Karma

Reactions? Interactions? Events? The more I think about it, the farther I get from causality, and the farther I get from time. I’m still not sure of what I’m getting closer to. It’s ironic, because I flash between picturing this on a macroscopic scale and considering it in terms of physically non-existent minutiae reacting on a level that we can sensually observe, without anything in between. It’s this whole quantum leap thing (how does anything ‘get’ anywhere?).

I’ve been largely educated ‘liberally,’ or at least by minds which consistently suggest that we look beyond the obvious for the seemingly ridiculous bits and allow them into our perception. It leaves one with a sort of acute paranoia. I find myself peeking around corners, so to speak, for anything that might possibly be taken for granted so that I can follow this tunnel of sorts even farther. And it is a tunnel, like unto Alice’s rabbit-hole. It’s a long way to travel, seeming endless, and to reach the ‘bottom’ leaves your world no less nonsensical than it was to begin with.

The challenge is that one is seeking, even by these means, to come to a sort of satisfaction in the unfocused and chaotic entirety of it all. In the end, that which you seek is that which you already know. That doesn’t stop you, though; you’re still in the tunnel, skittering after the unchallenged assumptions that waver in your peripherals like shadows on the wall of the cave.

Specifically, the book The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Gary Zukav) has been clinging to my brain. Most notably (at the moment, anyway), it has turned time into a much less binding assumption. It’s just a field now, existing all at once and not at all, of the myriad manifestations of probability. How our consciousness moves within this field, how our sensory experience focuses our perceptions of these manifestations, seems awesomely fleeting and meaningless - until we consider that without our selves to do the observing, none of these things are meaningful in a way that could ever impact us. It’s cyclical, and equalized.

The problem with looking at reality as a set of probabilities-manifest is that at first it seems very constricting. When we think of probability, we think of those things that are ‘probable’ - to us, this generally insinuates that they are ‘likely to occur’. It’s easy to fall back into the mental construct of this universe operating as a grand machine, with each and every event pre-determined. Really, the picture painted by such advents as the Schrodinger equation is far more varied and exciting - it’s just harder to imagine.

It means that anything - really anything - is possible. Illogical, unfathomable, inconceivable - all descriptors for things that we cannot fit into our daily experiences with reality. They are outliers to the statistical set we have accepted as ‘making sense’. But this reality, in all its tangible reliability, is not the end-all, is it? What we know of the universe is not truly universal, and even knowing that, our perception is incomplete. Why does quantum theory feel so right?

One could spend a very long time attempting to figure that out. For the time being, I have decided to relax the attempt I would normally make to structure everything systematically. Even thinking of things in terms of chaos, the tendency to attempt to apply causality encroaches. I, myself, spent hours attempting to utilize mathematics to extrapolate on the concept of dimensional compounding using linear coordinate systems conceptually, but found myself speaking only in terms of the ‘physical’ or ‘temporal’ universe which with we are familiar. And it was frustrating - all I was trying to do is prove why everything I had learned made so much sense.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t, because we have constructed definitions for ’sense’ and ‘order’ that simply don’t work. The intersections are not graduated simply because we speak in terms of quanta. They are not points where lines meet, nor rippling tangential fields. They are distributed, to infinity, in unfathomable ‘homogeneity’. From one to the next may simply be a shift from + to -, the disappearance of one necessitating the appearance of another at any place, any time. We dance like sparks among them, as them, as I and as we: going in every direction, having no direction at all.

One might be under the assumption that the hole is generally filled with water, enough to buoy one slightly. The analogy changes rather drastically in the absence of that factor.

It hurts a lot more to hit the bottom of a dry hole after a long fall.

There is the possibility of finding bits to grab on to, but the chances that such things will halt the descent and provide an opportunity to reverse it are slight. One’s best hope is to attempt to orient themselves in such a way that these things don’t become jagged, bludgeoning obstacles; these slow the fall, erstwhile making it more painful. Thinking about how far off the bottom is, and consequently how much momentum one has gained and has yet to gain, can be depressing. Avoid this.

The most striking difference is the disproportionate amount of effort required to get back out of the hole. But, if the fall doesn’t kill you, staying at the bottom will.

I already know I will not die helplessly.
I do not fear death, nor presume to concern myself with its persistent imminence.
So if death is not the object, but it is the only final and insurmountable one…
What have I to fear?

It’s really something to be ‘bottoming out.’

There has been a loss of control. But it’s been more like a blip in the power steering than, say, spiraling into addiction or becoming trapped in a bad relationship. I guess this means something different to everyone. Either way, it’s quite the experience.

