August 7, 2008
AIMC Physics East & West
The Cultural Influence of Physics: Physics as Modern Religion (980 words)
A google search for the film “What the bleep do we know,” (searched using quotation marks) produces over a million hits -- precisely 1,080,000 hits. This 2004 documentary film explores the worlds of “Quantum Physics, Neurology, and Molecular Biology in relation to the spheres of Spirituality, Metaphysics, and Polish weddings” according to the official website for the film--basically suggesting a connection between the laws of quantum physics and collective consciousness. It has spawned over 100 “Study Groups” across the world, in places as far flung as Argentina, South Africa, Canada, and Turkey.It is hailed as one of the most successful documentaries of all time, and was distributed in over thirty countries. There is some controversy surrounding the film’s message, published in the journal Physics Today, about the accuracy of the science in the film. Whether or not all of the film’s claims can be scientifically proven is not the point of this paper. The point is that ideas being generated by physicists are being grabbed a hold of by millions of lay people. Physics has finally pervaded popular consciousness, and done so in a powerful way. So, what is the strong appeal of this film? Why are millions of people, who probably hated high school physics class, suddenly interested in physics?
There is a famous sequence in the film now titled “I create My Day” spoken by Dr. Joe Dispenza. In the interview, Dispenza talks of consciously designing his destiny from a spiritual standpoint, and by doing so he is “infecting the quantum field.” He goes on to say, “Now if (it) is in fact the observer’s watching me the whole time that I’m doing this and there is a spiritual aspect to myself, then show me a sign today that you paid attention to any one of these things that I created, and bring them in a way that I won’t expect, so I’m as surprised at my ability to be able to experience these things. And make it so that I have no doubt that it’s come from you.” This sounds an awful lot like a prayer to the great “observer” in the sky. You see, popular interpretations of physics have turned God into a scientist.
Science started replacing God in the late 1700s and early 1800s when scientific discoveries began to conflict with Christian thinking. At the end of the 1800s, with the publication of Darwin’s treatise, the “theory of evolution” began to replace a belief in God. Political ideologies, such as communism, which rose to popularity in the early 1900s, further eroded a reliance on religion and God. Perhaps God could be replaced by the social structure? In the West, the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 70s were partially successful because they were rebelling against the Christian thinking and behavior that had made somewhat of a comeback in the post World War II years of the late 1940s and 50s. The social revolution wanted to bring about greater freedoms and traditional Christianity was seen, for the most part, as restrictive. God was no longer speaking to the masses. The scientific worldview had begun to completely take over. In the 1980s and 1990s Christmas got pulled from school, the theory of evolution was commonly taught, and those still adhering to religious views began to home school their children. Yet it seems this mass exodus from churches left people feeling empty. The “Me Generation” got lost in consumerism, cocaine, overeating, and divorce; crime rates went up and things came crashing down. Once forbidden by religion, these behaviors became more and more okay. Scientific thought now led us and, for all its explanations for how things work, science doesn’t offer ethics, rules for the game, nor does it lend a lot of meaning -- it doesn’t answer the “whys” and “who am I” and “how should I behave.”
Enter physics. Physics is the only hard science that circles back around to exploring questions involving God. Through looking deeply at how things work, physicists began to offer up meaningful explanations that sounded a lot like the words of ancient mystics. David Bohm has been quoted as saying, “Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.” Niels Bohr said, “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” Physicists even admit to a search for the “God particle.”
The film “What the bleep do we know” packages science and religion together for consumption by popular culture. It gives us permission to pray to the great “observer” in the sky without feeling embarrassed about being “religious” since religion went out of style long ago, around the time of Sir Isaac Newton’s influential temper tantrum when he declared that he would not believe in the invisible, and not believe something simply because someone told him it was. Newton’s Principia Mathematica declares the rules for the scientific method. The first is “We are to admit no more causes of natural things such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” The funny thing is that Newton, a pioneer of modern physics, insisted on discovering the world for himself. This method of discovery -- science -- has led us back to God after all.
So we have been on a long journey together, searching for the truth. With Newton we disregarded everything that we could not explain. We lost mystery, and without mystery we lost meaning. From the numbers of people running to see “What the bleep do we know” and buying books with titles like “5 Steps to a Quantum Life: How to Use the Astounding Secrets of Quantum Physics to Create the Life You Want,” it seems that we are welcoming the mystery back, and many of us prefer to have that mystery wrapped in science.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Week Thirteen: Bionics and Our Biophysical Future
This whole topic is a little depressing to me. If you have any good jokes about lost limbs, I'd love to hear them.
Would you support the development of a “bionic” person?
Bionic parts don’t trouble me as much as perhaps they should. Someone in the market for a bionic replacement probably had a bad accident, or perhaps worked their body so much that the part just wore out. It sure is nice to be able to move around “normally” with all your parts, free of pain. We’ve been giving people false teeth for some time now -- at least since 1789 when George Washington became president. It’s good to be able to chew your food, you know? I know a lot of people of my mother’s generation, born in places where the water wasn’t fluoridated, who have a full set of dentures today. Nothing seems ethically “wrong” with this to me. But when I looked into George Washington’s false teeth I discovered that his dentures (there are four sets that are still preserved) were made of the following materials: gold, ivory, lead, human teeth, horse and donkey teeth.
It is the questioning of the kinds of materials that might be used for bionic parts that gives me pause. Where will the materials come from? Will the demand for bionic parts rise so high that it will impact the earth due to overuse of materials and the fact that today’s bionic parts don’t biodegrade?
Social justice questions come into the picture here, too. Who will receive bionic parts? Only people who can afford them? Will the distribution of bionic parts be equitable?
What impact does having non-human body parts have on the energy system of the body? Is it “healthy”?
The scariest scenario of all this is that the military might put bionics to nefarious uses, as usual--kind of like Robert Downey, Jr., in Iron Man. The military always seems to find a use for new technology - a new way to kill people. Just the opposite use of what “medical advancements” are created for.
But finally, if we have a way to replace limbs lost to diabetes, to cancer, to reckless accidents, to war, what’s to encourage us to live healthier lives, collectively? Why do we have so much diabetes and cancer? Bionics just seems to say “who cares” on these issues, and pushes on forward to the “future” where we can continue to move further and further away from “nature” and invent ways to get around our suffering. So far, judging from where much of our technology has led us, it seems this doesn’t actually alleviate suffering in the end, but increases it.
How would you rate “the control of artificial limbs by thought alone”?
I apologize, but I can’t quite get over how we arrived here...experiments on other animals for “human benefit.” How can something that was created from the suffering of others be a “good” technology? How can we blindly disregard and accept this fact? Some of us recognize that Decartes mind/body split was inaccurate and many of the effects of this thinking were harmful. Decartes performed a lot of experiments on non-human animals for the benefit of science, to satisfy his own curiosity, and with the presumption that non-human animals don’t feel pain. This is profoundly disturbing to me and feels wrong at all levels.
It’s pretty exciting to know that our brain waves are “real” and exciting to think of being able to move physical objects, or even objects on a screen, by thought alone. It feels very empowering. But we have had a number of people claiming these powers for a long time -- psychics, spoon benders, even qigong masters -- and these people were laughed at and disregarded. Only through “real scientific proof” gained through putting a lot of living beings through a lifetime of awful suffering for the benefit of human kind, beings we arrogantly decide are more worthy than other living creatures, do we give credence to this power of the mind. I think that sucks and on principle cannot think these technologies are exciting or cool because they come to us in a most inhumane way.
There are videos on you tube of the experiments that used monkeys to develop these technologies. I’ll spare you from my urge to post some of these videos. These images are difficult, if not impossible, to watch. What kind of life is that for anyone, for any purpose? It kind of takes the fun out of playing one of these mind control video games. And takes away the joy at watching some little kid, whose arm was blown off by a land mine, have use of an artificial limb through thought alone. I just can’t sit quietly with that. I would rather put my efforts into stopping war, diabetes, stroke, and reckless accidents so that we don’t need to use this technology. I’d rather practice trying to bend spoons with my own mind, or honing my “psychic powers,” however hippy dippy that may sound to some people. Or working with people to try to find joy in life without all of their body parts intact.
So I would rate this technology, developed in this way, as awful. It turns my stomach.
I’m sure there are a lot of innovations that I myself take advantage of because some other animal was subject to many lifetimes of hideous experimentation. That’s hard to sit with, too.
Causalities of war...I'm sure robotic limbs would improve their lives.
But this doesn't look like a very happy existance to me.
Would you support the development of a “bionic” person?
Bionic parts don’t trouble me as much as perhaps they should. Someone in the market for a bionic replacement probably had a bad accident, or perhaps worked their body so much that the part just wore out. It sure is nice to be able to move around “normally” with all your parts, free of pain. We’ve been giving people false teeth for some time now -- at least since 1789 when George Washington became president. It’s good to be able to chew your food, you know? I know a lot of people of my mother’s generation, born in places where the water wasn’t fluoridated, who have a full set of dentures today. Nothing seems ethically “wrong” with this to me. But when I looked into George Washington’s false teeth I discovered that his dentures (there are four sets that are still preserved) were made of the following materials: gold, ivory, lead, human teeth, horse and donkey teeth.
It is the questioning of the kinds of materials that might be used for bionic parts that gives me pause. Where will the materials come from? Will the demand for bionic parts rise so high that it will impact the earth due to overuse of materials and the fact that today’s bionic parts don’t biodegrade?
Social justice questions come into the picture here, too. Who will receive bionic parts? Only people who can afford them? Will the distribution of bionic parts be equitable?
What impact does having non-human body parts have on the energy system of the body? Is it “healthy”?
The scariest scenario of all this is that the military might put bionics to nefarious uses, as usual--kind of like Robert Downey, Jr., in Iron Man. The military always seems to find a use for new technology - a new way to kill people. Just the opposite use of what “medical advancements” are created for.
But finally, if we have a way to replace limbs lost to diabetes, to cancer, to reckless accidents, to war, what’s to encourage us to live healthier lives, collectively? Why do we have so much diabetes and cancer? Bionics just seems to say “who cares” on these issues, and pushes on forward to the “future” where we can continue to move further and further away from “nature” and invent ways to get around our suffering. So far, judging from where much of our technology has led us, it seems this doesn’t actually alleviate suffering in the end, but increases it.
How would you rate “the control of artificial limbs by thought alone”?
