Cosmolosophy: A Starting Point and a First Question

This pamphlet is going to be devoted to exploring what I hope will be a useful new framework for finding meaning and direction in a complicated environment of  information, social
expectations, and economic realities.  Let me be clear from the beginning that the intent is to create a new synthesis of science and faith.  It will strive for a description of us and our place in the Cosmos that balances a questioning mind with the need for that which transcends the merely rational.  Love and Mind and Loving Structure are terms you will be seeing a lot of in the many short declaratives that I propose to put forth here.  There will also be a good deal of
technical language that I hope the non-technical will not be put off by.  Because I want this framework to be grounded in a good deal of what is actually known now this bit of reoccurring jargon is an unfortunate necessity.  I will attempt to provide hot links where possible.

That I have presented this as a pamphlet I do for several reasons.  With so much that washes around the info-sphere these days there is always a need to be as brief and succinct as possible. I am also of the mind that the pamphlet, once a grand tradition for those who would seek to engage in a dialogue of advocacy, ought to have a comeback.  A point that also serves my desire towards full disclosure; namely that I'm hoping the pursuit of Loving Structure will be seen as a call for very fundamental social change.   I have been advocating a very specific course for that change, in fact, via my site Oldsofty.com for more than ten years now.  But I am also hoping that these discussions will give anyone interested a new kind of belief system to hang their philosophical hats on.  A belief system that holds not only the act of questioning itself to be fundamental, but respects the fact that everyone must necessarily find their own answers.  If you question.  If you accept the possibility that you might be wrong as you question, but hold to your answers because they make sense both to your mind and your soul, then you have a faith that deserves respect.  And in that context all such faiths will be treated with respect here, no matter how divergent from our own.

So lets begin the grand give and take of questioning ourselves, and our hold on life.  To do that let's start with a few of the physical basics and see how a new view might demand
new questions of what is ethical in science; especially as it pertains to physicists.

All cosmological entities are tightly integrated interactive systems. It makes no difference if the reference is to a planet, a word, an electron, a person, a galaxy, quarks or the complete reality of an entire collection of galaxies. Each cosmological entity is itself a collection of other cosmological entities arrayed within a set of space time relationships. It is only a difference of scales of consideration that separates them

Space, as empty distance (or duration), is a necessary illusion (much as zero is a necessary abstraction in mathematics). Everything, no matter how seemingly distant, is part of
an ongoing space time relationship. Space time (as an information conduit) is as substantial as matter, it is only perceived differently. Relative movement, and the rate thereof, is only a
change in this space time relationship. Such change has to affect the entire system. As these must necessarily be complex systems, small inputs can have large effects.

Mass and energy comes from the structure itself (the system of systems) and not from any one entity. They are equivalent precisely because they are the same thing. The difference
is an artifact of scale and the associative vector of probability realization (sequentialized information exchange). Space time is the thread that binds associative interactions into a common reality. As such, gap (and its twin boundary) can be seen as the fundamental
necessity for there to be information.

There are an infinite number of different realities because there are an infinite number of associative vectors with which to align the interactions of the entirety. Each of these
vectors is the consciousness of an individual sentient being. It starts out as what we perceive as a singularity because the essence of consciousness is a singular point of reference; brought about by the process of objectification (or containerizing).

Faith must necessarily enter this conceptual framework because of the limits of empiricism to test interactions beyond a few different scales of consideration. Even though the
quantification of these interactions can have practical material effect (for good or ill) within our reality, extrapolating them too far in the effort to model the entirety, is to try and objectify (or contain) the infinite from within it. A speculative process at best that, even within that limited context, should always be undertaken with great humility and caution. In this (as with so many other endeavors) it is not the end result that should be valued so much, but the process of the journey.

For me, the two essential tenets of faith in Cosmolosophy come in the understanding of why these many different tightly integrated interactive systems need to come together and
exchange in the first place. As well as why mind and sentience are fundamental necessities to complete the circle.

Our need to embrace.  The elemental embrace of an electron in its orbit about a nucleus. The movement of a planet about a sun, as well as the exchange of electrons at the various shells in the collection of containers that constitute a molecule. For myself all of these demonstrate what is essentially loving structure. Love is why things need to come together and exchange. No amount of quantified interactions, no matter how expressly represented in predictive abstractions, will provide a better understanding than this. And yet, without mind, as the result of objectification, there can be no information, and thus no reality. Love and mind. The two, working together, churning within a barely imaginable matrix of mutual creation, constitutes the entirety. It is a thing of infinite complexity and wonder. It is also a thing where we can be confident of our place within it. We are as necessary as stars compressing matter, and light pushing back against the dark. We have purpose inherent in our very existence; to amply and resonate with the creation of loving structure, as well as to perceive, understand, and appreciate as much of the whole as we can. We make it as it makes us. Could there be anything more magical and wondrous than that?

