Dear L,
In the Coen brother’s movie “A Serious Man”, there’s a scene where a Rabbi talks about how Hashem talks to people in subtle and interesting ways, for example through a man's teeth. Thanks to Coen brother’s signature style, It’s incredibly comedic but deeply stirriing to watch the protagonist, Larry Gopnik, a professor of physics getting confused over the Rabbi’s answers, the events of his life, his faith and everything around him and getting no where. Gopnik was divorced, broke, living in a motel with his sick brother and struggling to get a tenure. At the time when I watched the movie, the humerous portrayal of tragic events in a midwestern suburbia wasn’t as strirring as it is now. I’m not religious, neither I have any knowledge of Judaism; but I think it’s safe to say that the questions Dr. Gopnik was asking in the movie are as relevant when the movie came out as it is now; As it was relevant throughout the anthropocene.
Looking for meaning is an unqiuely human endaveour. All other mammals who inhabit this planet generally tend to be content with the process of their lives. We humans, tend to look for meaning, to look for answers that we can understand, interpret and process. Since the cognitive revolution, we have confabulated gods, titans, dieties and the scientific method to make sense of it all; We still have a lot of open questions, but I am glad to see that we are making progress in understansding the meaning of it all.
Michio Kaku - Does the Cosmos have a Reason?
How awe drives scientists to make a leap into the unknown - Helen De Cruz | Aeon Essays
Do We Share DNA with ET? - Issue 80: Aliens - Nautilus
The Quantum Mechanics of Fate - Issue 9: Time - Nautilus
I also couldn’t help but enclose the episode of the teeth from the movie.
Enjoy.
Best,
A