The thing of it is not to panic. 

It reminds me of my first forays into The Evergreen State College’s twelve-foot deep diving pool, when I was just old enough to pass what at the time seemed like a rigorous swimming test (two laps in the regular pool). To plunge in headfirst from that height, slicing through eight feet of water when you are barely four feet high, is exciting and at once starkly foreign to what you know as swimming. But there are familiarities. I could find ‘up’ with a momentary pause to drift, and steer myself in the same way I swam along the bottom of the five-foot pool. The pressure in my ears, though intense, was recognizable and not frightening. Recognizing these elements as universal to being a person under water allowed me the time for curiosity, to wonder at just how far away the surface was and how close this new stretch of pool floor had gotten.

Once I felt the bottom, oriented it to myself and mapped it into my world, to resurface took  little more than a push. But, I did find it easiest to push once both feet had touched down.

We were thinking about how we forgot what we were just thinking about,
But that it doesn’t matter, because now that we’ve thought about it, it’s out there. 

– The final night in my first apartment 

It is often said: "Everything in moderation."

I would not live by this, not as a rule of caution like it was perhaps intended. Instead, considering myself a being responsible and aware of the limitations and capacity of the vessel within which I grow, I would instead colour it my intent:

"Everything, in moderation."

What a difference one comma makes. 

I have three major personal philosophies.
Two of them I am aware of.
The first has to do with the general tendency to analyze and judge categorically, this being inversely relative to the expanding human consciousness. I’ll go into that later.

The second, and probably the most pertinent on a daily basis, deals with process.
If there is one thing I’ve noticed in moving through time, it is that nothing begins and ends at the same moment. We never remember the exact beginning or the exact ending of an event - it is what leads to these beginnings and ends (which for the purpose of my thought are one and the same) that makes a point in life memorable. Try and think of a single moment in your life that you remember clearly. Immediately, one tends to wonder why one remembers it.
It is part of our inquisitive nature as humans; I like to think of that curiosity as a subset of this philosphy, because that is what drives these automatic reactions. I remember reading Sophie’s World (an excellent book if you ever get the chance to pick it up); there was a part in which an object is rolled through the room towards a cat, who immediately locks onto the object and watches where it goes next. A different form of curiosity; humans see an object roll into the room and, as the book notes, look to the object’s origin and not its destination. This is why history is necessary to us, why science looks to debunk the whole thing, and why so many look to faith: we need an explanation of the process. Simple answers like “We are alive, and that is all” are not enough.
Life is about process.
The most important part of this, though, is far more personal. We measure our life in terms of experiences, not necessarily in knowledge gained. It is a strange phenomenon in adults, however, that when we reach a certain age, we feel the need to pass on what we have accumulated so far to the generation below us in the hopes that perhaps they will not have to go through things in the same manner we did. What we forget is the importance of process in that child’s life. The answer will not be enough for such a young and inquisitive mind, and we are hard pressed to explain the sequence that led to these conclusions, especially when it may seem different in retrospect than it did at the time. Memorable events are going to have a larger impact on a child than simply delivered answers that were perhaps not what they meant to ask for.
Children are simply an example, really, of a more over-reaching idea. In modern Western society, we are very individualistic and goal-oriented. Often we lose sight of what we go through in between until much, much later. So my philosophy of process is, I suppose, to gain as much from the process as you might from the end result; or perhaps, to be careful about taking the process for granted.

The third philosophy is a mystery to me, at least so far. I like to think that in a roundabout way, this alludes to my belief that not everything must be explained or understood; and I can accept this, which further indicates that it’s alright, and perhaps it isn’t necessary anyway.

I always feel the need to defend my philosophies against nihilism for some reason. I suppose it’s because as I write and attempt to debunk any questions that one might have about what I am writing, the first objection to leap to mind is “Well bugger all then, we can just leave things be and not bother doing anything, is that it?” This is not necessarily so. I suppose it could be in the harshest of interpretations, but one would be missing the point.
One misses out on a lot by simply disengaging and assuming the world has nothing to do with them. Above all else, without ourselves, how would we appreciate anything?

My friend got some bad news yesterday.
Long story short, there are some cells present which, though they appear commonly, have a chance of turning into cancer. For which there is no cure.
As we talked about it, she kept saying “oh well”. And well, I guess that’s it. What more can you say? If it happens it happens, and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. Not to say that one shouldn’t be worried — the thought of it feels like I’ve been hit by a two-ton truck. Or that it should not be fought, if it happens. This wasn’t some kind of super-pacified nihilism.
Because she said to me that even then, she wouldn’t feel as though she were going to die. And I said, if she doesn’t already feel like she’s going to die, why should that have to change?

