The Heaviness of Being

It seems amazing to me that everything that anyone ever does has an indelible effect on the lives of every other person and thing in the world, the universe even. None of us is truely invisible. In fact we are wholly part of everything. Perhaps this is what Milan Kundera meant by the "heaviness" in his book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

For example, if a fly happens to fly by your nose and you swat it away, this will have an effect on everything and everyone in the world. It is scientifically impossible for anything to be totally isolated from this event. As a thought experiment (because in reality this experiment could not be carried out perfectly), imagine two video recordings of the world as it would be with and without this fly flying by. Play the recordings from your view of when you next observe some other people. It is possible that you may not see much difference immediately, but I'd speculate that within seconds or minutes these peoples' conversations are differing, and you would start to see corresponding differences in movement.

How about someone on the other side of the planet? Perhaps in the first few minutes you would not see any noticeable difference, but i'd speculate that within hours you would detect visible differences. These differences would escalate over time and after days, weeks, months, there maybe no relation between the two videos, though there would be some weaving a set plans are carried out (eg catching a flight, attending a meeting), but even these co-incidences would fizzle out with time, even for the most hardened planners.

The basic principle here is the well-known butterfly effect. After I just completed the last sentence, a fly just landed on my eye (no joke!) It caught me by surprise, and i swiped at it suddenly. The guy on the computer next to me turned to look for a moment. He is on some internet chat. At the very least, the time it has taken him to make his next response has changed slightly. As has my take on this blog- the text has changed completely. There will be ongoing repercussions of this event forever for everyone.

Perhaps this is why we need faith. There is a limit to the extent to which we can control our lives, ultimately we must accept that we are part of a whole, and with this acceptance comes a sense of holiness (from Old English hāl - whole).

Easier said though. My heart aches to feel this.

Janeiro 2010 - Rio de Janeiro

Where to start? Europeans first sailed up the Guanabara bay in January about 500 years ago, hence the name Rio de Janeiro (river of January), so where better to start a New Year.. in this Cidade Maravilhosa! And what a marvelous city it is...

I'm writing this post 4 months on so its all a bit of a blur now... random memories flash about my chaotic mind.. Ipanema posto 9, Lapa, capirinha, Help no more, mayhem on my birthday, juice bars, acai, bad dates, Emporio, groundhog days, depression, and finally a need to move on south.

Here are a few of the highlights...

1st January - sunrise Copacabana. Hanging on in hope..

New Year Copacabana

Storm building up over Ipanema beach

Hanging out on Ipanema beach

Body bashing

View from Pedra de Gavea of Dois Irmãos and Ipanema

Pensive

Fussvolley Ipanema beach - before the 'choque de ordem'. It is now banned on the waterfront before 5pm

Tudo bem

Birthday cake.. before the mayhem (censored)

Ready to hit the town

Aren't we cool

This was supposed to be a date, but she brought along a few friends. Yaz came along to back me up.

Chilling on high

Frescobol Ipanema beach

Rocinha favela

Recycling

Visconde de Piraja. Lojas Americas, yuk.

Making a bed in flip-flops - watch it with the hammer and chisel. Well it a change from the usual routine.

Things to do with an unmade bed - weight lifting

More pictures on Flickr

Entropy and Love - part 1

It is said that the last thing fish would discover is water. For us, could this thing be the essence of time?

Time passes by, or does it?

In classical physics time is just a variable that can just as well go backwards as forwards. It is not until the second law of thermodynamics that science provides a direction to time – the direction in which things go wrong! E.g. drop a plate and it will smash – never will a smashed plate magically come to mend itself . The direction of time given by this law is known as the thermodynamic arrow of time . It implies that time flows in the direction in which things become more chaotic, e.g. from whole plates to smashed plates.

But this is just one perspective. It is a perspective based on analysis – one provided by the mind. And it is necessarily the perspective of the mind. The mind is a delay-response system – time is a function of this system. Whereas simple organisms receive stimuli and respond directly to these in a pre-programmed manner (instinctive behaviour), more complex organisms such as man have the ability to “store” stimuli in a brain and respond at a later time.
It is this storage of information that creates this sense of time. Why? Because when the brain stores information it is becoming less chaotic relative to its surroundings . Therefore it perceives the world as becoming more chaotic.

A curious by-product of this result is the key to happiness, already well documented by many. The solutions fall into two broad categories:

1. Instead of storing information, release it. Commonly, people do this just by talking – this does work, but at a cost to the listener who is storing information that they too will need to release. More environmental approaches include prayer or meditation.

2. Store and release in equal measure. A good conversation, a good mechanic fixing a car, a musician striking a perfect note, a carpenter striking a chisel just so, doing anything that you really enjoy – are all examples of the mind storing and releasing in equal measure, or of neither storing nor releasing – sometimes known as a state of flow. In such a state we may experience time as if standing still – we are living entirely in the moment.