complexity

February 9, 2013

Complex States At Being

Emotions can be incredibly complex states of being/mind.

I just want to be happy by bravelittlebird on flickrPeople (particularly in this western culture) are afraid to experience emotion due to heavy amounts of socialization and conditioning, especially in school. You know, we’re taught to sit still, to be quiet, to “use our inside voices”, to line up, to avoid disorder and be orderly, to obey, to submit, to share. To share, but not to cooperate. There is a difference. Sharing does not necessarily imply or guarantee cooperation. In school, sharing is a behavioral technique; used as a means to control the behavior of a room full of pinging (that is, naturally rambunctious and curious-minded) short beings.

Let me tell you a story: a sad story about a little girl who cried.cry_baby_cry_by_Barbara_Pellizzon_flickr

To get to City Island one can walk across a 2,800 foot long truss bridge, which was exactly what I was doing when I spotted a brief exchange between a little girl and her father. The little girl’s father, pushing another child in a stroller, told the little girl to look around as well as look at all the fish visible in the River below. The little girl was throwing bread over the side of the bridge to the fish, and seemed very happy.

Later, having crossed the bridge, I was sat under a pavilion and saw the little girl and her family again as they were passing by. The little girl tripped over a rise in the structure of the sidewalk and fell very hard. So hard that I winced when I heard the sound. She immediately bawled, as I’m sure that hurt her terribly. Probably terrified at the pain, you know, she ran to her father for solace. . . and he admonished her. He yelled at her as he brushed the dirt from her clothes, “You gotta watch where you’re walking. You can’t be looking around while you’re walking!” He seemed actually angry with her that she tripped, an accident on her part, no intent to spoil his day whatsoever. She only cried harder asking then for her mommy. At this, her father really became angry and shouted, “That’s it! You’re going back to the car you can’t act right!”

Did you see the contradiction?

Just moments ago, on the bridge he was telling her to LOOK around, then minutes later punished her for doing exactly that. These are the kinds of happenings that disturb me in the world. What did that do to the mind of that little girl? How could she possible understand that kind of contradicting information from such a trusted and authoritative figure as her father? What was the impact upon her consciousness? What did she just unconsciously learn? How did that affect her ego? Her sense of self in the world she knows and how will that affect her sense of self in subsequent years?

Which brings me back to emotions and the horrors some humans have undergone. That suffering. What I think not many humans grok is that suffering can be soft, horror is not always large, it can be very subtle. . . like entropy, changing and developing small vibrations over time that then result in the current personality/identity of that child in the form of an adult.

The_Girl_Who_Cried_Wolf_by_GaelForcePhotography_flickrWhat happened to that little girl is a subtle terror, an event that will accompany who knows how many more and will shape her as a human being. It’s systematic, to get children all to sit still or to behave as one being so it could be easier (or more efficient) for the teacher to educate them. A good idea, sure, but in actuality what happens is that the children become standardized. The spark, the inspiration for creativity and innovation and imagination breaks down because the channels created have no room for them, no means to categorize something as unpredictable as a room full of children all having ideas simultaneously.

This is one way that fear of emotion is installed in the collective consciousness. That fear to really let go and be fully in the space. . .

“. . . and I’m free, free falling.” ~Tom Petty, ‘Free Falling’

*Image credits (used with permission through CC license)–
“I just want to be happy” by bravelittlebird
“cry, baby, cry” by Barbara Pellizzon
“The Girl Who Cried Wolf” by GaelForce Photography

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February 8, 2013

The Wellspring of Quantum

Eclipse_by_Mario_in_arte_Akeu_flickrDepending upon the level of magnification, the scale or lens through which one perceives, society and its rules/laws change.

It does not stop there, in but a single dimension. Levels can overlap and can affect one another and send vibrations through the levels. What is being perceived, or conceived, or even social systems or social institutions within a society or within a framework of a corporation can change depending on the level. In other words, there are systems within systems, societies within societies, tangents within tangents, and all are approaching convergence without actually ever arriving definitively at a point of convergence, there is no real convergence coordinate, only a continuous—sometimes discrete—movement towards convergence.

Escher_3000_by_Roberto_Rizzato_flickrAlso, similar to the idea that there are small pockets of movements (social movements, civil rights movements, etc.) occurring simultaneously, often with none of the participants aware of the participation of the other participants [this idea is like the idea of cooperation, but like a prisoner’s dilemma inverted cooperation. The prisoner’s do not know each other, but in the act of operating selflessly—the movement itself, advocating civil rights or something like that—cooperate with one another to cause the same outcome, that of ending suffering and obtaining civil rights]). These are magnifications (magnifications also because each individual has an amalgamation of cells and genes and symbiosis with one’s environment through those cells, comprising a group, which operates like a cell, comprising a movement, which operates like an organ. All of this swinging from quantum to macro), protrusions into this “dimension” called Reality or The World.

But what we’re really talking about are cultures, or a culture, and there are cultures within cultures. To look at cultures is a big scale, I think (well, relatively.  Not relative to, like, the sun or something, but relative to say groups or departments or neighborhoods, which, incidentally can all be cultures. But I’m actually referring to volume in this line of thinking). So, at what level do we stop and say here is where we know what we are seeing? It’s like the Wave/Particle Problem. Why does a photon behave as a wave when unobserved and behave as a particle when observed? What is it about this observation that alters the potentialities of the atom? So, do we run into a problem (or did we run into a problem) when trying to ascertain from what level of magnification to begin? From where the problem can begin to be addressed? How to remove the self as the observer? Or, remain the observer while subjectively interacting with the environment that withdraws the elements that serve as catalyst for the movement?

We are the rudimentary manifestations of the quantum behavior of a photon.

 

*Image credit (used with permission through CC license)–
“Eclipse” by Mario in Arte Akeu
“Escher 3000” by Roberto Rizzato

 

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