Saturday, December 08, 2007

Boats borne ceaselessly

Individual consciousness can be seen as a quantum wave function which through focusing massive amounts of free energy, manufactures flimsy webs of thought patterns that we string together to make an identity and a life. The amount of time we spend in sleep, dreaming, processing random sensations and perceptions, attending to bodily needs, and otherwise preparing for the moments in the day that we might actually do something really conscious might seem excessive. But that is the way of the universe. It takes a lot to get a little. Dark matter and dark energy account for 95% of the composition of the cosmos. Most of the rest is gas, and there's a little bit left to create the stars and heavy elements that we are familiar with. Our small boat is rocking on this unknown ocean, and we have very little understanding of the contents of that darkness, other than to know it is immeasurably bigger than we are. How can we not question why we are here, when such a vast unknown is buoying us up on the quantum foam in our quixotic quest to enlighten ourselves in the heart of this engulfing night?

2 comments:

Hartog said...

Help me,

Does:

quantum wave function which through focusing massive amounts of free energy, manufactures flimsy webs of thought patterns

mean that we know what and how 'thought' is?

Doug Mackey said...

Good point. Actually "thought" itself is a flimsy concept. Aside from its neuropsychological definitions, when we start to analyze the concept of thought we quickly arrive at rudimentary linguistic structures: subject, verb, object. If linguistics is inherent in the structure of cognition itself, thought may be just a reflection of the process of thinking. Thought is like a Wal-Mart full of products made in China. That's about the best I can do right now.