth of Everything rather young unless we do some comparing with objects that lie within the universe: Galaxies and their stars and stars with their planets. But the universe’s age isn’t as accurate as we might think, and it poses a really big question: What do we do with the “Methuselah star” (HD140283) that might be 14.5 billion years old? * You know the old saying: “You can’t be older than your mother.” Have you been happy with the 13.8 billion-year age of the universe based on the initial Cosmic Microwave Background assessment? Did you think: “Hey, there’s nothing I can do about it, and I have no way of cross checking all those bright scientists who stamped their approval on 13.8 billion years”? Well, now, somebody else has lowered the age of the universe by a billion years or so, and that makes the Methuselah star much older than its mother. **
Then someone came along and did the opposite for mushrooms, pushing back their origin by a half a billion years.*** It’s a paleontological analog of Methuselah’s age. Mushrooms thrive by consuming organic matter. If the mushroom was around a billion years ago, on what did it feed? We need to look into the possibility that other life-forms were flourishing a billion years ago, long before the Cambrian Explosion or the Ediacaran fossils that mark the fossil record with a widely accepted beginning for multicellular life.
So, why should I mention the universe’s age and the age of the oldest mushroom? I’ll mention a vague memory I have of a 1950s TV show, maybe Twilight Zone, in which one of the actors said he was “an old man” because he was in his 60s. Whereas it is definitely true that life can end at any age, in the 2000s, we are surrounded by a number of people whose sixth decade is a rather active one, more so, I believe, than it was for sixty-year-olds of the 1950s. Sure, we like to keep track of “absolute ages,” those we can pin down with a specific number, but relative age appears to be just as important and maybe even more so when it comes to feeling younger than the number might indicate.
As we all learn, we have two sets of ages: The numbered age and the attitudinal age. We can argue that the latter is a counter to the former and that staying physically active is the mechanism for staying young. But fighting off entropy is probably a losing cause; we’ve all cracked the age egg relatively long ago, and we’re not putting it back together. However, that attitudinal age is an egg from a different bird altogether. It’s an egg we can renew by being creative. Seeking to be creative can make the universe of the mind much younger than the universe of the brain. So what can you do to revitalize your youthful creative self?
You are immersed in matter and process, and you’ve been taught (directly and indirectly) which process applies to which matter. Think differently. Look to apply a process to matter with which it is never associated. Look for analogs.
Here’s an anecdote that reveals how ageing minds age. A colleague of mine introduced a new curriculum and course at a university-wide committee meeting. In the course proposal he recommended books that crossed a variety of academic fields. One committee member from a different department, was upset that books in his field were included in the reading list and angrily questioned how someone in another field could have the audacity to recommend books associated with his field of study. Is there any example more telling of an ageing mind than one showing a refusal to see knowledge holistically?
We are steeped in what we do every day, and it’s difficult for us to take a different approach to what we daily do. Yet, the only path to revitalization is one that is different from the typical. The creative mind can, in fact, be younger than its component parts; your personal universe can be younger than Methuselah. Also, in an analog of those very ancient mushrooms, you’ve been feeding on some ideas for a very long time even though you haven’t yet discovered fossil evidence that they have been there all along.
Sometimes going back to the beginning is the best way to the end.
* http://www.astronomy.com/news/2013/03/hubble-pins-down-age-of-oldest-known-star
** https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/04/25/universe-expanding-faster-than-expected/
*** https://phys.org/news/2019-05-billion-year-fungi-earth-oldest.html
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