There are no answers; only choices.
-- Stanislaw Lem (novel),
Steven Soderbergh (screenplay), movie: Solaris. 2002.
It [
The Little Apocrypha] was a
collection of articles and treatises edited by an Otho
Ravintzer, Ph.D., and its general level was immediately obvious.
Every science engenders some pseudo-science, inspiring eccentrics to
explore freakish by-ways; astronomy has its parodists in astrology,
chemistry used to have them in alchemy. It was not surprising,
therefore, that Solaristics, in its early days, had set off an
explosion of marginal cogitations. Ravintzer's book was full of this
sort of intellectual speculation, prefaced, it is only fair to add, by
an introduction in which the editor disassociated himself from some of
the texts reproduced. He considered, with some justice, that such a
collection could provide an invaluable period document as much for the
historian as for the psychologist of science.
-- Stanislaw Lem. Solaris (1960). from the
English translation (1971) by Kilmartin and Cox of the French
translation of the original Polish text. p. 77.
We're humanitarian and noble, we've no intention of subjugating other
races, we only want to impart our values to them and in return, to
appropriate their heritage. We see ourselves as Knights of the Holy
Contact. That's another falsity. We're not searching for anything except
people. We don't need other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what
to do with other worlds. One world is enough, even there we feel
stifled. We desire to find our own idealized image; they're supposed to
be globes, civilizations more perfect than ours; in other worlds we
expect to find the image of our own primitive past.
Yet on the other side there's something we refuse to accept, that we
fend off; though after all, from Earth we didn't bring merely a
distillation of virtues, the heroic figure of Humankind! We came here as
we truly are, and when the other side shows us that truth--the part of
it we pass over in silence--we're unable to come to terms with it!
-- Stanisław Lem. Solaris (1961), [Chapter 6] "The
Minor Apocrypha." Translation from Polish by Bill Johnston (2017) Pro
Auctore Wojciech Zemek.
Every science comes with its own pseudo-science, a bizarre distortion
that comes from a certain kind of mind: astronomy has its caricaturist
in astrology, chemistry used to have alchemy.
-- Stanisław Lem. Solaris (1961), [Chapter 6] "The
Minor Apocrypha." Translation from Polish by Bill Johnston (2017) Pro
Auctore Wojciech Zemek.
In a certain sense the god of every religion was defective, because he
was encumbered with human qualities, only magnified. The God of the Old
Testament, for instance, was a hothead who craved servility and was
jealous of other gods... the Greek gods had just as many human
imperfections, with their quarrelsomeness and their family squabbles...
-- Stanisław Lem. Solaris (1961), [Chapter 14] "The Old
Mimoid." Translation from Polish by Bill Johnston (2017) Pro
Auctore Wojciech Zemek.
If I understand you correctly, and I'm afraid I do, then you're thinking
about an evolving god who develops through time and grows, mounting
higher and higher levels of power toward the awareness of that power's
impotence? This God of yours is a being who has entered godhood like
entering a blind alley, and when he comprehends this, he yields to
despair. Fine, but surely a despairing God is a human being, my friend?
You're thinking about human beings...
-- Stanisław Lem. Solaris (1961), [Chapter 14] "The Old
Mimoid." Translation from Polish by Bill Johnston (2017) Pro
Auctore Wojciech Zemek.
A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn't create his own
purposes. These are imposed by the time he's born into; he may serve
them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or
rebellion comes from the outside. To experience complete freedom in
seeking his purposes he would have to be alone, and that's impossible,
since a person who isn't brought up among people cannot become a person.
-- Stanisław Lem. Solaris (1961), [Chapter 14] "The Old
Mimoid." Translation from Polish by Bill Johnston (2017) Pro
Auctore Wojciech Zemek.