Curiosity, Creation, and Regress

The creator made a world simple enough to serve its purpose. Into it he placed us, free to live as we chose. He also planted a tree whose fruit would awaken the need to understand.

We ate, and innocence ended. What had been enough no longer was. We began to ask why, then what lay beneath the answer, then what lay beneath that.

The creator answered by enlarging the world. Each question made new depths for the answer to occupy. The more closely we looked, the more there was to see. Matter opened into particles, particles into fields and uncertainties. The heavens opened into stars, galaxies and reaches without end. These depths had not waited there for us. Our asking called them into being.

Curiosity therefore carried its own punishment. Every answer increased the number of questions. Knowledge did not approach completion; it moved completion farther away. To seek was to make more to seek.

Perhaps the way out is not another answer. Perhaps it is to stop requiring the world to explain itself, and to become once more capable of being in it.

Nothing more can be said about that return. The moment we try to understand it, the tree bears fruit again.