Having said all of this I must now take a moment and provide the basis for a line of questioning that I think has not been delved into very much as concerns particle accelerators in general, and the Large Hadron Collider in particular. I should preface this first, however, by stating as clearly as I can just how much I share in the enthusiasm, curiosity, and just plain cool factor of such amazing examples of technical ingenuity engender. I also
appreciate, and understand, the desire of the very talented people who design and staff these machines, to ask the deep questions, and then probe with very real scientific rigor into them. I fear, though, that there is not nearly enough self examination of what they do.

Let me be also clear that this has absolutely nothing to do with whatever infinitesimal black holes that might pop in and out of existence as a part of the energetic interactions. What
I am talking about is more of a moral consideration inherent with the approach taken to get such energetic interactions. 

Obviously, nothing that's done in any of the accelerators human kind could devise would surpass what the cosmos already engages in. Energetic collisions are a part of the cosmos.
The moral question that I would ask is this. Is there a difference between collisions created by sentient choice, as opposed to those that occur as a part of the natural flow of probability (within a given association vector of space time)? This may seem a trite question at first blush, but if you consider it's cousin, perhaps it will become more pertinent.

One of the apparent paradoxes that one confronts when talking about loving structure in the natural world is perceived violence. For instance, when one considers an ecosystem one can be easily influenced by what seems harsh when a predator kills prey. The violence in this act tugs at a natural human inclination towards anthropomorphism. Is it only when one steps back a bit and takes in the bigger picture; of how prey and predator work a balance so that the whole can flourish; only then does the loving aspect of this structure come through. In considering this, though, one might then conclude that violence is OK; at least as far as we're concerned. But of course this is where morality comes in. Violence when we do it is something fundamentally different than when non-sentient entities do it.

What we have to consider here is whether energetic interactions created by sentient choice is a form of violence or not. And if it is, what does that do to the fabric of what we are testing? How are we influencing it? Even if it is not violence, it may still be an interaction considerably different than the one that probability (as a part of the sequence from the singularity on) engendered. Remember. These are infinitely complex systems. If small inputs have large affects on, say, the planet's atmosphere, how much might they have in particle systems? 

Then, of course, is the larger question still. If these interactions are violence, what do they do to our reality as a whole? Or to other realities for that matter. If we make it and it makes us these are not trivial questions; especially as the energies applied to create the interactions increase. As the acceleration of the expansion of the universe increases I'm not going to suggest that particle accelerators caused it. I am going to offer the notion that it is still fair game to speculate on whether whatever natural process is behind this increased expansion might be influenced by such sentient derived interactions. The real problem here is that, despite great leaps in the last 50 years in physics, we are still operating within great ignorance. I don't think enough appreciation is given to just how complex, and tightly integrated, this system of systems is.

I realize that I might be opening a philosophical can of worms here in trying to differentiate various expressions of violence; especially as it relates to morality.  In one respect, creation itself is violence (which may be why much of humanity has always consider itself in a state of assumed sin).  As such, if I burn something I create heat and combinations of carbon and oxygen, but am I also choosing to do violence of a sort to the substance that acts as fuel?  Oxidation is a natural process and it happens all of the time.  One could argue, in fact, that it is quite necessary for organic life to exist at all.  But if it happens as a consequence of sentient choice, is that immoral?  That one might answer “It depends” only serves to deepen the already mentioned can. I would tend to think, however, in as much as many of our choices could be viewed as violence, that there is an element of scale that is important here; especially as it relates to the sub-atomic or cosmological. Because, in that sense, we are tending to move beyond what we might consider our nominal reality. And I would propose that the more we move from that nominal reality (where our choices to act are profoundly influenced by essential material, and emotional needs), the more we should question the affects of those choices.

In any case, though, it is my view (and I am certainly not a physicist) that this zeal for ever increasing energies of interaction ought to be tempered with a good deal more humility at what is being manipulated than thus far seen. There are alternatives that will come in time if we do not lose faith in our need to explore the heavens directly as well as indirectly. After all, all of the accelerators any physicist would ever need have already been created. They are out there and waiting to be observed, understood and appreciated. What is needed is ingenuity and creativity on a scale not seen yet in human endeavor.

The last notion that I am going to leave you with to speculate on is this. Of far more greater impact on the whole than accelerators may, or may not, have had is both our lack of both
providing loving structure to each other, as well as not embracing what our true purpose is. I am convinced that the universe will go cold because we have become cold. The universe will cease to be wondrous because we have ceased to recognize and appreciate its wonder. In order to do this we must seek it out in every way we can. That is why we are here.