I apologize, but I can’t quite get over how we arrived here...experiments on other animals for “human benefit.” How can something that was created from the suffering of others be a “good” technology? How can we blindly disregard and accept this fact? Some of us recognize that Decartes mind/body split was inaccurate and many of the effects of this thinking were harmful. Decartes performed a lot of experiments on non-human animals for the benefit of science, to satisfy his own curiosity, and with the presumption that non-human animals don’t feel pain. This is profoundly disturbing to me and feels wrong at all levels.
It’s pretty exciting to know that our brain waves are “real” and exciting to think of being able to move physical objects, or even objects on a screen, by thought alone. It feels very empowering. But we have had a number of people claiming these powers for a long time -- psychics, spoon benders, even qigong masters -- and these people were laughed at and disregarded. Only through “real scientific proof” gained through putting a lot of living beings through a lifetime of awful suffering for the benefit of human kind, beings we arrogantly decide are more worthy than other living creatures, do we give credence to this power of the mind. I think that sucks and on principle cannot think these technologies are exciting or cool because they come to us in a most inhumane way.
There are videos on you tube of the experiments that used monkeys to develop these technologies. I’ll spare you from my urge to post some of these videos. These images are difficult, if not impossible, to watch. What kind of life is that for anyone, for any purpose? It kind of takes the fun out of playing one of these mind control video games. And takes away the joy at watching some little kid, whose arm was blown off by a land mine, have use of an artificial limb through thought alone. I just can’t sit quietly with that. I would rather put my efforts into stopping war, diabetes, stroke, and reckless accidents so that we don’t need to use this technology. I’d rather practice trying to bend spoons with my own mind, or honing my “psychic powers,” however hippy dippy that may sound to some people. Or working with people to try to find joy in life without all of their body parts intact.
So I would rate this technology, developed in this way, as awful. It turns my stomach.
I’m sure there are a lot of innovations that I myself take advantage of because some other animal was subject to many lifetimes of hideous experimentation. That’s hard to sit with, too.
Causalities of war...I'm sure robotic limbs would improve their lives.
But this doesn't look like a very happy existance to me.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Week Eleven: Energy Medicine and Energy Fields
Acupuncture as effective energy medicine / Human intent as it affects health (these two questions are linked for me)
How can effectiveness of any treatment be measured? My graduate work was in medical anthropology; part of our study turned the lens onto western biomedicine. Studies within this field have shown how the amount of both the patient’s and the physician’s BELIEF in the treatment at hand impacted the efficacy of the treatment. Doctors have been quoted as saying “prescribe this medication while it still works” meaning that new medications often had a kind of “beginner’s luck” while belief in the medication ran high. If physician and patient were coming from two different belief systems, treatment was often not as effective.
I tend to think of almost any treatment as a placebo. Our minds’ belief in the strengths and limitations of treatments, and of our own healing powers, I think ultimately have the greatest impact on our health.
So...is acupuncture effective? To me, the overall metaphor of Chinese medicine is truer to life than the clinical and detached belief system of western biomedicine. Therefore, right off the bat I think it must be more effective, because it is truer to what I believe as a metaphysical reality of union and interconnectedness. Treating the body as a microsystem of the planet is much more respectful than treating the body as though it were a “dumb machine.” Life IS energy, and therefore it makes sense to me to treat the body as an energy system. I do think that “buy in” is almost always essential in any treatment, however. And I think more and more people are allowing themselves to respect their bodies as part of the natural order of things.
The effectiveness of acupuncture will be difficult to study because so many variables are involved and no treatment or practitioner is essentially the same, easily reproduced in exactly the same manner. What will matter, I suppose, is whether or not people who are treated feel as if it were effective and can see/feel the results themselves. I know that I personally have had experiences with acupuncture that affected me so profoundly and deeply that it is almost hard to believe -- kind of like seeing a ghost; the amazement at realizing the universe really is as mysterious and wonderful as we might have hoped, and that we are intimately connected to it as living energy beings! Wow! I have also gathered many, many similar stories from others relating how amazed they were by the profound effectiveness of acupuncture.
Acupuncture in the TV News media tells an interesting story of where we are with it in our popular culture...
Some healing stories about the effectiveness of acupuncture and other energy-based medicine...
What conclusions can you draw from Kirlian photography?
Only that we possess electrical energy which can be photographed.
How can effectiveness of any treatment be measured? My graduate work was in medical anthropology; part of our study turned the lens onto western biomedicine. Studies within this field have shown how the amount of both the patient’s and the physician’s BELIEF in the treatment at hand impacted the efficacy of the treatment. Doctors have been quoted as saying “prescribe this medication while it still works” meaning that new medications often had a kind of “beginner’s luck” while belief in the medication ran high. If physician and patient were coming from two different belief systems, treatment was often not as effective.
I tend to think of almost any treatment as a placebo. Our minds’ belief in the strengths and limitations of treatments, and of our own healing powers, I think ultimately have the greatest impact on our health.
So...is acupuncture effective? To me, the overall metaphor of Chinese medicine is truer to life than the clinical and detached belief system of western biomedicine. Therefore, right off the bat I think it must be more effective, because it is truer to what I believe as a metaphysical reality of union and interconnectedness. Treating the body as a microsystem of the planet is much more respectful than treating the body as though it were a “dumb machine.” Life IS energy, and therefore it makes sense to me to treat the body as an energy system. I do think that “buy in” is almost always essential in any treatment, however. And I think more and more people are allowing themselves to respect their bodies as part of the natural order of things.
The effectiveness of acupuncture will be difficult to study because so many variables are involved and no treatment or practitioner is essentially the same, easily reproduced in exactly the same manner. What will matter, I suppose, is whether or not people who are treated feel as if it were effective and can see/feel the results themselves. I know that I personally have had experiences with acupuncture that affected me so profoundly and deeply that it is almost hard to believe -- kind of like seeing a ghost; the amazement at realizing the universe really is as mysterious and wonderful as we might have hoped, and that we are intimately connected to it as living energy beings! Wow! I have also gathered many, many similar stories from others relating how amazed they were by the profound effectiveness of acupuncture.
Acupuncture in the TV News media tells an interesting story of where we are with it in our popular culture...
Some healing stories about the effectiveness of acupuncture and other energy-based medicine...
What conclusions can you draw from Kirlian photography?
Only that we possess electrical energy which can be photographed.
Week Ten: Living Systems
Dead or Alive?
I know I’m a living system because...
I feel love. That sounds kind of cheesy, I know. I don’t identify so much with my body though as I do my soul. Identifying other things with their spirit essence instead of their physical construction makes it easier to attribute “living” qualities to things like rocks and pieces of trash. Reflecting on this question honestly scares me a bit. I’ve been working hard these last five or so years to identify more with my body -- to “be in” my body more...but today I realize I still think of my body as a rubbery unit that is necessary in order to carry my soul around. That’s not to say I don’t feel the pain in my shoulder today, or that I don’t love a good foot rub, or that dancing, running, singing, and sex aren’t four of the biggest joys in my life, but they are more like extracurricular activities -- the real business is my soul. I’m the sort of person who feels bad if I fling a beloved pillow carelessly on to the ground because I’m worried it will feel lonely. Or I wouldn’t necessarily pile a bunch of blankets on top of each other because the bottom one might feel smothered. I feel immature admitting that...like a little kid who thinks her stuffed animals are truly alive....but I’m wanting to be honest here.
I collect lost and broken things; I think I do this in part because I feel sort of "sorry" for them. Them seem to have quite a bit of "life" left in them still, however...and often get a "new life" with me!
Some items from my collection...they seem alive to me!
I also know I’m a living system because I eat and poop. And because I know I’m going to die some day.
I tend also to associate other people more with their bodies than I associate myself with my body. I have pretty strong intuitions about the location of other peoples’ pain, and where to touch them to alleviate it. Sadly, I don’t tend to know my own body quite so well. And this has been a very interesting exercise. Yikes.
Biophysics and Oriental Medicine...
Systems! It took me awhile to see a connection, but the connection here I think is that they both utilize systems thinking. Do a search for “biophysics” and “systems” and you come up with studies about cellular systems, systems biology, neural systems, populations, ecosystems, descriptions of “living systems” at a microscopic level...etc. Biophysics takes interactions within the systems into account. We are no longer living in isolation. The body is no longer made of separate, discriminate parts like a watch...although if you think about it even watch parts are part of a system (if the spring breaks, so goes the whole thing!). Biophysics is interesting to me because any living system can be studying using biophysics as a lens. The similarity with oriental medicine is of course that oriental medicine views the body as a system interacting within an environment. Parts of the interior and exterior system affect each other. Nothing is occurring in isolation. I think that biophysics’s systems thinking might lend greater credibility to oriental medicine, and that oriental medicine might begin to see western science as more of a like-minded friend. Each could begin to learn more freely from the other.
This image, taken from a biophysics department studying of proteins, looks somewhat similar to something that might be found in a book about the five elements in Chinese medicine....
I know I’m a living system because...
I feel love. That sounds kind of cheesy, I know. I don’t identify so much with my body though as I do my soul. Identifying other things with their spirit essence instead of their physical construction makes it easier to attribute “living” qualities to things like rocks and pieces of trash. Reflecting on this question honestly scares me a bit. I’ve been working hard these last five or so years to identify more with my body -- to “be in” my body more...but today I realize I still think of my body as a rubbery unit that is necessary in order to carry my soul around. That’s not to say I don’t feel the pain in my shoulder today, or that I don’t love a good foot rub, or that dancing, running, singing, and sex aren’t four of the biggest joys in my life, but they are more like extracurricular activities -- the real business is my soul. I’m the sort of person who feels bad if I fling a beloved pillow carelessly on to the ground because I’m worried it will feel lonely. Or I wouldn’t necessarily pile a bunch of blankets on top of each other because the bottom one might feel smothered. I feel immature admitting that...like a little kid who thinks her stuffed animals are truly alive....but I’m wanting to be honest here.
I collect lost and broken things; I think I do this in part because I feel sort of "sorry" for them. Them seem to have quite a bit of "life" left in them still, however...and often get a "new life" with me!
Some items from my collection...they seem alive to me!
I also know I’m a living system because I eat and poop. And because I know I’m going to die some day.
I tend also to associate other people more with their bodies than I associate myself with my body. I have pretty strong intuitions about the location of other peoples’ pain, and where to touch them to alleviate it. Sadly, I don’t tend to know my own body quite so well. And this has been a very interesting exercise. Yikes.
Biophysics and Oriental Medicine...
