Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

You can't create a Cosmic Plan, because you are human, material, and about two meters in your largest dimension, and the Cosmos is divine, metaphysical, and about 10^16 meters in its physical emanation. Unfortunately, it won't accept your Plan. Partly because it doesn't exist.

This is a great talk, thank you! I worry often that the cultures of the developed world are forgetting the extraordinary progress of the past, and losing faith in the possibility of still greater progress for the future. Inspiring reminders of this are so valuable!

Deutsch here is explicitly invoking mythology, and sketching a mythology of the future. Mythology is an powerful tool! It's important to get the metaphysics of it as right as possible; and also not to confuse the mythic and factual modes. (Not saying he is doing that...)

Worth asking about "humans are not playthings of cosmic forces, we are users of cosmic forces": why "cosmic" here rather than "physical"? How is "humans are not playthings of physical forces, we are users of physical forces" different?

If that seems less inspiring... what did "cosmic" mean there? At the factual level, was it true? (We are and always will be subject to physical forces...)

At the mythic level, what teleological narrative is suggested, and what does that motivate? As a call to contribute to progress, it's great. As a suggestion that this can give one's life definite meaning—it may be counterproductive, imo.

Tangential aside: a term I learnt from Neil Postman is "transcendental narrative", meaning (my interpretation) a story sufficiently powerful is it is possible to attach a life meaning, certainly individually, and perhaps even collectively.