Time and Energy

I was chatting earlier and got into a discussion about physics, the description of reality, and energy. The person I was chatting with appeared to take the position that physics can account for everything—all phenomena can be described in terms of energy. I mentioned that we’re not even sure what energy is, but he claimed that energy is a signal is information. But, I protested, this is mere tautology: it tells us nothing more about what energy is than the fact that maybe we have more than one word for it.

So I look up energy, and the Wikipedia entry has a great quote of Richard Feynman:

“There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law; it is exact, so far we know. The law is called conservation of energy; it states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity, which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number, and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.”

So, energy, as understood by physics, is ultimately without any properties other than a corresponding number. However, it also has many different appearances, and it is transition from one form to another that appears as motion or activity, and has more to do with the word’s etymology as “active,” “operation,” and “working.” Thus, there is a seeming paradox when it comes to energy: relative to a defined frame of reference, the activity of energy in a given space over time creates the phenomena that manifests within that space; however, the energy of the system remains identical to itself—it does not change. So what we find about energy appears to be that it changes in space over time, but it doesn’t change at all.

I also chatted with this person about how we don’t really understand what time is. Hir position was that we did, and that it could be understood as steps of progress in mutations, which seems to have intuitive merit; however, this merit, it seems to me, is based upon our perceptions of experiences as embedded within time, and not an understanding of time itself. Given that ‘space-time’ has no properties, but instead defines the dimensions of the system or structure in which energy exists, and that energy is merely some unchanging number, I’m not sure how we come to an understanding of what time is beyond a product of our own perceptions of something that, ultimately, does not change.

In other words, time makes no damn sense at all. And yet, this absurdity seems to be our reality.

Something Elsewhere

I wrote the following for an online community of which I'm a member, but I wanted to post it here too as it has everything to do with what this blog is about. Now, I know it might not make total sense because the context has been removed, but it relates some of the ideas I hold about our reality, the ways in which in interpret it, and how to examine such a mode of interpretation. Without further ado, here is the post:

Hurm...maybe don't give up the goat so quickly? I mean, maybe you didn't get it all right, but sure as shit ya' didn't get it all wrong either, and where some critiques might be valid, I bet dollars to donuts none of the detractors, ultimately, have it all right either.

See here’s some of the thing—and fer sure this is simply from how I got it reckoned, and maybe some of it’s right, but I’d be struck dead by whatever force you (reader) happen to believe in if it should contain no error. So yeah, well there is undeniably a distinction drawn in QBL between RHP and LHP, this is, as has at least been hinted by some of the folks above, not exclusive to QBL by any means, nor is it merely a strictly Western way of creating categories of our experiences.

In fact, I’d hazard that in almost any tradition there is something within the interpretive structure that defines distinction between ‘right’ and ‘left’. ‘Cause really, right and left are a basic tool we use to orient ourselves in the physical world, and this, being based on the interpretation of physical space, is fairly entrenched in the psyche of an experiencing being. Humans, being so damn complicated, are bound to create meaning out of such fundamental distinction, and so, make connections with all sorts of other meaningful structures within both their personal and social “reality tunnel(s).” Again, this is at least a means to orient oneself not only physically, but mentally/spiritually what-have-you—it creates a space within which we can attempt to know ourselves in virtue of our interpretation of the information that occupies this space.

To put it all a little differently, without a sense of left and right, well, we’d be cut off from a whole dimension of experiencing. So yeah, the basic dichotomy of ‘right’ and ‘left’ seem very real, and to some people who believe in some particular interpretive structure, the meaningful associations made with these orientations are also real—they are used to create categories which aid in identification, a means to understand.

But that all said, it’s not only important to recognize and acknowledge the reality of dichotomies, it’s also equally important to understand their deconstruction and unity. Thus, your attempt in the original post to weave a synthesis of polarities, and relate your understanding of the unity and/or “falsehood” of the particular dichotomy you define seems to me a means to deeper understanding and wisdom—it doesn’t matter so much here that perhaps the facts may or may not be right, it’s more the understanding of the need to undertake such a venture.

Structures And Etc.

We all live inside structures. There are many different types of structures: economic, social, political, religious, geographical...ah but with that last we blur a line a little don't we? The rest of the list is more, shall we say 'ethereal' (sometimes called 'paradigms'), but that last is more concrete, more physical. And we exist inside physical structures too--I exist inside the structure of this apartment, for instance; but we also exist in bodies, which are nothing more than a kind of biological structure, of which there are currently many different kinds of biological structures (although some scientists tell us there are many types of biological structures dying off with each passing day). All of which, as far as we can tell, are dependent on a handful of the same types of protein strains--but that's another story.

Robert Anton Wilson called paradigms 'reality tunnels'. The reality tunnel is a more versatile concept as it can be intimately personal as well as a representation of a larger group mind--a structure of people who have some similar set of ideas about interpreting experience. Ultimately, each person has a reality tunnel--a structured way of interacting with the world--and this reality tunnel generally shares many common elements with the tunnels of some other set of people.

Something interesting to note is that the whole of an individual reality tunnel need not be internally self-consistent. Indeed, like Lovecraft reckoned, if we could only put all of our experiences into relation, then we would go mad with the absurdity of it all! But in the meantime, we operate through our reliance on, and relation to, structures of meaning and of being; further, within the set of interpretations that compose our reality tunnel, we selectively choose (consciously--with intent--or otherwise) from possibly contradicting methods of relating to our experiences of being.

I'm writing about this so I can set up the fact that it is likely that I'll be discussing structures quite a bit over the course of this blog. I probably won't always call them structures though, but rather I'll discuss them by name, like 'Christianity', for example, or 'magick' or 'quantum mechanics'--or even something like 'the Calgary Tower'. The point being here is that structures of all variety or kind seem basic to human experience--not merely my experience, but everyone's experience--and that's what I want to start getting at again: everyone's experience.

Yeah, I'm probably one of the last of the "great system builders"--their time in philosophy has past in the shadow of modern philosophical thinking, at least, that's what I heard talk of around the department several years ago, back when I was on a campus and enrolled in the hallowed halls of academia. Their time has past, btw, because it is generally accepted that no one system (or structure) can hold up to all forms of philosophical critique. I mean, Godel's theorem applies to the seemingly most rigourous and formal of structures: mathematics, and it states that the structure of mathematics cannot verify its own truth. So if the most logically consistent structure cannot establish its own absolute reality (I'm slanting the interpretation here, yes), then how can the structures that make up any one being's reality tunnel--which are generally more sloppy and fuzzy than mathematics--be mutually self-consistent and collectively verify the over-arching structure of the reality tunnel's own absolute truth?

They can't. And I'm OK with that. We only need to recognize that a description or interpretation of experience must take this contradiction into account. We merely need to realize that we live in the reflection of some unnameable ultimate absurdity and all we can do is laugh. Without the laughter, as Lovecraft feared, we simply go mad.