I don’t know why I take so much notice of these church billboard signs. I don’t go to church. I’m not Christian, and I don’t percieve God in the same manner they do. I am, in fact, of a Bhuddist-Hindu philosophy. But I’m very contemplative, despite context, and am always on a subconscious lookout for concepts to mull over. Things like “Big bang theory? Yeah right! –God” catch my eye now and again.
So this morning on the way to work, after dropping off some of my mum’s heavenly vegetable soup for my best friend (it’s her favourite), I drove by a sign that jumped out at me.
It said, more or less, that prayer was not to give commands to God, but to report for duty.
This challenged my personal perspective.
I have prayed to “God” before, once. I guess I just wanted to see what it was like. It was a warm fuzzy feeling, though uncertain, and of course tinged with that silly feeling that one is talking to oneself about things one already knows. It was the latter that stuck with me, not because I felt stupid for having done it, but because it was true - I was talking to myself. Churches have the strange dichotomy of all at once telling you that God is in everyone, but that “He” is also the master. He is a separate entity. When you speak to him in prayer, you are broadcasting your prayer in a heavenly direction. But what I found, that one night, is that it is simply a further internalization. We pray before we sleep, with what is most important to us weighing on our mind. The comfort of the idea of a God then sends you to sleep with reassurance that someone is giving thought to your problems, your dilemmas. And sometimes it happens, miraculously, that you wake up in the morning and you come to some kind of conclusion, though you can’t explain why. You dreamt something? Or maybe you don’t even remember your dream.
I talk to myself all the time. Driving in my car, falling asleep at night, both silently and out loud. The same thing has happened to me, some strange resolution, realization, or epiphany has come to me, though I have no heavenly agent to which I can attribute its coming. It is of the same nature.
“Prayer” is not for giving commands to God, no. But it is not for recieving them, either. It is for putting those thoughts of yours out in the open. Telling yourself and whatever is floating in the air around you what you are worried about, what you are thankful for, or what you hope will happen, works the same way as it does when you sometimes write something down to remember it and the act of writing it causes you to memorize it. It is now manifest as one assumes God to be. And there it remains, in your subconscious, which processes these thoughts in the background more than you may realize at the time. Is this “God?”
All I had intended to say, initially, was that no one can tell you how to “pray”. But the more I bounced it off of myself in the car on the way here, the more I thought of. All this in a ten-minute drive to work? I’ve got a lifetime ahead of me! This ought to be fun.

Humanity, since the formation of its languages, has been plagued with a number of short simple questions that we cannot seem to answer. For hundreds of years, simple paradoxes have given us something to wonder about when science continues to find ways to spell out the rest of it.
Some are a matter of opinion - is the glass half empty, or half full? Some could probably be solved with a little intensive investigation, but due to constantly differing circumstances never are: Where do all the socks go? ( I am personally inclined toward the Sock Gnome theory, which is inversely proportionate to the amount of change that can be found under your couch cushions. It’s hardly theft. )
But there is one that is infamous for its apparent catch twenty-two. It is asked so often that its utterance no longer demands an answer. It seems so mind numbingly simple and yet, for some reason, no one I have ever spoken to has provided a watertight answer. But really - given an evolutionary perspective which, I can allow, some may not hold - it is very simple to explain.
Think of the classic symbol of evolution, a monkey’s progression into a man. Now, if each offspring were like its parent, this obviously wouldn’t have happened. Apply this theory, then, to the evolution of chickens. Chickens weren’t always as they are now, we can safely assume; over the ages there have been changes not only in their habitat but also their surrounding food chain, both of which would necessitate at least minor adaptation to their physical form.
Assuming survival of the fittest applies: imagine being the first “bird” safely classifiable as a “chicken”. Talk about a genetic mutation.
For some reason, God knows why (likely), chickens were better suited to the environment of their time than were their parents. Otherwise they wouldn’t have survived. This first chicken continued to breed, evolution being a cosmically efficient yet sluggish phenomenon, eventually (very eventually) becoming what we shove into small cages ten at a time, lop the heads off of in great numbers and fry up in fatty grease to stuff our faces with today. Not that this is the point. The point is that the egg which bore the first chicken did not come from another chicken, because there were none. The chicken could not, logically, have come before the egg. Even if you want to nitpick back to the embryonic stage, the egg forms before the cells begin to take the form of a “chicken” and is laid before the embryo develops into anything recognizable. So ha.
And there you have it, the logical evolutionary explanation for why the egg came before the chicken. Thank you.