Systems! It took me awhile to see a connection, but the connection here I think is that they both utilize systems thinking. Do a search for “biophysics” and “systems” and you come up with studies about cellular systems, systems biology, neural systems, populations, ecosystems, descriptions of “living systems” at a microscopic level...etc. Biophysics takes interactions within the systems into account. We are no longer living in isolation. The body is no longer made of separate, discriminate parts like a watch...although if you think about it even watch parts are part of a system (if the spring breaks, so goes the whole thing!). Biophysics is interesting to me because any living system can be studying using biophysics as a lens. The similarity with oriental medicine is of course that oriental medicine views the body as a system interacting within an environment. Parts of the interior and exterior system affect each other. Nothing is occurring in isolation. I think that biophysics’s systems thinking might lend greater credibility to oriental medicine, and that oriental medicine might begin to see western science as more of a like-minded friend. Each could begin to learn more freely from the other.
This image, taken from a biophysics department studying of proteins, looks somewhat similar to something that might be found in a book about the five elements in Chinese medicine....
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Week Nine: Towards a New Synthesis
Can I synthesize East and West?
In physics, I think a synthesis of Eastern and Western views has been apparent since at least the 1950s. In the general culture, I see a synthesis of East and West happening as well, though not quite as fully integrated. The “synthesis” is kind of like an introduction at this point to ways of being and thinking in both Eastern and Western cultures. Just through my own witnessing, and no particular research devoted to the topic, I list here some examples of Eastern / Asian influence in the West, and Western influence in the East:
Eastern influences in the West:
Martial arts: Karate, Tai Chi, Tae Kwon Do, etc.
Yoga / meditation
Chinese medical practices: herbs, acupuncture
Ayervedic medical practices
Buddhist and Hindu practices (books, monasteries, retreats)
Asian cuisine (Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, etc.)
Increase in population of Asians
Products made in Asia are ubiquitous
Presence of the Dalai Lama as a world religious figure
local Asian TV stations
Western influences in the East:
Capitalism (or some version of it)
Increased consumption (energy, cars, food, etc.)
Westernized styles (music, dress, food, etc.)
Allopathic medicine
With increased global communication and travel we have seen ideas and lifestyles from far away places infiltrate previously isolated cultures (except, perhaps, in Wyoming). In places, the East looks more like the West than ever before and the West looks more like the East. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a true “synthesis” at this point, but we seem to be moving in that direction.
Most of these changes occur first at the lowest level --that of popular culture. True synthesis will come when the thinking and practices inform scientific, religious, and medical practices at the root level, which will become apparent when we see a synthesis of these ideas in education--when the new generation learns something from both worlds of thought.
In physics, I think a synthesis of Eastern and Western views has been apparent since at least the 1950s. In the general culture, I see a synthesis of East and West happening as well, though not quite as fully integrated. The “synthesis” is kind of like an introduction at this point to ways of being and thinking in both Eastern and Western cultures. Just through my own witnessing, and no particular research devoted to the topic, I list here some examples of Eastern / Asian influence in the West, and Western influence in the East:
Eastern influences in the West:
Martial arts: Karate, Tai Chi, Tae Kwon Do, etc.
Yoga / meditation
Chinese medical practices: herbs, acupuncture
Ayervedic medical practices
Buddhist and Hindu practices (books, monasteries, retreats)
Asian cuisine (Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, etc.)
Increase in population of Asians
Products made in Asia are ubiquitous
Presence of the Dalai Lama as a world religious figure
local Asian TV stations
Western influences in the East:
Capitalism (or some version of it)
Increased consumption (energy, cars, food, etc.)
Westernized styles (music, dress, food, etc.)
Allopathic medicine
With increased global communication and travel we have seen ideas and lifestyles from far away places infiltrate previously isolated cultures (except, perhaps, in Wyoming). In places, the East looks more like the West than ever before and the West looks more like the East. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a true “synthesis” at this point, but we seem to be moving in that direction.
Most of these changes occur first at the lowest level --that of popular culture. True synthesis will come when the thinking and practices inform scientific, religious, and medical practices at the root level, which will become apparent when we see a synthesis of these ideas in education--when the new generation learns something from both worlds of thought.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Week Eight: Classical Physics
Newton's Three Laws and Frances
I tell myself not to be afraid of Newton's Three Laws. Though I identify with my Capricorn nature, I also feel tethered to a sometimes uncomfortable earth where the three laws of physics described by Newton show themselves. I don't like to get hit by hurling objects, such as when "two objects interact, say in a collision" exerting equal amounts of force on one another (Newton's third law). The matter of world, and my soft human parts living amongst it, seems awfully dangerous sometimes. Not to mention a little irritating at other times -- tripping on a shoelace, dropping keys in a sewer grate, bumping my head on a sharp edge. Hauling things around this place also feels like an uncomfortable chore at times -- I don't much enjoy moving my stuff from one home to another, for example. All those boxes of books add up to a lot of heavy weight to lift. They do not move themselves (Newton's first law -- objects at rest remain at rest and a force must be applied to change the state of motion of an object).
So. Newton's laws are kind of a drag sometimes. I think a lot of people feel this way, and therefore have invented ways in which to use these same laws to help out with the heavy lifting our lifestyles and this earth seem to require (tow trucks, dollies, back hoes, etc.). My spirit knows differently, however, and moving my body in concert with these laws can feel exhilarating and energizing (running several miles, dancing around, the crack of a bat on a baseball, having sex, etc.).
The other world of imagination, spirit, quantum mechanics, appeals much more to me. It is, I think, the world of energy, whereas Newton's world concerns itself with matter. I love the wide open possibilities in the other world. The surprises and the magic of connection possible in the "other world" where it seems anything is possible.
I want to say something else about Newton's ideas. The scientific method that he presented in Principia Mathematica reminds me of the kinds of things that teenagers might exert to their parents. If human history can be viewed like one long life, taken collectively, then I would propose that beginning in Newton's time we were adolescents (and might be on the verge right now of growing out of this stage). His rules of scientific reasoning basically seem to be saying "I want to validate my OWN experience and will believe only what I carry out on my own, and I will build my own world and beliefs from MY observations and you can't tell me anything different, unless you can prove it to me." Only now do we seem to be confident enough to acknowledge that perhaps some of the old wisdom was good and true, and that maybe our elders knew a thing or two.
One more thing. I don't want to place judgement on our adolescent stage. Breaking things down into parts one can understand the world through its tiniest bits -- it reminds me of the first stanza of the WIlliam Blake poem "Auguries of Innocence":
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
Our Energy Efficient Culture
I am repelled by this topic of energy use in the U.S. because I feel ashamed of our collective habits. "Energy efficiency" seems like kind of joke to me, especially with population continuing to rise and more and more regions around the world growing comfortable with Western-style consumption. As long as numbers of people consuming energy continues to rise, even if products are becoming more "efficient," we will continue to use energy at an unsustainable rate. The answer seems to be to just stop using so much. Reduction instead of efficiency?
Descartes has a lot to answer for!
My opinion of Descartes impact on our culture is similar to what I wrote above about Newton. I think it may have been a necessary step toward our growth. Again, for some coincidental reason, I am reminded of William Blake and the "innocence experience innocence" idea of our life cycle. We are born innocent, travel through experiences and lose that innocence temporarily, and in the end return to innocence, but this time consciously and with wisdom. Blake believed that true inncence was impossible without experience. We berate ourselves for the destructive path we have trod down like bulldozers, and place blame on thinkers like Descartes who led the way through the realm of experience, but without Newton and Descartes we would not be on our way to a higher innocence, one that is hard won as we fumble around in the darkness trying to find the light switch.
The Angel
I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!
And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight.
So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten-thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.
William Blake
I tell myself not to be afraid of Newton's Three Laws. Though I identify with my Capricorn nature, I also feel tethered to a sometimes uncomfortable earth where the three laws of physics described by Newton show themselves. I don't like to get hit by hurling objects, such as when "two objects interact, say in a collision" exerting equal amounts of force on one another (Newton's third law). The matter of world, and my soft human parts living amongst it, seems awfully dangerous sometimes. Not to mention a little irritating at other times -- tripping on a shoelace, dropping keys in a sewer grate, bumping my head on a sharp edge. Hauling things around this place also feels like an uncomfortable chore at times -- I don't much enjoy moving my stuff from one home to another, for example. All those boxes of books add up to a lot of heavy weight to lift. They do not move themselves (Newton's first law -- objects at rest remain at rest and a force must be applied to change the state of motion of an object).
So. Newton's laws are kind of a drag sometimes. I think a lot of people feel this way, and therefore have invented ways in which to use these same laws to help out with the heavy lifting our lifestyles and this earth seem to require (tow trucks, dollies, back hoes, etc.). My spirit knows differently, however, and moving my body in concert with these laws can feel exhilarating and energizing (running several miles, dancing around, the crack of a bat on a baseball, having sex, etc.).
The other world of imagination, spirit, quantum mechanics, appeals much more to me. It is, I think, the world of energy, whereas Newton's world concerns itself with matter. I love the wide open possibilities in the other world. The surprises and the magic of connection possible in the "other world" where it seems anything is possible.
I want to say something else about Newton's ideas. The scientific method that he presented in Principia Mathematica reminds me of the kinds of things that teenagers might exert to their parents. If human history can be viewed like one long life, taken collectively, then I would propose that beginning in Newton's time we were adolescents (and might be on the verge right now of growing out of this stage). His rules of scientific reasoning basically seem to be saying "I want to validate my OWN experience and will believe only what I carry out on my own, and I will build my own world and beliefs from MY observations and you can't tell me anything different, unless you can prove it to me." Only now do we seem to be confident enough to acknowledge that perhaps some of the old wisdom was good and true, and that maybe our elders knew a thing or two.
One more thing. I don't want to place judgement on our adolescent stage. Breaking things down into parts one can understand the world through its tiniest bits -- it reminds me of the first stanza of the WIlliam Blake poem "Auguries of Innocence":
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
Our Energy Efficient Culture
I am repelled by this topic of energy use in the U.S. because I feel ashamed of our collective habits. "Energy efficiency" seems like kind of joke to me, especially with population continuing to rise and more and more regions around the world growing comfortable with Western-style consumption. As long as numbers of people consuming energy continues to rise, even if products are becoming more "efficient," we will continue to use energy at an unsustainable rate. The answer seems to be to just stop using so much. Reduction instead of efficiency?
Descartes has a lot to answer for!
