by Chris Bodenner
The latest entry in the never-ending thread:
My son is autistic, high-functioning – but not high IQ – with OCD and ADHD on top of it. When he grabs onto an idea, he really grabs on and will ask me (over and over and over again) questions that, in many cases, I had not considered before. One of those areas that enthralls him is the universe and alien cultures (thanks to Star Trek). I have tried explaining the Big Bang theory and how the universe is still expanding. I do okay on the specifics and ideas that relate to everything between the Big Bang and the edge of the universe. But I totally shut down beyond those edges. How can there have been nothing before the Big Bang and then something? What is beyond the universe – nothing? How can there be nothing?
I really think that this type of head-banging is why people and cultures always end up believing, for the most part, in some kind of god. It is the easiest answer to unanswerable questions. In many ways, it is my cop out. When all else fails, I just answer, "God did it" or "Only God knows."
Another:
I had a similar reaction to infinity. It was truly frightening to me at an early age. Raised a Catholic, I imagined myself in heaven, waking up day after day, forever. No end in sight. There is something truly exhausting about this thought, as if infinity is, in and of itself, a Sisyphean struggle.
Later, while attending an all-boys high school in New Orleans, I casually discussed my childhood fear with a well-regarded Jesuit, letting him know that it still troubled me, although it lacked the panicked urgency of my youth. He gave me an insight that has helped me deal with the concept, and might be helpful to others. Instead of imagining infinity as a linear concept, picture a wholly formed pyramid. Now, begin breaking it into pieces, smaller and smaller. He said that this is the way he envisioned it – that God’s creation is but one whole, that can be broken down forever and ever. He also said that we are only human and need to accept the limitations of our understanding. With that said, I have found this to be of some solace.
Another:
I just want you to know how comforting this thread has been to me. I've suffered panic attacks since I was a small child over the concept of infinity. At the time, I thought I was simply afraid of dying, but over time I realized that the concept of an eternal heaven scared me just as badly. The verse from "Amazing Grace" that reads, "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun" really freaked me out. Over time, the attacks have come less often but I still endure them as an adult. So to read that others have suffered from a similar inability to grasp infinity and the terror it can produce has actually been comforting to me. As the old cliche goes, I may not have an answer but at least I'm not alone.
Since childhood, I've had occassional and totally random moments of crippling consciousness, which thankfully subsided with age. The best way to describe them are as flashes of hyper-awareness, an intense focus on the tiny slice of "now" immediately in front of me, and how that sliver contrasts with the vastness of my life and then outwards to the infinite expanse of everything else. I can't tap into that feeling if I try; it only happens out of the blue. One time it popped up when I was 16 and really drunk at a party, and the booze intensified the feeling to near torture. And I was having a blast before then. Anyway, another reader:
There is an excellent French documentary, "To Be And To Have", which follows an elementary school teacher and his students throughout the school year. A remarkable scene shows the French teacher asking a student, Jo Jo, to keep counting as high as he can go. (Watch on YouTube here, but unfortunately it does not have English subtitles. The film is also available on Netflix streaming with English subtitles, and the scene occurs at "1:13:16".) Jo Jo starts to realize the numbers keep going up and never stop. It's a moment we have all had as children – when we discover mathematical infinity. The documentary captures this moment as it happens to Jo Jo for the first time, and also shows his freaked-out realization that there is no end to the counting. He promptly changes the subject with his teacher and refuses to keep counting. He does not want to deal with infinity. It's just too overwhelming.
Another:
You seem to be hearing from readers who are freaked out by infinity. I would like to hear from your readers who are NOT freaked out by infinity. I'm not freaked out by it. Frankly, I feel as if my *brain* is expanding when I think about infinity. I am awed by the expanse of the universe, but I try to view that sense of wonder as a good thing and a healthy thing. (I'm freaked out by other things – for example, sitting in the third tier at the New York City Ballet (gulp!), or the continuing popularity of reality television and the Black-Eyed Peas.)
Another reader not freaked out:
Even as a child, before I studied mathematics, infinity was something to play with. Standing between two mirrors at the age of 6 or 7 is perhaps my earliest memory of it. What fun!
I wonder whether the fear of the infinite is connected to the fear of death. I have always found the contemplation of death to be comforting. I was very surprised to learn, as an adult, that many people are terrified of death, and that this fear is one of the strongest driving forces in their lives. (It is so strong that it makes otherwise reasonable people commit themselves to absurdities like resurrection and reincarnation.) I don't know whether psychologists have studied this, but history, literature, and philosophy teach me that this is one of the most basic and essential dividing lines of human personality: there are those who experience awe as terror, and those who experience it as joy. I consider myself lucky to be one of the latter.
Another:
Maybe I'm naive, but I can't help but think that the existential angst from so many of your readers is a case of misapprehension. After all, in the realm of real numbers, fractions can be infinitely small as well as infinitely large, and a human being who is a speck in relation to the size of the universe is a gargantuan in relation to, for example, an atom. For me, the message inherent in "infinity" isn't that I am tiny and insignificant, but that size itself is largely irrelevant.
I just assume that Infinity is so daunting because, as four-dimensional finite beings, we are not equipped to cope with or comprehend it in any meaningful way. I think of my childhood friend who was born colorblind. No matter how succinct the description that I come up with, he is never ever ever going to know what it is like to experience "Red". Even when we think we are understanding the concept of infinity, we really aren't.
Another:
I submit to you that this "fear of infinity" is reducible to something else. Something underneath "infinity." We're not born with a fear of infinity. When we encounter infinity it triggers a fear that goes below awareness: perhaps a fear of being alone or in a situation where there is no support or total darkness, or something akin to this. In short, when we encounter "infinity" we encounter a memory of a time or cluster of times when we felt an existential insecurity of some sort. And I suspect that it's a very early memory, and one connected with some really scary incident. In some circles, this is called "restimulation. Infinity reminds us of this time.
Sorry to get psychological about this, but I think that this is what's going on. And it's probably less "interesting" than a "fear of infinity." The latter is more, well, literary or something.
One more:
There is only a problem with infinity if one identifies oneself as the mind. The mind is finite and can therefore not encompass infinity. If one identifies "self" as the mind, then infinity is threatening because it represents the eventual annihilation of the severely limited mind. The mind is afraid of death because it knows that it is finite and the existence of infinity is the evidence. The mind attempts to shut out the evidence that it is insignificant. It uses fear to accomplish this and will even go as far as psychosis if necessary.
Once one has an experience of existence beyond the mind, through meditation, revelation, or drugs, then the mind quiets and takes its place as merely a tool to be used in facilitating physical existence and not the true identity. People who really know who they are do not fear infinity. They welcome it as the embodiment of what we all truly are.
The Dish 