Funny Thing, Life.

Hey y’all. It’s me, your favorite needlessly philosophical lizard-person back from the dead. Or, rather, back from the mess that was the winter 2020 semester of college. After a failed class or two, several slight breakdowns, and some similarly minor inconveniences, I have made the decision to take a break and focus on work this year. Which means one of two things; either I’ll have more time to be posting regularly OR I might simply forget the existence of this blog once again. Only one way to find out!

So. As per usual, I’m going to rambling with no apparent direction and hoping that it comes to something. So buckle in, folks, this is either gonna be a wild ride or an incredibly boring one and they always say better to be safe than sorry! 

To set the stage, I’m currently sitting in a coffee shop, probably looking like that one person that’s trying way too hard to look like their involved in something important and interesting. I’ll make one thing clear: the things in which I’m involved are neither interesting nor important. But! As depressing as that may sound, I’m actually quite happy with it. I like sitting here, wasting my time away clickety clacking away on a keyboard on my day off from work. It’s recently come to my attention that I don’t spend nearly enough time pursuing my hobbies, and I should really focus on doing what I love more often. Like rambling on a random blog whose followers mostly consist of random porn bots. Shout out to them, I do hope they enjoy pretending to read what I write. Do robots enjoy things? I think that you need some form of free will in order to actually enjoy things, so maybe not. Not yet, at least. 

There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Free will. Is free will synonymous with consciousness? I can think of arguments in both directions, but I must admit that I’m inclined to think that they’re two different things. All animals, all living things, have free will. This means that they have the ability to act as they please, but only within their own limits. A tree can neither choose to walk around nor have the desire to do so. A cat cannot build a spaceship, nor can it comprehend what a spaceship is. Creatures with consciousness, however, can both act out of free will and have the capacity to have desires that extend beyond their own abilities, beyond the material world. That sounds terribly gross and fake philosophical, but I think that what it comes down to is that free will is the ability to do things, while consciousness is the ability to want to do things. Does that make sense? Hopefully it does.

Part of me wonders whether consciousness is just an extension of free will. I would elaborate on that, but I can’t seem to come up with the right words to do so, right now. All that means is that I’m going to sign off for now and think about it some more until I can write you another directionless mini-essay. If you bothered to read all this, thank you. If you disagree on a fundamental level and are terribly offended that I would even suggest such a thing as a difference between free will and consciousness, or think that it’s just a self-evident fact and want to call me an idiot, please, feel free to discuss. 

Do you ever just look at someone and remember that they’re living a life completely their own? Notice some stranger driving to work in the morning and realize that they exist completely independent of you? Or consider the fact that there are billions of people that you’ve never even seen before? That are all living their own intricate lives without ever once interacting with you? 

And then... realize that it’s likely you’re that person on their way to work to someone else?

I find this indescribably beautiful in some ways, and positively terrifying in others. This simultaneous self-importance you gain from the insight along with the sudden awareness of your own insignificance. 

I’ve also realized that I get a similar feeling when stargazing. When I consider just how unimaginably far away those tiny points of light are. How long it took just for their light to reach us. Sometimes it makes me curious. Wondering what (or who) else is out there. Sometimes it gives me a sense of security. Out of everywhere in that vast expanse I could be, I’m right here. On a habitable planet with people who choose to include me in their own intricate lives. And who let me include them in mine. Sometimes stargazing can make me upset, though. So much knowledge that we’ll likely never have access to. Definitely not have access to in my lifetime, at least. It makes me a little sad, honestly.  

On occasion, watching the stars can make me downright anxious. To the point that, when I’m dealing with more stress than usual, I can’t so much as look up at the night sky without a certain sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Now why in the world would that be?”, you might ask.

To which I would answer: For the same reason I find imagining others’ lives both beautiful and terrifying: it reminds me of my own insignificance. Makes me hyper-aware that I’m less than a speck in this vast universe.

But I think that I have found a solution to this issue. Why not flip it around? Just as we flipped things around on ourselves earlier when we were talking about other people’s lives. Only this time, we flip things around on the universe.

A bold move, perhaps, but hear me out. If you do this, and start comparing the universe with itself, I think you’ll find something worth holding on to: nothing and no one is more important than any other thing or person in existence. 

You’re just as significant as that star you’ve been staring absently at for two hours while you contemplate your existence.

You’re just as significant as the Black Hole sitting at the center of our galaxy.

I think that we can all agree that the Black Hole sitting at the center of our galaxy is pretty important, right? But... Compared to everything in the entire universe, it’s nothing. Not important in the slightest. The same goes for our sun. Compared to that black hole, it’s nothing. Not even comparable. The black hole eats stars like that in its cereal every morning.

You know what would happen if we didn’t have that tiny, insignificant star in the center of our solar system?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

We would never exist. There would be no life on Earth. Never would have been and never would be in the future. In fact, it’s doubtful that Earth would even exist in the first place!

The sun, that tiny, insignificant speck, is quite literally the most important thing ensuring that life on Earth continues to grow and thrive and even just exist in the first place.

Which makes me wonder...

What’s saying that it doesn’t work the same way for us? In a world full of people who don’t know you exist and couldn’t care less, you’re still there and that’s honestly all that really matters. For all you know, you might be someone’s sun. Or several people’s. Or maybe your pet goldfish’s. Or the bug that you chose to let outside instead of squishing when you found it on the wall.

