Insurance

 Insurance


Long before there were

actuaries and economists

before insurance companies

with names on tall buildings

there were

and always will be

natural insurance


Entropy ensures that time 

moves in only one direction 

except at the subatomic level

gravity ensures that matter

clumps in a certain way

that objects

relate to each other predictably

and star systems like ours

live and die predictably 

based on the systems 

we understand as physics


It was not a committee

or a governing body

which decided upon

the mode of operation

of the standard model

or the processes that are 

gravity and electromagnetism

the emergence of chemistry 

and from it biochemistry

that resulted in life

everywhere on the planet

a process that all living things

can count on


The certainty that if

we are able to eat and drink

and breathe

and regulate our temperatures

in accordance with our biochemistry

we will survive

in the niche in which we evolved

for a fairly predictable period of time

as individuals and as a species


Evolution by natural selection

the outcome of chance 

and of circumstance

reliably resulted in the formation

and the survival 

of many species

appropriate for their place and time

and respeciation

in the event of sporadic catastrophes

destroying much of the life

at the time that they were here


The natural order

by which we are surrounded

balances the needs

and competition for resources

so predators and prey

plants and animals

coexist successfully enough

to have their moments in the sun

or in the darkness of worlds

most humans never see


Evolution blesses us

with reliable machinery

organs we can depend on

structures that function predictably

at least long enough 

to procreate and protect 

the products of procreation

at least for a while


We don't need to understand

how the immune system works

to ensure our survival

at the level of the species

in its contemporary ecology

or what the brain is doing

to ensure survival

in an everchanging world


We are able to sleep

perchance to dream

and wake up tomorrow

when the sun rises

when we see the sky

hear the birds

smell the blossoms

watch the butterflies

and the predictable motion

of shadows as the earth turns 

dancing around the sun


We do not need 

insurance companies to know

that wherever there is life

there is also death

injury and pain

and some probability of joy

and comfort and satisfaction

celebration of birth

the gift of love

the blessing that is happiness

somewhere 

in some measure 

for some time 

for most of us


We humans

the inventors of money

know that money

cannot buy love


The words life and love

are etymogically unrelated 

but they are bound together 

by immutable forces


We are alive

That is our insurance policy

Love is where we keep it 


Aubrey Lieberman

8/29/23 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Music and mind

  Music and Mind Created by Aubrey Lieberman in collaboration with ChatGPT 5.1 turbo — December 2025 Music enters the mind long before thought does. Before language, before memory, before the ability to name the world, there is rhythm. There is tone. There is the human body learning to sway, breathe, and respond to patterned sound. Music is not an ornament added to consciousness; it is one of the structural beams that holds consciousness up. The mind does not merely listen to music. It organizes itself through music. Some pieces awaken us. A line like “There’s something happening here…” can expand awareness faster than any lecture. Others invite us to begin again, to feel the world reopening with the quiet certainty of “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day.” Music becomes the annunciation of renewal, a reminder that consciousness can be rewritten. Other pieces turn inward, spiraling through the recursive spaces of thought. “Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel…” descri...
Read more

The foundation of awe, and the fog of reality

  The Foundation of Awe and the Fog of Reality Produced by Aubrey Lieberman with ChatGPT 5.0 turbo — September 2025 Wavicle is a word coined by quantum physicists a century ago. Wavicles don’t have simple properties like position and speed. When speed is determined, position cannot be, and vice versa. That’s what uncertainty means: reality itself is built upon probabilities that result in stable atoms and molecules. Without that, there’d be no matter, no life, no us. In the early 20th century, scientists learned that light (not only visible, but the entire electromagnetic spectrum) possesses both particle and wave like properties. To capture this duality, some began using the word wavicle. It emphasizes that the division into “wave” or “particle” is artificial; the true quantum entities are neither, but rather both. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle follows naturally: wavicles don’t carry precisely defined values of position and momentum simultaneously. This isn’t about limits of ...
Read more

Sticky Mittens

  Sticky Mittens   Developmental psychologists have put sticky mittens on baby hands, with which the tiny humans were able to grasp much more effectively, enabling them to do things they were previously thought to be incapable of. The researchers concluded that neural connectivity during early life exceeded the physical constraints imposed by the little hands. A human adult given sticky mittens, might climb a skyscraper, given wings, fly like a bird, given scuba gear, swim like a fish, given a telescope, explore the galaxies, given a microscope, enter the earths microbiome, given vibrating strings, makes celestial music, given a board and chalk, write the equations which govern life and the universe. Human general intelligence is the sticky mitten which enables us to grasp almost anything, even to make tools to enhance our intelligence beyond the limits we can imagine now. Perhaps we will collectively become smart enough to escape our evolutionary constraints, enabling kindnes...
Read more