It’s All Relative
Einstein was right, It’s All Relative. One way he explained his theory of relativity in layman’s terms was: if you have three hairs on your head, its too little – if you have three hairs in your soup its too much.
This blog is written as a progression, and builds upon the concepts discussed before.
In order to get to the formulas about how this “life thing” works, we still need to build some of the building blocks – so we are on the same page.
Relativity is a key concept to discuss, so we know that there are no absolutes per se.
For example, if you asked “What is the meaning of life?” one of the answers would be “mine is not yours.” Its all relative…
When I look through my eyes at the world – I see you. When you look through your eyes at the world – you see me. So again, I could see things that you may not, simply because of my vantage point (and vice versa)
To illustrate further, let’s use our mom and kid example once more (why not?)
Mom: If you will touch the fire, it will burn you and hurt after
Kid: Why should I believe you? How do I know that you are not “just saying that”?
I have not experienced everything there is to experience in a lifetime (thank G-d). But I have experienced some things that are either unique to me (singularities), or some things that while uniquely experienced by me – I am not the ONLY one to experience them.
I have never sailed a boat in my life on my own. I can learn to sail either by trying it out and figure things as I go, or take advantage of the vast experience of OTHERS. If I ever try, I think I will tap into the experiences of other sailors…
However, even if I was an avid sailor in the year 1492, I would still NOT KNOW how to reach the other side of the world as that experience was either unknown to all, or at one point known only to Mr. Columbus uniquely.
Our knowledge is relative and is composed of “direct experiences”, blended with “indirect experiences.” Direct experiences are those we have experienced ourselves, firsthand. Indirect experiences we acquired through: reading books, watching movies, listening to stories and so on.
So if I was to write “trust me, there is life after death…” I am asking you to believe in something and trust me. However it must be either that:
- I know it, you don’t know it, and you are left to decide if you should believe me or not
- I don’t know it, you don’t know that I really don’t know it, and you are left to decide if you should believe me or not
- I have convinced myself that I know it (but in reality, I don’t know it), and you are left to decide if you should believe me or not
When writing this blog, I knew that if I was the reader of it (being the logical being that I am, with a dash of skepticism and a pinch of sarcasm) – I would tend to discount everything that I hear/read which I did not have a “direct experience” with. Ces’t La Vie.
My promise to you the reader is to do every possible effort, to ONLY write about things that fall into category #1 and #3 above. I will not waste my time nor yours, by trying to convince or make my case for a theory I am not sure of – its just not worth it and life’s too short.
The risk in writing this blog is that I may not know anything, and I am dragging you along on a wild goose chase. There, I have said it, if we are to be frank with each other.
However, the risk of letting another generation go “blind” and not harness the Internet (the ‘sum of our ambitions’) to help make sense and finally “Examine Life” – is sheer stupidity.
Together we can make the case for the general formulas of the forces that shape our world and our lives. We can simplify them like Sir Isaac Newton simplified his first three laws of motion, so we all can observe something and break it down to the forces that made it so.
We know gravity exists, yet, no experiment can prove exactly how it works. We can’t just turn off gravity for a few minutes to see that it was the culprit of pulling the apple to the ground – however we do KNOW that there is a FORCE that is pulling down the object’s mass towards the center of the Earth. That part is not disputed.
In the same fashion, we will explore the ascent to fame and infamy of a person, group, nation, planet, planetary system, galaxy and so on – as it is a direct result of FORCES that were acting on these objects. Our journey will explore known cases of movement of objects/organisms/social groups and individuals, and will attempt to uncover the forces that moved them in space and time to their position (success or demise.) If we assume that every baby born is a blank slate (Tabula Rasa), then it will not go far from its birthplace unless taken physically from there. The assertions here are about the unseen FORCES, which are not “physical”, which will carry this baby to become president of a country, a celebrity, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes and the list is far from complete.
Don’t you think that if these forces will be uncovered, explained, documented, modeled and “proven” – that it will help enlighten our lives? It will help us better NAVIGATE and know what we ought to be doing to “get there”? Just like NASA could NOT get to the moon without the laws of motion discovered and shared by Newton.
Unless we will not attempt to crack the code, and explain how this stuff works, and what causes what – it will be akin to living in a world that motion is a mystery, and there is no explanation to why an apple falls to the ground when dropped.
If we are successful, together as a wise crowd we could explain these forces – that is why this blog was created. So we, together as a society can have a rational, logical, meaningful and hopefully somewhat conclusive view about what is going on in life, and examine it. Especially with the advent of the Internet, and the ability to crowd-source data and use the Wisdom Of The Crowd. We can now conduct experiments that were unimaginable before.
Note that we already established that we can NOT get 100% of the people to agree on anything. That is a given. Yet, even if we all don’t agree nor grasp Newton’s laws of motion, they are still occurring (independent of us.) However, if most of us will discover these forces of life and use them – we can have a better planet to live on.
References and Quotes:
Isaac Newton, Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion
Rene Descartes, Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy
When Albert Einstein met Charlie Chaplin
When I started loving myself” – A poem by Charlie Chaplin written on his 70th birthday on April 16, 1959:
When I started loving myself
I understood that I’m always and at any given opportunity
in the right place at the right time.
And I understood that all that happens is right –
from then on I could be calm.
Today I know: It’s called TRUST.
When I started to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody
When I tried to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time is not right and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I know: It’s called LETTING GO
When I started loving myself
I could recognize that emotional pain and grief
are just warnings for me to not live against my own truth.
Today I know: It’s called AUTHENTICALLY BEING.
When I started loving myself
I stopped longing for another life
and could see that everything around me was a request to grow.
Today I know: It’s called MATURITY.
When I started loving myself
I stopped depriving myself of my free time
and stopped sketching further magnificent projects for the future.
Today I only do what’s fun and joy for me,
what I love and what makes my heart laugh,
in my own way and in my tempo.
Today I know: it’s called HONESTY.
When I started loving myself
I escaped from all what wasn’t healthy for me,
from dishes, people, things, situations
and from everyhting pulling me down and away from myself.
In the beginning I called it the “healthy egoism”,
but today I know: it’s called SELF-LOVE.
When I started loving myself
I stopped wanting to be always right
thus I’ve been less wrong.
Today I’ve recognized: it’s called HUMBLENESS.
When I started loving myself
I refused to live further in the past
and worry about my future.
Now I live only at this moment where EVERYTHING takes place,
like this I live every day and I call it CONSCIOUSNESS.
When I started loving myself
I recognized, that my thinking
can make me miserable and sick.
When I requested for my heart forces,
my mind got an important partner.
Today I call this connection HEART WISDOM.
We do not need to fear further discussions,
conflicts and problems with ourselves and others
since even stars sometimes bang on each other
and create new worlds.
Today I know: THIS IS LIFE!