For all of humanity’s many gifts—consciousness, science, compassion, and love—one we take for granted is the two ways we directly interact with existence—our hands and our scents.
I forget where I heard that we only interact with existence in these 2 ways, but it was immediately known to be truth, as counterintuitive as it may have seemed. I have to reach out to get the water I need (or the wine I probably don’t!). I can think great thoughts, convey my love through beautiful words, but until I act on the stuff of the universe... it remains unmoved (at least so long as someone else, failing the motivation of my words, also does not act on behalf of these ideas... don’t hold your breath, more on this in a sec).
And we have terrific phalanges to apply normal force to objects and others. What a joy it is when the dirt yields to a shovel and a tree is moved from store to soil, or when we reach out and find a hand or a hug, movement in harmony, signifying we are not alone. We can sweep away a tear, close a door or open a window, dance like no one is watching—all the while manipulating our surroundings, ourselves, and even the neuroplasticity of another.
Whether it is the soaked in scent of a loved one or the compelling idea entering your worldview, the motions of neurons manipulate a universe more vast than the one we can work on by hand. Ideas applied to the physical, computational, or interpersonal world spread faster, involve greater scope, and are more durable than those moved by force alone. Resistance to these mental manipulations is similarly dynamic with the force for good, slowly and intractably acting above its weight class as we combine to better our angles and bend the long arc of our history.
No more do we expect to move mountains with our most dutiful dieties, instead we can imagine the cosmos created in cataclysm, connected by consciousness, and seek creative proofs to discover if it is so.