My opinion of Descartes impact on our culture is similar to what I wrote above about Newton. I think it may have been a necessary step toward our growth. Again, for some coincidental reason, I am reminded of William Blake and the "innocence experience innocence" idea of our life cycle. We are born innocent, travel through experiences and lose that innocence temporarily, and in the end return to innocence, but this time consciously and with wisdom. Blake believed that true inncence was impossible without experience. We berate ourselves for the destructive path we have trod down like bulldozers, and place blame on thinkers like Descartes who led the way through the realm of experience, but without Newton and Descartes we would not be on our way to a higher innocence, one that is hard won as we fumble around in the darkness trying to find the light switch.
The Angel
I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!
And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight.
So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten-thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.
William Blake
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Week seven: Chaos Theory
Ordered chaos - does this sound familiar
Yes and no. In the world of cafes and scrambled eggs, cars and streets and shops, weddings and bar-be-ques, funerals and summer novels, newspapers and fall fashions...we westerners usually just go about our lives without thinking much about the nature of “reality.” The straight lines of human built structures, the predictable ticking of the clock, the typical stages of ones life, are all "givens" we hold on to...but what happens when things spin out of control? We do more studies, make straighter lines, build better bridges, blow people up, create prisons, invent alarm systems and stealth technology and drink ourselves into oblivion and continue to search for the laws of the universe that will finally allow us to feel safe, and continue to look for ways to control, or at least predict, our environment and the future.
The intangible uneasiness that leads to so much craziness comes from that deep down feeling that nothing is truly within our control. The surprises are called “freaks of nature” and “freak accidents” and "just bad luck" and “margins of error.” And a million different conflicting explanations will be presented to try to explain what happened, or to try to find someone to blame. We try to make some sense of it in order to figure out how not to be taken by surprise again. There another response to all of this, and that is the complete surrender to chaos--which might be called religion or surrendering to God’s will. But wars break out all the time in the name of God. And priests become pedophiles. And churches kick people out and steal their money...and sometimes evil deeds are justified as being "god's will."
So, the search continues for the God particle, a unified theory of everything -- someone please tell us what is going on! Where are we? Who are we? and Why are we here? Ordered chaos indeed.
The only “answer” that feels right to me is that the message seems to be to stay in the present moment, have faith in the general goodness of everything, allow this universal energy to flow through and keep on trying to do the best we can. Give up the need to control, predict tomorrow, and just do what you can right now, right here, to tune into the moment, and try to spread a lot of love along the way.
Fractals as Patterns of Complex Systems
Fractals present an interesting message, and another solution to “ordered chaos.” Instead of trying to place straight lines over the “mess” of the universe, fractals show a consciousness, a sensibility, to unpredictability. The designs found in fractals are related to the whole, but are not predictable or ever exactly the same. They show infinite originality, but beauty and balance. Like a surprise package that keeps on surprising, without unnerving or exploding, while still making sense, but also without having to be locked up, locked in, and controlled. It’s like someone is saying to us, “Just relax and enjoy the show. Everything will be fine if you just relax.” It’s a place between order and chaos. A place that has meaning without force or coercion. What a relief. What a beautiful message. What an ingenious solution. Not wildly messy, but not predictable and in control either. Balance.
Consciousness out of chaos
I think this “chaos” can be explained only by allowing for every bit of everything and every non-thing to possess consciousness. Using fractals as our window, how can one look at the infinite, chaotic order of fractals and deny this consciousness? Everything is working together with a beautiful unified creativity if only we would relax in this and not try to restrict and restrain and control it. Easier said than done, of course, but eventually maybe we will tire of trying to have all the answers and pushing our desire for control on the infinite creation.
Cool Experiments in Classical Physics...
I read through several of the experiments and played with the silverware for a little while. Looking at the reflection of my face in the front and back of a spoon, flicking the fork tines and hearing the vibration in a table, and looking at how text appears in the reflection of a knife. I am having trouble making any of it meaningful to me. Though I am wondering why the knife seems to hold on to the reflection of the text on the page and the text will move with the knife instead of continue to reflect straight across.
I also read through some of the computer experiments and learned that the computer is giving off radio waves...why?
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Week 6: Vibrations
[painting by Alex Grey]
Are all vibrations good?
Vibrations are energy; energy is life. All of the universe is in motion. Yes, I think this means that all vibrations are good, though something in me wants to refrain from judgments of good and bad and just remain in the middle. There are horror stories starring “bad vibes.” Maybe these are just blocked vibrations that become stored up and the matter they are trying to travel through leaves no exiting pathway. I am sorry that some vibrations have caused suffering, but I like to have faith that even though some things seem to cause suffering, in the end growth and understanding will result even from that which is considered to be “bad.”
The way we shape ourselves and the world about us can sometimes prevent vibration from being able to travel freely. Since there can be blockages in matter energy can get trapped; and since energy can not be “destroyed” the energy collects until it has enough power to blow the blockage out. I think something about my conceptualization here is a little off, but this is the only way I am wrapping my head around this right now.
Resonance in my world...
I spent time trying to understand the meaning of resonance, in physical terms -- to understand exactly what is happening. I don’t really understand this concept yet, though intuitively I do. Resonance seems to have something to do with the relationship between matter and energy -- the structure of matter and the way it allows certain vibrations to be realized. I found this definition of resonance: “resonance is the tendency of a structure to oscillate at maximum amplitude at a certain frequency.” And also, “The natural frequency is also related to the speed the waveform can propagate through the structure.” So, it’s the marriage between the properties of specific matter and the ability of a mechanical wave to travel through that matter. Mechanical waves need matter to transport their energy, like sound. Electromagnetic waves require no matter for travel, like light.
Outside of that scientific meaninglessness, I think I have personally experienced what may be a sort of human energetic “resonance.” It’s kind of close to what is termed “ESP” for me. When I’m feeling really “in tune” with myself and another person, I have this strong feeling/thought on occasion that I know exactly what they are going to say and what they are thinking--but I know it with my full body, almost as though we are one body/mind. This resonance happens to a lesser extent when I first meet certain people, like at a party -- people that I just really “click” with.
Connections between energy an qi...
From my very elementary understanding of both “energy” (in the scientific sense) and “qi,” it seems that an understanding of qi cannot be divorced from the body’s meridians. I see qi as the way energy flows through matter, how successful the energy vibrations are flowing. A build up of energy in the physical world can lead to major events like earthquakes and tsunamis--the energy is still trying to get through and can be blocked for only so long until it bursts forth. Perhaps this what happens in the human body if energy is blocked, resulting in a build up of stress which can lead to sickness or violent outbursts. The study of mechanical energy in Western science looks at how vibrations move through matter and the study of qi in Chinese medicine looks at how qi moves through the body. There is also electromagnetic energy which requires no matter to move itself and perhaps this “light” energy can be felt by the spirit even if the “matter” of the body is blocked or sick in some way. The spirit always has a way of transferring energy regardless of the condition of the physical body.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Excitement about sound
I can't help but get a little too enthusiastic about the topic of week 6...sound...music! I just had to share this musician Evelyn Glennie. She is the world's only "solo percussionist" and the thing she doesn't like known, but which for me teaches so much about what it means to truly "listen" is that Evelyn Glennie is profoundly deaf. She has several clips on you tube and I had a really hard time picking just one...so I picked two short ones. There's a thirty some minute on you tube as well called "how to listen to music with your whole body..." I really hope you enjoy her music and wisdom as much as I do!
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Week Five: Symmetry and Sacred Geometry
My (a)symmetrical world...
At our core the universe is symmetrical - in pure truth and beauty. In the outer realm of "reality" things are choatic. Calm down to find the symmetry again, get caught up in the craziness and the patterns are lost. I think perhaps this is the reason that Quantum mechanics and classical mechanics do not follow by the same rules. They tell two different stories. One speaks to the "unbroken wholeness" the other to the shattered mirror. A world view coming from the inside will see pattern, meaning, balance; a world view taken from the outside will see chaos, meaninglessness, imbalance. Meditating on the balance, on the symmetry is said to work to restore the calm, connected core. What you look for, you will find.
I offer no explanation, but it doesn't take their beauty away... Crop circles....
Creating symmetry...
Bipolar art...
Just what does this CP violation really mean?
"CP violation has so far been observed in one system only, namely in the decays of neutral kaons..." I think of it as the coyote, the trickster, in the story. This is a paragraph from Wikipedia on the subject, which really is fascinating...what went wrong? It seems we shouldn't really be here, but just existing as pure light:
The Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and anti-matter if CP-symmetry was preserved; as such, there should have been total cancellation of both. In other words, protons should have cancelled with anti-protons, electrons with positrons, neutrons with anti-neutrons, and so on for all elementary particles. This would have resulted in a sea of photons in the universe with no matter. Since this is quite evidently not the case, after the Big Bang, physical laws must have acted differently for matter and antimatter, i.e. violating CP symmetry.
...."a sea of photons in the universe with no matter...." The universe should be pure energy!
CP violation means that the mystery continues. Here is a really good link I found trying to communicate the concept in friendlier terms: http://www.phy.bris.ac.uk/groups/particle/PUS/A-level/CP_violation.htm
Are there connections between Sacred Geometry and Physics?
Yes. Sacred Geometry speaks to the unity of the universe. It is like the rosetta stone, sort of. Metaphysical messages plunked down by sages who, through deep inner practice, I suspect, discovered the unified theory of everything. Hence, we see the pyramids, mandalas, crop circles, the "flower of life" pattern, etc. This is precisely what physicists are searching for - an equation as simple as E=mc2 that will tie the universe together in one pretty picture. Look at a picture of DNA...it is quite symmetrical and unified.
Dr. Masaru Emoto's work--made famous in that movie What the Bleep Do We Know-- on the structure of water crystals and human thought/intention ties all of this together for me. The water crystals resulting from thoughts of love are very symmetrical, balanced, pleasing. Those resulting from thoughts of hate directed toward them are chaotic, ugly, disorganized. Do we indeed project what we want to see in this world? This (a)symmetrical world... See www.hado.net.
At our core the universe is symmetrical - in pure truth and beauty. In the outer realm of "reality" things are choatic. Calm down to find the symmetry again, get caught up in the craziness and the patterns are lost. I think perhaps this is the reason that Quantum mechanics and classical mechanics do not follow by the same rules. They tell two different stories. One speaks to the "unbroken wholeness" the other to the shattered mirror. A world view coming from the inside will see pattern, meaning, balance; a world view taken from the outside will see chaos, meaninglessness, imbalance. Meditating on the balance, on the symmetry is said to work to restore the calm, connected core. What you look for, you will find.
I offer no explanation, but it doesn't take their beauty away... Crop circles....
