19 and 23! for the ask meme pls
19. What fictional doctor do you wish was your doctor?
Well, the 13th Doctor isn't necessarily a medical doctor, though she can still heal and get me to her Tardis for the worst of it. But I'd love for her to be my doctor. Absolutely loved her run and her and Yaz's relationship. She also has that playful (and often angry) approach to life that I relate to.
23. Share a bit of philosophy?
I wrote this essay by hand awhile ago, then typed it up sometime in 2021. I'll just copy/paste it for your enjoyment as it sums up my own philosophy. :)
Communality is the communion of subjects (living beings, world/Earth) not objects, and is based in the relationality of all living things and the Earth itself. What is relationality then? It is the relational way of being, knowing, and doing as defined as the socionatural configurations that arise from the recognition of the radical interdependence of all living things, where nothing preexists the relationships that constitute it (See Paulo Freire's and Arturo Escobar's books).
Our atoms come from the Earth, and thus we are interconnected, entangled. As the Earth lives, we live, and we are in communion with all living beings on the planet. We cannot separate ourselves from the Earth without falling prey to the lie of ‘individualism.’ The lie of ‘individualism’ teaches that we are all independent, not connected, and are separate from the world and thus can act upon it without consequences. This is based on the false dichotomy that undermines much of Western philosophy, that we are separate and thus not part of nature.
We cannot ever be separate from nature as we come from it, and we live within it and we use it – often in harmful ways for ourselves and the habitability of the planet. This individualistic philosophy severs us from the interdependence of our relationality with the Earth, thus we end us causing extreme harm to ourselves. So what is a better way to be with the Earth?
Relationality, where we recognize that we are not separate from the Earth but interdependent on it and all that live on it. Where we realize we are not true objective observers outside the system, but we are entangled IN the system, and thus unable to ever be one hundred percent removed and truly objective. For example, in Buddhism, we, everything in life, are the result of processes of dependent coarising.
Nothing exists intrinsically; everything is mutually constituted. This belief aligns with the results of quantum mechanics, and how our atoms are all constituted of star dust — Big Bang dust, all mutually constituted, unable to exist without all the universe also mutually existing with, in, and around us.
In a sense, our particles that comprise us are entangled with the particles of the universe. From that one starting explosion that expanded outward in all directions and dimensions to form the lattice of superclusters, galaxies, stars, planets, and us. From that one beginning, we were all formed. The universe made conscious in us (and any other sentient beings), burning with a curiosity to know itself.
Thus, we cannot truly separate ourselves from the universe in order to obtain true objectivity.
True Objectivity requires full separation from the universe to observe and rationalize it from outside its systems, but no one is one hundred percent separate from reality. This myth of true objectivity poisons our relations; it claims that only logic and separation must rule — as if we can separate ourselves from our emotions, from our unconscious biases, from our prejudices, from our socialization, from the situations in which we find ourselves. As if one can separate our minds from our bodies, our bodies from the universe. This simply is not possible in our reality.
The best we can do is analyze with a mixture of subjectivity and partial objectivity, where in partial objectivity we examine only a small segment of reality, but even in this action, our subjectivity remains because our act of observing impacts the system. Thus, again, true objectivity remains out of our reach.
Quantum mechanics have shown that the act of observing a system changes the system. The observation is entangled in the system being observed, where the observer becomes part of the system they are observing. When light passes through a narrow slit with no detectors to determine where it will hit and at what velocity, it does not show any interference pattern. As soon as the detectors are added, that act of observing the photons influences the system and the interference pattern appears.
The observer becomes part of the system; the observation changed the results by the sure act of observing. Quantum particles are governed by the uncertainty principle, where particles exist and simultaneously not exist in a probability cloud, where we cannot know all attributes, such as position and velocity, at the same time and with the same accuracy. The more precise we measure one attribute, the fuzzier and more ‘spread out’ the probability cloud becomes for the other particle’s attributes.
For quantum mechanics, Schrodinger’s Equation can show where a particle is ‘likely’ to be versus ‘unlikely’ with amazing accuracy. Another interesting feature is how quantum particles’ probability clouds smear enough that sometimes they “tunnel” through barriers (Electron scanning microscopes and MRIs rely on this), but they also can become entangled so even when separated by vast distances, they still act in tandem (an example: if one particle is measured in an up spin, the other will change simultaneously to a down spin).
