Can you believe it? I am writing this
essay in order to better understand why I am writing this essay.
When a person states, as I have, that
the entirety is made by us, even as we are made by it, that person
ought to feel some responsibility for discussing how their view of
causality fits into the larger set of concepts that have prompted
them to make that statement in the first place.
The problem with thinking about cause
and affect is that we tend to separate our approach into a single
type of methodology: That is to understand it only in terms of
objective interactions; which is usually a discrete sequence, or set
of sequences, of objective interactions. This is, I believe, an
aspect of ignoring a fuller appreciation of what connection really
implies, and whether meaning assessment is ever only a mechanistic
process.
When you hear someone as brilliant as
Einstein say that the amazing thing about the universe is that the
human mind can understand it, you are not overly anxious to question
it. The thing is, the feeling I get when I read that is one I can't
ignore. It is a feeling that makes me wonder if there isn't a good
deal of arrogance in that notion.
Certainly we can understand aspects of
it, just as we can ascertain aspects of truth in any complex
situation. But to suggest that we might understand some form of
complete truth is ridiculous. It is so precisely because we ignore
our own connection to what we are trying to understand.
Do we Love if? Do we hate it? Or do we
pretend the maintenance of a complete indifference to it? Perhaps it
is a complex mix of one or more of these options. In any case,
though, I fear it is too often an approach one could liken to Captain
Ahab as he is confronted by what lay behind the leviathan that
wronged him. And let us be clear here. Was it the loss of a leg or
was it being humbled by an abyss of relationships whose power
frightened him, even as it called him forth with its wonder, and
promise for a chance to prove himself better than it. The kind of
need that only a mind molded under the idea that rationality, and
control, gave it the right to feel superior to all things below man
in the natural world.
Which then begs the question: Is it
something to be conquered? Something to be put under the leash of our
control; just as our stance toward nature in the 19th
century had us view its material manifestations as merely resources
waiting to be translated into power of one form or another?
If we truly connected to what we wish
to better understand, wouldn't we tend to take a more cautious
approach? One where we apply some sense of humility as to our own
place in the bigger picture? Even if we don't actually apply the
human concept of love?
I can't help but consider the question
of causality as a duality; as in the cosmological and the subjective.
As both objective empiricism and
personal observation, or experience. How could it be otherwise when a
singular, formless bit of infinite potential evolves into ever more
increasingly complex structural arrangements as to eventually end up
with a sentient entity. Precisely the kind of thing that can not only
make observations, but can then apply those observations to abstract
considerations of what they might imply as to past conditions, and/or
future possibilities.
You need only ponder the idea of a
reality, or an entirety of realities to come to this conclusion. An
inconceivably vast matrix of non-linear equations that play out on
interactive planes of energy scale, phase scale, and scales of
angular momentum. All of which is meant to create meaning systems to
hold the traceries of why or how. Something that wouldn't really
matter that much if there were never to be ever more complex meaning
systems that would ultimately create a meaning processing system that
could hold and manipulate meaning elements into abstract logical
steps of precedent, as well as probable future meaningful outcomes.
Situations where we would have the unprecedented ability to make our
own choices.
Isn't it interesting that, even in our
earliest, most ignorant and superstitious collectives, we began to
imagine various sorts of divine decision makers. One entity or anther
who made the choices that ended up with whatever frightened beings
who were doing the imagining in the first place, and who were then
wondering why these supreme beings chose one outcome over another.
Not to mention whether we had any part to play at all.
Everything has a why, how and what
associated with it; even as to the application of those words to the
writer now placing them before you. A loop of continuous iterations
of the why of asking why that can certainly end up with you eating
your own mind. It is, never the less, relevant to consider the point
of an entirety that would involve itself with creating meaning
systems in the first place if there weren't meaning assessment, and
manipulation systems (or sentience), to make use of the meaning
entities.
It is also interesting to take these
considerations from another angle. If there were never sentient
entities then the cosmos would be completely deterministic; after
all, what else could influence it to create uncertainty, and thus a
range of probabilities. What would there be for a point of reference
upon which Relativity could be based. Everything would happen
precisely because of the conditions that preceded each infinitesimal
moment of event realization, along with certain interactive norms.
This kind of reasoning, though, only begs the question of what
preconditions started those interactions and their given interactive
norms in the first place? Why would there even be boundaries at all,
to say nothing of distinct quanta, as something to observe if there
were no observer and, more importantly the singular reference point
with which to objectify as a measured quantity.
I understand that this might seem to
just rehash the old nostrum of trees falling, and the question of
sound if no ears are there to perceive them, but what we're really
talking about here is more complicated than that. Such a tree makes
the potential for a sound, but the perceiving entity is what resolves
the wave function probabilities and gives it a meaningful
objectification of one type of sound as opposed to another; such
meaning only arrived at by a history of experience association that
occurred to the observer. In other words, a tree falling is just
energy transfers of various sorts. Distinctions as to the properties
of those transfers, and the qualities each property might have,
requires some sort of associative, experience processing system.