Creating symmetry...
Bipolar art...
Just what does this CP violation really mean?
"CP violation has so far been observed in one system only, namely in the decays of neutral kaons..." I think of it as the coyote, the trickster, in the story. This is a paragraph from Wikipedia on the subject, which really is fascinating...what went wrong? It seems we shouldn't really be here, but just existing as pure light:
The Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and anti-matter if CP-symmetry was preserved; as such, there should have been total cancellation of both. In other words, protons should have cancelled with anti-protons, electrons with positrons, neutrons with anti-neutrons, and so on for all elementary particles. This would have resulted in a sea of photons in the universe with no matter. Since this is quite evidently not the case, after the Big Bang, physical laws must have acted differently for matter and antimatter, i.e. violating CP symmetry.
...."a sea of photons in the universe with no matter...." The universe should be pure energy!
CP violation means that the mystery continues. Here is a really good link I found trying to communicate the concept in friendlier terms: http://www.phy.bris.ac.uk/groups/particle/PUS/A-level/CP_violation.htm
Are there connections between Sacred Geometry and Physics?
Yes. Sacred Geometry speaks to the unity of the universe. It is like the rosetta stone, sort of. Metaphysical messages plunked down by sages who, through deep inner practice, I suspect, discovered the unified theory of everything. Hence, we see the pyramids, mandalas, crop circles, the "flower of life" pattern, etc. This is precisely what physicists are searching for - an equation as simple as E=mc2 that will tie the universe together in one pretty picture. Look at a picture of DNA...it is quite symmetrical and unified.
Dr. Masaru Emoto's work--made famous in that movie What the Bleep Do We Know-- on the structure of water crystals and human thought/intention ties all of this together for me. The water crystals resulting from thoughts of love are very symmetrical, balanced, pleasing. Those resulting from thoughts of hate directed toward them are chaotic, ugly, disorganized. Do we indeed project what we want to see in this world? This (a)symmetrical world... See www.hado.net.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Qigong Anyone?
Hi Physics Buddies,
I really enjoyed the brief standing meditation exercise Larry led us through last week and asked him if perhaps we could do that at the start of class (after the quiz) every week...he asked me to ask you all. I spoke to a couple of people in class today who thought it a mighty fine idea. Please let me know if you too would like this to become a regular part of the class. (Or, please let me know if this sounds like the most awful idea in the world!) I will pass feedback on to Larry, or you could just let him know directly.
Thanks everyone for helping to make physics fun!
Frances
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Week Four: Energy, Matter and the Four Forces
How has e=mc2 affected you?
E=mc2 has greatly affected the larger culture, and in that way it has affected me as well. E=mc2 took scientific thinking from absolutes to relativity. Perhaps this sort of thinking is what led to the 60s, and LSD experimentation, and cubist art...and the civil rights movement and the women's movement...who can be certain? All of those openings in the collective conciousness have impacted me positively. E=mc2 also led to nuclear energy and the atomic bomb. Chernobyl and Hiroshima. Lots of death and destruction. I was sixteen when the Chernobyl disaster happened. I recall those images of devistation and suffering well. These images led me into a more activist mindset, a realization that big plans by governments and scientists can lead to a great deal of suffering for others. I would really like to say that overwhelmingly I feel that Einstein's work has affected me in a positive way, but frankly I think the world might be a better place without it. Maybe I romanticize the caveman days but I don't think technological "advances" or an understanding of space through physics has led us to a better place than would otherwise be with us still crawling around in the trees like squirrels. We are ending up with the same realizations through physics that mystics told us thousands of years ago -- the world is connected, we are connected to everything in it, etc. Too bad we have had to go through all of this investigation and suffering in order to bring us back home, but I guess that's what growing up is all about. The only place to go now is to keep moving forward to try to find the god particle, which I imagine will either destroy us completely or liberate us...perhaps it's one and the same.
How would you compare the four forces?
Strong nuclear force
Weak nuclear force
Electromagnetic force
Gravity
Gravity and electromagnetism are apparent in the "everyday" world and have an infinite reach. The strong and weak nuclear forces are found only in the nucleus of an atom. Except for the weak nuclear force, the forces hold the universe together from the smallest bit to the largest bit like a chain. The strong force holds the nucleus of an atom together, electromagnetism holds the atom together, and gravity holds the planets, stars and galaxies together. The weak force causes particles to decay. Apparently physicists can't seem to put their finger on gravity, which is kind of funny to me since gravity can really put the finger on us (falling apples and pianos...our bodies are stuck here on this planet and yet where is the graviton?)...We don't know how gravity is transmitted, yet we know how the other forces are transmitted (photons, gluons, W and Z particles. Physicists believe that if they can tie all these forces together and prove they are the product of some larger force, they will then have found god, or in scientific terms, the one unified force that blew everything apart in the big bang. I have an inkling the answer might be found in superstring theory.
In superstring theory there are "extra" dimensions of spacetime. I think these extra dimensions do still exist at the subatomic level and that when the big bang happened the other dimensions inverted and became really, really tiny (subatomic particles).
What is the function of gravity?
One day I watched a dish drying in the dish rack knock over another dish and I got the apparently silly idea that we could use gravity as energy--it's always present and always pulling things down. When I looked into it, however, it turned out scientists have often made a big joke of this idea...it still seems kind of possible to me if you can build a perpetual motion machine operating by the force of gravity. Anyway, I think gravity is more complicated than its common reputation. The function appears to be to hold things in place without having them smash into each other or fly away from each other. It allows us to have relationships with people, places, and things. It holds us to the ground, but also has an infinite reach gently keeping everything connected in the universe. It can also be a dangerous thing...falling pianos, etc.
(Personally, I think that gravity is a byproduct of an object and does not exist separately from objects.)
E=mc2 has greatly affected the larger culture, and in that way it has affected me as well. E=mc2 took scientific thinking from absolutes to relativity. Perhaps this sort of thinking is what led to the 60s, and LSD experimentation, and cubist art...and the civil rights movement and the women's movement...who can be certain? All of those openings in the collective conciousness have impacted me positively. E=mc2 also led to nuclear energy and the atomic bomb. Chernobyl and Hiroshima. Lots of death and destruction. I was sixteen when the Chernobyl disaster happened. I recall those images of devistation and suffering well. These images led me into a more activist mindset, a realization that big plans by governments and scientists can lead to a great deal of suffering for others. I would really like to say that overwhelmingly I feel that Einstein's work has affected me in a positive way, but frankly I think the world might be a better place without it. Maybe I romanticize the caveman days but I don't think technological "advances" or an understanding of space through physics has led us to a better place than would otherwise be with us still crawling around in the trees like squirrels. We are ending up with the same realizations through physics that mystics told us thousands of years ago -- the world is connected, we are connected to everything in it, etc. Too bad we have had to go through all of this investigation and suffering in order to bring us back home, but I guess that's what growing up is all about. The only place to go now is to keep moving forward to try to find the god particle, which I imagine will either destroy us completely or liberate us...perhaps it's one and the same.
How would you compare the four forces?
Strong nuclear force
Weak nuclear force
Electromagnetic force
Gravity
Gravity and electromagnetism are apparent in the "everyday" world and have an infinite reach. The strong and weak nuclear forces are found only in the nucleus of an atom. Except for the weak nuclear force, the forces hold the universe together from the smallest bit to the largest bit like a chain. The strong force holds the nucleus of an atom together, electromagnetism holds the atom together, and gravity holds the planets, stars and galaxies together. The weak force causes particles to decay. Apparently physicists can't seem to put their finger on gravity, which is kind of funny to me since gravity can really put the finger on us (falling apples and pianos...our bodies are stuck here on this planet and yet where is the graviton?)...We don't know how gravity is transmitted, yet we know how the other forces are transmitted (photons, gluons, W and Z particles. Physicists believe that if they can tie all these forces together and prove they are the product of some larger force, they will then have found god, or in scientific terms, the one unified force that blew everything apart in the big bang. I have an inkling the answer might be found in superstring theory.
In superstring theory there are "extra" dimensions of spacetime. I think these extra dimensions do still exist at the subatomic level and that when the big bang happened the other dimensions inverted and became really, really tiny (subatomic particles).
What is the function of gravity?
One day I watched a dish drying in the dish rack knock over another dish and I got the apparently silly idea that we could use gravity as energy--it's always present and always pulling things down. When I looked into it, however, it turned out scientists have often made a big joke of this idea...it still seems kind of possible to me if you can build a perpetual motion machine operating by the force of gravity. Anyway, I think gravity is more complicated than its common reputation. The function appears to be to hold things in place without having them smash into each other or fly away from each other. It allows us to have relationships with people, places, and things. It holds us to the ground, but also has an infinite reach gently keeping everything connected in the universe. It can also be a dangerous thing...falling pianos, etc.
(Personally, I think that gravity is a byproduct of an object and does not exist separately from objects.)
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Week Three: Synchronicity
What evidence can you find for synchronicity?
It is commonplace to call someone and for them to say "I was just thinking about you!" Or to wake up and get dressed and find you have on the exact same colors as your partner -- which one of you is going to have to go change? Or to be flat broke and suddenly an unexpected check shows up in the mail (this has happened to me on a number of occasions!). If you begin to pay attention, sychronicities pop up all over the place.
My previous blog entry goes into significant detail about synchronicities I have experienced in my own life. Most recently last Tuesday I had this experience rather profoundly. Around noon I was experiencing a deeply unsettled feeling like something bad had happened, or was going to happen. This feeling wasn't connected to anything in the present that I could put my finger on and it went beyond the feeling one gets from having too much caffeine. It was so troubling that I called my husband to ask him if everything was okay, and to ask if everything was okay with his family, etc. Everything was fine. Two hours later as I sat in a meeting at work on the UC Berkeley campus seven shots rang out in the air in front of our building and a man lay dying in the parking lot. When I got home that evening and told my husband what had happened he asked, "Did that happen before or after you called me?" It had happened after. And suddenly my uneasy feeling made a lot of sense to both of us -- so much so that we did not question the cause of my feeling. It was clearly a premonition.
Here is a story about synchronicity, similar to the one Carl Jung describes when working with his patient who had the golden scarab dream. It comes from the webiste of Dr. Leslie Gray, a Native American psychologist (www.woodfish.org):
The Reality of Power Animals
For a shaman, the guardian spirit or power animal a person meets on a shamanic journey is just as real in non-ordinary reality as a rock or a bear or a human being is in ordinary reality. These entities are not mere figments of the imagination, projections of the unconscious, or useful symbols for personality integration, as psychotherapy might describe them.