This entanglement is at the root of why our observations influence a system. We cannot divorce ourselves from our own particles and the universe itself. We have to include ourselves in the analysis of reality. We are interconnected and interdependent. We are mutually constituted.
Descartes, a philosopher of Western Europe, separates reality into a dualism: physical stuff (realm of science – physics, chemistry, etc) and mind stuff, that although they may influence each other, they are distinctly separate. This mind/body dichotomy would influence centuries, but in the end can easily be prove false as I show above.
There is no separation — no dualism — mind stuff and physical stuff are the same, they are entangled and interconnected. Mutually constituted. Each made of the same collection of particles, and each interdependent. We cannot have our mind without our bodies.
What creates a conscious mind? The emergence of billions of particles, entangled, working in concert within the neurons of our brains; here the emergence of a new process (mind-thought) can appear. The particles of our body – of which our brain is part of our body — is necessary for the emergence of consciousness to even exist.
All is Alive and Interconnected
In Indigenous knowledge, Everything is Alive. All things — animals, people, rocks, rivers, planets, etc – are alive; they are emergent minds that exist because of the organization and energy of billions of entangled collections of particles. As much as we are dictated by the physical laws of the universe, made of the same particles originating in the Big Bang, the emergence of each of our consciousnesses stems from our unique configuration of collections of particles, and how our behaviors (responses to stimuli) begets our ability to learn, be creative, think, act — the higher level portion of a nested story that began with a collection of particles.
Thus, the point here is even an observer to a real-time situation is still part of that system they are observing and thus influence the system (even if their action is only to stand in observe). The person cannot be detached from their presence and impact on the system. At best, they can share their subjective experience and cross reference with those present (or recorded analogs or experiment logs from detectors, etc)_ to find commonalities, differences, and shared facts.
Free Will and Cooperation
Each of us unique in our configurations. As for why we are here, that is up to us to decide. I believe it is rooted in curiosity and relationality — humanity has survived NOT because of competition (it is a myth that nature is only red in tooth and claw, there is much cooperation in nature that helps species thrive), but we have survived because of cooperation.
We, even in the darkest and most dangerous disasters, tend toward cooperation. Even when people are looting stores in disasters, they aren’t doing it just out of selfish need (though their needs are valid and worthy of help) but also to share with their relations — whether those relations be biological relatives, neighbors, or other people in their area. This tendency toward cooperation has played out again and again and again throughout history. Even as children, we tend toward cooperation.
Society had to teach us how to be competitive (sometimes unsuccessfully and sometimes far too successfully), and that socialization is what severs us from each other, from the root of our being (our interconnectedness with the Earth), and from who we are.
What about reconciling our realities?
Let’s say we are looking at a cat in the box. The box is closed. We have no way to measure if the cat is actually IN the box or if the box is empty. We could try to lift the box and check its weight, but without the knowledge of the box weight or the cat weight, it is hard to definitely say the cat is in the box or not.
So until we open the box, we can disagree on reality all we want. It’s the act of measuring by opening the box where the reconciliation of our realities happen.
Now, because sentience is a weird thing, the person who claims there is no cat in the box, can go on doing that all they want, even as they reach in and touch the cat’s fur. (This is how conspiracy theories are born). They can have all the evidence the cat is in the box, but if their mind is so rooted in denying that reality, for them, they create their own made-up reality and may even fail to see what they are actually touching. We can trick our own minds. So yes, there is instances where we may disagree and have no way to reconcile it. Brains are funky like that, but now we’ve entered into the realm of psychology, and that’s not my forte.
Suffice to say, the universe reconciles the differences, but we have the conscious decision to reject that reconciliation or embrace it. Because our interdependence — us being part of the system means our act of observing the opening of the box causes the universe to reconcile the interior of the box for us to observe. The waveform collapses, and we see the cat or not. But because we are conscious and sentient, we can reject that reality still. That’s a decision that is one step beyond the moment the wave-form of quantum particles collapse from our observation.
Thanks for reading! And thank you for the questions! :D
