To Find

Normally considered to be the end of a frustrating search for something lost, but realised at the w/e that this is one of the most central ideas we have.

I was mushroom picking. Have been doing this for 3 years and eventually this sunday I came upon for the first time, quite by chance, as is always the way, a troop of chantelle mushrooms. Had some for lunch yesterday.

Now I don't know whether it was the discovery of the mushrooms, or the nature of the place, but it rapidly developed into what can be best described as a sanctuary -- now one of my favourite places in Hampshire.

It reminded me of Ray Mears' great insight that hunter-gathering is our most ancient and fundamental skill. He comments upon the posture of Australian aboriginal hunter gatherers and says it is the same posture the world over. Mine I noted was not like this however but everything else was. The acute use of all the senses (bar hearing) to uncover mushrooms, the primordinal association with food and the use of the mind (the sixth sense in Eastern thinking) to distinguish the types uses almost the entire human repertoire. Today, bird watchers, or nature watchers in general, stamp collectors or in fact any of the variety of enthusiasms which grip us it seems are traceable back to this intrinsic survival skill which shapes our outlook on the world.

The other great search is that for a mate. It uses also the "cunning" which it must be said mushrooms only present a test to in their sporadic abundance. But a friend once said that when he met his wife to be actually it was a very easy and normal process - so maybe their is more in the finding than in the cunning. Indeed it seems most scientific discioveries are more in the finding than the cunning, but as Thomas Jefferson said "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."... altho his quotes I see can't be taken too seriously it seems here is what he says about the gun, "it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind" so I presume when two bold, enterprising and independent minds meet they seek to kill each other... would have been tragic irony if Jefferson had been one of the four presidents to be assasinated.

Finding is often also the "halting problem" in that we can never predict when we will find something. We may know of its existence, and even where to look but by definition it isn't found until we find it and that is a problem which sometimes we an put no upper limit on. In the game of "mines" on Windows systems logically we can find every mine with at least one guess (to get started). Often we can logically reduce a search to a systematic search of the "only" places. But often in the real world this "assumption" closes down our search and we end up focusing our energy in the wrong place. We assume our wallet was left at home, when actually we forgot we had it in our pocket when we left for work. Other searches really are unlimited, especially those we weren't even looking for like the chance discoveries in science e.g. famously penecillin. The SRH will need to show that "chance discoveries" can never be ruled out and so no theory can ever be Total... to do.

Finding is also linked to desire. We may often "find" things which other people want but because we don't desire them they don't constitute a "find". The happy person is the person who receives everything as a find and who can generate a desire for what they chance upon. The unhappy person is the person who has a specific desire that they cannot find an object for - in many ways this is me, I wonder if we are all this because our root desire is for "Home", or a place in the world that fundamentally welcomes "us". Such a thing doesn't exist unfortunately while we remain egotistical.

So I have argued that finding is at the root of our existence.