"The topic is ethereal aspects of existence"
By "ethereal" I mean airy, insubstantial (as or like) ether. You seem to be saying that "mystery" is airy or insubstantial. As a mystery is defined as something unexplained or unknown, I guess I have no trouble agreeing it is airy and insubstantial.
To "wonder" is to question something or to desire to know more about something. A mystery is something unexplained or unknown so it is natural for a thinking entity to want to know more than he/she/it knows.
I don't find the fact that there are unknown and unexplained things to be terribly significant. It follows naturally from the fact that we all lack omniscience. So the great majority of our conscious experience will be a "mystery"--(as you call the unexplained or unknown). And desiring to know about what one is ignorant of would seem eminently reasonable, rational, and anything but mysterious. Reducing ignorance is obviously an evolutionary benefit as it creates options for managing our environment and thus supports our safety, our survival, and our comfort. One only needs to compare the terrible world of superstitious people with the world where reason has removed much of that ignorance of the unknown in order to see the benefit to both individuals and groups.
So trying to find answers to ignorance is very much a part of human nature and (in agreement with yourself) I do not suggest any handiwork or planning in this simple fact. People are not omniscient. Therefore they are largely ignorant. Therefore, they are like children groping their way through a forest in the dead of night with no map and no light. Naturally they wonder. Naturally they question. Naturally they are curious. Naturally, the back of every 99 trees in a hundred is a mystery. They can invent anything behind any tree (goblins, imps, elves, gods, nymphs)--or they can find out what is actually there by satisfying their curiosity and their wonder. And it just might be FOOD (for the stomach or for the mind). And FOOD is a wonderful thing for a starving man... |
