The Daedalus Barrier

Something known as the Drake Equation describes the probability of human-like intelligent life in other parts of the Galaxy as being very highly likely, if not indeed, virtually certain.

The Fermi Paradox questions why, if the Drake Equation is correct, we haven't encountered it yet.

I need not go too deeply into these two concepts here – with the internet these days, any reader can, if they aren't already fully familiar with either concept, read up on them quite exhaustively.

However to me there is a great deal these days that passes for science and intelligent thought, that is in fact really nothing more than present-era folklore. Yes, these sorts of ideas contain some mathematical contructions that are meant to reflect or even represent the situation that is being looked at. And these constructions can be quite complex and impressive and look the part. But this is a kind of a trick, a way to infer legitimacy by associating a weak conclusion with something external that is solid and strong itself.

A Monstrous Bull

My own concept borrows a great deal from an ancient Greek, and by our own family folklore, an ancestor of mine – a certain Daedalus, of Ithaca. This Daedalus once made an incredible maze for King Minos, in which was kept the deadly and horrible monster the Minotaur. Once a victim entered the maze, they would never be able to discover the way out, and were forced to go further inwards, into the centre of the maze, where the Minotaur was, and where they would meet certain death – according to the most common versions of the tale.

Humans appear to have this remarkable inclination to create mazes of the mind for themselves to wander around in, where none actually exists in the outside physical reality. Reality consists of a large number of shapes and sizes of a very large number of things: some things are smaller than we can easily see, some too large individually for us to perceive what they are as a whole complete thing. Some things we know of as the result of many of them appearing together and thereby becoming more perceptible to our senses at our own human level, some we know of only one face or aspect of them at a time since they are quite gargantuan in their complete form to our human level of sense and perceptions.

The immensely complicated maze of Daedalus was overcome through the device of a simple ball of a single string that the holder unwound as they went into the maze, and then could wind back up in order to retrace their steps and find their way back out again.

Without such a device to assist us to 'cheat,' as it were, the complexity of 'the maze' - whatever that maze is - our perceptions and intellect are at the mercy of potentially overwhelming odds that run against us: fear of the monster in the dark, fear of our own demise, doubts about the clarity of our senses, the problems of perspective that confront us when matters are not on the human scale, and the fundamentally gravitic forces of crowd mentality... The problem of encountering other intelligent human-like life in the Cosmos is not resolved by the Drake Equation, or any better understood by the Fermi Paradox, because in the way of our perceptions is the Daedalian Wall.

Of course the original myth of the Minoan Maze contains a lot of complex psychology – and certainly, the sacrifice of virgins to propitiate the monster is a recurring theme throughout human history. In another post soon, I shall, I am sure, voice some of my own views about things like the Golden Apples of Hera, and the black sailed ships returning from Minos. And the virgins.

Best, Calvin J. Bear.