"Balsamic" Cosmology

The several foregoing discussions of “models” or “cosmologies” now need some rounding out, a certain amount of benign critique, and it seems to me that a good approach to that might be by analogy to a traditional food product. The contrast I’d like to suggest is that between the processes that take place in the vineyards of France, as old as time almost, and the activities that take place in modern laboratories.

When French vintners make really first class balsamic vinegar, they start with freshly pressed-out grape juice from carefully selected varieties. This they cook until only a third of the original volume is left over, known as “must.” Then begins a process of fermentation; more volume is lost, known as the angels’ share; the liquid grows thicker and sweeter and more concentrated. And after that begins a long period of aging. The product, which is neither, properly speaking, wine nor vinegar, is an expensive delight used to flavor salads, dips, and sauces. The best such products have lived in the darkness of barrels for up to twenty-five years.

Real cosmologies—and not called that, but functioning as cosmologies do, only better—are like balsamic vinegar. They are a concentration and essence of long periods of human experience. They come into being by means of poetic inspiration of just a few individuals and then live on as essences that change the very taste of reality. In their native form they are mythologies. And by the time that they are incorporated into holy books—where, invariably, they are mixed in with all sorts of other matters, not least history, law, custom, and moral guidance for the community—they are already very old. They arise—meaning that they’re captured in poetic forms—in the early stages of cultures. As these mature, the myths are gradually transformed into systems of belief. Where poets once had visions, now philosophers are scribbling. Later yet come modern times, such as the current phase in Western culture, when the philosophies, based on the myths, are in turn translated into cosmologies proper. This last stage resembles the analysis of a minute sample of balsamic vinegar (forget the salad) in a modern laboratory to see what it contains. And what it contains will turn out to be nothing at all like the vinegar itself, the must from which it was fermented, the juice that had been cooked, and never mind the grapes, the vines, the vineyards from which it all came. In this process, inevitably, value is lost. But in the final stages, in situations where the human mind has been uprooted from its collective experience, where time is no longer perceived in the same way—all those long years in the barrel—all that’s accessible to public thought is the chemical composition. And, not surprisingly, it’s the same-old carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and so on.

I say this in benign critique of the things that I have written on “models” up to this point. They serve as a kind of intellectual orientation, but they are not matters of experience. Something is lost in the process, and, one suspects, the most vital element. There is no taste left. The angels’ share has boiled away. The life in the grape is no more. Which is a way of saying—not that it needs to be said—that reality cannot be captured in models. But making models is one way in which we can trace residues of something higher still left in the culture.

Having said this much, I will go one more step in the direction of concentration and try to sum up the essence that traditional cosmological models leave us. It is that life appears to be “out of place” here—for whatever reason: by expulsion, invasion, or capture. That it is different from that which now surrounds us. That it descended from on high—however that is viewed: by creation, by voluntary seeking of experience, or by cosmic misfortune. Finally, that the purpose of life is some kind of return. With that I think we can now wander on in our patrol of the Borderzone.