The way Gray treated a client who came to her with a nightmare illustrates the difference between shamanism and psychotherapy. The client, who had been working with Gray for a couple of months, was under considerable stress. She had recently divorced and moved to the area, had not yet found work and was living with a new lover. The night after a session in which Gray had restored her guardian spirit, the woman dreamed that a red spider attached itself to her vagina. At her next session with Gray, she asked what this meant. Rather than launch into dream interpretation as a psychotherapist might have done, Gray explained to her that analysis is only one way of working with dreams. The shamanic way would be to remove the spider rather than interpret its meaning.The client agreed to let Gray conduct a classic shamanic ceremony for removing harmful power intrusions.
As Gray prepared to enter non-ordinary reality, a spider crawled across the pillow on which she was sitting. She picked it up, held it in her open palm and showed it to the client. The client turned pale and shrieked. The spider in Gray's palm was the same red color and had the same markings as the one in her nightmare. Gray took the ordinary spider outside, released it, and returned to the task of removing the non-ordinary spider.
After the session, the woman improved dramatically. She began to interview for jobs and actively pursue new friendships. She also reported feeling more energy. She no longer described herself as depressed. Gray does not claim to know what the nightmare meant or why removing both the ordinary and the non-ordinary spider appeared to have such a beneficial effect. Analyzing the problem and its resolution is not of great importance to her. What she does know is that the techniques worked, and that's enough for her.
In the red spider case, Gray directly intervened to empower a person she considered dispirited. Such intervention is not always necessary. Often people can heal themselves using shamanic techniques even if they have no previous experience with shamanism.
Based on what you know, how would you explain connectivity?
I feel that connectivity and sychronicity are caused by consciousness. Many seemingly inexplicable things might be explained if we would be willing to attribute more power to the invisible transmission of consciousness. But science has for many hundreds of years seemed to want to bring everything down to a mundane level in order to extricate the ideas of "religion" and "superstition" from the "real world." "Seeing is believing." It is perhaps naively hopeful to think that nothing exists outside of what we can perceive with our limited human senses. And, I would propose, not as much fun!
In medicine there are concepts such as the placebo effect and spontaneous remissions and studies pointing to the power of prayer in healing. In physics we have evidence of quantum entanglement and the power of the observer to impact that which is observed. In daily life we have all had experiences like "deja vu," "intuition," and some degree of "ESP." In biology we have unexplained "mutations" occurring in the genetic code and holes in the evolutionary record, leaps in form from one state of being to another. How can one really explain butterflies whose coloring mimics poisonous butterflies as a defense mechanism, or who have evolved to look like they have owl eyes on their wings? Simply evolution? I kind of don't think so...
Consciousness. Consciousness as an energy that exists outside the boundaries of space and time. In my early twenties some friends and I were fooling around with a modern version of the Ouija board. I had become a complete disbeliever in everything invisible before then. The messages that came through that board in those magical months were astounding and profound. One of unforgettable messages was: "What you believe you will find." These experiences we had with the Ouija board showed evidence, in my mind, to a connectivity with conscious energy. And the message of this energy communicating through the board said to us, basically, the power of the mind is profound.
David Bohm said "Reality" means "everything you can think about" as reality is derived from the roots "thing" and "think." I ask if another interpretation of this might be that reality is every thing you can think into existence.
Furthermore, consciousness is not something that belongs only to us big-brained humans. Before modern science most cultures the world over had a belief in animism -- extending consciousness to everything. Now in modern physics, matter that is supposed to be "dead" and predictable shows signs of being impacted by observation and behaves in a most uncertain fashion. If we all come from the same stardust, are made up of essentially the same matter, wouldn't it follow that not just human beings have consciousness? That we are intimately connected with everything in the universe?
So, based on what I know, I explain connectivity as a universal consciousness that pulses through every little bit of the universe.
It is commonplace to call someone and for them to say "I was just thinking about you!" Or to wake up and get dressed and find you have on the exact same colors as your partner -- which one of you is going to have to go change? Or to be flat broke and suddenly an unexpected check shows up in the mail (this has happened to me on a number of occasions!). If you begin to pay attention, sychronicities pop up all over the place.
My previous blog entry goes into significant detail about synchronicities I have experienced in my own life. Most recently last Tuesday I had this experience rather profoundly. Around noon I was experiencing a deeply unsettled feeling like something bad had happened, or was going to happen. This feeling wasn't connected to anything in the present that I could put my finger on and it went beyond the feeling one gets from having too much caffeine. It was so troubling that I called my husband to ask him if everything was okay, and to ask if everything was okay with his family, etc. Everything was fine. Two hours later as I sat in a meeting at work on the UC Berkeley campus seven shots rang out in the air in front of our building and a man lay dying in the parking lot. When I got home that evening and told my husband what had happened he asked, "Did that happen before or after you called me?" It had happened after. And suddenly my uneasy feeling made a lot of sense to both of us -- so much so that we did not question the cause of my feeling. It was clearly a premonition.
Here is a story about synchronicity, similar to the one Carl Jung describes when working with his patient who had the golden scarab dream. It comes from the webiste of Dr. Leslie Gray, a Native American psychologist (www.woodfish.org):
The Reality of Power Animals
For a shaman, the guardian spirit or power animal a person meets on a shamanic journey is just as real in non-ordinary reality as a rock or a bear or a human being is in ordinary reality. These entities are not mere figments of the imagination, projections of the unconscious, or useful symbols for personality integration, as psychotherapy might describe them.
The way Gray treated a client who came to her with a nightmare illustrates the difference between shamanism and psychotherapy. The client, who had been working with Gray for a couple of months, was under considerable stress. She had recently divorced and moved to the area, had not yet found work and was living with a new lover. The night after a session in which Gray had restored her guardian spirit, the woman dreamed that a red spider attached itself to her vagina. At her next session with Gray, she asked what this meant. Rather than launch into dream interpretation as a psychotherapist might have done, Gray explained to her that analysis is only one way of working with dreams. The shamanic way would be to remove the spider rather than interpret its meaning.The client agreed to let Gray conduct a classic shamanic ceremony for removing harmful power intrusions.
As Gray prepared to enter non-ordinary reality, a spider crawled across the pillow on which she was sitting. She picked it up, held it in her open palm and showed it to the client. The client turned pale and shrieked. The spider in Gray's palm was the same red color and had the same markings as the one in her nightmare. Gray took the ordinary spider outside, released it, and returned to the task of removing the non-ordinary spider.
After the session, the woman improved dramatically. She began to interview for jobs and actively pursue new friendships. She also reported feeling more energy. She no longer described herself as depressed. Gray does not claim to know what the nightmare meant or why removing both the ordinary and the non-ordinary spider appeared to have such a beneficial effect. Analyzing the problem and its resolution is not of great importance to her. What she does know is that the techniques worked, and that's enough for her.
In the red spider case, Gray directly intervened to empower a person she considered dispirited. Such intervention is not always necessary. Often people can heal themselves using shamanic techniques even if they have no previous experience with shamanism.
Based on what you know, how would you explain connectivity?
I feel that connectivity and sychronicity are caused by consciousness. Many seemingly inexplicable things might be explained if we would be willing to attribute more power to the invisible transmission of consciousness. But science has for many hundreds of years seemed to want to bring everything down to a mundane level in order to extricate the ideas of "religion" and "superstition" from the "real world." "Seeing is believing." It is perhaps naively hopeful to think that nothing exists outside of what we can perceive with our limited human senses. And, I would propose, not as much fun!
In medicine there are concepts such as the placebo effect and spontaneous remissions and studies pointing to the power of prayer in healing. In physics we have evidence of quantum entanglement and the power of the observer to impact that which is observed. In daily life we have all had experiences like "deja vu," "intuition," and some degree of "ESP." In biology we have unexplained "mutations" occurring in the genetic code and holes in the evolutionary record, leaps in form from one state of being to another. How can one really explain butterflies whose coloring mimics poisonous butterflies as a defense mechanism, or who have evolved to look like they have owl eyes on their wings? Simply evolution? I kind of don't think so...
Consciousness. Consciousness as an energy that exists outside the boundaries of space and time. In my early twenties some friends and I were fooling around with a modern version of the Ouija board. I had become a complete disbeliever in everything invisible before then. The messages that came through that board in those magical months were astounding and profound. One of unforgettable messages was: "What you believe you will find." These experiences we had with the Ouija board showed evidence, in my mind, to a connectivity with conscious energy. And the message of this energy communicating through the board said to us, basically, the power of the mind is profound.
David Bohm said "Reality" means "everything you can think about" as reality is derived from the roots "thing" and "think." I ask if another interpretation of this might be that reality is every thing you can think into existence.
Furthermore, consciousness is not something that belongs only to us big-brained humans. Before modern science most cultures the world over had a belief in animism -- extending consciousness to everything. Now in modern physics, matter that is supposed to be "dead" and predictable shows signs of being impacted by observation and behaves in a most uncertain fashion. If we all come from the same stardust, are made up of essentially the same matter, wouldn't it follow that not just human beings have consciousness? That we are intimately connected with everything in the universe?
So, based on what I know, I explain connectivity as a universal consciousness that pulses through every little bit of the universe.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Week Two: Quantum Mechanics & Thoughts on Synchronicity
guess who's going to have trouble with the 500 word limit on the mid-term paper? um...sorry this is so long. I will shoot for more brevity next time around.
Uncertainty
Physics is like real life. It’s funny that we’re all so stunned that there is something in science that is uncertain. Scientists are used to setting up controlled experiments with a clear outcome. We've all come to expect this. But if we step out of the science experiment, into our messy lives--psychology, emotion, spirit, human relationships, relationships with other living beings--all of it is uncertain. We are all so entangled, and there are so many factors, billions of perspectives to the same event, an infinite number of outcomes...there is always a large degree of uncertainty. If you get into your car to drive to the store to buy a loaf of bread any number of things might happen. You might never come home. You might meet an old friend. You might find a stray puppy. The store might be out of bread...though when we got into our car, the purpose was certain, and the outcome was certain: drive to store, get a loaf of bread. Sometimes we like to live our lives like a science experiment.
We can strongly predict the behavior of that which is not "alive." When that which is not alive behaves unpredictably, we are confused.
In regard to this quantum question, the Uncertainty Principle, it tells us that we can measure only one quantity of a subatomic particle at a time because the behavior of a single particle is so unpredictable. This would suggest to me that perhaps subatomic particles possess consciousness...perhaps they are "alive," operating from some internal will and not following some law of physics as the "dead" matter at the atomic level does.