Getting back to connection, though, in
talking about causality, one can easily lose track of connecting.
What is connection in the larger sense of deep involvement? Is it the
recognition of a multiplicity of channels? The acknowledgment that
there can be channels we will never be able to isolate objectively,
much less put instrumentality to for measurement or testing? And if
you start talking about higher orders of circuitry, don't you also
have to accept that there are energy transfers that we can only guess
at? Transfers that take place, at least in part, with higher (or
lower) orders of associating structure (another way of expressing the
idea of scales of consideration?
Don't get me wrong here. I am not
suggesting the need to believe in deities for these higher orders of
structure. What I am suggesting, however, is that our minds might be
interacting with the entirety to create feedback loops we have only
just begun to fully imagine.
Even though I am not talking about
deities, this is where I feel I need to introduce the notion of
spirit.
I know. For you empiricists out there
this is just about as bad as a deity, but bare with me for a bit
here.
We talk about the ideal of certain
native cultures and how they form a deeper connection to the living
world around them. The suggestion is that they do this out of a
reverence for life as a system who's over all structure they cannot
ever be fully aware of; even if they don't fully appreciate that
motive.
I think about these things as I sit
here writing because I wonder why I would even attempt it in the
first place. I can't even begin to describe to you how ambivalent I
have been about putting any of my musings forth on such a weighty
topic. After all, I have no formal training in philosophy, or
physics. I have been a systems analyst, but on systems that are some
pretty small potatoes compared to the entirety, or any particular
reality, for that matter. What could possibly motivate one to risk
public pontification in this vein? Especially if you know for certain
that you are in no way, shape, or form, any kind of genius; even in
your most inflated of imaginings.
But then, it always comes back to what
has always motivated me; there is a feeling for which I do not have
the words to articulate. A feeling that is impossible to ignore. So I
am then forced to see if I can carve out, from the stone of my
limited vocabulary, something that approximates an articulation of
what I feel.
What then is the causality of a
feeling? What channels of energy transfer do we concentrate on?
Culture? Genetic proclivities? Certain intrinsic properties of
identity and ego; along with the need to validate a sense of self as
it exists in a large grouping of identities? Or is it simply the
completely mechanistic tracery of biochemistry, neuron inter
connectivity, and weighted electrical discharge?
But now we come full circle; back again
to what constitutes sentient choice. Which feelings do I act on? In
what context do I consider the range of action options? What effect
do these choices have on the larger system of sentience space? Is
there such a larger system? If there was, could there be any way that
it would be completely isolated from space time itself?
You can also come back around to
quantum notions at this point. Might there be, for instance, at every
quantum moment, all possible variations of the self that was about to
make this next choice, with the correspondingly complex set of
probability distributions? Superposition would suggest that all of
those possibilities would exist simultaneously. The question then
becomes would each possibility then go off on its own vector of
reality ray tracing, at a larger scale of angular momentum?
The problem in all of this is simply
that cause, as with meaning, can never be fully understood, or
objectified. This is so precisely because any wave front of change
has in it a universe of constituent, bounded process elements, each
of which has its own universe of further such elements, to infinity.
We can never make fully accurate determinations of why because we
cannot fully understand the preconditions that preceded the
particular event in question. And that is precisely because we can't
know how far to take our matrix of nonlinear equations into the
various scales of consideration. And this is because we cannot know
precisely the number, or effect of all of the channels of interaction
and feedback.
The thing is, even if we can't
objectify them all, we can still feel quite a few. The sound of that
tree falling is, just like music, a great deal more than pressure
variations through a semi viscous fluid. Just as why things need to
come together and exchange in the first place is a great deal more
than a quanta of meaning that, with an arbitrary gap of duration
between another quanta of meaning, conveys a new state for which a
new question that is automatically implied.
In the end, it seems to me, our best
strategy for progressing in our evolution of both what constitutes
the makeup of our physical and mental capacities, as well as what we
understand, and how we understand it, we need to try and keep a
balance between objectivity, and feeling. We may not always
understand why different things happen, but at least we will have the
best mix of tools to both make good choices, and deal with the joys
and pains of consequences. And will continue that evolution with a
humility that recognizes our limitations, even as we celebrate our
strengths and achievements.
Always remember that we are part of a
spectacularly grand process. We participate as both spectator and
cause contributor. Lets try to keep a sense of wonder and awe even as
we extend our reach with practical involvement and effect. The
entirety, as well as our part in it, will be a great deal better off
in the long run.
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