Noumenal Net

Over on Noumenal News today I posted a story about Steorn’s free energy device.  My dear friend Bas left the following comment: 

Aged eleven I sent in a design for a free energy device to my local power company. Got a nice reply it wouldn’t work and to please not try as many scientist have gone nuts in trying to make one.

I still have the letter as a reminder… 

I can’t help but be saddened by this comment. It won’t work. Please don’t try.

Whomever wrote that letter discouraging Bas was not only short-sighted but had a narrow view of what is valuable in society and as a life experience. If I had gotten that letter I probably would have kept it too. But I would have kept it with the attitude of “I’ll show him.”  

By discouraging the pursuit of free energy, this guy was discouraging a journey, one that might have yeilded untold discoveries. But the writer of the letter was concerned only with the goal, saw value only in the outcome and not in the exploration itself.

Seems to be a lot of that going around these days. The end result is all that matters, the journey be damned. Everyone seems to be working for some nebulous future event that may never arrive, and forget that whats happening here and now is the important part. 

Leonardo designed a flying machine, but a flying machine never got off the ground until centuries later. Yet the impossibility of the thing didn’t matter to Leonardo, it was the vision and the experience that mattered, and his life was enriched by his conjectures and speculations, by his insight, by his imagination. And hey, we did eventually get a flying machine (snakes sold separately).

So cast your imagination into the furthest reaches of desire, set crazy, impossible goals. Who knows where it might take you and what experiences you may have along the way. And hey… we might just end up with a free energy device.