If the observation of the particle influences the particle’s behavior, and if light is behaving as both particle and wave, depending on what we do with it and what we try to observe, perhaps there is some sort of communication going on here, and transfer of mental energy from one seed of consciousness to another?
The only thing left to do really is scratch our heads and smile in wonder. And perhaps play with these little subatomic particles that like to surprise and elude us like tricksters.
Causality
It seems almost silly, living in the real world, to even begin to think that each effect has just one cause and each “cause” has just one effect. The only place where this very clear cut sequence of actions happens is in a controlled environment. Still even in those controlled environments, there is always a “margin of error”; something that scientists tend to ignore, accept, keep quiet about. What is happening in that margin of error? That question intrigues me...
I love the concept of the Butterfly Effect, made popular by the epynonymous movie of 2004. Some little event can have, and I would bet always does have, multiple effects, rippling outwards, impacting so much more than one might ever suspect. An example:
My friend Lyle had his bike stolen. The direct impact/effect of this is that he now rides a different bike. Cause, effect. But the situation is so much more complicated than this. The impact of his stolen bike ripples out: His friend Anthony had a junky old bike he would give to Lyle. Anthony had to wait for me to drive Lyle over to his house to pick up the new bike. While Lyle was getting the bike Anthony gave him a photocopied book--200 loose pages-- which Lyle set on a parked car as we maneuvered the bike into the back of my truck. The wind kicked up. Two hundred loose pages went fluttering down the middle of the street. The neighbors saw. We dropped the bike and chased the papers down the street. It was exhilarating and a beautiful sight to see. I was laughing and laughing. We recovered all but ten of those pages. Lyle needed that book for school. He did not read those ten missing pages. Perhaps those ten pages would have been life changing for him. Perhaps he failed his test because those were the most important ten pages. Was the cause of him failing his test because he got bike stolen? And what caused the bicycle thief to steal his bike? And on and on...We are all intricately connected in chaos...billions of fluttering pages bumping into each other causing this and that...And by the way, because his bike got stolen now Lyle knows how to fix up an old bike...
Is the Universe weird?
Yes, I think so. I think it is so much stranger than we allow ourselves to admit on a daily basis. I’m not sure we could survive if we paid attention to all the oddities of the Universe. What would happen if the whole world tripped on acid at once? Do we need some collective story about how things work in a predictable fashion in order to survive? It seems so. Most tribal societies had one designated shaman...the one who was allowed to pay attention to the weirdness. Who will find the food, cook the dinner, and build the house if we are all tripping on acid and paying attention to the weirdness?
Thoughts on Synchronicity...
Since I left Washington state five years ago the guiding forces that exist in the world have pushed me to engage more with planet earth, and less with the mystical, meta-cerebral realm in which I have lived most of my life. These days, I often feel like an alien, having come into "civilization" just recently and having missed many of the real world experiences that most other people seem to have had. It's "Welcome to Earth 101." The world used to feel so easy--just the right person, thing, or idea, would pop into my life as if on cue. My dreams were sacred messages from a higher, more enlightened world. "Synchronicity" was a common experience for me. I was being given a great deal of help from some place else, and welcomed it readily, relied upon it heavily.
I moved to California based on a synchronicity. Growing weary of teaching second grade for many years, I put forth the wish to work with wild animals. Within about three weeks I had landed a job in California working directly with gorillas. Shortly after arriving in California I began seeing a shaman (actually a sha-woman) on a regular basis. I was attempting to break through some blockages I felt in my heart of hearts and she showed up to help. During the first visit she looked at me, listened to me, and then pronouced, "We look at three things: your mind, your body, and your heart. Your mind is in good working order, your body is healthy...it is your heart we need to focus on." I left her apartment that day, crossed the street, and noticed a scrap of paper blowing along the sidewalk. I bent down to pick it up. It was folded in half. I opened it. The only thing on this paper were two hand-drawn hearts, mirroring each other. Later the sha-woman explained to me that I was on a vision quest. Many more unbelievable synchronicities occurred during the months that I visited her. Ideas in my head, or stories I was reading would manifest exactly, almost immediately, in the physical world.
Just before this time, I began to get this clear message that my direct connection with the "other" world was about to end. I was being asked to stand on my own two feet, to learn to trust MYSELF, to connect with the earth, the here and now. It was as if someone had been holding me my whole life, and now was pushing me off, up, to stand by myself, like learning to walk. I saw the sha-woman for several months, but still felt as if my life were not manifesting in ways that is "should" be, or could be. There was still the blockage.
It has been four or five years since I was pushed from the arms of what feels to me like the great spirit. I have been walking "on my own" during this time. It has been the most difficult period of my life. I am learning and growing tremendously, but it hasn't been easy. I have learned to use a screw gun, to grow my own food, to fix broken things, to notice how things are built...and I am aware of my own energy more and more and the intricacies of relationships (and the difficulties) are more apparent to me...I have learned to notice when I feel grounded and when I feel ungrounded. Synchronicities seem few and far between these days...they are like some distant memory. So much so, that I had almost forgotten the unbelieveable synchronicities of my time seeing the sha-woman until I read these links assigned to us for class. Maybe it is a coincidence, or maybe a synchronicity...maybe it is time to merge the two worlds. I hope I'm ready.
Uncertainty
Physics is like real life. It’s funny that we’re all so stunned that there is something in science that is uncertain. Scientists are used to setting up controlled experiments with a clear outcome. We've all come to expect this. But if we step out of the science experiment, into our messy lives--psychology, emotion, spirit, human relationships, relationships with other living beings--all of it is uncertain. We are all so entangled, and there are so many factors, billions of perspectives to the same event, an infinite number of outcomes...there is always a large degree of uncertainty. If you get into your car to drive to the store to buy a loaf of bread any number of things might happen. You might never come home. You might meet an old friend. You might find a stray puppy. The store might be out of bread...though when we got into our car, the purpose was certain, and the outcome was certain: drive to store, get a loaf of bread. Sometimes we like to live our lives like a science experiment.
We can strongly predict the behavior of that which is not "alive." When that which is not alive behaves unpredictably, we are confused.
In regard to this quantum question, the Uncertainty Principle, it tells us that we can measure only one quantity of a subatomic particle at a time because the behavior of a single particle is so unpredictable. This would suggest to me that perhaps subatomic particles possess consciousness...perhaps they are "alive," operating from some internal will and not following some law of physics as the "dead" matter at the atomic level does.
If the observation of the particle influences the particle’s behavior, and if light is behaving as both particle and wave, depending on what we do with it and what we try to observe, perhaps there is some sort of communication going on here, and transfer of mental energy from one seed of consciousness to another?
The only thing left to do really is scratch our heads and smile in wonder. And perhaps play with these little subatomic particles that like to surprise and elude us like tricksters.
Causality
It seems almost silly, living in the real world, to even begin to think that each effect has just one cause and each “cause” has just one effect. The only place where this very clear cut sequence of actions happens is in a controlled environment. Still even in those controlled environments, there is always a “margin of error”; something that scientists tend to ignore, accept, keep quiet about. What is happening in that margin of error? That question intrigues me...
I love the concept of the Butterfly Effect, made popular by the epynonymous movie of 2004. Some little event can have, and I would bet always does have, multiple effects, rippling outwards, impacting so much more than one might ever suspect. An example:
My friend Lyle had his bike stolen. The direct impact/effect of this is that he now rides a different bike. Cause, effect. But the situation is so much more complicated than this. The impact of his stolen bike ripples out: His friend Anthony had a junky old bike he would give to Lyle. Anthony had to wait for me to drive Lyle over to his house to pick up the new bike. While Lyle was getting the bike Anthony gave him a photocopied book--200 loose pages-- which Lyle set on a parked car as we maneuvered the bike into the back of my truck. The wind kicked up. Two hundred loose pages went fluttering down the middle of the street. The neighbors saw. We dropped the bike and chased the papers down the street. It was exhilarating and a beautiful sight to see. I was laughing and laughing. We recovered all but ten of those pages. Lyle needed that book for school. He did not read those ten missing pages. Perhaps those ten pages would have been life changing for him. Perhaps he failed his test because those were the most important ten pages. Was the cause of him failing his test because he got bike stolen? And what caused the bicycle thief to steal his bike? And on and on...We are all intricately connected in chaos...billions of fluttering pages bumping into each other causing this and that...And by the way, because his bike got stolen now Lyle knows how to fix up an old bike...
Is the Universe weird?
Yes, I think so. I think it is so much stranger than we allow ourselves to admit on a daily basis. I’m not sure we could survive if we paid attention to all the oddities of the Universe. What would happen if the whole world tripped on acid at once? Do we need some collective story about how things work in a predictable fashion in order to survive? It seems so. Most tribal societies had one designated shaman...the one who was allowed to pay attention to the weirdness. Who will find the food, cook the dinner, and build the house if we are all tripping on acid and paying attention to the weirdness?
Thoughts on Synchronicity...
Since I left Washington state five years ago the guiding forces that exist in the world have pushed me to engage more with planet earth, and less with the mystical, meta-cerebral realm in which I have lived most of my life. These days, I often feel like an alien, having come into "civilization" just recently and having missed many of the real world experiences that most other people seem to have had. It's "Welcome to Earth 101." The world used to feel so easy--just the right person, thing, or idea, would pop into my life as if on cue. My dreams were sacred messages from a higher, more enlightened world. "Synchronicity" was a common experience for me. I was being given a great deal of help from some place else, and welcomed it readily, relied upon it heavily.
I moved to California based on a synchronicity. Growing weary of teaching second grade for many years, I put forth the wish to work with wild animals. Within about three weeks I had landed a job in California working directly with gorillas. Shortly after arriving in California I began seeing a shaman (actually a sha-woman) on a regular basis. I was attempting to break through some blockages I felt in my heart of hearts and she showed up to help. During the first visit she looked at me, listened to me, and then pronouced, "We look at three things: your mind, your body, and your heart. Your mind is in good working order, your body is healthy...it is your heart we need to focus on." I left her apartment that day, crossed the street, and noticed a scrap of paper blowing along the sidewalk. I bent down to pick it up. It was folded in half. I opened it. The only thing on this paper were two hand-drawn hearts, mirroring each other. Later the sha-woman explained to me that I was on a vision quest. Many more unbelievable synchronicities occurred during the months that I visited her. Ideas in my head, or stories I was reading would manifest exactly, almost immediately, in the physical world.
