Previous posts have seized on the phrase “I don’t see why not” as a perfect—yet unintentional—admission of ignorance in response to statements involving limits or constraints. In this unusual post format, I present a bevy of haiku to explore a variety of domains in which the “I don’t see why not” mantra exposes a cognitive insufficiency characteristic of our (or any) species. What else can we expect from hardware that is a mere subset of a greater ecological complexity? Anyway, “I don’t see why not” is an unwitting but brutally frank acknowledgment of mental limits, which ought to be celebrated as an expression of humility—even if accidental.

While refraining from exhaustive prose presents a personal challenge, the haiku form is especially attractive and germane in this exercise in that it imposes hard constraints that must be heeded—much like the universe itself (previously expressed in a representative pair of haiku). Some may also recall a related experiment to convey tricky concepts in single-syllable format.

But let’s dive into the familiar world of staggering ignorance and delusion…

Our Brilliant Future?

Will human beings
ultimately live in space?
I don’t see why not!

Might wise aliens
teach us how to live on Earth?
I don’t see why not!

Will humans one day
achieve immortality?
I don’t see why not!

Can the human brain
find its home in silicon?
I don’t see why not!

Will Lord Man* achieve
global peace and unity?
I don’t see why not!

Have We Transcended Limits?

Can techno-progress
proceed indefinitely?
I don’t see why not!

Is capital growth
a fixture of our future?
I don’t see why not!

Can the right choices
maintain progress evermore?
I don’t see why not!

Does modernity
supersede ecology?
I don’t see why not!

Can we detach from
the ecological realm?
I don’t see why not!

Might humans survive
a mass-extinction event?
I don’t see why not!

Could humans design
an ecology from scratch?
I don’t see why not!

I Am Universe!

Could the universe
be controlled by a Sky God?
I don’t see why not!

Can the universe
fit inside my boundless brain?
I don’t see why not!

Is there more to “me”
than materiality?
I don’t see why not!

Can “I” override
how physics instructs “my” atoms?
I don’t see why not!

Will Lord Man* one day
rule their universe as god?
I don’t see why not!

* Lord Man is a fantastic construct I got from Eileen Crist.

Coda

This set does not nearly exhaust a large collection of similarly-mediocre constructions I was able to hammer out in a short burst, but it seemed appropriate to constrain the presentation to a 5–7–5 arrangement. Because human cognition is virtually unlimited as to what we fail to recognize, examples abound. A common element is a heavily-biased self perception: what it means to be an individual, and what it means to be human. Colossal ignorance easily makes room for arrogance, aggrandizement, and narrow scope. What we don’t know can (and does) fill a universe.

As always, I advocate deferring to what the universe itself has to say, if we have the requisite skill to listen. The universe is not the one spinning stories of space colonization, immortality, indefinite growth, technological exceptionalism, global harmony, ecological detachment, human supremacy, or transcendence from material reality. Those are human mythologies borne of wistful and unmoored imaginations. The key is in looking to deep-time arrangements and not to the explosion of human-written garbage over the last several millennia. Wisdom isn’t in smarty-pants spectacles but in richly-woven relationships that have proven durability.

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