"DEAR SPINOZA,"

Having no address for you, I post this little note in cyberspace, feeling like somehow it'll reach you. It's just that this morning when I first saw the little bed of beets glowing in early sunlight, for a moment it almost seemed as if you there hovering about, smiling into the plantlets the way I do. Then I began daydreaming about what we might talk about if in fact your Earthly self came visiting, as you liked to do with your other philosophizing friends back in Holland in the mid 1600s.

Here's one question I have ready for you: You wrote that love for Nature/God spontaneously arises as we rationally search for the truth of things -- as we reason out the Eternal Truths of Nature/God. This love is personally transforming, you say, and in your case it seems to have made you the most modest, moral and ethical of Dutch citizens. That, despite many people hating you because you were a Jew banished by your community, refusing to convert to Christianity.

So, if the blossoming of this love really is so automatic as we approach Eternal Truth, how come I know people who seem to have understood your proofs and conclusions very well, but whom I'd never think of as loving Nature/God in any transformative way?

In fact, it seems to me that Nature goes out of Her way to equip humans with an unending diversity of genetic predispositions, and ever-changing mental and emotional states, so no human reaction to any given circumstance can ever be predicted with certainty. Nature is simply in the business, I'd say, of evolving diversity at all levels in all dimensions, including human mentality and feeling.

Moreover, God/Nature Herself seems unsatisfied with the eternal perfection you attribute to Her, for She Big-Banged Herself into a whole Universe of "modifications" of Her "Substance," as you like to frame it. And, from what I can see, we modifications are as likely to be mutually antagonistic as we are mutually nurturing to one another. How does automatic love and eternal, absolute perfection fit into all this?

But, back in the 1600s, you didn't know about the Universe's black holes, the trickiness of curved and warped space-time, and all the lab results coming out nowadays apparently confirming some of the most outrageous, irrational predictions of quantum mechanics...

To tell the truth, nowadays I personally am not so sure that any Eternal Truths and absolute perfection exist at all, unless we simply define something as having those attributes. The only thing I'd swear to now is that from my perspective it seems that something really weird is going on. And one weird thing is that after 72 years of trying to peg down Eternal Truths and to approach perfection in my own clumsy way, now somehow I'm OK with just shrugging my shoulders and grinning about the Whole Thing, not coming to any conclusions at all. The Whole Thing, you know? No conclusions at all.

Anyway, see you around, Spinoza, and thanks for the visit.

Jim