There’s a problem that’s been around since humans first encountered the world: Is this a continuous or a discontinuous world? If the former, then where do individuals fit in; if the latter, then where does meaning fit in among discrete “units”? For a long time, the problem lay in the hands of philosophers and theologians. Then physicists stepped in, altered the problem a bit, and either found or decided that on the most fundamental level the universe is apparently One and that our conscious efforts to understand it break it into discrete units, including the units we call You.
Nonsense? Not really. Think of how you waver between seeing a unified and a disunified world of people. You appear both entangled and un-entangled, wrapped up at times in a collective consciousness, set of values, and behaviors, and at other times disrobed of all encumbrances of social interaction. Crowd v. loner. Propagandized v. isolated. Them v. You. And as you look at your state of existence, you see yourself as simultaneously belonging and ostracized, a human wave or particle, a duality you can’t get a handle on because there’s a constant switching from one to the other. Each time you try to quantify (or even qualify) your status, you interfere. When you want to demonstrate that You belong, you find yourself identifying a You.
Esoteric nonsense? Maybe not. Look at yourself as an individual in any relationship. You can measure what you are, but then you can’t measure yourself within the relationship. You can measure the relationship, but not You as individual. Your existence seems both determined and undetermined, but it depends on how you chose to measure or qualify You or measure or qualify the relationship.
Is there a practical side to this? Possibly. If you recognize that you cannot be simultaneously discrete and incorporated, then you can take whatever measurement you like. That is, the human world, Your consciousness, is sometimes bound and sometimes free, sometimes determined and sometimes not. That leads to the questions You have to ask yourself: In switching from unity to disunity and back, how do I maintain both my relationship and my individuality without destroying either? Can I provide evidence that the human universe is simultaneously both continuous and discontinuous? What causes the collapse of the universe and a non-local unity of humans into a set of local discrete beings with antipathy?
You could, if you desire, ignore this apparent dichotomy of your being. But run this little thought experiment. You on your first day of school. You on your first day in high school. You today. Are they all You? Or, when you think of a continuous life, do you make it discontinuous when you think of discrete moments? Can you maintain a discreteness in your present state if you think of being a continuous person? Then run this thought experiment. You entangled with another in a relationship, acting as a unity. You entangled with a group, acting as a unity. Can you maintain discreteness when you act in unison as a single consciousness devoted, for example, to a single cause that overrides the causes of its component members?
Pay attention in these troubled times to what you see on TV or on the Web to note whether or not our human universe is nonlocal or local, unified or discrete. Watch the waves collapse into particles and the particles become unified waves. Then, like the physicists, ask yourself about the nature of your assessment, that is, your measuring device. Do you change the human universe just by wanting to see it as either determined or undetermined? And if You want to quantify or qualify or You actually measure, does that in itself contradict the notion of unity? You can’t, as you know, measure infinity. You can measure only the finite. Measuring, weighing, and even judging are predicated on disunity and on discrete entities.
Nonsense? Not really. Think of how you waver between seeing a unified and a disunified world of people. You appear both entangled and un-entangled, wrapped up at times in a collective consciousness, set of values, and behaviors, and at other times disrobed of all encumbrances of social interaction. Crowd v. loner. Propagandized v. isolated. Them v. You. And as you look at your state of existence, you see yourself as simultaneously belonging and ostracized, a human wave or particle, a duality you can’t get a handle on because there’s a constant switching from one to the other. Each time you try to quantify (or even qualify) your status, you interfere. When you want to demonstrate that You belong, you find yourself identifying a You.
Esoteric nonsense? Maybe not. Look at yourself as an individual in any relationship. You can measure what you are, but then you can’t measure yourself within the relationship. You can measure the relationship, but not You as individual. Your existence seems both determined and undetermined, but it depends on how you chose to measure or qualify You or measure or qualify the relationship.
Is there a practical side to this? Possibly. If you recognize that you cannot be simultaneously discrete and incorporated, then you can take whatever measurement you like. That is, the human world, Your consciousness, is sometimes bound and sometimes free, sometimes determined and sometimes not. That leads to the questions You have to ask yourself: In switching from unity to disunity and back, how do I maintain both my relationship and my individuality without destroying either? Can I provide evidence that the human universe is simultaneously both continuous and discontinuous? What causes the collapse of the universe and a non-local unity of humans into a set of local discrete beings with antipathy?
You could, if you desire, ignore this apparent dichotomy of your being. But run this little thought experiment. You on your first day of school. You on your first day in high school. You today. Are they all You? Or, when you think of a continuous life, do you make it discontinuous when you think of discrete moments? Can you maintain a discreteness in your present state if you think of being a continuous person? Then run this thought experiment. You entangled with another in a relationship, acting as a unity. You entangled with a group, acting as a unity. Can you maintain discreteness when you act in unison as a single consciousness devoted, for example, to a single cause that overrides the causes of its component members?
Pay attention in these troubled times to what you see on TV or on the Web to note whether or not our human universe is nonlocal or local, unified or discrete. Watch the waves collapse into particles and the particles become unified waves. Then, like the physicists, ask yourself about the nature of your assessment, that is, your measuring device. Do you change the human universe just by wanting to see it as either determined or undetermined? And if You want to quantify or qualify or You actually measure, does that in itself contradict the notion of unity? You can’t, as you know, measure infinity. You can measure only the finite. Measuring, weighing, and even judging are predicated on disunity and on discrete entities.
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