Just before this time, I began to get this clear message that my direct connection with the "other" world was about to end. I was being asked to stand on my own two feet, to learn to trust MYSELF, to connect with the earth, the here and now. It was as if someone had been holding me my whole life, and now was pushing me off, up, to stand by myself, like learning to walk. I saw the sha-woman for several months, but still felt as if my life were not manifesting in ways that is "should" be, or could be. There was still the blockage.
It has been four or five years since I was pushed from the arms of what feels to me like the great spirit. I have been walking "on my own" during this time. It has been the most difficult period of my life. I am learning and growing tremendously, but it hasn't been easy. I have learned to use a screw gun, to grow my own food, to fix broken things, to notice how things are built...and I am aware of my own energy more and more and the intricacies of relationships (and the difficulties) are more apparent to me...I have learned to notice when I feel grounded and when I feel ungrounded. Synchronicities seem few and far between these days...they are like some distant memory. So much so, that I had almost forgotten the unbelieveable synchronicities of my time seeing the sha-woman until I read these links assigned to us for class. Maybe it is a coincidence, or maybe a synchronicity...maybe it is time to merge the two worlds. I hope I'm ready.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Week One: The Meaning of Time
A. Answers to this week's quiz:
1. What attracts me to Chinese Medicine...
The basic premise that humans are part of the natural world--a premise I think is integral to Chinese Medicine--sits right with my inner compass. Curved lines, the cycles of the earth, wild wisdom, the pull of the full moon, the open sky, running in the wind, floating in the ocean, building a campfire, digging in the dirt, meeting eyes with a squirrel, a hummingbird, a harbor seal, a grizzly bear...well... I feel at peace with these experiences (the grizzly bear was behind a large fence!) more so than with cold tile floors, windows that won't open, sirens and alarms, perfect angles, wall to wall carpeting, and the belief in scientific absolutes. What does it mean to be well? What does it mean to be sick? I see a lot of people out there sleeping on the streets driven mad by our human-made structures and "order", and not getting well after ten minutes in a doctor's office and a lifetime of drugs...I see a lot of people dressed tightly in costume following the leader and dying of heart attacks, with a belief that they must squeeze themselves in to this mechanical order of contemporary "civilization"...There is hope with Chinese Medicine. And the practice has been around for thousands of years. I'm betting something wise has been learned in that time.
My attraction to the healing arts stems from an in-born passion to know the human body and mind. I want to transform my knack for identifying the location of someone else's pain into helping to heal that pain. In most cases the removal of their suffering will lead to a reduction in suffering for us all.
2. What do I honestly think of Physics, really?
Physics is one way of looking at the world. It is no more--or less--relevant than poetry. It's a lens, a path of investigation, and one that, like poetry, has yielded some fine stories. However, the rules that physicists have birthed can be used for large scale destruction. Come to think of it, though, poetry may have led to some bloody revolutions...so yes, physics is like poetry. Of all the sciences it seems to be the most poetic, the most willing to investigate the invisible, the most mystical. If I had to choose one branch of science to be my religion, it would be physics. Where the questions are bigger than the answers. I like that.
3. Now that I think about it, have I ever experienced time slowing down?
About six years ago, laying in a strange bed hundreds of miles from home, time stopped for me. It was like walking into the point between being asleep and being awake, though I was fully awake. It felt like "time" had become a sphere, as though I had entered into wormhole, and there around me was always. The past, present, future didn't exist, only there with me then was eternity. Now was forever. There was no yesterday, no tomorrow. Something with the air was different; it felt as if my lungs had never breathed before that moment. Everything hovered and buzzed in peace.
B. My reflections on this week's class: The Meaning of Time
This was a "timely" class for me. I've been thinking about clocks recently--wanting to get rid of them. Without clocks--and without being so caught up in time--the world would, I presume, become much more vibrant, animated, and real. Just like it does when I go on an Internet diet. You're forced to get your head out of the flattened two-dimensional world and then the eyes pop open, allowing greater richness, clarity, and dimension. Without time, the world becomes embodied. There is space.
Our westernized conception of time is kind of a bummer for me. I am often "late"; wanting to finish what I'm doing and resenting some pre-arranged agreement to be ready for something at a certain time. How the heck am I to know what's going to happen between now and then? How do I know how I'm going to feel when the time comes?
I think it's trippy, to use a very scientific word, that physicists are investigating things like what happened in the first milliseconds after the Big Bang occured. I like considering ideas like black holes and white holes because I think they are metaphors for the rest of life. As I said above, maybe not so plainly, I think the discoveries we find in physics is just God talking to us in another language that some people are inclined to speak. Similar lessons could be learned from the mundane experience of buying ice cream.
I would like to more deeply understand many of the concepts that were brought up in class so that my thinking about them is not so immature.
C. Impressions on the links about Quantum Mechanics:
I felt a little crazy after pursuing those links on Quantum Mechanics. I kept wanting to understand the content better which led me deeper and deeper into thought chaos. Coming out of it, with my mind swirling, I realized a few things:
Time = Change
The only constant is change--if you are looking for a constant to find comfort in, go for that one because it is the only constant there is.
Physics seems to be all about motion. I read on one of those web sites, "Nothing can ever be at rest." Whoa. Doesn't the universe ever get tired?
I shouldn't get my mind all wrapped up in physics theories and go out and try to use a screwgun. I got really mixed up by the real world all of a sudden. I think I need to integrate the theory and doing parts of my brain better...it made for a difficult morning trying to build some simple flower beds. I just kept thinking "What is light?" and "Time doesn't exist!" and "A time machine will never work because everything is happening all at once. Running time backwards assumes time is linear and that the changes never happened!" and finally, " "How many physicists have gone mad!?" Meanwhile, I had to fix a lot of crookedly screwed together pieces of wood...
This is an interesting link I found on scientific inventiveness and sanity... http://www.uh.edu/engines/ut-1.htm
1. What attracts me to Chinese Medicine...
The basic premise that humans are part of the natural world--a premise I think is integral to Chinese Medicine--sits right with my inner compass. Curved lines, the cycles of the earth, wild wisdom, the pull of the full moon, the open sky, running in the wind, floating in the ocean, building a campfire, digging in the dirt, meeting eyes with a squirrel, a hummingbird, a harbor seal, a grizzly bear...well... I feel at peace with these experiences (the grizzly bear was behind a large fence!) more so than with cold tile floors, windows that won't open, sirens and alarms, perfect angles, wall to wall carpeting, and the belief in scientific absolutes. What does it mean to be well? What does it mean to be sick? I see a lot of people out there sleeping on the streets driven mad by our human-made structures and "order", and not getting well after ten minutes in a doctor's office and a lifetime of drugs...I see a lot of people dressed tightly in costume following the leader and dying of heart attacks, with a belief that they must squeeze themselves in to this mechanical order of contemporary "civilization"...There is hope with Chinese Medicine. And the practice has been around for thousands of years. I'm betting something wise has been learned in that time.
My attraction to the healing arts stems from an in-born passion to know the human body and mind. I want to transform my knack for identifying the location of someone else's pain into helping to heal that pain. In most cases the removal of their suffering will lead to a reduction in suffering for us all.
2. What do I honestly think of Physics, really?
Physics is one way of looking at the world. It is no more--or less--relevant than poetry. It's a lens, a path of investigation, and one that, like poetry, has yielded some fine stories. However, the rules that physicists have birthed can be used for large scale destruction. Come to think of it, though, poetry may have led to some bloody revolutions...so yes, physics is like poetry. Of all the sciences it seems to be the most poetic, the most willing to investigate the invisible, the most mystical. If I had to choose one branch of science to be my religion, it would be physics. Where the questions are bigger than the answers. I like that.
3. Now that I think about it, have I ever experienced time slowing down?
About six years ago, laying in a strange bed hundreds of miles from home, time stopped for me. It was like walking into the point between being asleep and being awake, though I was fully awake. It felt like "time" had become a sphere, as though I had entered into wormhole, and there around me was always. The past, present, future didn't exist, only there with me then was eternity. Now was forever. There was no yesterday, no tomorrow. Something with the air was different; it felt as if my lungs had never breathed before that moment. Everything hovered and buzzed in peace.
B. My reflections on this week's class: The Meaning of Time
This was a "timely" class for me. I've been thinking about clocks recently--wanting to get rid of them. Without clocks--and without being so caught up in time--the world would, I presume, become much more vibrant, animated, and real. Just like it does when I go on an Internet diet. You're forced to get your head out of the flattened two-dimensional world and then the eyes pop open, allowing greater richness, clarity, and dimension. Without time, the world becomes embodied. There is space.
Our westernized conception of time is kind of a bummer for me. I am often "late"; wanting to finish what I'm doing and resenting some pre-arranged agreement to be ready for something at a certain time. How the heck am I to know what's going to happen between now and then? How do I know how I'm going to feel when the time comes?
I think it's trippy, to use a very scientific word, that physicists are investigating things like what happened in the first milliseconds after the Big Bang occured. I like considering ideas like black holes and white holes because I think they are metaphors for the rest of life. As I said above, maybe not so plainly, I think the discoveries we find in physics is just God talking to us in another language that some people are inclined to speak. Similar lessons could be learned from the mundane experience of buying ice cream.
I would like to more deeply understand many of the concepts that were brought up in class so that my thinking about them is not so immature.
C. Impressions on the links about Quantum Mechanics:
I felt a little crazy after pursuing those links on Quantum Mechanics. I kept wanting to understand the content better which led me deeper and deeper into thought chaos. Coming out of it, with my mind swirling, I realized a few things:
Time = Change
The only constant is change--if you are looking for a constant to find comfort in, go for that one because it is the only constant there is.
Physics seems to be all about motion. I read on one of those web sites, "Nothing can ever be at rest." Whoa. Doesn't the universe ever get tired?
I shouldn't get my mind all wrapped up in physics theories and go out and try to use a screwgun. I got really mixed up by the real world all of a sudden. I think I need to integrate the theory and doing parts of my brain better...it made for a difficult morning trying to build some simple flower beds. I just kept thinking "What is light?" and "Time doesn't exist!" and "A time machine will never work because everything is happening all at once. Running time backwards assumes time is linear and that the changes never happened!" and finally, " "How many physicists have gone mad!?" Meanwhile, I had to fix a lot of crookedly screwed together pieces of wood...
This is an interesting link I found on scientific inventiveness and sanity... http://www.uh.edu/engines/ut-1.htm
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