In the end, it isn’t a matter of comparing how significant you are to the strangers around you. Or how much of an impact you’ll have on the world. It’s about having a positive impact on those you directly interact with. It’s about knowing yourself to be and appreciating that you are that sun in other people’s lives and allowing yourself some sunlight of your own.

You may be one of countless creatures made up of flesh and blood and stardust, living on one of countless planets in one of countless solar systems in one of countless galaxies in one of countless galaxy groups in one of countless superclusters.

But, in the end, you are the most important thing in your own life. You’re positively impacting people and plants and animals every day just by being alive.

Alright folks, you know what’s happening (if you don’t please refrain from asking me because I have no idea). So basically I have a test that I know I’ll most likely fail coming up in about 18 minutes but I want to talk to you about teleportation before that happens. So. When you think about teleportation ya’ll probably think the ‘beam me up scotty’ type of thing where one moment you’re one place and then you slowly dematerialize in weird light and then you spontaneously appear somewhere else, right? Well, I’m here to tell you that teleportation is possible, but not like that. Well, sort of like that but mostly not like that.

So the thing with real-life teleportation is it would (and does) depend on this handy dandy thing in the quantum world called entanglement. You’ve probably heard about that, whether it be in a passing conversation in your physics class or through watching a sci-fi movie (sci-fi movies like to take physics and misinterpret it, think politicians with the U.S. constitution). Anyway, for clarification quantum entanglement is basically where two really tiny particles are like identical clones where they’re the exact same. But they take this whole twin thing a step further and end up doing the exact same thing as the other. If one starts moving at a different speed, so will the other. That sort of thing. And the important part is that it doesn’t matter how far apart these particles are, they still do what the other one does.

Alright so I got ten minutes left which means I need to type fast because I’m gonna post this whether it’s finished or not because that’s just what I do. And I can’t pick up on the same thought process after I’ve dropped it. 

Anyway, smart people think we can use this quantum entanglement as a way to teleport. And I’m pretty sure they’ve actually done it with some really tiny things (look it up before you quote me on that). And they do that by making particles become entangled. So for example, if they did that with a glass of water, the particles of that glass of water would become entangled with the particles in whatever area the scientists wanted and once they became entangled an exact copy of the glass of water would ‘materialize’ in that spot.

Before I begin I should clarify that I mean a murder of crows, not the sort of murder that generally results in death. I’m not Macbeth; don’t freak out. 

I recently learned that if you feed a group of crows, even just once, they’ll remember who you are, and oftentimes two or three members of the group will be tasked with following you around in case you happen to drop anymore tasty snacks. I have the feeling that these feathery stalkers get told to keep a low profile, because whenever I see them they’re peeking down from a discreet rooftop or partially hidden in a pine tree. So much work for the odd chance of the target tossing some food on the ground.

The thing about crows is that they’re naturally mistrustful of anything that seems good. They may stand less than a foot away from you as you walk past, yelling on the phone, but the moment you toss them food, you’re probably malicious. They have this strange little system where if you don’t toss a crumb far enough away the bravest one will fly down from a tree and move very slowly toward it. As soon as it gets within pecking range it snaps the crumb up and hops away at full speed, then seems somewhat triumphant about its daring brush with death.

Crows are strange people. So are humans. If you do something kind for a us just once, we’ll remember your face for as long as we live. We might even tell out friends about it, and they’ll remember you, too. Offer to do something kind, however, and you’re often met with certain mistrust, or at least a little surprise. Once we assure ourselves that the provider of kind deeds doesn’t have anything in it for themselves, we still often have trouble accepting it, and will keep our distance. 

It certainly is a brave human being who can accept a favor without any second-guessing.

Do you ever just sit and think? Not about anything in particular, just sit on a chair or lay on your bed and stare at the wall or ceiling and let your mind wander? I have to admit, I don’t get as much time to do this as I used to, but when I have the chance I often find some fascinating thoughts hidden in some of the dustier, previously unnoticed corners of my brain. It’s crazy what your mind can accomplish when you just leave it alone to do its thing. 

Which prompts the question: are these thoughts or mental notes that surface only on the rare occasion that we aren’t actively using our mind truly our thoughts? Did we consciously create them and simply forget about it afterward? Do we have some sort of “deeper”, unconscious mind that thinks thoughts in the background while we are performing our everyday tasks, and then stores them for conscious contemplation at a later time? Surely they aren’t remnants of thinking that we have done in our sleep.

Whatever the case, one wonders whether one can call a thought that has not been consciously created truly one’s own. Perhaps it’s just a strange concatenation of information that has been stored throughout the years. Some sort of strange Frankenstein created by mashing together a random collection of personal experiences. Just sitting there, waiting to be acknowledged. And when it finally is brought to the surface of one’s mind, the thinker wonders that such a thought could be concocted within the depths of one’s mind without the thinker’s knowledge. Sort of like a built-in muse. 

Perhaps this is the beginning of creativity. The more arbitrary experiences one has, the more material the mind has to play with and mash together when we aren’t looking. By the time the thoughts come to light, they are utterly unrecognizable. Though it’s up to the thinker to communicate this thought, whether through art, or writing, or music. It isn’t truly creativity until one acts on it.